:: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15 - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21 ::

📽️ Crucial Viewing

Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (UK/US)

Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 4pm and 7:30pm

It took more than a decade for audiences to begin to appreciate Kubrick's final film, which is set in a facsimile of contemporary New York but heeding closely to the psychology and sexual mores of the 1924 Arthur Schnitzler novella on which it is based. This discrepancy sparked incurious outrage in 1999—particularly among writers in the New York Times, who actually seemed offended by the lack of realism—but it's come to resonate as one of the deepest mysteries of the director's monumental career. For Martin Scorsese, who placed the film in his top five for the entire decade, it's about New York as it appears in a dream. "And as with all dreams," he wrote, "you never know precisely when you've entered it. Everything seems real and lifelike, but different, a little exaggerated, a little off. Things appear to happen as if they were preordained, sometimes in a strange rhythm from which it's impossible to escape. Audiences really had no preparation for a dream movie that didn't announce itself as such, without the usual signals—hovering mists, people appearing and disappearing at will or floating off the ground. Like Rossellini's VOYAGE IN ITALY, another film severely misunderstood in its time, EYES WIDE SHUT takes a couple on a harrowing journey, at the end of which they're left clinging to each other. Both are films of terrifying self-exposure. They both ask the question: How much trust and faith can you really place in another human being? And they both end tentatively, yet hopefully. Honestly." Kubrick arrived at this combination of mystery and exposure through singular working methods unlikely to be repeated in a major film. Reportedly the longest shoot in movie history, Kubrick spent weeks on individual scenes, running actors through conversations until they were no longer conscious of performing. He had pursued this sort of marathon process before—most notably on THE SHINING and FULL METAL JACKET—but never on material so explicitly psychological. As a result, even superstars like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (giving their finest performances as a wealthy married couple) seem unfamiliar and strangely vulnerable. But EYES WIDE SHUT is only truly unsettling on contemplation: on the surface, it's one of Kubrick's funniest (with some of the most eccentric supporting performances in anything he made after THE KILLING) and most luminous, capturing the allure of Manhattan in winter with remarkably simple lighting arrangements. Screening as part of the Alternative Christmas Features series. (1999, 159 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Fred C. Newmeyer's GIRL SHY (US/Silent)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

Fresh from his breakup with legendary Hollywood producer Hal Roach, GIRL SHY stands as Harold Lloyd’s first independent feature. Already a star with the success of SAFETY LAST! (1923) the year prior, the film’s enormous success made the funny man the highest paid actor of the silent era. Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer, the film follows Harold, a tailor’s apprentice terrified of women. He writes The Secret of Making Love, a guide for young men looking to seduce women. Entirely based on fantasy, Harold details how to go about wooing a flapper woman followed by section on wooing a vampire. Once completed, Harold travels to Los Angeles in hopes of getting his magnum opus published. Along the way, he falls in love with Mary Buckingham, a young ingénue (played by Jobyna Ralston), and she and Harold begin a romance. In the process of falling in love, Harold loses his inhibitions towards women. Mary, scorned by her lover, engages another man. To the marriage, Harold engages one of the greatest races against the clock sequences ever put to film. Especially for a movie in the early days of cinema, the sequence remains breathtaking in its ability to tantalize audiences. In the end, Lloyd gets the girl and becomes a laughingstock—the book gets published for its absurd notions of women. The editor only agrees to a book deal with the belief that readers will find its so hilarious they’ll buy it in droves. The narrative thread of Harold’s work feels ahead of its time and almost Freudian in that the character writes about desired dreams and lives in complete fear in waking hours. Distanced by a century, a modern audience may view the character as a Pygmalion male working towards fame and notoriety. Preceded by Alfred Goulding’s 1923 short film THE KID REPORTER (21 min, 35mm). With live accompaniment by Jay Warren and Nicholas White. (1924, 77 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]

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

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

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]

Hong Sang-soo’s IN WATER (South Korea)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Spoiler alert: IN WATER is drenched—and I mean it literally: everything is blurry and might go slightly more out of focus as the film progresses, even into the end credits. Non-diegetic subtitles reassure that your eyesight is intact. It is a film that, upon finishing, you reflect back and wonder if you have really seen it at all; you might simply have dreamed it up. It’s probably Hong Sang-soo’s most intimate, experimental take yet—so intimate that he produced, wrote, directed, photographed, edited and composed for the film. It is also a meta-film, a film about filmmaking with its distress, boredom, and serendipity. Young actor Seoung-mo (Seok-ho Shin) has decided to make a short film true to his heart; he brings young actress Nam-hee (Seung-yun Kim) and cinematographer Sang-guk (Seong-guk Ha) to the chilly seaside of the Jeju Island, chewing up his personal savings as days go by without a concrete idea of what to shoot. He explores his surroundings but not without some anxiety about the cost of idling, until he sees a lone stranger by the sea and decides to talk to her. And everything starts to make sense. Hong has the talent of flattening every concept—however mundane, awkward, complicated or difficult to articulate—through unhurried conversations that are sprinkled with polite aloofness but can give punches of honesty. The discussion about whether to have sashimi for dinner is treated in the same way as when Seoung-mo talks about how he wishes he was never born. When images retreat to the back seat, sound takes command. The sounds of the waves, the wind, and the voice of Kim Min-hee (who never shows her face but only voice-acts as Seoung-mo’s possible former love interest), will absorb you into this film like soft, impressionist reverie. Preceded by Pedro Costa’s 2023 short film THE DAUGHTERS OF FIRE (9 min, DCP Digital). (2023, 61 min, DCP Digital) [Nicky Ni]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Sergio Bergonzelli's CRISTIANA, DEVIL NUN (Italy)

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

Inside all of us, there is an angel and a devil at war with each other. This conflict informs some of our greatest dramatic characters, such as the incurably horny nun at the center of the Italian nunsploitation romp CRISTIANA, DEVIL NUN. Experiencing a bout of bad turbulence on a plane and thinking she’ll die, the hedonistic Cristiana (Toti Achilli) makes a deal with God to devote herself to a pure life if she lives through the ordeal. The plane safely lands, and Cristiana feels so moved to make good on her promise that she dumps her lover and moves into a convent. This is an imperfect plan, though, since she almost immediately starts having sex again with a fellow nun, a painter, and Luca (Gerardo Rossi), her former lover from the outside world who hides out at the convent while on the lam from a murder charge. The film is nominally interested in what all of this means for Cristiana and her relationship to good and evil, but the status of her soul by film’s end isn’t exactly clear, and it’s not like you come to a nunsploitation movie for serious theological inquiry anyway. You come to watch absurdly beautiful European women play dress-up with some awkwardly inserted hardcore shots. The film is surprisingly light on sex for how much the thin plot demands, and the whole thing is buoyed mainly by Achilli’s casual eroticism and the kaleidoscopic visual effects that kick in every so often. This allows director Sergio Bergonzelli to toggle between softcore and psych-freak-out aesthetics as needed, always keeping something interesting onscreen even as the film vamps for long stretches. The tone is light and low-maintenance, giving the film more of a loose party vibe whose sacrilege makes it a perfect fit for holiday viewing. Screening as part of the monthly Fetish Film Forum series. Co-presented by Corinne Halbert of Acid Nun. (1972, 104 min, Digital Projection) [Maxwell Courtright]

Aki Kaurismäki’s FALLEN LEAVES (Finland)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

The “feel-good” movie is often tossed aside as mere cinematic distraction, something flimsy and fleeting to avoid the ever-constant drudgery, chaos, and misfortune of the modern world. But Finland’s Aki Kaurismäki, assembling what is maybe the most morosely joyous film of 2023, offers up an alternative for how feel-good cinema can operate: stories fully cognizant of the world’s inherent misery, injustice, and destruction, and yet striving to find hope and joy and love regardless. Kaurismäki’s trademark style—deadpan performances navigating brightly colorful, impeccably designed surroundings—presents a droll world of intentionally composed scenarios, transporting us between various bars, small homes, movie theaters, hospitals, and workplaces, where work is fleeting, the pay is never enough, and news of constant warfare and hospital bombings is enough to want to shut yourself off from the world for as long as humanly possible. Within this mess, a familiar romantic-comedy formula emerges: Ansa (Alma Pöysti) is oscillating between various low-paying workplaces run by cruel and incompetent bosses. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) works as a laborer but can barely function without a flask of alcohol tight in his grasp. These two embittered lost souls of the working class have a delightful meet-cute at an absurd night of karaoke, fall in love, and fall apart due to seemingly irreconcilable differences, but anyone who has seen enough romcoms in their lifetime might be able to guess where things go before the music swells and the credits roll. Kaurismäki’s world is distant yet familiar, the paint a bit brighter and the tone of dialogue a bit stiffer, but the feelings of overbearing dread, and the feelings of humor and passion that arise within that dread, are all too palpable and relatable. The romantic comedy is often bemoaned as a dying object at the multiplex, but here, the genre is brought into the present day, startlingly, heroically, and with life-affirming intensity. (2023, 81 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Panah Panahi’s HIT THE ROAD (Iran)

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (1155 E. 58th St.) – Friday, 7pm

Panah Panahi’s debut as a writer-director bears resemblance to his father Jafar Panahi’s recent feature 3 FACES (2018) in that it’s a seriocomic road movie that considers the difficulties of being a young adult in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The film approaches its concerns obliquely, however, making it an open-ended allegory more in line with certain films by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (THE CYCLIST, THE SILENCE) and Mohammad Rasoulof (IRON ISLAND, THE WHITE MEADOWS). Most of the story follows a family of four on their road trip across a remote, mountainous region of the country. Panahi generates winning humor from the familiar situation of family members trapped in a car with each other’s quirks, and he provides the principal characters with memorable idiosyncrasies. The father, mother, and 20-ish older son each get moments in the dramatic spotlight, but they’re all overshadowed by the family’s six-year-old younger son, a hyperactive brat who goes unpredictably (yet always believably) from being endearing to being obnoxious. Like a lit firecracker, he doesn’t seem to belong inside a moving car—he really ought to be doing sprints up and down the mountains the family keeps passing. The little boy’s liberty stands in sharp contrast to the fate awaiting his older brother, which Panahi starts to intimate around the half-hour mark of HIT THE ROAD, continues to allude to, but never reveals outright. All we ever learn for certain is that the family is delivering him to some group of people—maybe good, maybe bad—in the middle of nowhere. That the character’s future is literally unwritten brings an air of dread to this superficially pleasant movie, and it inspires alarm about whatever hangs in the balance for all of Iran’s young people. Yet in keeping with the poetic tradition of much Iranian art cinema, Panahi buoys the proceedings with plentiful moments of childlike wonder, most vividly in a late sequence that finds father and bratty tyke literally floating through the cosmos. With an introduction from ISAC Research Associate Professor Abbas Alizadeh. (2021, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Holiday Detour

FACETS Cinema – See below for showtimes

Lynne Ramsay's MORVERN CALLAR (UK)
Friday, 7pm
Played magnificently by Samantha Morton, the title character of Lynne Ramsay’s second feature is an existential protagonist in the tradition of Albert Camus’ Meursault. She has no morality and no ambitions; she is capable of both friendship and betrayal, entering into either seemingly without motivation. Ramsay doesn’t attempt to probe the character’s inner life; rather she delivers a rich sensory experience that channels the excitement of Morvern’s moment-to-moment existence. The film is marked by mobile camerawork and vivid sound design (Ramsay’s use of music is especially strong), which draw viewers into the character’s perspective without revealing any psychological insight. This immersive style adds to the film’s sense of unpredictability—not only are you unsure of what Morvern will do next, you can’t see far enough beyond to immediate experience to guess. The film begins when the anti-heroine finds her husband’s corpse after he’s committed suicide. Rather than inform the police, Morvern hides the body, tells her friends her husband’s disappeared, then takes his recently completed novel and attempts to sell it to publishers as her own work. While all this is happening, she continues going to her job as a supermarket clerk during the day and partying hard at night; Ramsay finds mystery and wonder in both activities, presenting them as part of a continuous sensory flow. Nothing jars that flow, not even when the setting switches from urban Scotland to rural Spain, which is where Morvern and friend go on vacation with the money Morvern’s taken from her dead husband’s bank account. There are echoes of Antonioni’s THE PASSENGER in how Ramsay presents travel—the attractive imagery carries an undercurrent of disappointment, suggesting that no matter how far you go, you never get away from yourself. With an introduction from FACETS Marketing Manager and Holiday Detour series programmer Emma Greenleaf. (2002, 97 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
---
Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT (US)
Sunday, 5pm
For many—including Wilder himself—this was the director's finest hour, the film in which all the elements converged with grace, sass, and a tinge of tragic inevitability. It was inspired by a line that Wilder wrote in his notebook sometime in the 1940s and couldn't forget: "Movie about the guy who climbs into the warm bed left by two lovers." By the time the film was made (during the so-called "New Permissiveness" of the early 60s), the two lovers had multiplied into several men and countless mistresses and the warmth of the bed had turned musty. The guy, however, retained all the bittersweet sympathy of that initial premise. As incarnated by Jack Lemmon (in the most tolerable performance of his career), C.C. Baxter is the ultimate schlemiel, a resigned bachelor who lends his apartment to his insurance company superiors because he can't imagine any alternative to advancing in a job that kills him. Shirley MacLaine plays the disabused mistress who turns out to be the girl of his dreams, one of the great creations of the movies: her Fran Kubelik is a woman who seems ideal even in her faults—youthful, spontaneous, naive, sexy, resilient: exactly the type who could humanize an office drone like Baxter. The romance between them is so affecting (to say nothing of the dialogue, which pops as only Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's writing can) that it's easy to overlook what a superior piece of filmmaking THE APARTMENT is. Wilder remains underrated as a visual artist; and here, working in sparkling black-and-white 'Scope, he creates some remarkable effects, such as the unforgettable loneliness of the apartment itself and the modernist nightmare of the insurance company office (an image borrowed from King Vidor's THE CROWD), where rows of desks seem to extend into infinity. Wilder also employs small objects with an imaginative economy worthy of Hitchcock. As he explained in Cameron Crowe's book-length interview Conversations with Wilder: "When Baxter sees himself in [Fran's broken compact] mirror, he adds up two and two. He gave it to the president of the insurance company [Fred MacMurray], the big shot at the office, now he knows what we know. And we see it in his face in the broken mirror. That was a very elegant way of pointing it out. Better than a third person telling him about the affair—that we did not want to do. This was better. This gave us everything, in one shot." With an introduction from Cine-File co-managing editor Ben Sachs. (1960, 125 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
---
Also screening as part of the Holiday Detour series is Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s 2007 film INSIDE (82 min, Digital Projection) on Saturday, 7pm, with an introduction from film critic and programmer Katie Rife.

John Carpenter’s CHRISTINE (US)

Music Box of Horrors at the Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 9:30pm

CHRISTINE is John Carpenter’s only Stephen King adaptation, which may be surprising, but the director took on this high-profile adaptation as more of a necessary career move than anything else; his previous film, THE THING (1982), was critically panned and a box office disappointment. The result is a warped and entertaining take on late-century obsession with '50s American culture. Unpopular teen Arnie (Keith Gordon) buys a red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury, named Christine, but the seller (Roberts Blossom) leaves out some sordid details about the vehicle–namely that Christine is possessed with an evil mind. As Arnie starts restoring the car, he becomes more than a little obsessed. He begins to change, taking on the personality of a hardened '50s greaser, and those who mess with either him or the car come to bloody ends. Arnie's best friend (John Stockwell) and new girlfriend (Alexandra Paul) attempt to help, but they must get through Christine first. The film includes standout supporting performances from character actors like Blossom, Robert Prosky, and, most noteworthy, Harry Dean Stanton; as Arnie, Gordon gives an anxious performance, appropriately uncomfortable as he transforms from nerd to aggressive car-obsessive. It’s impressive how Carpenter’s camera slowly pans over Christine, giving, with the help of lighting, the often-unmoving car an eerie life of her own. It remains one of my favorite Carpenter rewatches, and it doesn’t hurt that it boasts one of his greatest scores—juxtaposed against the '50s tunes that Christine plays, the moody main theme is the very best of '80s synth soundtracks. (1983, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Jakub Piątek’s PIANOFORTE (Poland/Germany/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

As the world’s population continues to grow exponentially and opportunities to win fame and fortune in the arts grow ever dimmer, competitions have become a crucial means for aspiring artists to break through the vast crowd of hopefuls to wider recognition. This is especially true in the rarified and declining field of classical music. For young pianists, the golden ticket to a successful solo career is winning the International Chopin Piano Competition, which has been held in Warsaw every five years since 1927 and helped launch the careers of such renowned pianists as Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich, and Garrick Ohlsson. During this 21-day, four-stage tribute to Poland’s most famous musician, composer and pianist Fryderyk Chopin, competitors must demonstrate their technical mastery and emotional depth across the entire Chopin repertoire, ending with a performance of a Chopin piano concerto by the dozen or so hopefuls who have made it through to the finals. Filmmaker Jakub Piątek helps us understand the psychological and physical pressures of this competition by focusing on eight of the 87 pianists vying for the €40,000 prize and that all-important, career-making win during the 2021 competition. There is camaraderie among the pianists who have faced off in dozens of competitions, such as between an Italian-Slovenian virtuoso who practices yoga to relax and a bubbly Italian woman who also likes to play Metallica. The film’s treatment of two 17-year-old competitors, a Russian girl and a Chinese boy, is a story of contrasts. The former has a strict teacher who constantly corrects her and tries to get her to hold her hand in a way that may not be possible given her still-maturing body. The latter has had the same teacher from the very beginning who is always boosting his confidence and confesses that she wishes she were his mother. An Italian pianist in her early 20s seems morbid and depressed much of the time, quipping at one point that the prize money would best be used for psychotherapy to recover from the competition. There is also interesting detail about the competition itself, such as how the young pianists “test drive” several superb pianos and choose which one they want to play and how the out-of-town competitors’ hotel rooms are equipped with spinet pianos. I found myself rooting for one young man, but felt for all of them as we learn about their home lives and the unique aspects of their personalities. While the idea of judging artistry is tricky and not free from bias as to age and reputation, it is also clear from this absorbing documentary that these young musicians have sacrificed many hours of their childhoods for something ineffably richer than anything else in their lives to that point. When we see two men in the audience weeping at the beauty of one performance, it’s clear that these young musicians have nurtured a talent precious to us all. (2023, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s MONSTER (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

For Hirokazu Kore-eda, one of contemporary cinema’s preeminent humanists, people are seldom all bad. If they do something unscrupulous, as in the director’s Palme d’Or-winning SHOPLIFTERS (2018), it is usually not out of malice but symptomatic of systemic inequities beyond their control. Understanding and empathy can be achieved through a change in perspective, which is the overarching theme of MONSTER. The Cannes-laureled script, by Yuji Sakamoto, is structured as a triptych, with each section assuming a different character’s point of view. The first focuses on Saori (Sakura Ando), a single mother raising a surly, taciturn boy named Minato (Soya Kurokawa). Discovering that her son’s erratic behavior could be the result of alleged abuse by his schoolteacher, Saori conducts a heated meeting with the school staff to address the wrongdoing. The film then shifts to the perspective of the accused teacher, Hori (Eita Nagayama), who reveals a different version of events. MONSTER concludes by focusing on the feelings and experiences of those society is often most ill-equipped to understand: children. Through Minato and his burgeoning relationship with an effeminate, bullied classmate named Hoshikawa (Hinata Hiiragi), the film elucidates the truth behind its spiraling dramas, surfacing the social prejudices and repressive cultural attitudes that lead a boy to act out, or a teacher to be vilified, or a parent to pass the blame. Sakamoto’s script risks didacticism in how it preaches the pitfalls of making assumptions; it’s so precisely engineered to elide or disclose perception-shifting information at just the right moments that it can feel overly rigged for effect. On the other hand, we could all use a reminder—especially one as warm as this—that none of us have all the knowledge, and that we’d be wise to interrogate even our smallest judgments before they grow into the real monsters. (2023, 125 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

The 40th Annual Music Box Christmas Sing-A-Long & Double Feature

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (US)
Like Steven Spielberg today, Frank Capra was associated more with reassuring, patriotic sentiment than with actually making movies; but just beneath the Americana, his films contain a near-schizophrenic mix of idealism and resentment. In this quality, as well as his tendency to drag charismatic heroes through grueling tests of faith, it wouldn't be a stretch to compare Capra with Lars von Trier. There's plenty to merit the comparison in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE alone: The film is a two-hour tour of an honest man's failure and bottled-up resentment, softened only intermittently by scenes of domestic contentment. Even before the nightmarish Pottersville episode (shot in foreboding shadows more reminiscent of film noir than Americana), Bedford Falls is shown as vulnerable to the plagues of recession, family dysfunction, and alcoholism. All of these weigh heavily on the soul of George Bailey, a small-town Everyman given tragic complexity by James Stewart, who considered the performance his best. Drawing on the unacknowledged rage within ordinary people he would later exploit for Alfred Hitchcock, Stewart renders Bailey as complicated as Capra himself—a child and ultimate victim of the American Dream. Ironically, it's because the film's despair feels so authentic that its iconic ending feels as cathartic as it does: After being saved from his suicide attempt (which frames the entire film, it should be noted), Stewart is returned to the simple pleasures of family and friends, made to seem a warm oasis in a great metaphysical void. (1946, 130 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
---
Michael Curtiz's WHITE CHRISTMAS (US) 

Critics agree that Mark Sandrich's HOLIDAY INN (1942), the first musical comedy to feature Bing Crosby, an inn, and Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," is a better film than this partial remake. Yet it turns out that it's the revivals of this Technicolor, VistaVision version that people look forward to this time of year. WHITE CHRISTMAS incorporates the history of its own title song, which, while it would go on to become perhaps history's largest-seller, actually seemed a flop at first. Music historians Dave Marsh and Steve Propes note, "What saved 'White Christmas' were requests made by GIs to Armed Forces Radio around the world. Soldiers away from home, many of them in the South Pacific or North Africa, uncertain of whether they'd ever again see family and friends, let alone a snowfall, responded passionately to Berlin's understated evocation of the mythic romance of Christmas Past." This history is folded into the opening scene: it's Christmas Eve, 1944, somewhere on a World War II battlefield, and Crosby sings the song to fellow troops amidst some very fake rubble, as bombs explode in the background. The movie's got Crosby and Danny Kaye as music-and-lyrics team Wallace and Davis, and Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney as sister act the Haynes. They're a treat to watch even just sitting around a railroad passenger car singing "Snow," bound for Pine Tree, Vermont, where the inn turns out to be run by ex-General Waverly (Dean Jagger). When people gather for a screening of this movie, I doubt they worry that it may not rank with Michael Curtiz's best work (CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, MILDRED PIERCE). They come to mark the change of years together. If there's a season for nestling in the warmth of nostalgia, it's this one. Plus, there's the camp appeal of Crosby and Kaye doing "Sisters." (1954, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Scott Pfeiffer]

Wong Kar-wai's 2046 (Hong Kong)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Friday and Monday, 3:30pm

When it was in production (for what felt like a decade), swarms of rumors surrounded Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, the most popular being that the film would be Wong’s first foray into science fiction. That’s a plausible notion, given the film’s title, which refers to the final year that China promised to let Hong Kong remain as it is before the mainland government assumed greater control over the island. But while the finished film does contain passages set in the year 2046, for the most part it’s a period piece set in the mid to late 1960s. Moreover, the film that Wong completed turned out to be a sequel to his beloved IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000), with Tony Leung reprising his character of Chow Mo-wan. The previous film ended with Chow leaving Hong Kong for a job in Singapore, where he hoped to forget about his longing for the married Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung); this one opens with him returning to Hong Kong and resuming his work as a newspaper writer there. Whereas Chow was a quiet introvert in LOVE, in 2046 he’s a bon vivant and ladies’ man, proceeding through a succession of one-night-stands with blithe indifference. Wong seems to be saying that unfulfilled romance and unfulfilling sex are two sides of the same coin—both result in feelings of melancholy and loneliness. Chow channels his feelings into a sci-fi serial he writes about the year 2046, when people have romantic relationships with androids and high-speed train lines unite the globe. These stories about connection betray Chow’s feelings of disconnect from most other people, which are ameliorated through fleeting relationships with women who are just as lonely as he is. The film is divided into episodes centered on different women, who are played magnificently by Carina Lau, Zhang Ziyi, Faye Wong, and Gong Li. (As in LOVE, the women are all magnificently dressed too.) This was Wong’s first film in widescreen, though he shot most of it in medium close-up—the film transpires in an intimate space where it seems that sex (or, possibly, a deeper connection) is only a breath away. (2004, 129 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL (UK)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 11am and Wednesday, 7pm

Terry Gilliam and Sam Lowry—two impossible dreamers haplessly lashing out against the powers that be—are the twin heroes of BRAZIL, one behind the camera and the other before it. The behind-the-scenes narrative of this dystopian masterpiece has attained mythic status, with Gilliam locked in heated battle against Universal over their insistence on a more audience-friendly cut of the film, all while the fate of put-upon office drone Lowry (played with beleaguered bafflement by Jonathan Pryce) hangs in the balance. In fairness, it's not hard to see how a studio would look askance at the film before them. Gilliam takes his budget and constructs what is essentially just a child's blanket fort on the largest scale imaginable; a bureaucratic quagmire built of tubes and cardboard, at times dangerously close to coming apart at the seams. It's a world where instability is constantly threatening to undermine the tightly wound internal logic that governs everything, where loose cogs in the machine like Sam Lowry become threats simply because the system isn't wired to accommodate them. Under these conditions, there's a very thin line between getting imaginative and getting mad, so it's little wonder Gilliam followed a similar path to his protagonist. BRAZIL, among the most fantastically dark and detail-rich science fiction flicks ever, was—and remains—a visionary work worth fighting for. (1985, 142 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
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 next year. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Kid Flix presents Henry Selick’s 1993 film TIM BURTON’S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (73 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday and Sunday at 11am. All tickets are $5. More info here.

⚫ Mental Filmness
The first Mental Filmness Holiday Short Film Showcase screens Saturday, 2pm, at the Edgewater branch (6000 N. Broadway St.) of the Chicago Public Library. Includes Alyssa Thordarson and Cine-File contributor Michael Smith’s short film PAPER PLANES.

On Sunday, Amin Matalqa’s 2022 film 5000 BLANKETS (105 min, Digital Projection) screens at the Independence branch (4024 N. Elston Ave.) of the Chicago Public Library at 2pm. Followed by a post-screening discussion with producer Douglas Shaffer. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Morrisa Maltz’s 2023 film THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY (85 min, DCP Digital) screens this week. See Venue website for showtimes. More info here.

⚫ School of the Art Institute
Two job opportunities! The Department of  Film, Video, New Media and Animation (FVNMA) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is conducting a double search—two tenure-track positions hiring concurrently this year. They are jointly listed for artists with an expertise in "experimental film and video." The priority application deadline is January 8, 2024. More information about the role and how to apply 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 (2016-2019, Total approx. 49 min) screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: December 15 - December 21, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Nicky Ni, Scott Pfeiffer