:: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 - THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 ::

Remember to check venue websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place for COVID prevention. We recommend verifying those before every trip to the theater.

🎞️ CELLULOID NOW

Celluloid Now, a project of our dear friends at the Chicago Film Society, continues through Sunday. The program includes screenings, workshops, and other events showcasing work by analog filmmakers and artists alongside archival rediscoveries and restorations. Find the full schedule, screening lineup and more information here.

The longest event in the program, 16mm Visions, takes place at Constellation on Friday at 7:30pm. Per the title, the event will focus on work shot exclusively in the 16mm format. It begins with a new restoration of Frank and Caroline Mouris’ experimental animation IMPASSE (1978), then goes on to present recent work; some of the filmmakers featured include Lori Felker, Kioto Aoki, and Alexander Stewart. The program notes also promise “selections from the Chicago Film Society’s film collection and more!”

The programs on Saturday and Sunday will take place at the Chicago Cultural Center; all are free to attend. Saturday’s event kicks off with Where do film prints come from? at 12pm. Anthology Film Archives’ archivist John Klacsmann and “handmade-cinema specialist” Tatsu Aoki will be present to discuss the nuts and bolts of the filming and printing process. The program continues with another selection of 16mm shorts. Still more (!!!) 16mm films are on the docket for the 2:15pm program, Mysteries. Some of the more recognizable names in this program include Ben Balcom and Jodie Mack. The Saturday events conclude at 4pm with a program of Super-8mm shorts playfully titled A Miniature Screening of Miniature Films. Cute!

Sunday’s events kick off with Celluloid Open Mic at 11am. As the name suggests, the event comprises whatever films the attendees want to bring and share with an audience. This program is followed by the workshop Projector Anatomy 101 at 2pm. For this event, CFS members will dissect a 16mm projector and show how to “tear a machine apart [and] attempt to put it back together” (as one does on a Sunday). Then two more shorts programs round out the day’s events. At 5pm comes Films That Walk, Films That Talk, an hourlong program of 16mm experimental work that centers on films from the past several years but also contains a recent restoration of Peter Rose’s 1971 short IMPASSE. At 7pm comes 2x16mm: Double the Fun, a selection of work designed to be projected from two projectors at once. The highlight of this program is a new restoration of experimental legend Paul Sharits’ RAZOR BLADES (1968).

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Jacques Rivette’s DUELLE (France)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

Jacques Rivette understood that the magic of narrative cinema had little to do with narrative; rather, it came from the accumulation of gestures, fetish objects, and make-believe that rendered each movie a world unto itself. A follow-up to his greatest achievement, CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (1974), DUELLE was released along with NOROÎT in 1976 as parts of an intended quartet of films, but the third and fourth episodes were never made. In hindsight, the unfinished nature of the project seems to epitomize Rivette, who was known for his unresolved, yet remarkably intricate, conspiracy premises. DUELLE even goes so far as to invent its own cosmology, which involves immortal beings assuming human form in contemporary Paris, but the nature of the myth remains opaque until the end. As a storyteller, Rivette was more concerned with imagining complications than with connecting them, and this makes DUELLE feel like a Louis Feuillade serial, with the suggestion that the narrative innovations could spin out indefinitely. Enhancing the connection with silent cinema, Rivette had pianist Jean Wiener on set throughout the filming of DUELLE to accompany the action. As Henry Witt explained in his program notes for the UW Cinematheque, "Though always on-location when providing accompaniment, Wiener and his piano are only sometimes visible onscreen. His appearances vary from having entirely sensible diegetic motivations—performing at a nightclub, for instance—to the nonsensical, like when he appears midway through a private hotel room conversation... This slippery approach to the diegesis reflects the film’s handling of realism and fantasy generally." The cinematography, by regular Rivette collaborator William Lubtchansky, adds to the film's slippery nature. While it doesn't seem overtly fantastical, the photography nonetheless captures magic auras in real locations, like the great shafts of lights that shoot through a train station early on in the film or the glow off of fish tanks in a late-night aquarium sequence clearly indebted to Welles' THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947). Such effects suggest (like the narrative itself) a supernatural presence lurking beneath the veneer of ordinary life; for Rivette, cinema had the power to bring that presence out into the open. Screening as part of the return of Highs & Lows, which includes several double features of “high” and “low” cinema (which one is which? That’s up to you!) through November 13. One admission provides entry to both films. (1976, 121 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Screening after Andrew Fleming's 1996 teen horror film THE CRAFT (101 min, 35mm).

George Cukor’s WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? (US)

Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm

George Cukor had been in Hollywood for only a couple years when he directed this poison-pen letter to the movie industry, one of the first films to depict the studio system in a less than glowing light. It tells the story of a waitress at the Brown Derby (the famed Los Angeles restaurant that looks like a giant hat) who gets discovered by a veteran film director on the lookout for fresh talent. She becomes a star as the director’s career tanks due to his alcoholism, but she remains a devoted friend to the man who made her career. If the story sounds familiar, that’s because producer David O. Selznick reused it five years later for A STAR IS BORN, which in turn has been remade multiple times. That film has been a hit in any version, while WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? was a commercial flop on first release. Did audiences respond to the story only when romance became a central component? Mary Evans (Constance Bennett) experiences only a familial love for her director/Svengali (Lowell Sherman, who also struggled with alcohol dependence offscreen; his performance is nakedly autobiographical), while her romantic feelings are reserved for a rakish polo player, a secondary character who essentially strong-arms her into marriage. Cukor’s subversive handling of heteronormative relationships is not yet evident here, though his direction of dialogue is remarkable, combining the zippiness one associates with pre-Code cinema with an off-hand sophistication that always feels authentic to the characters. Characteristic of early Talkies, WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? moves fluidly between tones; it begins in a comic register and grows steadily more tragic as it proceeds. Consistent throughout is a knowing, bitter air about how movie stars are made and broken by the entertainment industry. It’s worth noting that the film’s most bitter sentiments are reserved for gossip columnists and entertainment reporters; one of the few pure-hearted characters is a paternalistic studio chief modeled after Samuel Goldwyn and played by the fine character actor Gregory Ratoff. Preceded by the Fleischer Studios’ 1929 short I’M AFRAID TO COME HOME IN THE DARK (7 min, 16mm). (1932, 88 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s THE DECAMERON (Italy/France/West Germany)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 7:30pm

Pier Paolo Pasolini considered his “Trilogy of Life” (of which THE DECAMERON was the first entry) to be his most political films, which may seem surprising, given the intensely political nature of nearly all his movies. How could these collections of centuries-old bawdy tales have more to tell us about the modern political situation than, say, MAMMA ROMA (1962), TEOREMA (1968), or PORCILE (1969)? For Pasolini, the answer lay in the trilogy’s rejection of modernity and its attending codes about sex, religion, and money. The films take place in a world with far fewer taboos with regards to hygiene and bodily functions—with sex being just one of these functions—than the one we presently inhabit. In comparison with us modern spectators, the characters in the Trilogy of Life seem closer to nature, less reliant on authority, and unencumbered by the pursuit of material satisfaction. They represent, in short, a vision of humanity that Pasolini felt had been sacrificed to mechanization and cultural standardization. Pasolini also felt a personal connection to Giovanni Boccaccio, the author of the epic work on which THE DECAMERON is partly based. Boccaccio chose not to write in Latin, as was customary in 14th-century Italy, and in so doing became one of the first major Italian poets to write in the language of common people. Pasolini, one of the major Italian poets of the 20th century, carried on this tradition when he published verse in the vernacular of his time. Language is central to the politics of Pasolini’s DECAMERON, as the characters speak in the contemporary Neapolitan dialect, not the earlier Florentine language of Boccaccio’s original; the intent was to spotlight the poorer conditions of contemporary southern Italy vis à vis the economically powerful north. Despite Pasolini’s lofty intentions, THE DECAMERON comes off as earthy and playful, down to the way it skips from one story to another. Pasolini would later disown the film because its commercial success inspired a number of hardcore pornographic knockoffs. A lifelong Marxist, Pasolini rejected pornography because it turned sex into a function of capitalism. It’s critical to note that the Trilogy of Life films take place before this economic system came into being. (1971, 111 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

JESSICA BARDSLEY: INTO THE CANYON (US/Experimental)

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

Timelessness is perhaps the most pervasive theme in the five films featured in this shorts program. Through existing film footage and her own original work, Jessica Bardsley suggests a persistence of experiences and ideas that are rooted in earthly and unearthly—as well as cinematic and personal—landscapes; they transcend beyond the corporeal but always reflect the human experience. Bardsley is particularly interested in the experiences of women and their navigation of these often-dangerous spaces. The program’s titular film, INTO THE CANYON (2018, 8 min) is set in the American west; Bardsley uses sweeping landscape shots to depict a group of women traveling on horseback through rocky terrain. Their presence is viewed mostly from afar; the final shot is of the travelers as just dots in the wide canyon setting. There’s visual distance, but the sound of their movements--the crunching of the ground underneath, soft singing--is easily heard. The juxtaposition of the remoteness of the travelers with the closeness of the sound suggests that their impact resonates, despite their smallness in the canyon space. GOODBYE THELMA (2019, 14 min) also focuses on the western landscape, this time using negative footage of Ridley Scott’s THELMA & LOUISE (1991) as the backdrop for an exploration of the experience of being a woman traveling alone. Combined with her own footage, Bardsley examines the freedom and simultaneous fear of traveling by oneself; natural, empty spaces can feel safe, but the threat of violence is ever-present. Sound, too, plays an important role--she notes in one moment that the natural sounds of the day become terrorizing at night; the film affectively articulates the constant state of vigilance women are in, negotiating risk in every space. In LIFE WITHOUT DREAMS (2022, 14 min), Bardsley turns to images of celestial bodies to examine insomnia and critique the nonstop bombardment of concerns that modern capitalist society imposes on us. THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE EARTH (2018, 16 min), likewise makes a connection between geology and the phenomenological experience of being a woman. Both films feel out of time, again, conveying a constancy to these concerns and experiences. Finally, THE BLAZING WORLD (2013, 19 min), Bardsley’s most personal film, is a video essay detailing her obsession with Winona Ryder and her character in James Mangold's GIRL, INTERUPTED (1999) and her own history with depression, kleptomania, and suicide. Using footage from educational films about shoplifting, along with film and interview clips of Ryder, THE BLAZING WORLD blurs the line between fiction and reality, reexamining these public and personal events with honesty and empathy. [Megan Fariello]

Jim Jarmusch's MYSTERY TRAIN (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am

Jim Jarmusch had never been to Memphis before he made MYSTERY TRAIN, but that doesn’t make the film less successful as a portrait of that city. Rather, it communicates what Memphis looks like to an outsider who believes in the magic of the city’s music history (Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and many others recorded songs there) and hopes to discover traces of its impact. Divided into three stories, the film plays like a sketchbook of Jarmusch’s ideas, which revolve around travel, loneliness, crime, and the supernatural. The first story, “Far From Yokohama,” concerns a Japanese couple who travel to Memphis to pay homage to their favorite musicians. The second section, “A Ghost,” follows a young Italian widow (Nicoletta Braschi) as she buries her husband during her honeymoon, spends a night at a run-down hotel, and meets the ghost of Elvis. (In deadpan Jarmuschian fashion, the ghost appears to her only because he gets the wrong address.) The third, “Lost in Space,” centers on a British expat (Joe Strummer), his brother-in-law (Steve Buscemi), and a mutual friend as they spend a long night drinking, fighting, and hiding from the police. All three stories converge at the same hotel, which is watched over by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (in a screamin’ red suit) and a bellboy played by Cinqué Lee; these two provide the film with much of its winning humor. The images of the hotel (like those of the diners and run-down houses the characters visit) recall the work of such noted photographers as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and William Eggleston. It’s a beautiful-looking film, shot lovingly by Robby Müller and designed inventively by Dan Bishop; this was Jarmusch’s second feature in color, and its palette is perhaps the most varied and vibrant in his entire filmography. Screening as part of the Music Box Staff Picks! series. (1989, 110 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Jean Grémillon’s DAÏNAH LA MÉTISSE (France)

Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday,7pm

A rather glorious curiosity, Jean Grémillon’s DAÏNAH LA MÉTISSE straddles the line between 1920s French Impressionism and 1930s French Poetic Realism. It has an otherworldly, dreamlike quality that draws from both traditions; this quality is furthered by its hermetic setting aboard an ocean liner. It also straddles the line between silent and sound cinema—a period in the late 1920s and early ‘30s that produced many films remarkable in their shoehorning late silent era visual sophistication together with awkward (but fascinating) sync sound sequences. Ill-fitting parts that become dynamic through their radical shifts from one to the other. The Daïnah of the title is a seductive “half-breed” (métisse) who captivates everyone on board, flirting and charming, but who is married to a black magician/conjurer (there’s a spectacular and odd performance from him featuring a glass bowl, some fish, and a bird). Daïnah is a dervish who upsets the equilibrium of this closed group (literally early on; a mad, spinning dance in a lame dress is a sight to behold) and perhaps must pay a price. The film was severely cut by the studio—by nearly 40 minutes—and it’s hard to tell how much (or if) the film suffers from this. The film is constantly destabilizing the viewer through severe camera angles (so many birds-eye shots!) and by filming through railings, distorting windows, and other obscuring elements, that any narrative roughness feels deliberate rather than after-the-fact butchering. It’s a film of sharp edges, and sometimes a deep cut is better than a shallow puncture. Screening as part of the as part of the Black Actors in Foreign Cinema series presented by the Blacknuss Network. (1932, 51 min, Digital Projection) [Patrick Friel]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s INFERNAL AFFAIRS (Hong Kong)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

A crime thriller about the ongoing back-and-forth between the police and a triad, INFERNAL AFFAIRS shows what happens when both groups embed a traitor in the other's ranks. Tony Leung plays the police mole masquerading as a triad member, and Andy Lau is the criminal who becomes a police hotshot. The film draws parallels between the two men, with both rising through the ranks of their infiltrated organization, juggling romances, and even sharing hobbies in music and audiophilia. Where another film may embellish the plot with elaborate action sequences, car chases, or rooftops pursuits, INFERNAL AFFAIRS instead keeps the tension grounded. The editing and visual flair bring an undeniable energy that borders on kitsch, with crazy cuts and zooms that keep the pacing fast and, yes, furious. The style should be familiar to anyone alive during the 2000s, yet coming back to it is refreshing. Perhaps it's nostalgia, but returning to this over-replicated visual style that grew tiresome 10 years ago is a breath of fresh air in the current blockbuster landscape. Barring a few diamonds in the rough, our contemporary cinematic universes offer little substance in the midst of style, and even if INFERNAL AFFAIRS goes a bit overboard, I’ll gladly take that over something completely unremarkable. That being said, the film spawned its own cinematic universe of sorts, with two sequels and Scorsese’s Hollywood remake THE DEPARTED. (2002, 101 mins, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
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Also screening this week are new DCP Digital restorations of INFERNAL AFFAIRS II (2003, 119 min) and INFERNAL AFFAIRS III (2003, 118 min).

James Isaac's THE HORROR SHOW (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight

In most cases, a low-budget film with subpar acting and a negative critical reputation will get buried to the point that it will never be widely seen again, unless, of course, you count people flipping on FX to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon. However, low-budget horror films, particularly those classified as "slashers," often warp what an audience might consider a "good" movie, and I can think of no better example as to why these films scratch an itch others cannot than James Isaac's THE HORROR SHOW. Released as HOUSE III in foreign markets in 1989, it was decided that the film should be advertised with an original title in the United States because its content lent itself less to comedy than its predecessors; this decision seems questionable given some of its unintentionally hilarious moments. The plot revolves around a serial killer-turned-supernatural entity who micro-doses electrocution in order to survive capital punishment and haunt the cop who locked him up, resulting in violent, Freddy Krueger-esque dream sequences for the officer and his family. If that concept alone isn't wild enough, Brion James and Lance Henriksen, as the killer and the cop, elevate the film to ridiculous heights. Their onscreen chemistry lays the groundwork for this kind of absurdity to work. Their awkward, stilted dialogue and over-the-top cleaver-and-gun fights provide the type of blood-soaked fun that a healthy sense of self-awareness is necessary to deliver. Despite overwhelmingly negative reviews and a rare 0% Rotten Tomatoes score, this film has maintained an audience among horror fanatics and fans of cheesy, low-budget films alike, making it a worthwhile genre piece for those with the right sensibility. (1989, 95 min, 35mm) [Michael Bates]

Tsai Ming-liang's STRAY DOGS (Taiwan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 8pm

If Tsai Ming-Liang had indeed retired from making feature-length narrative films after STRAY DOGS in 2013, as he indicated in interviews when it premiered, he would have gone out on a high note (he has since returned with 2020’s DAYS). This beautiful film found the great Taiwanese director training his patient camera eye on a homeless man (the inevitable Lee Kang-Sheng) who struggles to provide for his two young children in contemporary Taipei. There are extended wordless sequences of Lee’s unnamed character “working” by standing in traffic and holding an advertising placard—and thus functioning as a human billboard, not unlike the protagonist of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s THE SANDWICH MAN—as well as washing his children in a grocery store bathroom; these shots are almost startling in their clear-eyed compassion and remind us that, for all of the audacious experimenting he does with form, Tsai has also grounded much of his best work in an authentic sense of character and milieu. The film's high point occurs about half-way through: a long take of Lee’s character smothering a head of lettuce with a pillow (before doing other interesting things to it, including voraciously biting into it and cradling it in his arms and sobbing over it), a sad, funny and crazy scene that is far more emotionally moving than the similar but more shrewdly contrived and melodramatic climax of Michael Haneke’s AMOUR. Then there is the matter of the amazing penultimate shot: a static close-up of two faces staring at a mural that ticks well past the 10-minute mark before cutting, with one of the characters effortlessly shedding a few tears halfway through, a moment that recalls the famous final shot of Tsai’s breakthrough VIVE L’AMOUR in 1994. Without taking anything away from its culturally specific qualities, I think that the depiction of a family of “have nots” in STRAY DOGS has more to say about the lives of ordinary Americans in the 21st century than the vast majority of movies that have come out of the United States. Screening as part of the Tsai Ming-Liang series. (2013, 138 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Lucrecia Martel's THE HEADLESS WOMAN (Argentina)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Lucrecia Martel’s films demand your attention to infinitesimal details and then upbraid you—albeit thoughtfully, like a sage imploring you to reconsider all your preconceived notions—for caring too much about them. Her 2008 film THE HEADLESS WOMAN, the last in her Salta Trilogy (called as such because all three, including LA CIÉNAGA from 2002 and THE HOLY GIRL from 2004, are set in the eponymous Argentine province, also her hometown) and her most recent film before ZAMA, is the preeminent example of this tactic within her oeuvre. The plot is deceptively simple: before the title card even appears, a well-to-do Argentine woman, Verónica (referred to as Vero and played in a masterful performance by María Onetto), gets distracted by her phone while driving and hits something—possibly a dog, possibly a child. Rather than verify and, if necessary, help the victim, she drives on, presumably stopping only to get out and seek assistance for herself. The film’s Byzantine trajectory is rendered dreamlike via Martel’s perversely epical perspective (and real-life inspiration; she reportedly conceived of the film in a dream)—nothing is what it seems, neither for the protagonist nor the viewer. Although this is a recent trend in world cinema of late, considering some noteworthy films born of the Iranian and Romanian New Waves such as Asghar Farhadi’s A SEPARATION (2011) and Cãlin Peter Netzer’s CHILD’S POSE (2013), Martel’s disembodied approach is less tactical and more intrinsic than others’ use of such means. It may be trite to say that Martel challenges viewers to question what they see (and hear—her use of sound is exquisite), but it’s a logical assumption. After Vero hits whatever it is, I was almost sure that, when the film shows the casualty in the car’s rear window (movie pun unintended, though many critics reference its Hitchcockian overtones) as she drives away, it was in fact a dog; but when her family starts quietly helping cover up the accident following a series of disconcerting events—a servant’s child goes missing and is then found drowned in the canal next to the road where the accident occurred—I wondered what it was I think I saw, this newfound confusion mirroring Vero’s while likewise reinforcing the flimsy impudence of the very sense most crucial to film viewing. Martel’s sound design is similarly dumbfounding, the acousmatic dialogue further distancing us from already removed figures, practically unable to be called characters in how little is revealed about them. This distance, then, makes us question our own complicity, thus positioning the role of spectator, a seemingly passive viewpoint, as an active, if not political, stance. Martel said in an interview that “[t]here is a relationship between the dead body you never see and the desaparecidos,” referring to when a military junta disappeared tens of thousands of political dissidents during Argentina’s 'Dirty War' of the 1970s. This context reframes the scenario, prompting one to wonder if there’s any real difference between what one thinks they see and what one, either naively or maliciously, wants to see. There’s also an intriguing motif involving Vero’s hair, dyed blonde, making her bourgeois status even more prominent against the darker-skinned, lower-class people who serve her, that ties all this together. It’s another element that confronts one’s perceptions—what seems like a clever embodiment of the film’s central metaphor is, when Vero dyes her hair dark brown towards the end, further indictment of one’s connivance. Where Martel challenges her viewer’s preoccupation with minute narrative details, she impugns for what is confessed in that very absorption. If there’s no detail too small, how do we miss—or, better yet, ignore—so many big ones? Screening as part of 50/50, the Siskel’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (2008, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Lewis Klahr’s FALSE AGING (US/Experimental Short)

Corbett vs. Dempsey (2156 W. Fulton St.) – Tuesday through Saturday, 10am – 5pm

Combining whimsy and wistfulness, prolific experimental filmmaker Lewis Klahr tackles the experience of aging in FALSE AGING, a short film in three parts that combines animation and collage. Artist/filmmaker Joseph Cornell could have been an inspiration for Klahr, but the latter skews much more pessimistic than the sunny Cornell. Part one focuses on leaving the nest, exemplified by homey wallpaper and the recurring images of migratory birds as Dionne Warwick sings “(Theme From) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.” The theme, hailing from a tragic film about young women assuming adult responsibilities and finding all is not as they dreamed it would be, might as well be screaming “go back!” Another sad entry into adulthood is narrated by Grace Slick’s intense rendering of “Lather,” a case of arrested development imagined by Klahr as the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The final part takes place in the Big City, as John Cale recites Andy Warhol’s aggrieved diary entry “A Dream” from his and Lou Reed’s album Songs for Drella. Klahr uses an alarm clock on which a round object rotates like a second hand to segue between the film’s segments. Amusingly, when Slick sings that Lather draws mountains that look like bumps, a tiny, plastic woman with well-formed breasts emerges from a slit in the background paper. Klahr reclaims the past with the recurring image of an obsolete points program—a redemption book filled with stamps earned from purchases. Warhol’s final lament from his diary that no one invites him out or comes to see him anymore is a warning that old age and infirmity know no friends. The naïveté and immaturity of each of the sung and spoken narratives suggest that the concept of aging truly is false to our understanding of ourselves. Screening in the Vault through October 8. (2008, 15 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s THE GOOD BOSS (Spain)

Landmark's Century Centre Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

It’s been a joy to watch Javier Bardem age and not only get better at what he does over time, but be able to find new characters to inhabit that manage to show us that he really is on par with the Daniel Day-Lewises of the world. With this film, we have peak (as of now) Bardem as Julio Blanco, the head of a very successful scale manufacturing company in small town Spain, who is willing to do whatever it takes so that his company wins a business award. This concise premise gives so much room for anything to happen to Bardem’s mediocre Machiavelli. Nestled somewhere between a comedy of manners and a comedy of errors, THE GOOD BOSS brings a distinctively Spanish dark charm to a story that would equally befit the world of the Coen brothers. Bardem’s Blanco is so obsessed with everything being in perfect order (he does manufacture scales after all) that as problems start to occur in the personal lives of his employees, he sees it as his duty as a paternal boss to help remedy them. Everything that goes wrong is in the pursuit of perfection. And everything Blanco does is drenched in false magnanimity. Whether or not Blanco sees this we’re never quite sure. So, like so many stories of a man fighting the world and attempting to control the things he cannot, we see the unraveling of Blanco’s world coming at the worst possible time—as the committee for the one business award he has yet to win is due to visit. This film is equal parts corporate satire, sex farce, class analysis, and morality play. Yet despite all these things happening at the same time, THE GOOD BOSS maintains a surprisingly digestible decorum. Everything is in its place as it falls out of place, and the story never falters or muddles. In fact, I had the good luck to see this the week it opened while in Spain alongside my travel companion who doesn't speak much more than passing Spanish. Despite there being no subtitles, they were able to follow the film perfectly and we actually had a great conversation about it afterward. Honestly, this is a near perfect film storytelling wise. And boy oh boy did the Spaniards seem to agree. This film was nominated for a record 20 Goyas (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars) and won six (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Original Screenplay, Score and Editing), so it’s kind of a ringer if you’re looking for a quality picture to watch. Plus you get to see something absolutely magical which is Javier Bardem dressed, and acting, as a middle aged, middle of the road, uninteresting businessman. We’re given this sleight of hand where we get to see exactly what Bardem would be like if he wasn't one of the most successful actors in the world. If it was anyone but Bardem I’d call it stunt casting, but in this case it’s not only charming, but ingenious. Free admission with online registration. (2021, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS – ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
The extensive Asian Pop-Up Cinema continues its fifteenth season on Saturday. Their in-person and virtual offerings are too many to list here. (A good problem to have!) Visit here for more information.

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Mårten Klingberg’s 2020 Swedish film MY FATHER MARIANNE (110 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.), followed by an in-person post-screening discussion with professor Nick Davis from Northwestern University. Free admission with online registration. More info here.

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
The first in a three-part series of films looking at immigration and gender that have been programmed by the Goethe-Institut Chicago, Narges Kalhor’s 2019 documentary IN THE NAME OF SCHEHERAZADE OR THE FIRST BEER GARDEN IN TEHRAN (75 min, Digital Projection), screens on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Juan Pablo González’s 2022 Mexican film DOS ESTACIONES (97 min, DCP Digital) and Salomé Jashi’s 2022 documentary TAMING THE GARDEN (92 min, DCP Digital) both open this week. See Venue website for showtimes. Jack C. Newell’s 2022 documentary HOW (NOT) TO BUILD A SCHOOL IN HAITI (90 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday at 7:30pm; Saturday at 1:30pm; and Tuesday at 7:30pm. All showtimes followed by a Q&A with the director.

A screening of the National Theatre Live production of Nicholas Hytner’s play STRAIGHT LINE CRAZY (2022, DCP Digital) takes place on Sunday at 2pm,  19-minute pre-show introduction before the feature starts and a 20-minute intermission from approximately 3:30pm - 3:50pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
The Music Box Garden Movies continue. See Venue website for films and showtimes.

Ti West’s 2022 film PEARL (102 min, DCP Digital) opens, and Dean Fleischer-Camp’s 2022 animated feature MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (89 min, DCP Digital) continues with limited showtimes. 

Jean Luc Herbulot’s 2021 Senegalese horror film SALOUM (84 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday and Saturday at 11:45pm.

Atsuko Ishizuka’s 2022 animated Japanese film GOODBYE, DON GLEES! (94 min, DCP Digital) screens on Sunday at 11:45m and Tuesday at 4:45pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Reeling: The 40th Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival
Chicago Filmmakers’ annual LGBTQ+ film festival starts Thursday and goes through Thursday, October 6. The opening-night film, Maxime Govare and Cédric Le Gallo’s 2022 film THE SHINY SHRIMPS STRIKE BACK (113 min, DCP Digital), screens at the Music Box Theatre at 6:45pm, preceded by a Q&A session with the director. A special admission ticket for the film and the afterparty in the Music Box lounge and garden is also available. More info here.

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

⚫ Media Burn Archive
On Thursday at 6pm, Media Burn Archive is hosting a three-part virtual program in support of BARRIO TELEVISION, a documentary about the incredible story of Realidades, the first prime-time TV program for Puerto Ricans in New York and the first national and bilingual news series by, for and about Latinos in the country. The virtual event will include a screening of Realidades, a first look at documentary footage connected to BARRIO TELEVISION, and a Q&A with the documentary’s director, Christina DiPasquale. Funds donated during the event will go directly to the making of the film. More info here.

⚫ Video Data Bank
“‘Make Believe, It’s Just like the Truth Clings to It’: In Conversation with the Work of Cecilia Dougherty,” curated by Amanda Mendelsohn, is available to stream for free on VDB TV. The program includes Dougherty’s THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD (1992, 6 min); MY FAILURE TO ASSIMILATE (1995, 20 min); THE DREAM AND THE WAKING (1997, 15 min); and GONE (2001, 36 min). More info here.

CINE-LIST: September 16 - September 22, 2022

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Patrick Friel, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden