:: FRIDAY, JUNE 28 - THURSDAY, JULY 4 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Marzieh Meshkini’s THE DAY I BECAME A WOMAN (Iran)

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

THE DAY I BECAME A WOMAN was made the same year as Jafar Panahi’s THE CIRCLE, and both films consider what it’s like to be a woman in contemporary Iran through an episodic plot that allows the filmmakers to address a range of women’s experiences. But while THE CIRCLE is an angry, visceral film, Marzieh Meshkini’s directorial debut (co-written by her husband, the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf) is lyrical, sensuous, and at times even funny. That’s not to say it’s any less insightful; Meshkini is just working in a poetic idiom that emphasizes metaphor, allusion, and sensory detail to convey the nuances of lived experience. This idiom is a hallmark of Iranian cinema, and it reflects how crucial poetry is to Iranian culture on the whole. So, it feels especially fitting here, given the cultural specificity of Meshkini’s concerns. The film consists of three shorts, each one less realistic than the last. In the first, a little girl is about to celebrate her ninth birthday, at which time she “becomes a woman” and must wear a chador whenever she’s in public and stop associating with boys. Rather than celebrate her birthday, she would rather play with a boy from the neighborhood and get ice cream, so she convinces her mother that she should get to be a child until noon because that’s when she was born. The rest of the short concerns the last hours of this little girl’s childhood; it’s a bittersweet, ultimately tragic piece of neorealism in the tradition of Vittorio De Sica. The abrupt, ambiguous ending, however, feels extremely Iranian, so too does Meshkini’s jarring shift to the next story, a tense struggle that suggests something out of a nightmare. A woman is riding a bicycle in a race with numerous other women cyclists, though she appears to be riding faster than anyone else, and her expression is markedly worried. In a few moments we figure out why: various men from her village are trying to get her to return to the family home after her husband granted her a divorce. Meshkini ratchets up the suspense from there, building on the momentum of the race to underscore the necessity of the heroine’s escape to freedom. The film concludes on a lighthearted note with a quasi-surrealist tale of an elderly woman with no apparent family ties who mysteriously inherits a load of money; she decides to buy every consumer product she’s ever wanted, then display them all on the beach. Like the other two tales, this one can be summarized in a sentence but hints at a lifetime’s worth of disappointment and frustration. Note the resentment with which the heroine of this story alludes to her past—she’s clearly earned the right to be as selfish as she wants. The little gang of boys she assembles to tote her stuff is icing on the cake, a comic inversion of patriarchal norms. Preceded by Boris Kolar’s 1964 short film VAU VAU (9 min, 35mm). (2000, 74 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Agnieszka Holland’s GREEN BORDER (Poland)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

To say that one can’t see the forest for the trees is to suggest that they’re too focused on the details, unable to see the bigger picture in question. Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland’s latest does the opposite, positioning Europe’s refugee crisis as the forest and those suffering through it as the trees, focusing on them rather than the macro-level issue of immigration that can sometimes blur the faces of those involved. This metaphor is echoed in the beginning of GREEN BORDER, as an audacious tracking shot glides over the tops of trees, their near-gothic verdancy both ravishing and prescient; much of the film takes place in the forest, its sprawling landscape an innocent cover for the specific tragedies it conceals. As the title appears on screen, the image turns to black-and-white, and it stays that way for the rest of the film. Holland has said she made this aesthetic choice to give the film a timeless quality, perhaps a knowing reference toward the cyclical nature of history, which Holland, whose oeuvre is defined by films addressing critical junctures in the 20th (and now 21st) century, such as the Holocaust, that risk repetition should they remain only broad subjects, all too easily brushed off by the ignorant and impressionable alike and therefore not acknowledged for their devastating nuance. Written by Holland, Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko, the film is divided into three parts. The first centers on a Syrian family and Afghan teacher flying to Belarus at the behest of Belarus’ president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who promoted the Belarus-Polish border as a way for refugees to enter the EU in order to flood the countries with immigrants and simultaneously undermine their purportedly humanistic views and stoke right-wing aggression. (Holland faced much backlash and even censorship, with the country’s interior minister requiring theaters showing the film to screen a government-produced video beforehand that challenges the film’s portrayal of events.) These characters are initially strangers but later band together, as they enter the EU via Poland in hopes of obtaining asylum. The frustrated game of ping-pong played by the two governments, in which Polish border guards force the refugees back into Belarus, continuing to do so as they attempt over and over again to get into Poland, accounts for much of the film; Holland highlights through this dilemma the Kafkaesque nature of asylum-seeking. The second section focuses on the border guards, one in particular, though the previous characters’ stories continue even as the film shifts its attention to this other facet of the refugee paradigm. The border guard contends with the reality of his job, eventually, it would seem, coming to gain more empathy toward refugees, whom he sees being treated badly by his colleagues firsthand and whose experiences he knows to be brutal. It’s cliché to explore the notion that there are good people in the world and that sometimes minds can be changed, but Holland does so in such a forthright way as to make it seem undeniable, a pearl of truth in a sea of misery. The third section follows a widowed psychologist who’s pulled into the fray after she attempts to help some refugees in the woods behind her house, witnessing one die in the process. This radicalizes her, and she subsequently becomes an activist, taking a more hands-on approach than some of those she works with. Holland’s epic approach to the subject covers many of the experiences of and attitudes toward refugees, and as such doesn’t necessarily conclude in a pat fashion, though there’s both a hint of optimism and unequivocal admonishment, the latter by way of an epilogue that shows border police welcoming Ukrainian refugees with none of the vitriol they showed those coming from the Middle East and Africa. It’s not a concise text by any means—its running time is a solid two-and-a-half hours—yet somehow Holland manages to distill both a perennial and timely issue (here in the United States as well, obviously), that of people seeking refuge from persecution, into a precise narrative that conveys the indisputable facets of goodness and the complicated nuances of reality. (2023, 152 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Annie Baker’s JANET PLANET (US/UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Annie Baker understands the power of silence, and all it contains. As one of the most prolific and lauded playwrights of the 21st century, her onstage worlds have navigated back alleys, writer’s rooms, and, yes, movie theaters to discover the volume that exists in between the devastating sentences we utter into the universe. In her seamless shift into the world of filmmaking as writer and director of JANET PLANET, Baker brings those silences with her, alongside her accomplished brand of understated maximalism—characters whose outer shell of mundanity plants the seeds for inner truths that yearn to blossom—while taking advantage of the expanse of realism that can be fully accomplished on the big screen. In propelling her artistry forward, Baker looks backward to the early 1990s, when the young Lacy (a one-of-a-kind Zoe Ziegler) spends the late summer months with her mother, the eponymous Janet (Julianne Nicholson, fitting eerily well into the Annie Baker oeuvre) in the rural woods of Massachusetts. Lacy views Janet not just as mother but as lifelong companion, eternal caregiver, all-seeing, all-knowing deity of the universe. "Janet Planet" is the name of Janet’s home acupuncture clinic, but more thematically sums up how Lacy sees her; a world in and of herself, an entire celestial body that all else revolves around. Indeed, the film unravels episodically based around the various friends, lovers, and guides who enter and exit Janet’s life, themselves floating bodies of matter that enter Janet’s orbit but find themselves floating away after such little time. Lacy and Janet have a bounty of meaningful conversations throughout Baker’s extraordinary debut feature, but it’s really in those moments of silence where the inner workings of these two burst off the screen, as the torrid summer days transition into cool autumn nights, and Lacy, without uttering a word, finally realizes that her mother is not a planet, but is something even more mysterious; a person, just like her. (2024, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Sidney Lumet’s SERPICO (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 3pm and Wednesday, 6pm

Sidney Lumet addressed institutional corruption within the NYPD at several points in his career—in PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981), Q & A (1990), and NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN (1997)—but never did the results make a bigger splash than they did with SERPICO, one of his best-known movies overall. Much of its enduring success can be credited to Al Pacino's performance as the title character, a real-life NY police officer who became a pariah in the force by refusing to accept bribes. Pacino conveys both Frank Serpico's sense of duty and his iconoclastic streak, creating a quintessential hero for the Vietnam era (and, being Al Pacino, he delivers all the best lines as though shouting them from a rooftop). Lumet grounds the story with so much hard-won local detail—as IMDB notes, this was shot at 104 New York City locations—that the film can be appreciated simply as a documentary of the city at this time. It may lack the complex Brechtian structure of PRINCE or the procedural precision of NIGHT FALLS, but it's still dyed-in-the-wool Lumet, perceptive and cynical in equal measure. Screening as part of the Sidney Lumet Centennial series. (1973, 130 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

The Gene Siskel Film Center Festival Showcase

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

Sam Pollard & Ben Shapiro’s MAX ROACH: THE DRUM ALSO WALTZES (US/Documentary)
Friday, 6pm
Max Roach’s accomplishments were legion. Arguably the most innovative jazz drummer of all time, Roach developed a revolutionary approach to the instrument in which the drums didn’t just keep time, but rather played off melodic lines, making percussion into an integral part of the tune. He collaborated with the likes of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Abbey Lincoln (his second wife), and Stan Getz; he also served as bandleader on numerous major recordings, including the masterpieces Percussion Bitter Sweet and We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (both 1961), the gospel record Lift Every Voice and Sing (1971), and his albums with the percussion ensemble M’Boom. He was also a pioneer in marrying popular music to political activism, as epitomized by We Insist! and his compositions about African liberation. He even authored a book on drum fills that continues to be used by percussionists today (or at least it was when I was studying percussion as an adolescent). The most impressive thing about the American Masters doc MAX ROACH: THE DRUM ALSO WALTZES is that it gracefully integrates all these aspects of Roach’s life into a holistic picture of who he was and what his accomplishments mean to American culture. Veteran documentarians Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro approach each chapter of his life in terms of personal, political, and formal concerns, blurring the lines of where one ends and another begins. Consider how the filmmakers portray Roach’s response to the untimely death of his early recording partner Clifford Brown: not surprisingly, they touch on Roach’s retreat away from his family and into alcoholism, but more importantly they address how Brown’s absence impacted the evolution of bebop in general and Roach in particular. They achieve something similar in a late passage about Roach’s 1980s collaboration with Fab 5 Freddy, intertwining choice clips of their music with Roach’s own observations about the continuity between jazz and hip hop. It makes for a fitting climax to THE DRUM ALSO WALTZES, since the film’s ultimate subject is how Black artists have always found innovative means to translate their experience into popular art. Presented by the Black Harvest Film Festival. (2023, 82 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Sarah Beddington’s FADIA’S TREE (UK/Documentary)
Saturday, 12pm
A documentary about the forced displacement of Palestinians and also, kind of, about bird migration. A road movie of sorts, a journey made on someone else’s behalf. A love letter to a place, memories, and the power of friendship in an unrelenting world. English filmmaker Sarah Beddington’s FADIA’S TREE is all of that and more, the bearer of many descriptions yet transcending them all to be something singular and poignant. Beddington met the film’s subject, Fadia, in a cafe in Lebanon, where the latter lives in a camp as a Palestinian refugee. She asked Beddington if she was happy, an unusual introduction that began an unusual friendship in the most magical way. Across a 15-year period, Beddington and Fadia discussed a mulberry tree in the former Palestinian village of Sa’sa, where her family had lived. The tree as a symbol lends itself to many interpretations; in this case its strong roots tether Fadia and her family to the region even as they’ve been displaced for several generations. The tree is also a symbol of life and hope, as Fadia wishes to one day see the tree herself. Beddington documents two trips to Sa’sa. In the first she’s unable to find the tree. Narratively this initial lack of closure provides space for her to explore another thread pertaining to bird migration. At the Jerusalem Bird Observatory, a researcher notes that tagging the birds for tracking purposes becomes an issue on the ground where it wasn’t on the sky, as once they’re caught they become either Israeli or Palestinian birds. Neither ornithologists (one of whom Beddington had met on a train, another fortuitous encounter) nor aviary enthusiasts seem to care where the birds are coming from, where they are when they encounter them, or where they’re going; they symbolize a borderless existence to which humans are not entitled. Beddington deals in simple yet poetic allusions, natural even if commonplace. That may even add to it, as most humans can relate to the desire for roots and freedom, both of which the tree represents. Eventually on another trip Beddington finds the tree, and we share in her experience of relating this to Fadia, who revels in the memories evoked and the friendship on display. Overall, this is not a typical straightforward documentary, with experimental aesthetics that at times recall Chantal Akerman’s later non-fiction work, specifically DOWN THERE. It’s a simple ode to a complex issue, with the poetry of life taking the place of pain. Presented by the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. (2022, 82 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Leos Carax's HOLY MOTORS (France) 
Saturday, 6pm
To say that HOLY MOTORS is Leos Carax's valentine to film and filmmaking would be appropriate, as the film that is itself rife with overused clichés. That word is surprisingly apt for Carax's film, though only in the most literal sense: he addresses the overwrought concepts of filmgoing and filmmaking, but in a uniquely lyrical way that is respective to the madhouse stylings of the wunderkind-film-critic-turned-filmmaker. His first feature film since 1999, Carax makes up for lost time as he takes Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) from one 'appointment' to another, presented as brief vignettes within the film's overall narrative structure. Listing them would be unnecessarily redundant after all that has been written; that being said, Carax's cinephilia is more blatantly reflected in the discussions that take place as Monsieur Oscar and his various companions drive between genres. Oscar sadly reflects that while cameras were once bigger than ourselves, they are now so small we can barely see them. This begs a pertinent question: will out of sight eventually become out of mind? This is pondered not only by the man, but also by the machine—after Oscar's chauffeur (played by Edith Scob, with both eyes and a face) takes the limo back to a seemingly ethereal parking garage, the cars speculate that their owners and operators no longer have use for visible machinery. Carax solidifies his nostalgia with various references to other notable films, including King Vidor's THE CROWD (1928), the afore-referenced EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960), and even work of his own, with one of Lavant's personifications having previously appeared in a segment Carax directed for the film TOKYO! (2008). Carax also appears in the film as a man with a key in lieu of a finger who unlocks the hidden door to a mysterious cinema. Certainly, his auteurship does not go unrecognized even as he toys with themes not previously seen in his filmography. Edith Scob, Michel Piccoli, Eva Mendes, and Kylie Minogue round out the randomness that also involves a full-fledged musical number and an on-screen erection of the same caliber. Presented by the Chicago International Film Festival. (2012, 115 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Also screening as part of the showcase are Personal Histories and Experimental Visions, a shorts program presented by the Chicago Underground Film Festival, on Saturday at 8:30pm, and Nanette Burstein’s 2024 documentary ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES, presented by Doc10, on Sunday at 3pm. More info here.

Alex Cox's REPO MAN (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight

Before he made Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen into the punk rock Romeo and Juliet (and incurred Johnny Rotten's lasting wrath in the process), British director Alex Cox directed this cult classic comedy about an LA punk turned car repossessor. Emilio Estevez is convincingly apathetic as the title character in his first starring role, but it's the other repo men who steal the show (particularly Harry Dean Stanton and Sy Richardson) with their grizzled looks, erratic behavior, and desperation to impart wisdom. The first half of the film has some really authentic moments, some nice surreal touches, and great music (including a hilarious cameo by The Circle Jerks as the washed-up nightclub band). The second half devolves into a more typical everything-but-the-kitchen-sink '80s romp which either is your thing or isn't, complete with the paranormal HAZMAT team from E.T. and dull-witted, machine gun-toting, mohawk-sporting bad guys in the Bebop and Rocksteady mold. (1984, 92 min, 35mm) [Mojo Lorwin]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Josh Margolin’s THELMA (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Some say that age is just a number. While it’s true that old people can have young attitudes (and vice versa), nobody ages without experiencing functional decline. Take Thelma Post (a feisty June Squibb), the title character of actor Josh Margolin’s directorial debut. Thelma is 93 years old, lives alone in the house she shared with her husband until he died two years earlier, and is first seen exploring the wonders of the internet after a tutorial from her 24-year-old grandson, Daniel (Fred Hechinger). Thelma is determined to be as active and up-to-date as possible, but her judgment fails her when a scammer cheats her out of $10,000 by pretending to be Daniel calling to get bail money after getting into a car accident involving a pregnant woman. With law enforcement unable to help her, she decides to get her money back herself with the assistance of Ben (Richard Roundtree), a friend with a two-seat electric scooter she needs to get around. I admit I approached this film with some trepidation. Comedies centered on old people typically like to make fun of the infirmities and perceived randiness of people who presumably can’t have sex anymore. However, THELMA surprised me by looking at the elderly without ridiculing or pathologizing them. The comedy is gentle, but the reality that most of Thelma’s friends are dead and that Ben moved to assisted living because he couldn’t hear his wife fall down their staircase and die is sobering. Hechinger is very engaging as her loving grandson who can’t seem to get his life in gear; his interactions with Squibb are among the best in the film. Parker Posey provided me with most of the laughs as Daniel’s mother, swinging from California correct to hectoring spouse of emotionally vague Clark Gregg. A short scene in which Bunny Levine plays Thelma’s homebound friend Mona is brilliantly played and incredibly sad, as we see the disorder of Mona’s roach-infested home and the effects of memory loss on her ability to interact with the world. Staring down old age is no picnic, but Margolin provides a wonderful grace note at the very end of the film. The dialogue Squibb utters as she and Daniel drive away from a cemetery comes word for word from Margolin’s grandmother, seen in a video before the closing credits remarking on the resilience of the trees she sees. This film is a cleverly constructed act of love I’m happy to have seen. (2024, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Kelly O’Sullivan & Alex Thompson’s GHOSTLIGHT (US)

Music Box Theatre and the Wilmette Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

There are days where Chicago’s storefront theater scene can feel like the city’s best-kept secret; abandoned rooms and buildings scattered across the city that have been converted into shelters for imagination and earnest emotional excavation, created by people sharing stories with live audiences for little-to-no money, simply for the pleasure of nourishing that deep, artistic part of the human spirit. It’s corny and scrappy and painful and oftentimes exploitative, and in its best moments, it’s a place where—​despite it all—​art for art’s sake comes alive in a most hopeful and earnest fashion. It’s somewhat surprising that such a potent artistic subculture has rarely been seen as an environ for cinematic exploration, but Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s GHOSTLIGHT succeeds in mining this world for all it’s worth, tying this all to a story of familial grief and cathartic retribution that, of course, can only be unearthed through the power of theater. In this case, a hastily tossed-together production of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet does the trick, with construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) inexplicably joining the cast after wandering away from his worksite. Sullivan’s script slowly teases out the true narrative meat plaguing Dan’s life, a tragedy of human proportions that finds eerie parallels to the tragic Shakespearean love story Dan and his theatrical cohort (led by a harsh-yet-tender Dolly de Leon) have found themselves exhuming in a dingy storefront in the Chicago suburbs. The layers of authenticity are further deepened by the fact that Kupferer’s real-life family inhabit those same roles on screen here; Tara Mallen (a Chicago theater all-star in her own right) plays Dan’s beleaguered wife, and their daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer delivers an adolescent tornado of a performance as their rebellious teen offspring. Their shared onscreen family trauma (unfurled late in the film at a deposition hearing in a stunning piece of performance from Kupferer) is always boiling under the surface of their lives, with Dan and his daughter eventually finding a home for these repressed feelings to thrive within the Bard’s text. O’Sullivan and Thompson deliver the final blow with one fleeting image near the end of the film, hiding in the shadows, bringing Dan closer to a breaking point of meaning and understanding than he’s ever felt before. As messy and as slapdash as storefront theater often is, truth and vulnerability always find a way to shine through. (2024, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Michael Curtiz's YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 5pm

“My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you.” So ended each performance of the popular vaudeville act The Four Cohans, who entertained audiences across the United States with their singing, dancing, and clowning around in the late 1800s. So, too, do those words remain with me to this day as perhaps the most memorable line of the traditional 4th of July movie, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY. James Cagney won his only Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of showbiz phenomenon George M. Cohan (1878–1942). Here was the intensity he brought to his gangsters—Tom Powers, Cody Garrett, Martin Snyder—in service of a tour de force performance of pure joy. His singing (not so hot, but expressive), his dancing (eccentric and strange to modern eyes, but masterfully entertaining and done in Cohan’s style), and, of course, his acting, which could turn from bravado to playful to soulful in just the right measure, all come together like a force of nature to tell perhaps the ultimate showbiz story. Michael Curtiz applied his considerable ensemble directing skills to a story that spans from Cohan’s birth, through his days with The Four Cohans and Broadway theatrical career, and on to wartime contributions and his late career. Along the way, we get heavy doses of cocksure Cohan charm, grand production numbers, and large slices of fictional hokum about George M.’s theatrical partnership with Sam Harris and his marriage to Agnes Mary Nolan (Joan Leslie), as well as his deserved reputation as a super-patriot. The dramatic moments in the film are generally fine, though Leslie and Cagney generate all the fire of a wet match. Some moments, however, are quite poignant. For example, sister Josie Cohan (Jeanne Cagney, James’ sister) and George talk at the family farm, and Josie tells him she is getting married and retiring. This scene actually took place between Jeanne and James, who were a vaudeville team, and thus, there is a personal note that I find moving. The flag waving goes into overdrive for the musical number that ends the film, “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” from George Washington, Jr., giving Curtiz a chance to thank his adopted land for granting him safe harbor with all the skill at his disposal. I’m sure that in an America embroiled in war, this film helped ease the pain of parted loved ones, wartime rationing, and social uncertainty. James Cagney holds nothing back in portraying an American patriot who wasn’t afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. Give it a try. You just might feel a little bit better about America afterward. Screening as part of the Public Enemy: Cagney on Film series. (1942, 126 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Pedro Almodóvar’s ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Spain)

Wilmette Theatre – Saturday, 7pm (Free Admission)

In a review of Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, PARALLEL MOTHERS, New York Times critic A.O. Scott refers to the Spanish writer-director as being perhaps the “most prodigious world builder” among living filmmakers, employing a phrase that’s typically used to describe sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero narratives. Nevertheless, it’s true that Almodóvar has created a world entirely his own, where characters—whose identities are fluid, changeable at a moment’s notice, and whose appearances run the gamut from the highest of high fashion to the lowest of whatever low life has subjected them to—live in large, meticulously decorated apartments and encounter problems that even soap operas wouldn’t dare broach. Almodóvar’s ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER involves a degree of overlap sporadically present in his films, suggesting an inter-awareness among the seemingly disparate endeavors. In his earlier film, THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995), there figures a nurse called Manuela, who appears in a training video for doctors on how to communicate with family members of potential organ donors; in ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, Almodóvar regular Cecilia Roth stars as Manuela, an organ procurement coordinator who must decide whether or not to have her son’s organs donated after he dies in a car accident. The two Manuelas are not the same exact character, but it’s emblematic of the potential for the characters and locations in Almodóvar’s films to exist in the same raffish universe. For its part, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is an encapsulation of all that’s particularly wondrous about the Spanish master’s kaleidoscopic sphere, one that also earned him his first Oscar. After her son dies, Cecilia leaves Madrid for Barcelona in hopes of finding her son’s father, now a transgender woman called Lola; there she reunites with an old friend, another transgender woman named Agrado (Antonia San Juan), and makes new friends with a young nun named Rosa (Penélope Cruz) and the actress Huma (Marisa Paredes), who had been performing as Stella in the production of A Streetcar Named Desire that Cecilia and her son had gone to see the night of his death. That play and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s ALL ABOUT EVE factor heavily into the film: the former because it marks Cecilia’s life at two crucial junctures and the latter because, in addition to being a film that Cecilia and her son had watched together, the plot of this movie at times recalls that of the other. Like many of Almodóvar’s films, this is a long, magnificently rambling love letter to the things and people he loves most: cinema, theater, actresses, women, and above all, his own mother. (An epigraph at the end declares exactly this.) In Cecilia’s decision to take Rosa and eventually Rosa’s son under her wing, the film emanates the rapture of selfless love that, like other facets of Almodóvar’s pellucid auteurism, permeates the ostentation of his bittersweet melodramas. (1998, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Robert Z. Leonard’s IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME (US)

Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Ln., Northbrook) – Wednesday, 2pm and 7pm

Of the surfeit of movie musicals to come out of Golden Age Hollywood, IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME doesn’t typically rank among the best; its score, comprised of turn-of-the-century standards, is not especially memorable, and there’s little dancing to make up for what the music lacks. However, the film remains of interest for a number of reasons, which have helped secure its legacy. Most notably, it serves as the middle of a series of major film adaptations of Miklós László’s 1937 play Parfumerie, with Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940) as its predecessor and Nora Ephron’s YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998) as its much later successor. Director Robert Z. Leonard relocates the story from Budapest to Chicago, where his protagonists, both working in the same music shop, unknowingly conduct a romance via anonymous pen pal letters. Van Johnson takes over the James Stewart role (he even seems to mimic Stewart’s voice for part of the picture), while Judy Garland fills the role previously played by Margaret Sullavan. IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME is notable for being Garland’s penultimate film at MGM. Although the actress was infamously dealing with personal struggles and clashes with the studio, you wouldn’t know it from her performance, as she attacks the role of the headstrong but hopelessly romantic Veronica Fisher with feisty gusto, juicily sparring with Johnson’s salesman before silently realizing her growing infatuation for him in a lovely piece of facial acting late in the film. Garland is as sharp here as she ever was, her full-blooded vocal performance and presence enlivening what are often listlessly executed musical numbers. Other standout roles are played by the wonderful character actor S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall and Buster Keaton in his first MGM picture in 16 years. Keaton also served as a gag writer on the film, and he was unsurprisingly responsible for the two best comedic moments, both faux pas involving wrecked personal belongings. Despite barely taking place in the titular season, IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME is a mostly sunny affair, a colorful, good old time with some of Hollywood’s all-time great players. (Add to that list Liza Minnelli, who makes her first film appearance as an infant in the closing shot!) Screening as part of the Film Remakes Series. (1949, 102 min, Digital Projection) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with 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 March 15, 2026. More info here.

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

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Laura Mora’s 2017 Colombian film KILLING JESUS (99 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.) as part of the organization’s free summer screening series. Free admission. Register and learn more here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Henry Koster's 1950 film HARVEY (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 5pm.

Alfred E. Green's 1931 film SMART MONEY (81 min, 35mm) screens Wednesday, 8pm, as part of the Public Enemy: Cagney on Film series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2024 film KINDS OF KINDNESS (165 min, 35mm) begins screening for a one-week special engagement on 35mm.

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s 2024 film THE DEVIL’S BATH (121 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at midnight as part of the monthly Shudder Showcase.

Museum of Home Video, Live and In-Person! screens Sunday at 8:45pm. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Inventing Eternity: The Undersung Films of Late-Era Stan Brakhage, a 51-film retrospective presented by Tone Glow, entirely on 16mm, takes place Friday through Sunday. Note that all screenings are currently sold out. More info here. 

Find more information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its larger screening and workshop schedule, here. 

⚫ Taiwan Pride Film Festival
The Taiwan Pride Film Festival takes place on Saturday, starting at 10am, at CineCity Studios Chicago (2429 W. 14th St.). More info here.

🎞️ ONLINE SCREENINGS/EVENTS

⚫ VDB TV
Saif Alsaegh: Bittersweet Landscape, a program of three short films by Alsaegh, screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: June 28 - July 4, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Marilyn Ferdinand, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Mojo Lorwin, Michael Glover Smith