:: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9 - THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15 ::

📽️ Crucial Viewing

Luis Buñuel's VIRIDIANA (Spain)

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

The selection of Buñuel's VIRIDIANA as the Palme d'Or winner at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival was more than the validation of the film's artistic mastery—it was a display of political solidarity. The film's making and arrival at Cannes have become the stuff of legend: Its satire of greed and piety attacked the primary totems of Franco's Catholic, Fascist Spain; the film was banned upon completion and a print had to be smuggled out of the country for its premiere. But Buñuel is not one of the greatest of all filmmakers simply because he defied Franco. Each of his formal decisions, even when seemingly artless, reveals a piercing worldview. As Michael Wood wrote in his notes for the Criterion Collection's DVD release: "The film is divided very clearly into two parts: the story of an elderly man's hopeless love and suicide, and his near violation of a young woman; and that of the young woman's attempt to rescue a small portion of the world's unfortunates. There is desperation in the first part and grimly comic failure in the second, but the overall effect is more spirited than that sounds—because of the endless, irreverent life in the filmmaking itself, and because of Buñuel's commitment to the possibility of change, even when it seems impossible." Preceded by The Sound of Music trailer (1965, 35mm).  (1961, 90 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Warren Beatty's DICK TRACY (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm

It suffices to say that they don’t make them like they used to—the modern comic adaptation is less an homage to its source as it is a vehicle used to exploit its audience’s thirst for more, more, more, of anything and everything, such desires having been bred by the studios themselves. It’s with this in mind that I’d consider DICK TRACY a remarkable achievement, if not a masterpiece, for more than just its distinctive aesthetic; it knows its place, so to speak, both in regards to sincerity and drollery, qualities instilled by its undersung auteur. It’s not a personal project inasmuch as it was serendipity that brought Warren Beatty to it—Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Walter Hill, and even Alain Resnais were all tapped to direct at some point before Beatty, himself a fan of the comic and having wanted to make a Dick Tracy film since the 70s, optioned the rights and came on as director, producer, and leading man. The film’s plot, devised by Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr., with Beatty and collaborator Bo Goldman significantly rewriting the dialogue, and recalling the comic strip’s pulpy origins, is simple enough, even with ten plus villains: Yellow-clad detective Dick Tracy relentlessly pursues “Big Boy” Caprice (Al Pacino in what might honestly be one of his best performances) and his rogues gallery all whilst being torn between his personal life (long-suffering girlfriend Tess Trueheart and The Kid, an orphan who’d witnessed Big Boy’s germinal onslaught) and his work (aforementioned rogues and Madonna’s Breathless Mahoney, a lounge singer who falls hard for Tracy’s noble character). The canonical nature of its plot is in arrant contrast to the overburdened storylines of contemporary comic adaptations. Good and evil are just that, and archetypes are valuable for their insular purity; anyone who disagrees should try to synopsize any recent comic adaptation in so many lines. Pacino and Madonna are especially revelatory, though Beatty—whose performance wasn’t so well-received but I’d defend as demonstrating necessary restraint—and Glenne Headly as Tess are guilelessly amiable in what amounts to not-very-interesting characterizations. The film is also noted for its superior (almost to a fault) production design, its palette reportedly limited to just seven colors, the vivid costumes and gorgeous painted matte backdrops ironically reflecting the limited scope of comic art. Many critics accused the film of being too two-dimensional, but what’s the harm in that? What is DICK TRACY if not an exercise—or perhaps even a verdure exaltation—of Camp? To again quote Sontag, “Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.” Beatty’s visualization is just that—a veritable aesthetic phenomenon, a triumph of artistry not in spite of but because of its alleged failures. "Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation—not judgment,” Sontag asserted. “Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy… Camp taste doesn't propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn't sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures." It should say something about this film that the last point I’ll make in its favor is still far and above that of most other films—I’m referring to its soundtrack, with a score from Danny Elfman and five original songs by Stephen Sondheim. Beatty’s commitment to detail, which has proven to be an issue of contention between himself and those financing his films, from his allegiance to the source or inspiration, to various complementary elements, ranging from costumes to music, is the root of his auteurism. Born in a shadow cast by Tim Burton’s BATMAN the year prior, a lot of money, both on the production and marketing sides, went into making DICK TRACY the singular misadventure it’s remembered as today. Though part of its singularity likely stems from its patent declension (we cinephiles love a good underdog) and the doomed fate of a fabled sequel, one wonders how things might have been had the fortunes been reversed, if the overblown artistry of DICK TRACY had eclipsed the menacing excess heralded in by BATMAN. A girl can dream. Screening as part of the Computer Vision: Experiments in Digital Cinema series. (1990, 105 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Jessica Beshir’s FAYA DAYI (Ethiopia/US/Experimental)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm

On the one hand, FAYA DAYI is very much a film of its time. A mix of ethnographic and avant-garde filmmaking, it would play well alongside some of Ben Rivers’ recent work, and the affectless yet dignified onscreen presences (none of whom had any film experience prior to this) recall those in Pedro Costa’s movies. On the other hand, Jessica Beshir’s debut feature harkens back to the late silent and early sound eras in how the images and soundtrack seem to function as discrete entities; moreover, Beshir’s employment of a modernist aesthetic to contemplate early modern (if not premodern) ways of living suggests a kinship with something like Alexander Dovzhenko’s EARTH (1930). FAYA DAYI also straddles the contemporary and the timeless in its thematic concerns. It’s organized around the growing, harvesting, and consumption of khat, a plant with narcotic properties that’s long been part of Sufi rituals in Ethiopia (where Beshir was raised) and which has become that nation’s primary cash crop over a three-decade period of economic stagnation. “Khat affects everyone differently in the society,” Beshir told Filmmaker Magazine in a February 2021 interview. “First of all, I’m focusing on the rural Oromo society, a community of farmers who grow and use it, then those in the labyrinthian city of Harar who consume it too.” Beshir’s mission to trace the entire khat economy guides the fragmentary structure of FAYA DAYI, which moves fluidly between myriad human subjects; as the director notes, the narrative form reflects Ethiopia’s cultural makeup as well. “Ethiopia is made of over 80 ethnic groups, each with their own languages, cultures, and traditions,” she said in the same interview. “It’s counterproductive to ever have a single narrative about a country that encompasses so much, so I made a specific decision to have this wide focus as a way to contribute to the narrative of the country, because there are so many voices that are not necessarily represented at all.” FAYA DAYI indeed imparts the many voices of Ethiopia, but more importantly, it relates innumerable sensations particular to the country; the impressionistic editing, richly textured black-and-white photography, and unpredictable changes in film speed contribute to an overwhelming sensory experience. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Beshir. (2021, 118 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Priya Sen’s YEH FREEDOM LIFE (India/Documentary)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Thursday, 7pm

The South Delhi-shot documentary YEH FREEDOM LIFE opens with scenes from a conference on women’s health, with panels and individual speakers stressing the importance of female subservience and of childbearing as women’s most important duty. Within this context, it follows that the mother of one of the principal subjects, who’s also introduced early on, can’t fathom that her daughter would fall in love with another woman—it defies her understanding of the social order. The film goes on to observe the relationship between this young woman, a beauty parlor technician named Sachi, and Parveen, a street vendor who does business at night. Priya Sen structures the film unpredictably, shifting focus between these two women and sometimes introducing new ones, such as an ex-girlfriend of Parveen’s who had to end their relationship when her family forced her to marry a man. (The section devoted to this woman would make a great short film in itself; it builds to a heartbreaking note.) YEH FREEDOM LIFE owes its underlying dread to the question of if and when this will happen to Sachi, while the surface boisterousness has a lot to do with the subjects. Parveen in particular cuts a fascinating figure; she’s tough, talkative, and gives the impression of having lived too much to be so unselfconscious of her flaws. Yet the movie would be revelatory without someone like her at the center; there are very few films I know about queer life in India, especially with regards to working-poor people, and I learned a lot just from hearing the subjects describe how they navigate their lives. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Sen. (2019, 70 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Lila Avilés’s TÓTEM (Mexico)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Tona, a painter, is severely ill, and his family is throwing him a major party for what will probably be his last birthday. From this simple, straightforward premise, TÓTEM creates a richly lived-in family tapestry that is at once expansive and elliptical, and emotional without being maudlin. Our entry point into the drama comes by way of little Sol (Naíma Sentíes, a total natural), the bright and curious seven-year-old daughter of Tona. Traveling with her mother to her paternal grandfather’s house on the day of the party, Sol shifts between chirpy ebullience (reflected in the colorful balloons and clown wig she brings) and pensiveness about the condition of her father. As she finds ways to preoccupy herself during party preparation, a constellation of minor conflicts and incidents percolate among the other family members, including Tona’s sisters Nuri and Alejandra and their own children. Writer-director Lila Avilés takes an oblique, fly-on-the-wall narrative approach that makes delineating the relationships between the characters purposely difficult; their connections and chemistries are teased out only partially in fragments of action and dialogue. Cinematographer Diego Tenorio denies establishing shots in favor of handheld medium-closeups of the characters crowded in domestic spaces that never become fully legible. Yet within these chaotic, disorienting quarters, TÓTEM finds lucid, utterly familiar emotional beats: a family’s mirth masking deep pain; the contretemps between adult siblings; a child living her life through an impending personal tragedy she’s not quite able to comprehend. Halfway between the splintered bourgeois mosaic of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA and the parent-child melancholy of Charlotte Wells’s AFTERSUN, Lila Avilés’s TÓTEM speaks through quiet, suggestive gestures that contain unseen multitudes. (2023, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

Jeff Nichols’ TAKE SHELTER (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Curtis (Michael Shannon) is suddenly plagued by apocalyptic nightmares and visions—animal attacks, mysterious people coming to take his daughter away; these dreams are all set during a terrible storm that rains oil from the sky. Noteworthy, they don’t initially involve his caring wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), and he hides his visions and concern for his mental health from her. Despite this awareness, Curtis can’t help but doomsday prep by working on a tornado shelter in the backyard. His daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart), recently became deaf and Samantha’s primary concern is supporting her daughter, troubled that Curtis’ shift is starting to make that even more challenging. Small, sweet moments between the family trio that dot the film make Curtis’ unstable behavior even more distressing. Unsurprisingly, Shannon is remarkable, depicting the seriousness of Curtis’ situation without ever losing sympathy for the character, even as his actions become more and more alarming. This is aided by Chastain’s performance as Samantha, never letting her growing frustration overshadow the love she has for her husband; the chemistry between the two grounds their relationship in such a sincere, believable way. TAKE SHELTER is the second feature from director Jeff Nichols, after his outstanding debut SHOTGUN STORIES, also starring Shannon. All of Nichols’ films tackle a crisis of white American masculinity, depicting its toxicity as not just destructive to themselves and those around them, particularly the women in their lives who are forced into even more demandingly supportive roles. TAKE SHELTER further connects this to the issues of climate change—it’s no accident that Curtis’ is in construction, working on an oil rig; wide shots of the sky sit above Curtis’ modifying of the land below. These themes are most profoundly felt in the film’s shocking ending: one of the most quietly disconcerting I’ve ever seen. Screening as part of the Cli-Fi lecture series with lecturers Shawn Michelle Smith and Oliver Sann. (2013, 120 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Bob Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 4pm

The most harrowing movie musical (and the greatest of all the 8 ½ knockoffs), Bob Fosse’s searing auto-critique is almost too excruciating to actually enjoy. Of course, that hasn’t kept the film from being embraced by such luminaries as Kirk Douglas (who presided over the Cannes festival jury that awarded it the Palme d’Or along with Kurosawa’s KAGEMUSHA in 1980), Stanley Kubrick (who called it “the best movie I think I’ve ever seen”), and Kat Sachs (who placed it on her Sight & Sound ballot of the ten greatest movies of all time in 2022), all of whom have recognized its consummate artistry and emotional pull. In a jaw-droppingly committed performance, Roy Scheider stars as Fosse’s autobiographical stand-in, a Broadway choreographer in crisis. Addicted to drugs, juggling multiple romantic relationships, and struggling with creative block and a heart condition, Joe Gideon relies on his art to hold his life together. It’s a miserable life, but what art! The choreography of ALL THAT JAZZ is some of the most electrifying (and erotic) ever put on film, and Fosse’s montage builds brilliantly on its energy. One of the movie’s great formal achievements is how it employs editing to bring viewers into Gideon’s tormented headspace, whether it’s through the quick cuts of the morning routine sequences (famously pilfered by Darren Aronofsky in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) or the way the filmmakers interweave his memories, fantasies, and real life when he’s on his deathbed in the final act. The film was inspired by Fosse’s own near-death experiences—he had had at least one heart attack by the time he made ALL THAT JAZZ and would die of one less than a decade after it was made—and seeing him confront his mortality so nakedly is what gives it its rare power. Even though he didn’t resolve them in real life, Fosse certainly ascertained all his flaws: his narcissism, his philandering, his aloofness from the people closest to him. ALL THAT JAZZ is unflinching in its personal reckoning, but it’s also one of the most profound movies about the relationship between neurosis and the art-making process. The universal insights prevent the movie from slipping into the realm of mere navel-gazing. Screening as part of the Revising the Musical series. (1979, 123 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Ingmar Bergman's FANNY AND ALEXANDER (Sweden)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 11am

Although Ingmar Bergman was one of the towering figures of 20th-century cinema, his biggest influences—playwrights Henrik Ibsen and August Strinberg—belong to the late 19th century, when theatrical realism as we now understand it was first coming into its own. With his magnum opus, FANNY AND ALEXANDER, Bergman also drew on the major literature of that era; many have compared the film to the novels of Charles Dickens and Émile Zola, along with such turn-of-the-century early-modernism as Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. The five-and-a-half-hour TV version feels especially like an epic novel, often digressing from the title characters and their immediate family to consider the children’s uncles, who emerge as complex characters in their own right. The three-hour theatrical version retains this epic feel mainly during its first hour, which depicts the extended Ekdahl family celebrating Christmas Eve in the early 20th century. This section of FANNY AND ALEXANDER exudes a warmth that Bergman hadn’t exhibited since his films of the 1950s; moreover, the large ensemble represents a turn away from the chamber drama that had defined much of the previous two decades of his career. There are intimations of darkness in this hour of the film too, with foreboding suggestions that the familial happiness onscreen cannot be maintained for much longer, yet on the whole it may be the most joyous cinema that Bergman ever committed to film. When FANNY AND ALEXANDER turns dark, it turns very dark, with depictions of domestic abuse that are particularly scary because they unfold from a child’s point-of-view. The abuser is a cold-hearted pastor and unwelcome father figure; his character—mirthless, tyrannical, spiteful—marks the culmination of Bergman’s turning away from religion (which, of course, had defined so much of his early career). Counteracting this portrait of cruelty is the film’s odic depiction of childhood imagination. Nurtured by their theater-director father, Fanny and Alexander learn the value of dreaming from the start of the film; as the story progresses, imagination provides escape from misery. The longer version of the film features more digressions into fantasy, with numerous appearances by ghosts, yet both versions offer a rich consideration of the dream life. Screening as part of the Settle In series. (1982, 320 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

John Badham’s WARGAMES (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Combining the '80s teen film with a Cold War thriller, WARGAMES often feels like a cinematic beginners' guide to the power of the computer—and it’s been argued that it's one of the first mainstream films to address this technology. It’s even built into the narrative, as we’re introduced to teen hacker, David (Matthew Broderick). Spending his days at the arcade and at home with his computer, he befriends classmate Jennifer (Ally Sheedy)—they’re both in need of a grade change after acting out in science class and David is all too happy to use his skills to oblige. Obsessed with this technology and eager to show off his abilities to the delight of Jennifer, David wardials his way into a government system that constantly runs through war simulations, learning the best tactics over time. Unaware of its true purpose, David initiates a game of thermonuclear war, playing as the Russians. David and Jennifer are forced to answer to the US government and help stop the eruption of World War III. WARGAMES deftly balances its overarching Cold War anxiety with teen romance. Its earnestness is particularly felt in Sheedy’s performance as Jennifer, who's clueless about the severity of the situation yet simultaneously cheerful; her sincerity is contagious. There’s something striking about watching her giggle, drinking a Coke while David plays "war" and then later becoming emotional at the thought of dying in a nuclear war at only seventeen. It demonstrates the film’s boisterousness in its grappling with Cold War themes; it manages to be serious and fun in turn and, at moments, all at once. It is also a visual—and aural—feast for early '80s technology, all wall-to-wall green screens and computer beeps and boops. But WARGAMES doesn’t feel nostalgic so much as a time capsule of early '80s American culture—scenes of David in the local arcade and using a payphone outside a 7-Eleven are presented as so thoroughly grounded in that time and place, even within the vigorous plot. It’s a film that stands out precisely because, for so many reasons, it could only result from that one moment in time. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Stephen Schwartz, nonresident senior fellow with the Bulletin. Screening as part of the Science on Screen series. (1983, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Theodore Witcher’s LOVE JONES (US)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 7pm

LOVE JONES is one of the all-time great Chicago movies and almost certainly its best romantic comedy (more of a dramedy, technically, but I dare not leave any room for some jabroni to claim that MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING or, god forbid, THE BREAK-UP has a truer claim to that title). As cliche as it is to say, it’s true that the city is its own character here, the omnipresent third party in the protagonist duo’s burgeoning romance. Nina (Nia Long) is a photographer who’s sworn off love after being ghosted by her fiance; Darius (Larenz Tate) is a poet who works for Newcity, a job he’s leaving to focus full-time on writing a book. They meet at a nightclub on a poetry night during which Darius proclaims his attraction to Nina by way of an improvised poem after they meet at the bar. It’s a literary meet-cute, representative of the way the arts play a role both in their lives and their burgeoning relationship. They meet again at a record store and soon have their first official date, ending their night at the Wild Hare, a real-life venue that was once Chicago’s only full-time reggae club. These locations aren’t incidental; who Darius and Nina are as people, specifically upwardly mobile, Black creative types, is suggested by these locales, sparing writer-director Theodore Witcher (who’s from the Chicago suburbs and is also a Columbia College alum) from having unnecessarily to explicate the characters’ milieu. In this way Witcher tells not just a love story but the story of a city, transformed in the early 20th century by the Great Migration, during which more than 500,000 of the approximately seven million African Americans who were moving away from the South settled in Chicago. And in favoring more subtle references to the social and racial factors that surround Darius and Nina, Witcher foregrounds their relationship while not sacrificing a richness of depth owing to the all-encompassing but still breathable mise-en-scene. A similar richness tinges the couples’ love story in spite of the overall formulaic approach, consisting of the meet-cute, the idyllic courtship, and then the routine roadblocks that put the ostensible happily ever after into jeopardy. The story may be stereotypical, as most movie romances are, but the characters are not; from their respective creative passions to their idiosyncratic trademarks (Darius smokes, Nina has a shoulder-length bob and favors 90s-friendly berry lips), both the protagonists and those in their orbit, Darius’ robust friend group and Nina’s wily BFF, are finely drawn characters whose races aren’t an explicit point of focus. Its title is a variation on jonesing, or yearning, for love; it’s this elusively simple yet enduringly complex feeling that supersedes all else. Tate (who was chilling in MENACE II SOCIETY) and Long have chemistry with one another and us viewers, too, as do the extended cast comprised of Isaiah Washington, Bill Bellamy, Lisa Nicole Carson and Bernadette Speakes, among others. Chicago-born musician Darryl Jones did the film’s score, “modeled [after] Miles Davis’s score for the 1958 suspense film ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, which was recorded in a cavernous old building, as the movie played, in order to heighten the mood of the compositions,” per Danielle Amir Jackson’s excellent essay on the film for its Criterion release, which details the importance of its soundtrack, featuring music by Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, Cassandra Wilson, with hints of Chicago legends Buddy Guy and Curtis Mayfield in the film itself. Screening as part of the Melanin, Roots, and Culture. Free for Music Box members. (1997, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's QUERELLE (West Germany/France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 8:30pm

With QUERELLE, Rainer Werner Fassbinder married the slick professionalism of his “German Hollywood” films with the stark mise-en-scène and starker philosophizing of his early work. If it seems like a valedictory film, that’s only because Fassbinder died, at age 37, just six weeks before the premiere; his premature passing heightens the sense of finality already in the material. QUERELLE presents sex, pain, and death as tragically, inextricably linked, making it not only an appropriate final testament from Fassbinder (who famously named his first feature LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH) but also one of the major S&M films. The themes of sadomasochism and the theme of the interconnectedness between eroticism and crime come directly from the 1947 Jean Genet novel on which this is based, and Fassbinder accentuates it with lurid color and highly theatrical sets that make all the onscreen behavior seem like ritualistic role-play. In some ways, it feels like a sequel to the director’s sole other film in color and widescreen, the quasi-Western WHITY (1970), which took a similarly garish approach to American racism. But Fassbinder was capable of a more opulent minimalism by the time he made QUERELLE—the brazen artificiality of it all, which has the effect of making the sex seem more shocking, suggests a 1980s update on the films of Josef von Sternberg. This link must have been intentional, as Jeanne Moreau explicitly channels Marlene Dietrich in her performance (one practically hears Dietrich’s voice when Moreau sings her character’s theme song, “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves”) and the facsimile of Brest rivals the China of SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932) in its ersatz exoticism. As usual, Fassbinder also invokes Bertolt Brecht, distancing the audience from the drama with impassive narration, explanatory intertitles, and detached line readings from the actors. These qualities further add to the sense of inevitability in QUERELLE, as if to say that expressions of vulnerability will always invite brutality. Screening as part of the Hot & Heavy series. (1982, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Wim Wenders’ PERFECT DAYS (Japan/Germany)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue for Showtimes

There is peace to be found in routine. That’s what Hirayama—and perhaps director Wim Wenders—would have you believe. Exquisitely brought to life by Koji Yakusho, Hirayama, an employee of the "Tokyo Toilet," guides us day by day through Wenders’ latest fiction endeavor, a leisurely diary of a film. The world of PERFECT DAYS follows its own internalized rhythms, lulling the audience into a network of patterns in navigating Hirayama’s days, perfect or otherwise, that unwind before us. The sun will always rise in a purple-orange sky, a can of coffee will always pop out of the vending machine, the plants will always get their morning mists of water, the leaves will always be brushed to the side, the public toilets spread throughout Tokyo will always receive Hirayama’s careful and rigorous cleaning, and the day will always end with dreams. Hirayama’s dreams—at least as Wenders shares them with us—are always in black-and-white, layered fragments of the day, coated in leaves and shadows, an abstracted reset of the film’s internal clock. Days blend into each other in a way that feels intricate yet inevitable, with the most glaring piece of conflict arising more than halfway through the runtime, Hirayama’s niece having run away from a life of affluence and loneliness. She prefers her uncle's life, which she sees as simple and noble. But unbeknown to most around him, Hirayama’s life is an iceberg, the solid routine of the day hiding depths of passion and loneliness underneath. There is constant reflection on his past, especially upon the mass of cassette tapes he has collected over the years and refuses to part with, there is the yearning towards the future with his voracious consumption of literature. But where does that leave the Hirayama of the present? In one moment of conversation (one of the few times Hirayama feigns to utter dialogue in the entire film), he offers up that "the world is made up of many worlds. Some are connected, some are not." In a moment of potent vulnerability near the film’s end, Yakusho offers up a rare moment of the bottom of the iceberg peeking out, the tough exterior of Hirayama breaking apart ever so briefly, as the sun rises on yet another day. Just like every other day, and still brand new. (2023, 123 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Wim Wenders’ ANSELM (Germany/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Of the auteurs who have ventured into the realm of 3D filmmaking, Wim Wenders is surely among the most astute in utilizing the format’s unique aesthetic properties. This should perhaps come as no surprise considering the august German director’s proven, decades-long mastery of fluid camerawork and dynamic mise-en-scène. Like PINA (2011), Wenders’s first 3D film and another documentary about a German artist, ANSELM features immersive images that don’t so much showcase the art as produce a specifically cinematic experience of and around it. The subject is Anselm Kiefer, a painter, sculptor, and photographer best known for creating monumental structures and mixed-media paintings incorporating such materials as straw and lead. Born toward the end of World War II and raised in the bombed-out city of Donaueschingen, Kiefer often grapples in his work with the legacy of Nazism and national memory as he confronts viewers with devastated landscapes, fascist visual motifs, Judeo-Christian symbols, and various signifiers of decay. Wenders and cinematographer Franz Lustig use 3D to emphasize the sheer scale of Kiefer’s work, as in an ingenious establishing shot in which the magnitude of one of his hangar-sized studios suddenly becomes clear when Kiefer enters the bottom of the frame the size of an ant. At other times, Wenders takes advantage of 3D’s dioramic rendering of depth by layering the screen with multiple planes, whether through cross-dissolves, superimpositions, or foreground/background juxtapositions. The material diversity and tactility he evokes—especially in his prismatic use of water, glass, smoke, and light beams from projectors—forms a continuity with the work of Kiefer. As we’re taken through the artist’s increasingly elephantine studios and exhibition spaces, culminating with a tour of his 200-acre compound in Barjac, France, the line between art, the environment, and our lived spaces dissolves; so too does the one between Kiefer’s and Wenders’ work. ANSELM may be skimpy to a fault on biographical detail, but it’s an entrancing sensory experience born from the cinematic alchemy of these two singular artists. (2023, 93 min, 3D DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

Bong Joon-ho's THE HOST (South Korea)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7:30pm

Prior to its release, THE HOST was one of the most anticipated films in South Korea of all time and it is easy to see why. After an American scientist orders his Korean assistant to dump hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, the chemicals find their way to the Han River. Jumping ahead six years, a creature has mutated while living in the river and has grown into a 30-foot fish-monster, with legs and a tail that allow it to walk on land. When the monster finally reveals itself, a family’s life is torn asunder when its youngest daughter is taken away by the creature. Song Kang-ho’s performance as the daughter’s father, Park Gang-du, is full of nuance and hilarity, and his character’s arc is wonderfully realized, as he transforms from a dim-witted underachiever to a determined patriarch looking out for his family. THE HOST blends dark-humor and a compelling family drama with the trappings of American monster movies of the 1970s and 80s to form a well-rounded and heartfelt film. On a deeper level, the film provides plenty of social commentary on the United States’ presence in South Korea and plenty of political commentary to boot. Government agencies, both American and Korean, are depicted as uncaring, inept, and (sometimes) nefarious. A substance deployed to defeat the monster called “Agent Yellow” clearly alludes to the U.S.’s days in Vietnam. Other sequences in the film certainly allude to the United States' presence in Iraq and the War on Terror happening at that time. An Open Classroom screening with Cooper Long, Ph.D., Teaching Fellow in the Humanities, Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College, University of Chicago. (2006, 119 min, 35mm) [Kyle Cubr]

Brian De Palma's BODY DOUBLE (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm

The '80s were a heady time: Apple released the Macintosh, Eli Lilly brought you Prozac, and Brian De Palma was constantly inventing new and exciting ways to fail the Bechdel test. BODY DOUBLE (1984) had the unenviable task of following up the director's DRESSED TO KILL (1980), BLOW OUT (1981), and SCARFACE (1983). Say what you will about those films—I think the horse is still breathing—but in the waning days of New Hollywood they occupied a certain place in its pantheon. Caine, Travolta, Pacino. Add to that mononymous list: Wasson. "Nobody's perfect" is the De Palma mantra though, and BODY DOUBLE manages to transcend its flaws en route to realizing its unique vision of Reagan-era Los Angeles. Craig Wasson plays Jake Scully, underemployed actor and amateur claustrophobic. When we meet Scully he's just suffered a series of unfortunate setbacks: he has a fit on the job, he catches his wife cheating on him, and is thus booted from their home. Temporarily adrift, an acting acquaintance offers him a plush housesitting gig high, high in the Hollywood Hills. From this lofty vantage point Scully makes a habit of spying on exhibitionist neighbor, Gloria, and under the flimsy pretense of chivalry the practice eventually evolves into outright stalking. No points for catching the Hitchcock nods; De Palma's allusions to (or outright theft of) works like REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO are so overt as to signal jumping off points rather than ends in themselves. In a surreal segue toward the end of the film, a lip-synching Holly Johnson of the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood leads Scully, suddenly decked out in thick-rimmed glasses and argyle, onto a porno set to the tune of "Relax." The sequence functions as a movie-within-a-movie; it's De Palma's "Broadway Melody Ballet," if you will, except Gene Kelly didn't find Cyd Charisse behind a door labeled 'SLUTS.' The "Relax" scene marks a tonal crossroads in BODY DOUBLE. Soon after, the proceedings begin to accelerate at an almost nightmarish rate and the tightly plotted thriller De Palma fashioned in the film's first half starts to unravel as the limits of internal plausibility are pushed to the extreme. If you're on De Palma's wavelength though it's a worthy tradeoff, as tension gives way to near mania. When the film was released, Roger Ebert characterized BODY DOUBLE as having De Palma's "most airtight plot" yet—an assertion it's hard to imagine Ebert leveling without cracking a slight smile. The virtue and, dare I say, greatness of BODY DOUBLE come not from bulletproof narrative or even rudimentary character development, but instead from a messier place. De Palma synthesizes a multitude of disparate references into a scathing critique of nice-guy chauvinism, critical Puritanism, and countless other -isms, all under the guise of mindless genre fare. s Screening as part of the Mommy Issues: Freudian Relationships in Film series. (1984, 114 min, DCP Digital) [James Stroble]

Pedro Almodóvar's TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! (Spain)

Leather Archives and Museum (6418 N. Greenview Ave.) – Saturday, 7pm

One of the sexiest films ever made about Stockholm Syndrome, Pedro Almodóvar described his eighth feature as, “Lots of skin, a large helping of irreverent humor, and very little money, of course.” The film genesis came during the shooting WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF BREAKDOWN (1988). Production spent an excessive amount of money building a set of a penthouse. “I told my producer-brother, Agustín: ‘I’d like to make a movie à la [Roger] Corman that could occur entirely on Pepa’s penthouse set. Maybe then we can justify the huge expense.’ ‘Let’s go for it!’ he said.” With the instinct to make two films for the price of one, the seed snowballed into a film that Miramax would go on to defend over an X rating in the United States. The film follows a young man, Ricky (Antonio Banderas), recently released from a mental institution. His mission is simple: find the former porn star, Marina (Victoria Abril), whom he slept with the one time he escaped the ward. Eventually, he finds the girl. Bounding and holding her against her will, they shack up in her apartment. The next step, wait until she sees him for who he truly is and fall in love with him. To the chagrin of the audience and the damsel in distress, she develops feelings. In an unexpected climax, the two drive off into the sunset singing songs. The color and vibrancy of the set and costume design adds an electricity to the picture. In her second collaboration with the director, Victoria Abril gives a charming performance as the salacious ingénue trying to escape the captor she falls in love with. In his sexual prime, Banderas gives notes of a sultry Norman Bates. Like a lot of Almodóvar’s work, TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! is controversial in its material but more so in its delivery of the material. Ricky and Marina’s relationship explores fantasy, and their performances almost feel intentionally distant, like the movie is one big exercise in foreplay. Regardless of whether or not Almodóvar directs his actors to treat their scenario like role play, the picture as a whole fits in the lineage of Spanish surrealism, a descendent of Luis Buñuel. (1989, 111 min, Digital Projection) [Ray Ebarb]

Ishiro Honda’s GODZILLA (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6pm

Before he became a worldwide cultural symbol, before fighting off a cavalcade of adversaries from King Kong to Mothra to Mechagodzilla, before inexplicably becoming a father, before his horrific Americanization under the less-than-sturdy watch of Roland Emmerich, and before his franchise received its first-ever Academy Award nomination after a titanic run of seventy years and counting, there was simply a film released in late 1954 called GODZILLA. Ishiro Honda’s singular monster epic invaded Japanese movie theaters and brought the thrills and horrors of the monster movie genre to a country barely a decade out from their own monstrous nightmare of nuclear apocalypse. Amidst what would otherwise be an excitedly crafted work of sci-fi storytelling, there was still the innate belief that a Japanese audience—still reeling from the effects of the United States’ horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—could find catharsis and resonance in the tale of an atomic-infused creature battling humanity’s innate hubris. Even with the thrill of unleashing this new creature on the silver screen, Honda’s GODZILLA is ultimately more focused on how Godzilla’s presence affects the human characters, most notably Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura), a zoologist working to find humanitarian means of studying Godzilla’s resistance to the hydrogen bomb; his daughter Emiko (Momoko Kōchi), trying to navigate a city crumbling before her feet; and her estranged love Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), a scientist who may have found the means of defeating Godzilla, but who is rightfully concerned about this new weapon falling into political and military hands, creatures far more treacherous and villainous than any underwater sea monster. The image of Godzilla himself still inspires awe and terror to this day, a creature "baptized in the fire of the H-bomb" most often appearing here as a live actor inside a Godzilla suit trampling around a model city, with ingenious use of light and shadow to hide any and all technical limitations to convey the horror and grandeur of this atomic gargantuan force. Even seventy years on, Honda’s film remains as thrilling as any future entry in the Godzilla franchise, but perhaps even scarier than the monster himself is the notion that the anxiety, fear, and governmental hubris featured here carry as much weight now as they did back then. Just like Godzilla, some monsters just never go away. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Saira Chambers, Japanese Cultural Center director; Yuki Miyamoto, DePaul Humanities Center director; Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune film critic; and Robert K. Elder, president and CEO of the Outrider Foundation. Screening as part of the Science on Screen series. (1954, 96 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 9:30pm

Museums and mugs and food and flannels, everyone has mementos and memories they cherish. The cult classic ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND asks what if you could rid yourself of these treasures, or rather, what if you could rid yourself of these burdens. The concept which originally comes from conversations had by director Michel Gondry is expertly fleshed out by writer Charlie Kaufman, who brings that realness you can always expect from him. Kaufman suffuses the cast of characters with quirks and traits that round them out and make them almost lovable despite some of their moral failings, and perhaps that is because Kaufman isn’t afraid to say the things that we really feel and show the way we really are. Without this humanist touch, some of Kaufman’s high concept ideas and stories would likely fall flat without that grounding connection. Throughout the film, our protagonist Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) desperately races through his own memories searching for a way to keep himself connected to his beloved Clementine (Kate Winslet) after irreversibly walking down a path of forgetting. Gondry excels here as he shifts the viewer between sweet, intimate moments and terrifying, half-aborted recollections of some of Joel and Clementine’s worst times. Maybe after going down that rabbit hole, it would be easy to see that the relationship is just not worth it, with the lacerating remarks, corrosive jealousy, unfounded distrust. But, there’s also the way her hair smells, the shy smiles beneath the sheet, how she looks in her flea market find. I’m not sure any of us really know the answer. (2004, 118 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]

Anna Muylaert’s THE SECOND MOTHER (Brazil)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm

Class divisions and their consequences highlight director/screenwriter Anna Muylaert’s THE SECOND MOTHER, a showcase for the incomparable Regina Casé, an award-winning fixture of Brazilian film, television, and theatre. Here she plays Val, the longtime, live-in housekeeper of a wealthy family in São Paulo, whose unquestioning devotion to them is especially strong for Fabinho (Michel Joselsas), the college-age son she had a major hand in raising. One day, Val learns that Jéssica (Camila Márdila), the daughter she left behind in their small town when she went to find work, plans to apply to attend the prestigious University of São Paulo and wants to move in with her. Val is thrilled and exceedingly grateful to her employers for buying a new mattress to put on the floor of Val’s room for her daughter to use. Jéssica is unimpressed and moves into the unoccupied guest room in the main wing of the house. This and other challenges she makes to the class structure unsettle everyone in the household and reveal how the want of money has created a network of “second” mothers to care for children whose mothers leave the home to find a way to support them. The film is fairly predictable and benign, but worth seeing for Casé’s tour-de-force performance. Screening as part of the Antropofagia: Reinventing Class and Race in Brazilian Cinema series. (2015, 112 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Todd Haynes' MAY DECEMBER (US)

FACETS Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

There’s something so invigorating about watching a film like Todd Haynes’ MAY DECEMBER, a work that gleefully antagonizes its audience with seeming contradictions at every turn. From the moment the glaring and inexplicable score by Marcelo Zarvos pounds onscreen—itself a work of reorchestration and adaptation of Michel Legrand’s score for THE GO-BETWEEN (1971)—a wall of tension is immediately erected, daring the audience to reconcile the prestige of the craft on display with the heightened elements of melodramatic exploitation underlining the work. Haynes' film is built for an audience inundated with true-crime podcasts and pulp documentaries on streaming services, all garishly summarizing tabloid stories and sensationalized tragedies for public consumption in a way that strips away all shreds of humanity. In turn, we are hypnotically sucked into this particular story—clearly inspired by the real-life story of May Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau—and forced to reckon with what makes these works of scandalous recreation so beautiful and so ugly. The Letourneau counterpart here, Gracie (Julianne Moore), is gleefully naive, living a life with her husband Joe (Charles Melton) whom she met when she was in her thirties and he was but thirteen years old. An actor (Natalie Portman) tasked with bringing Gracie’s story to the screen is committed to the act of honest reinterpretation to a fault, obsessively collecting mementos and anecdotes and physical mannerisms in pursuit of crafting a performance built upon a structure of self-satisfying imitation. It all comes to a head as Melton drags us through a minefield of emotional vulnerability, his lumbering adult body carrying with it intense childlike insecurity as he finally reckons with Gracie’s decades-long control over his elongated state of arrested development. If there is discomfort to be found in watching MAY DECEMBER, it’s fairly easy to argue that the text encourages that, questioning the methodology and "ethics" behind any work that attempts to grapple with real-world complexity for entertainment’s sake. It all adds up to a film that might connect with you, or might create bad memories for you, or perhaps even make you admit that, often, there’s not much of a difference between the two. (2023, 117 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Steven Soderbergh's CONTAGION (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm

You know how pretty much every disaster movie ever made spends the first 45 minutes sketching in backstories for all the major characters, teasing you along with little glimpses of the calamity to come? With CONTAGION, Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns are saying, "Screw that." Before the first image even comes on screen, we hear a cough. And then a subtitle: "Day 2." We're in the middle of the plague already—and, compounding their audacity, they reduce the backstory to only what's important to understanding the virus. The virus itself is the protagonist. While not exactly reducing its victims to cold numbers on a spreadsheet, they also don't just spoon-feed us a lot of "here's what's at stake for these characters" nonsense. What's at stake is, well, their very lives. The consequences of succumbing to the virus are depicted in often-graphic terms (including an unforgettable shot involving Gweneth Paltrow's scalp). But there isn't any gratuitous gore either. Thanks to Soderbergh's crisp and clinical shooting style, it's all very straightforward—which, as William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST showed us, can be quite disturbing enough. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Suzet McKinney, principal and director of Life Sciences, Sterling Bay, in conversation with Ania Labno, director of the healthcare industry team at KKR Capstone. Screening as part of the Science on Screen series. (2011, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]

Mati Diop's ATLANTICS (France/Senegal/Belgium)

Alliance Française de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn Ave.) – Thursday, 6:30pm

For her first feature film, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop has created a mystical, atmospheric love story set in Dakar, on the Atlantic coast of Senegal. The timeless, rolling ocean that figures prominently in this beautifully shot film mirrors the vast, restless love Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) and Souleiman (Traore) feel for each other. But when Souleiman and his coworkers are cheated out of four months’ wages, they feel they have no choice but to try to strike out across the ocean to seek a better life. Their fate and the fate of the women they left behind remain intertwined across time and space, with explosive results. Self-determination is a quiet theme running through ATLANTICS—not only that of Ada, whose engagement to a wealthy man offers her a tempting path away from her lover and female friends, but also that of Souleiman and the other workers who see more possibilities abroad than they do in their predictably stunted existence in Dakar. The mythic dimensions that I find so satisfying in African films, for example, Rungano Nyoni’s I AM NOT A WITCH (2017) and Alain Gomis’ TEY (2012), are used to similarly great effect in ATLANTICS. This film’s a knockout. With a complimentary glass of Bourgogne Louis Jadot. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Nick Davis, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Screening as part of the French Women Filmmakers series. (2019, 106 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Mira Nair’s MISSISSIPPI MASALA (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 11am

Featuring one of the truly outstanding onscreen romances, Mira Nair’s MISSISSIPPI MASALA is also a multifaceted film about race. After their forced expulsion from Uganda by the dictatorship of Idi Amin, Mina (Sarita Choudhury) and her Indian family end up settling in rural Greenwood, Mississippi. Here, she falls deeply in love with Black business owner Demetrius (Denzel Washington), but their relationship reveals prejudices from both their families and communities. Nair’s camera moves to highlight the deep connections and profound rifts between characters. The gorgeous cinematography lends itself to Choudhury and Washington’s chemistry, which is completely realized; this is evidenced by a scene early in their relationship when they’re on the phone and still their passion is palpable and so sincere. MISSISSIPPI MASALA is grounded in its detailed and charismatic characters. The film is also very much historically grounded, especially with regards to Mina’s father, Jay (Roshan Seth), and his relationship to his homeland of Uganda, a framing plot likewise about love and heartbreak that's interwoven throughout. MISSISSIPPI MASALA never shies away from complicated issues such as displacement, racism, and colorism and concurrently maintains its sweetness as a charming and sexy romance; it’s not a juxtaposition but rather an effective illustration by Nair of the complexities of these cultures and communities. (1991, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Nikolaj Arcel’s THE PROMISED LAND (Denmark/Germany/Sweden)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Conquest seems to be a given in our compulsions and desires as humans. In contemporary times, we have ways to reframe this drive. I can’t go a week without the satisfaction of crushing someone in a video game, and, as Nicole Kidman proclaims in the AMC theater’s intro, the cinema can leave us “not just entertained, but somehow reborn.” Then in the 1775 of THE PROMISED LAND, it would make sense for our protagonist, Mads Mikkelsen’s Ludvig Kahlen, to obsessively strive to shape the land to his will. In the desolate heath of the Jutland, Ludvig wishes to cultivate the land in exchange for a title of nobility, an outrageous and humorous yet hesitantly agreed upon request. Ludvig is a complicated man, and the film’s Danish title BASTARDEN, literally THE BASTARD, does far more justice to this complicated portrait. The film does take a while to find its footing, but once the complex cast of characters begin to dig in and root themselves to the stubborn land, a compelling tale begins to sprout forth. However, the viability of the ground is not the only concern as local landowners and ruthless cutthroats look to take advantage of anyone they can. Ludvig, a former military captain, isn’t necessarily out of his element but at what cost does his quest yield fruitful? While bodies stack up and traumas are repeated, the vision can easily be soiled. But perhaps Ludvig’s conquest is different, one of revitalization and agency rather than destruction for the sake of the status quo. (2023, 127 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]

Molly Manning Walker’s HOW TO HAVE SEX (UK)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – See Venue website for showtimes

Once upon a time I could have more than two drinks and still enjoy being alive the next day. Now even the thought of alcohol is enough to give me a headache, so I’ve more or less come to terms with my party days being properly behind me. But I sometimes see a piece of media that does make me miss the uninhibited fun I had during that time, and Molly Manning Walker’s HOW TO HAVE SEX is the latest such work to add a wistful sheen to those otherwise hazy recollections. Sixteen-year-old Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and her best friends Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis) travel from Britain to the resort town of Malia, on the Greek island of Crete, for a party holiday following year-end exams; at their hotel they befriend some guys staying next door, and it seems Tara may have found a candidate or two to help with her goal of losing her virginity on the trip. The partying scenes, wherein the girls drink, dance and laugh in such a way that one only can when their future looms long in front of them, are infectious. It’s hard to take your eyes off McKenna-Bruce in particular, whose beaded necklace spelling out the word angel seems more to be a description than an accessory, her big eyes and roundish face epitomizing the ebullient innocence of youth, even as she chain smokes. The parts of the film in which the girls and their new friends party uninhibitedly are pure mise-en-scene, the coming-of-age film given frenetic, kaleidoscopic, haphazardly wrought compositions worthy of the complexities therein. Reminiscent of Harmony Korine’s SPRING BREAKERS during its first half, HOW TO HAVE SEX initially seems rather light-hearted, consumed, like a young person, with its own corybantic existence. This is to say the stakes feel relatively low, and I think it’s better during these parts wholly consumed with its own atmosphere. It may be because Manning Walker, in a feature debut inspired by her own teenage girls’ trips, had to this point worked as a cinematographer. The film is all style, which as a result becomes its substance; when it tries to introduce actual gravitas by way of Tara’s sexual encounters with one of the neighboring party boys—the first of dubious consent at best, the other full-on assault—the tone understandably shifts, but the film overall becomes enervated, not fully committing to the accordant intensity perhaps necessitated by this latter half. But maybe that’s the point and, for whatever reason, it just doesn’t resonate with this critic specifically. Far be it from me to tell anyone exactly how such traumatic experiences should be depicted. But the joie de vivre evinced beforehand, especially when juxtaposed with the cruel realities of life and adulthood, and the patriarchal culture that threatens to snuff out its light for women in particular, is stunning. (2024, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST (UK/US/Poland)

Various Cinemas – See Venue websites for showtimes

The term “the zone of interest,” the designation the Nazis applied to the Auschwitz extermination camp and adjacent areas, might as well apply to the robust activity surrounding this ultimate human evil by artists and the larger cultural community. The late British writer Martin Amis used the term for his 2014 novel, and now we have director/screenwriter Jonathan Glazer’s very loose adaptation of Amis’ book as a major motion picture. Whereas Amis focused on personal relationships between pseudonymous and fictional versions of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig, and an SS officer, Glazer chose an observational approach to the historical Höss family, imagining what living in a villa directly abutting Auschwitz might have been like for them and those who worked for them. Filmed at Auschwitz primarily in an accurate reconstruction of the villa the Höss family occupied, Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal eschewed conventional shooting techniques. They instead operated static, hidden cameras that could be manipulated remotely, and used natural light whenever possible. They also had no interest in giving us the usual horror show. Instead, Glazer leaned on Johnnie Burn’s sound design of gunfire, screams, and dogs, and only what camp structures could be seen from the Höss villa, to evoke the Holocaust. For example, the Höss family is hosting a children’s party in the vast garden of which Hedwig is so proud. As the children play, a cloud of steam moves in a line across the top of the camp wall—yet another train transporting victims to the slaughter. What Glazer concentrated on what he thought mattered to Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller)—career success and the good life—and if they had to live near and work in a human abattoir, well, that was the price of admission. Höss was reportedly a cold-blooded, hands-on killer early in his career, but Christian Friedel didn’t play this side of his character. Here, Rudolf seems like a loving father who reads to his daughters at night, is a good companion to his wife, and is well regarded by his fellow SS officers. His deeper depravity comes though chillingly during a late-night phone call with Hedwig. He eagerly shares his excitement that the deportation of up to 700,000 Hungarian Jews for extermination and slave selection will bear the name Operation Höss. Sandra Hüller as Hedwig projects a prosaic personality motivated by greed and social position. She seems like a Mother Courage pushing heedlessly through every circumstance to get what she wants, and is convinced that their living arrangement is doing nothing to harm her “strong, healthy, happy” children, despite the film’s ample evidence to the contrary. Little is known about the real Hedwig Höss, so this depiction seems like another example of demonizing mothers for fun and profit and the only questionable choice in an almost flawless movie. The remarkable score by Mica Levi is a haunting mélange of electronic and choral music. Glazer uses her score sparingly, however, in attempts to foreground the murdered at moments when we may be lulled by the mundane screen action. (I highly recommend you watch through the credits to listen to her audaciously beautiful score in its fullness.) In the end, a final, puzzling scene takes place largely in the present. I’ll leave its meaning to your own interpretation, but the familiar bourgeois lives Glazer has shown offers us a chance to reflect on our own unknowing callousness in the face of the suffering others endure for our convenience. (2023, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Hayao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (Japan/Animation)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 11:30am and Wednesday, 8:30pm

The anticipation of seeing a new film directed by Hayao Miyazaki is two-fold: there is a set expectation of whimsy, magic, and complex thematic exploration inherent in his work, but this is tied to the mystery of not knowing how specifically these traits will play themselves out. So it is with his (seemingly) final film, THE BOY AND THE HERON, a film rooted in familiar themes that Miyazaki has been dwelling on for decades of artistry. As with many of his works, Miyazaki provides another story of a youthful protagonist; here, the teenage Mahito—buried within heavy emotional armor to navigate the grief of losing his mother in a hospital fire the year before—finds himself navigating an unknown mystical world that sits somewhere between the afterlife and his own subconscious, after he's lured there by a deliriously antagonistic gray heron. The fantastical elements of Miyazaki immediately float to the surface, from new imaginative creatures like the Warawara—adorable floating balls that ascend to the heavens to be born as humans—to the bizarre amass of pelicans and parakeets that threaten to swallow up any frame they inhabit. Mahito‘s quest to find closure for his mother’s death results in a journey, ever joyous and sumptuous to watch, that ponders the nature of a world built upon loss, destruction, and chaos. Without spoiling too much, the film leaves us on something of an abrupt note, left to ponder the work of an undisputed master of cinema who was unafraid to bare his mortality before us, letting us sit in the knowledge that to live with the chaos of grief is still a beautiful life in and of itself; to know that there is no escaping pain, and there is something beautiful to carry on towards. Maybe a book your mother left behind for you, maybe a new, unknown journey waiting on the other side of a doorway. (2023, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station and will run day and night through mid-March. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
VLX5, the fifth season of VASTLAB's annual showcase of experimental short films, screens Friday at 6:30pm. Local artist Amanda Van Valkenburg in person for a post-screening Q&A as well as local musicians and sound artists live scoring VLX5 short films. More info here. 

⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1967 film OEDIPUS REX (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Mommy Issues: Freudian Relationships in Film series.

Jun Fukuda’s 1967 film SON OF GODZILLA (84 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 1pm, as part of the Dinosaurs Plus! on Film series.

David Fincher’s 2023 film THE KILLER (118 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm and 7pm, as part of the New Releases series.

Julien Temple’s 1988 film EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (100 min, 35mm) screens Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Revising the Musical series.

George Sherman’s 1952 film AGAINST ALL FLAGS (84 min, 35mm) screens Monday, 7pm, as part of the Brief Intro to George Sherman series.

Davy Chou’s 2022 film RETURN TO SEOUL (119 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 6pm. This is a free screening followed by a post-screening Q&A with Chou. Co-sponsored by the France Chicago Center.

Gregg Araki’s 2004 film MYSTERIOUS SKIN (105 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the Mirroring series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Elevated Films
Elevated Films is screening a work-in-progress film and soliciting feedback on Saturday, 1pm, at 2250 N. Sheffield Ave. RSVP here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Lukas Moodysson’s 1998 film SHOW ME LOVE (FUCKING ÅMÅL) (86 min, DCP Digital) and Angela Robinson’s 2004 film D.E.B.S. (92 min, Digital Projection) screen Friday at 7pm and 9pm, respectively, as part of the Queer Galentine’s “Make it a Double” feature. More info here. More info here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago)
Sang Hu’s 1979 film TWINS COME IN PAIRS (91 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Laughing, We Move Forward: Revisiting Chinese New Comedy Film series, curated by Lilian Kong, who will introduce the film. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Pawo Choyning Dorji’s 2024 film THE MONK AND THE GUN (107 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Adam McKay’s 2021 film DON’T LOOK UP (145 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 2pm, as part of the Science on Screen series. Followed by a post-screening discussion with University of Chicago professors Daniel Holz and Elizabeth Moyer.

The BLUE DESCRIPTION PROJECT (2024, 82 min, DCP Digital), conceived by artists and writers Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Jones, screens Thursday, 6pm, as part of the Conversations at the Edge. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2023 film POOR THINGS (141 min) screens on 35mm this week, with two new music videos from The Smile directed by Paul Thomas Anderson also screening on 35mm before the film. See Venue website for showtimes.

İlker Çatak’s 2023 German film THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE (98 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Clare Cooney’s 2023 film DEPARTING SENIORS (85 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 11:30pm and Saturday at midnight.

Michael Schultz’s 1985 film THE LAST DRAGON (109 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday and Saturday, midnight, as part of the Melanin, Roots, and Culture series.

Andrew Dominik’s 2007 film THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (160 min, 35mm) screens Sunday, 11am, with cinematographer Roger Deakins and collaborator James Deakins in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. Presented by DePaul University. Note that the screening is sold out.

Rob Reiner’s 1987 film THE PRINCESS BRIDE (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, Valentine’s Day, at 7pm and 9:30pm More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ The Salt Shed (1357 N. Elston Ave.)
Crying at the Shed takes place Wednesday through Friday, February 16. The films screening include Chad Hartigan’s LITTLE FISH and Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (accompanied by a solo performance and Q&A with Jon Brion, the composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist—note that this event is sold out) on Wednesday at 5pm and 7pm, respectively; and Wong Kar-wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and Wim Wenders’ PARIS, TEXAS (featuring a performance by Douglas McCombs of Tortoise on Thursday at 5pm and 7pm, respectively.

⚫ South Asia Institute (1925 S. Michigan Ave.)
Jawad Sharif’s 2019 documentary INDUS BLUES (76 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 3:30pm, as part of the bi-monthly SAI Screening series. More info here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find more information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its larger screening and workshop schedule, here.

🎞️ ONLINE SCREENINGS/EVENTS

⚫ VDB TV
As VDB welcomes the Eiko & Koma and Eiko Otake collections, they are presenting a three-month series of programs that highlight representative works from them. Eiko Otake with Wen Hui: No Rule is Our Rule (2021, 73 min) screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: February 9 - February 15, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS //  Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, James Stroble, Drew Van Weelden