:: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6 - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise’s THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (US)

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

A curious sequel to Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE, producer Val Lewton’s follow-up THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE finds the three adult protagonists from its predecessor in a wholly new environment. Oliver (Kent Smith), whose first wife Irena (Simone Simon) died at the end of CAT PEOPLE, is now married to Alice (Jane Randolph), his long-suffering former assistant who ultimately won Oliver’s affection when Irena’s supposed delusions went too far. They reside in Tarrytown, New York, from where the legend of Sleepy Hollow originates (Lewton as a boy had spent time near there, where his aunt, actress Alla Nazimova, lived), and have a daughter, Amy (Ann Carter), who’s turning six. Amy is rather unusual, preferring her imaginary world to the company of other children, though her father, seeing in Amy his late wife’s tendency toward the fantastical, urges her to interact with other kids. Through a rather convoluted turn of events—Amy goes to the house of an elderly neighbor, a retired actress, who gives her a wishing ring—she is able to materialize a new friend in the form of Irena. It’s a hefty premise, tension between a father and his daughter because she reminds him of his ex-wife who believed that she would turn into a panther if sparked by passion. (Alice is quite a wife, seeming awfully tolerant of Irena’s ongoing presence in their new life, to the point that her daughter is more similar to her husband’s ex-wife than herself.) Things come to a head when Oliver punishes Amy for her continued belief in her imaginary friend, after which all the horror motifs being utilized—eerie child, imaginary person, senile actress with vengeful daughter, and the headless horseman himself—provide for a climactic finale. This was highly personal stuff to Lewton, who co-wrote the film with CAT PEOPLE screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen; as a child, he was similar to Amy and later told his wife that he never felt he entered the real world as an adult. This personal element imbues the film with a specificity and a seriousness that elevates its otherwise secondary status as a lesser sequel, directed by both Gunther von Fritsch and, when production went overlong, Robert Wise in his feature directorial debut, neither of which would reach the mastery of Tourneur before them. Ann Carter is a talented child actress, embodying all that’s inherently spooky about children and their limitless imaginations. Though having moved to the suburbs, Lewton and co. reveal that urban legends don’t necessarily have to be so urban. And as for its title being potentially misleading (it was also heavily marketed at the time as being similar to its predecessor, with studio publicity going so far as to suggest theater owners stencil paw prints leading up to the premises), critic James Agee noted of his experience seeing it that, “when the picture ended and it was clear beyond further suspense that anyone who had come to see a story about curses and were-cats should have stayed away, they clearly did not feel sold out: for an hour they had been captivated by the poetry and danger of childhood and it showed in their applause.” Preceded by the 1948 Merry Melodies cartoon I TAW A PUTTY TAT (7 min, 35mm). (1944, 70 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Alfred Hitchcock's REBECCA (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm and Saturday, 4pm

Following Joan Fontaine's death in 2013, Alfred Hitchcock's REBECCA was referenced in most every write-up of the late actress's illustrious career, and for good reason. Hitchcock made the film under contract with producer David O. Selznick, who was working on REBECCA at the same time as he was tying up loose ends on his legendary 1939 film GONE WITH THE WIND, and Fontaine competed for the leading role in a race similar to that of Selznick's search for the perfect Scarlett O'Hara. Fontaine even competed against Vivien Leigh, who eventually won out as Scarlett and was also married to actor Laurence Olivier, the man chosen over Ronald Colman to play the male lead in Hitchcock's first joint venture with the infamously controlling Selznick. Fontaine was selected and she brings genuine curiosity to the unique role that is really two characters in one. The film, based on the eponymous novel by Daphne du Maurier, is about a young woman (Fontaine) who falls in love with a handsome widower and settles for a dull, but privileged life in the shadow of his late wife, Rebecca. The young woman's husband, Maxim, rarely mentions Rebecca, but his friends, family, and even the household staff, are deeply reverent of her memory and the impact her death supposedly had on Maxim. She never appears on screen, not even in a photograph or portrait, yet the book and film are titled after her; just as ironically, the first name of Fontaine's character is never mentioned and she's referred to only as Mrs. de Winter, just as Rebecca was called when she was alive. In an attempt to seem as lively and welcoming as the first Mrs. de Winter, Fontaine's character convinces Maxim to throw a costume ball like the one they used to have at Manderley (Maxim's estate) in gayer times, only to receive bad advice from the duplicitous housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (played intriguingly by Judith Anderson and considered to be Hitchcock's only lesbian character). Danvers suggests that she copies the outfit of an ancestor whose portraits hangs in the house, after which it's revealed that Rebecca had adorned the same costume at the previous year's event. The portrait is not of Rebecca (it's of Maxim's ancestor, Caroline de Winter), but it acts as a representation of the deceased woman, and in being both unnamed and eventually recreating Rebecca's costume, Fontaine's character is also a representation of the conflicting character whose name is as much a presence as her living counterpart. It's no wonder then that, despite Maxim's later admissions of their marriage being a sham and his late wife as having been a promiscuous sociopath, critic Kent Jones, in his essay for the Criterion DVD release, would consider Rebecca to be "the film's real heroine." The film subconsciously suggests that, both in Rebecca's lasting effects on those she knew when she was alive, and those who came after. Hitchcock's first American film was not an entirely his own, with Selznick insisting upon as strict an adherence to the original material as censorship would allow, but scholar Robin Wood is correct when he declares this understated film as the "the most decisive single step both in Hitchcock's career and aesthetic evolution." Hitchcock would use similar themes in later films; for example, in VERTIGO (1958), he adapts another story in which a woman with multiple identities causes a male lead great distress. (Also, the first part of VERTIGO revolves around a painting and the woman who is imitating it.) Wood argues that "[S]kepticism about male-female relationships under patriarchy is central to Hitchcock's importance to us today," and that REBECCA is the first example of this enduring theme in Hitchcock's work. Despite Hitchcock's tempestuous relationship with Selznick, REBECCA reflects a turning point in the iconic director's career that foreshadows some of his best films. Part of the Women’s Paranoia: Cassandras and Conspiracies series. (1940, 130 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Kafkaesque: Experimental Films from Germany and the US (Shorts)

Chicago Filmmakers – Friday, 7pm

There's a light but unignorable feeling of internalized hopelessness that haunts this collection of films; the Kafkaesque bleakness floats on the water, almost effortlessly. Dana Sherwood’s adorable and hilarious opener FERAL CAKES (2017, 7 min) sees wild critters from the shrubs feast on decadent cakes and jellies, setting a nocturnal and stealthy tone. The paranoia and alienation under state surveillance that dissipates from Kafka’s writing is salient in Coppola’s 1974 classic THE CONVERSATION, which is surely the source of quotation for Deborah Stratman’s audiovisual feast HACKED CIRCUIT (2014, 16 min). A cool one-shot tour of a Foley studio that reveals the fabrication of sounds for cinematic make-believe, while laying bare the video’s very own process of making, questions the authenticity of human experience that can be all too easily misconstrued and manipulated. A little boy joyously sings out every bit of anxious truth in Rita Pauls and Federico Luis’s EN EL MISMISIMO MOMENTO (AT THAT VERY MOMENT) (2023, 12 min), a raw and harrowing first-person documentary about death, existence, and nothingness that spans from genuinely innocent to uncannily alarming. We barely see the face of our protagonist; his fingers sometimes cover the corner of the lens, imprinting the shaky images with a recurring bright blob that looks like a selfie taken by a ghost. What starts as an adorable home video grows eerie and creepy. The monotonal narrator in Gernot Wieland’s INK AND MILK (2018, 13 min) diaristically weaves together various accounts of memory, fictional or personal, that also serve as allegories for the bodies and souls burdened, disciplined, and distorted by unbreakable order and structure. The desire for narrative continues in Mahdi Fleifel’s I SIGNED THE PETITION (2018, 11 min), in which a proverbial phone conversation between two Palestinian friends—one of whom is the filmmaker—stems from whether to sign a grassroot petition asking Radiohead to not play in Tel Aviv. The filmmaker’s cozy, sunlight Berlin studio is montaged with footage of protest; the conversation, albeit heavy in its philosophical underpinning, is sometimes swirled by comedic interludes and a sense of self-deprecating humor. It poignantly alludes to the powerlessness of an individual caught by socio-political forces and the many contradictions that form a person’s complex yet elusive identity. The infamous case against whistleblower Katharine Gun by the UK government grounds François Bucher’s FOREVER LIVE: THE CASE OF K. GUN (2006, 13 min). In 2003, Gun was arrested for leaking top secrets that compromised an operation by the governments of the UK and the US that would aid the process to legitimize the US invasion of Iraq. Gun’s case was subsequently dropped, stoking speculations of a cover-up. In Bucher’s work, what constitutes the law and who has the authority over it becomes the center of the polemic. Gun was given a Chinese version of Kafka’s allegory “Before the Law,” its content unfamiliar to Gun prior to recording. A specialist translator of Mandarin to English, Gun translates the text in real-time over a telephone—as though she was tapped. Over statics and with pauses, Gun retells Kafka’s timeless parable and naturally spills out its truth. A second Deborah Stratman piece VILLAGE, SILENCED (2012, 8 min), a reworking of a clip from Humphrey Jenning's 1943 THE SILENT VILLAGE to emphasizes sound’s role in social control, wraps up the Kafkaesque program that only reverberates louder in the maddening, farcical world that we are living in. Presented by Chicago Filmmakers, Nightingale Cinema and Goethe-Institut Chicago. [Nicky Ni]

Mary Helena Clark & Mike Gibisser’s A COMMON SEQUENCE (US/Experimental)

Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.) – Saturday, 7pm

A COMMON SEQUENCE begins as a documentary about axolotls—a Central American lizard that has the power to regenerate body parts if they’re severed and which is now functionally extinct in its native environment—and goes on to consider a range of topics, from apple-picking machines to the patenting of genetic sequences. As the film progresses, a common sequence emerges: the progress of humanity always seems to result in some destruction of the natural world. It’s an upsetting work in that it provides ample evidence of humankind’s malign influence on the planet; at the same time, it’s so intellectually stimulating that it’s hard to emerge from it without some newfound appreciation of scientific phenomena. The portions concerning the apple-picking machines inspire fascination with how technology can solve human problems—a mesmerizing long take showing one of these machines at work, with multiple arms reaching and gently plucking apples from a row of trees, recalls the glories of early observational cinema. In context, however, the sequence is saddening, since it follows a short profile of human workers at another orchard explaining how they pick apples by hand. Just like human intervention destroyed the ecosystem of a Mexican lake where axolotls lived (the introduction of a particular species of water lilies ended up suffocating many of the native animals), the implementation of new technology destroys a way of life for countless workers. The portion of A COMMON SEQUENCE about the patenting of genetic sequences may be the most chilling, as it speaks to a future which sees the privatization of everything on Earth. Though our government outlawed the patenting of natural genetic sequences, the film explains, the patenting of synthetically created genetic sequences is not against the law, and this has allowed private companies to recreate codes that exist in the human body and patent them for profit. This revelation comes late in the film, and it’s the most naked consideration of the money-making motive that remains so detrimental to life on this planet. A COMMON SEQUENCE will be preceded by two shorts: Jesse Malmed’s WHIRRED, WHIRLED (2015, 7 min), a Chicago Film Archives-commissioned piece that combines pieces of the CFA collection with the music of local legends ONO; and Dana Dawud’s NOAH’S ARK (2024, 8 min), which uses materials culled from social media to address the disastrous implications of climate change and how our bleak future is discussed online. (2023, 78 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Joe Dante's GREMLINS (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, Midnight

Filmed on backlots in homage to IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and styled after Norman Rockwell illustrations, GREMLINS creates a memorable nightmare of the wholesale destruction of its settings by the titular monsters. The movie can be genuinely scary, but it’s also a laugh riot, thanks in part to the adolescent glee that Dante and company take from laying waste to such cherished American institutions as Christmastime, Walt Disney, and suburban architecture. A product of ’60s counterculture and ’70s exploitation cinema, Dante has always maintained his outsider bona fides no matter how mainstream his productions have gotten, and one of the wonderful things about GREMLINS is how it feels like a bunch of weirdos successfully crashing the ultra-square party that was Reagan-era Hollywood. The movie’s subversive humor reaches its strongest expression in Phoebe Cates’ sickly funny Santa Claus monologue (which would have been cut from the finished film had not executive producer Steven Spielberg intervened with Warner Bros. studio bosses), but the sentiment can be found even in the premise—that inside every cuddly Spielbergian creation is a destructive monster desperate to come out. Both Dave Kehr and Jonathan Rosenbaum have likened Dante to Frank Tashlin, the Warner Bros. cartoonist who carried over the rubbery reality of Looney Tunes into his work as a director of live-action satires. And like Tashlin, Dante makes fun of his subjects with an air of gee-whiz affection. But Dante’s electrifying shifts between comedy and horror show the influence of other directors: James Whale, who was mixing the two genres in the early 1930s, as well as the pop-obsessed auteurs of the French New Wave. Indeed, GREMLINS is so rich in knowledge of film history that it requires several viewings to catch all the references Dante hides around the frames, which are as visually packed in their way as Vincente Minnelli’s. (1984, 106 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Video Data Bank Presents: ROUNDABOUT (featuring Light Cone) (US/France/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

The third iteration of Video Data Bank’s (VDB) collaborative archival series Roundabout brings the experimental moving image collections of VDB (Chicago) and Light Cone (Paris) into thematic conversation around the mechanical and embodied eyes that underpin a poetry of light. Janice Tanaka’s DUALITY DUPLICITY (1980, 7 min), distributed by both participating archives and presented by Video Data Bank, opens the program as an early work in flicker video editing that puts the split-second image to work as a metaphor for the unconscious psyche, which inherits fragments of unfulfilled desire and familial intensities through the threshold of the eye. The video’s inverted values and blown out contours visually rhyme with Christian Hossner’s NIPKOW TV (1998, 7 min), a stunning short film that breaks from the hypnosis of Tanaka’s spoken prose poetry into the ambient hypnosis of pulsating figures in everyday street scenes shot from the filmmaker’s window. NIPKOW TV was captured by a scanning disk used as a rotary shutter inside a Super 8 camera. (The scanning disk was invented by German engineer Paul Nipkow in the late 19th century and later used as a key component in the first televisions.) Sarah Pucill’s BLIND LIGHT (2007, 21 min) synthesizes the prior two works as a contemplative exercise in strenuous window gazing straight into the sun, accidentally serving as an austere feminine foil to George Kuchar’s WEATHER DIARIES (1977-2011). Pucill maintains a direct shot of the blaze through her camera while opening and closing her window shade, performing aperture shifts and lens filter swaps, taking and giving away detail as she speaks of the weather, the camera, and the physicality of the eye. Here, the program is at once interrupted and reinforced by Stephanie Barber’s HEALING (2012, 12 min), which arrives as a guided meditation. A disembodied voice gently directs the viewer’s breathing and eye movement in coordination with two circles of alternately blinking light, on a path toward “surrender to the ridicule of eternity,” a path that careens absurdly between the guide’s personal, shared, and newly induced memories lifted into song. This crescendo deposits us at Paolo Gioli’s silent black-and-white film QUANDO L’OCCHIO TREMA (1988, 11 min), an obsessive ode to Luis Buñuel’s surrealist montages and iconography of the eye. The program culminates in BRILLIANT NOISE (2006, 6 min) from Semiconductor, launching back to Pucill’s sun—that is, Earth’s sun—as seen through the eyes of NASA satellites, which output the planetary grandeur of a volatile solar surface in grainy black and white. (16mm and Digital Projection) [Elise Schierbeek]

Hong Sang-soo's A TRAVELER'S NEEDS (South Korea)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

This week on the Hong Sang-soo Show: the indefatigable director reunites with Isabelle Huppert for their long-awaited third collaboration, a serene meditation on language that centers Huppert as Iris, a hard-drinking French expat in Seoul who is beginning to eke out a modest living as a language tutor. Despite possessing a severity of affect that recalls Huppert's grim work in Haneke's THE PIANO TEACHER (2001), Iris emerges as an embodiment of uninhibited whimsy, totally shameless in her commitment to both authenticity and amateurism. She plays the recorder (horribly) on a park bench; she falls asleep in outlandish locations, no doubt owing to the makgeolli she nurses throughout the day; and she rooms with a young Korean lover (Ha Seong-guk), mortifying his overly protective young mother in the process. Most interestingly, while totally bereft of any prior teaching experience, she has nonetheless developed a novel form of French language instruction in which she probes her tutees (in English) for deeper insights into their emotional state of being, only to translate those thoughts into slivers of French poetry (taking great creative liberty in the process). Her students are meant to recite these passages again and again, presumably in order to circumvent the rote mechanical dimension of translating everyday language and to convincingly encounter deeper truth in these tentative first forays into a new tongue. Neither the circumstances of her expatriation nor the precise nature of her relationship with her young Korean roommate are meaningfully expounded upon. Clearly they bear no relevance to the story that Hong is crafting here—contrary to the assertions of his detractors, Hong still scripts and shoots his pictures with extreme precision, even as they appear increasingly shambolic and deploy more daring uses of ellipses. If A TRAVELER'S NEEDS, which predominantly contains dialogue in English, were simply about the extraordinary earnestness that emerges from communication in a lingua franca, then it would be a retreading of the director's 2014 minor masterpiece HILL OF FREEDOM, or even his fragmentary first feature with Huppert, IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (2012). Instead, this is a film that is intellectually concerned with poetry in translation, evoking Walter Benjamin's sentiment that the task of translating poetry is chiefly about achieving a sort of linguistic transparency which will allow the "pure language" of the original text to resonate on the level of connotation rather than denotation, particularly as Iris's exercises in poetic transcription are juxtaposed against several moving encounters with internet translations of work from Korean poet Yun Dong-ju. The film also seems like an attempt from Hong Sang-soo, a noted disciple of Cézanne and Rohmer, to situate his own work in relation to his myriad French inspirations, exploring the edifying potential of immersing oneself in another culture and tradition while also probing the tension that arises as the mother tongue pulls one decisively back to the domain of creature comfort and basic need. As with THE NOVELIST'S FILM (2022) or IN OUR DAY (2023), A TRAVELER'S NEEDS also functions tidily as a reflexive process-oriented work. It's difficult not to think about Iris's idiosyncratic teaching method in relation to Hong's own unorthodox production process. All in all, this is handily one of the strongest works of Hong's relentless late-career run. As an added bonus for anyone fatigued by the slapdash cinematography of his recent slate of films, the compositions here are the most striking and deliberate since Hong decided to become his own DP back in 2021. (2024, 90 min, DCP Digital) [David Whitehouse]

Tarsem Singh’s THE FALL (US)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

Escape into fantasy is so often a result of harsh, unjust, and violent realities. In Tarsem Singh’s ambitious film THE FALL, the clash of fantasy and reality is explored throughout. This tension could also be connected to the film’s production and release. With shooting locations in multiple continents, THE FALL contains fantasy sequences, all of them breathtaking set pieces, in places and structures that do in fact exist, which blurrs the lines between fiction and reality. These scenes are stunningly color saturated, shot with graphic precision, and beautiful expansive vistas; its visuals are consistently astounding. Its ambition, however, was considered a self-indulgence of director Tarsem Singh (THE CELL), and its fragmented and loose storytelling was criticized. In considering its themes, as well as the real-world response to the film, the narrative is quite smart in its self-awareness. In 1915, movie stuntman Roy Walker (a dreamy Lee Pace) has the job of creating fantasy on film, yet is severely injured on set. Bedridden and depressed in the hospital, he befriends a little girl with a broken arm, Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), with whom he begins to share an epic tale of heroes and villains. The story comes alive in her mind, the characters built from the real-life figures within the Los Angeles hospital. She also humorously interrupts Roy with the curiosity and distraction of a typical child, and Untaru’s performance is captured with heartbreaking earnestness. As the confined Roy realizes he can use Alexandria’s trust and innocence to his advantage, both characters' own harrowing stories become entwined with the fantasy. THE FALL is also noteworthy for the costume design by Japanese artist Eiko Ishioka, who worked with Singh on all of his films until her passing in 2012. Costumes from this film are truly masterpieces, shocking in their beauty, form, and storytelling. The costumes especially, but the film as a whole inspires such a desire to see more, and, like Alexandria, to reside in the fantasy. But, as she laments to Roy, “You always stop at the same part when it’s very beautiful… and interesting.” (2006, 119 min, Ne 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Gints Zilbalodis’ FLOW (Latvia/Animation)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

As a film enthusiast fixated on the art of animation who also just so happens to be a cat owner, I was somewhat predisposed to have a visceral emotional response to Gints Zilbalodis’ FLOW, a dialogue-free animated adventure centered on a feline protagonist thrown into various episodes of peril. But my own personal biases aside, the joys of Zilbalodis’ feature become self-evident early on, the painterly images and gentle atmosphere immediately creating a world you’re thrilled to inhabit for its nimble less-than-ninety-minute runtime. Animated entirely on the open-source software Blender, Zilbalodis and his team have created something almost akin to an open world video game like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with charmingly rendered creatures navigating treacherous environs with puzzle-like intuition of how to get from one destination to the next. The narrative details of the world are purposefully thin, with preference given to a show-don’t-tell mode of storytelling that trusts the audience to imagine what may or may not have led to this world of abandoned homes and cityscapes surrounded by ever-growing greenery. Even within us filling in the world-building gaps, the ever-rising waters and lack of any human inhabitants can easily lead us down some climate-fueled apocalyptic rabbit holes. One can imagine the worse version of the film, the animal cast (here; a cat, a capybara, a secretarybird, a lemur, and several adorable dogs) given snark-fueled vocal performances from celebrity actors that completely burst the bubble of sincerity. Thankfully, what we have instead is a crew of creatures grunting and meowing and barking, nowhere near approaching anthropomorphism, but still granted enough distinct personality for us to become invested in their journey. Something almost spiritual starts to take over the film, the journey of our lead cat hero becoming less and less about reaching a set destination, and more so merely attempting to find some sense of peace and community with this new pack of disparate animal friends amidst a world falling apart in disarray. Above all else, FLOW succeeds in doing what animation does at its most holy: forgoing the rules and expectations of “real world” cinema to create something singular and spectacular from whole cloth. Most thrillingly, it’s in service of a story about stopping in one’s tracks to take in all that is bigger than ourselves and finding the beauty in knowing that none of us are alone in our journey. (2024, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Vincente Minnelli's MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm

Produced by MGM’s immortal Arthur Freed unit at a time when Technicolor made every shot look like an oil painting come to life, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS would have looked gorgeous even if Vincente Minnelli hadn’t directed it. Yet he did, and the world is a better place as a result. This is the movie (only Minnelli’s third as director) where the former Marshall Field’s window dresser became the American Max Ophüls; the balletic camera movements invoke, alternately, intoxication with rediscovering the past and a skeptical interrogation of the past. Comparably, the dense mise-en-scène is filled with countless little observations about how people lived in a particular time and place (specifically, an upper-middle-class St. Louis neighborhood in 1903-04), and remarkably, the imagery always feels in harmony with the emotional content, which is Chaplinesque in how it can be appreciated by small children and wizened adults for pretty much the same reasons. The onscreen world of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS was only four decades old when the movie was made, but given that this was during the worst days of World War II, the rosy images of the past probably seemed as distant then as they do today. (Notably, when the characters speak of different nations interacting, they’re talking about the strictly benign spectacle of the coming World’s Fair.) The film continues to triumph as escapist entertainment: Who doesn’t swoon over the exuberance of “The Trolley Song” sequence, grin beamingly at the expertly timed light comedy of the family interaction, or get misty-eyed during Judy Garland’s soulful rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”? Yet what makes MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS endure as art are the countless ways that Minnelli and company complicate their project of escapism. Consider the anecdotal narrative structure, which recognizes the banality and commonness of life in its focus on everyday events; or consider the film’s groundbreaking integration of songs into the story (before MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, the songs in most American musicals were distinctly separate entities from the narratives), which grants unprecedented depth to familiar emotions. These emotions are not always pretty or easily contained—Minnelli generates a surprising amount of anxiety from the Smith family’s impending move, and the scene of Margaret O’Brien’s Tootie taking her anger out on her snowmen is always more unnerving than you expect. Robin Wood once suggested, only half-jokingly, that MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS could be categorized as a horror movie, with Tootie being the monstrous personification of her family members’ repressed emotions, and no less than John Carpenter took inspiration from the Halloween section of the film in his design of the original HALLOWEEN. Apparently, there’s something about the forced perfection of all-American town life that lends itself to the horrific imagination. Screening as part of the Heartland series. (1944, 113 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

David Lynch's THE STRAIGHT STORY (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 3pm and Thursday, 8:30pm

Critics regularly describe THE STRAIGHT STORY as David Lynch’s least characteristic film because it’s a G-rated docudrama without any explicitly avant-garde flourishes, yet Lynch’s artistic personality is plainly evident throughout. The performers speak in that unemphatic, naïve-sounding manner that’s been a Lynch trademark since the beginning of his career, and the director films the all-American imagery (in this case, Midwestern farmlands and small towns) in an iconographic way that shows a direct connection to the settings of his BLUE VELVET and Twin Peaks. After the fashion of those two landmarks, there are even implications of dark, buried secrets beneath the Norman Rockwell-esque surfaces: the life of Alvin Straight, we learn, is marked by war trauma, alcoholism, family disputes, and a particularly heartbreaking episode that befell his adult daughter. These secrets never come to light in images, however (which is why the film had no trouble getting its G rating); instead, they take the form of poignant monologues that reveal how Straight has internalized and atoned for his tragedies. This narrative strategy allows THE STRAIGHT STORY to maintain a warm, contemplative tone from beginning to end in spite of its troubling themes. Some have likened the tone to the late films of Yasujiro Ozu, but it more likely has roots in Lynch’s longtime practice of transcendental meditation. Whatever inspired the film’s blissful patience is less important than the refreshing effect it has on the viewer; to watch THE STRAIGHT STORY is a bit like engaging in transcendental meditation yourself. For me, it all comes down to the long shot of Straight on his riding lawn mower, progressing at a snail’s pace down an unremarkable highway. The camera pans up, contemplates a perfect Heartland horizon for a few moments, then pans back down to find that Straight has barely progressed since we last saw him. The moment is both funny (Lynch suggests an ellipsis, only to reveal it isn’t one) and touching (the moment encapsulates the old man’s perseverance and quiet integrity), showing how much Lynch is able to assert his personal aesthetic in atypical circumstances. Deserving special mention for their creative contributions are veteran cinematographer Freddie Francis (who came out of retirement to shoot the film) and Sissy Spacek, who gives an unbelievably moving performance as Straight’s daughter. Screening as part of the Heartland series. (1999, 112 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Alan Rudolph's REMEMBER MY NAME (US)

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

The first time I ever saw DOUBLE INDEMNITY, I assumed it would climax with the murder that's discussed, analyzed, and rehearsed at length by Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck; when that act occurred half-way through the picture, leaving the rest of the runtime to untangle the aftermath, I was surprised and overjoyed that I'd guessed wrong. It's so rare to encounter a film with such an organic and disciplined narrative logic, to admire a film for the wit of its construction alone, for the twists and turns that are unpredictable but wholly earned, consistent, and thought through. Alan Rudolph's Stanwyck-inspired domestic thriller REMEMBER MY NAME is like that, too. I'd suggest going into it cold, which shouldn't be much of a problem as it's practically a lost film. (Sony Pictures Repertory maintains an absolutely superb 35mm print, but the music rights to Alberta Hunter's blues score have allegedly kept REMEMBER MY NAME unreleasable on home video for the past four decades.) Right when a conventional movie would be grinding to a climax, you realize that Rudolph is only getting started and nowhere near done with these characters. Though REMEMBER MY NAME is set largely in confined, claustrophobic, and economically marginal spaces (alleyways, thrift stores, dank bars, prison cells), each character's fate remains expansive and unwritten. Produced by Rudolph's mentor Robert Altman while he enjoyed a particularly flexible deal with 20th Century Fox (which yielded the likes of QUINTET and HEALTH, alas), REMEMBER MY NAME is more disciplined, focused, and purposeful than anything that Altman had directed himself up to that time. (During the same stretch, Altman also managed to produce features from Robert Benton and Robert M. Young, so it was hardly an artistic rut.) All of the performances are good (Anthony Perkins strives earnestly to convince us he's a hard hat family man and almost pushes Norman Bates aside entirely), though Geraldine Chaplin's star turn as an ex-con is exceptional: fierce, frightening, and flammable. Screening as part of the Columbia Pictures in the 1970s series. (1978, 94 min, 35mm) [K.A. Westphal]

Morton DaCosta’s THE MUSIC MAN (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

A con man drumming up business in small-town America mesmerizes the people he meets, convinces them that their way of life is under dire threat, and proposes they part with a considerable amount of their own money for a fix he never intends to make good on. No, this is not the United States circa 2016­­–24, but rather the fictional town of River City, Iowa, in the year 1912, and our crook is Prof. Harold Hill, the title character of the hit musical The Music Man. The show, with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Wilson, premiered on Broadway in 1957 and captured a slew of accolades, including the Tony Award for Best Musical. Inevitably, Hollywood grabbed for a piece of the show’s lucrative pie by adapting it for the screen. Helmed by theatre veteran Morton DaCosta, THE MUSIC MAN is a cornucopia of wholesome nostalgia scored with memorable, clever songs set in motion by the fluid choreography of Onna White and the gadfly energy of Robert Preston reprising the title role he originated on stage. From the opening scene of traveling salesmen bemoaning the multi-aliased Hill’s effect on their legitimate business in a capella syncopation to the final fantasy of an endless marching band, THE MUSIC MAN delivers dazzling, rose-colored vignettes of a bygone way of life. Meredith, a conductor who put all his knowledge into composing his first musical, chose a mixture of styles—marches, four-part harmonies, contrapuntal melodies, barn dance folk tunes—that scream Americana. Once touched by Hill, the characters surrender to the dream of harmony (quite literally in the case of the squabbling River City councilmen who form a barbershop quarter) to counter the pernicious effect of the town’s new pool table on their impressionable children. Great performances, especially from Hermione Gingold as River City first lady Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn and crystal-voiced Shirley Jones as Marian Paroo, the woman for whom Hill gets his foot caught in the door, elevate this corny material. The choreography, particularly the demented dance through the library of “Marian the Librarian,” keeps the film humming along. But it is Preston who steals the show with his tour de force performance that seduces the movie-going audience along with the citizens of River City. With such first-class entertainment on screen, it’s easy to forget the underlying illusion THE MUSIC MAN is peddling, an illusion that comes back with force during the closing number, “Seventy-Six Trombones.” By then, we hardly care. Part of the Heartland film series. (1963, 151 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Patrick Brice’s THE CREEP TAPES (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 10:15pm

In 2014, Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass collaborated to produce CREEP, a minimalist psychological horror film that immediately establishes an unsettling atmosphere. From the moment Mark Duplass’ character, Josef, is introduced, an underlying tension permeates his seemingly amiable demeanor. Both the audience and Aaron (played by Brice) are disarmed by Josef’s charm yet unnerved by subtle cues, such as a conspicuously placed axe. Duplass’ ability to convey duplicity through an improvisational performance skillfully balances these contrasting elements, crafting a narrative in which Josef’s apparent vulnerability masks his predatory intent. This interplay of tension and misdirection is pivotal to both CREEP and its 2017 sequel, CREEP 2. Both films originate from an unassuming premise: a Craigslist ad offering $1,000 for a session with a videographer. The germinating seed came from Duplass’ real-life encounter with an elderly man seeking help assembling Ikea furniture. The meeting unexpectedly transformed into a therapy session—although it remains unclear whether the furniture was ever completed. Few films can sustain audience engagement with only two characters, but CREEP accomplishes this through its embrace of unpredictability. From forced hugs and imagined tubby-time rituals to home invasion and an afternoon in the park, the narrative thrives on subverting expectations. Brice and Duplass leverage the found-footage format to amplify tension and intimacy, a pragmatic choice driven by budgetary constraints. While the found footage sub-genre experienced saturation in the years following THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) and again after PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2009), its limitations, when thoughtfully employed, heighten suspense and enable richer character exploration. The found-footage approach parallels the Dogme 95 movement, which sought to strip cinema of artifice by imposing strict creative constraints. Similarly, CREEP transforms minimal resources—a confined cast, singular camera perspective, and constrained settings—into a strength, focusing the viewer’s attention on the psychological interplay between Josef and his victims. The film’s tension arises from Josef’s duplicitous nature, leaving the audience to grapple with his ultimate intentions. CREEP 2 shifts focus to Josef’s existential crisis brought on by his upcoming 40th birthday. Now assuming the name “Aaron” (in homage to his prior victim), he grapples with the waning satisfaction derived from his violent acts. His latest ad attracts Sara (Desiree Akhavan), an unsuccessful YouTuber seeking compelling material for her web series, Encounters. Unlike Aaron in the first film, Sara proves resistant to Josef’s psychological games. Although he openly admits to being a serial killer and even shares footage of his crimes, Sara remains skeptical and unshaken, seeing an opportunity to boost her channel’s visibility. The dynamic between Sara and Josef in CREEP 2 recalls other films that explore the interplay between killers and their documenters, such as BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON (2006) and MAN BITES DOG (1992). Their interactions oscillate between moments of menace and unexpected tenderness, culminating in increasingly bizarre scenarios. Josef’s ability to elicit empathy, despite his heinous actions, remains a central theme. Brice and Duplass initially envisioned a trilogy but soon realized that their expansive ideas exceeded the constraints of a single film. This led to the development of THE CREEP TAPES, an anthology television series that broadens the narrative’s scope. Each episode introduces a new victim and persona for Josef, while maintaining certain constants, such as his unsettling attachment to a werewolf mask named Peach Fuzz. This mask, with its shifting backstory, serves as a metaphor for Josef’s mutable identity and his fixation on themes of family, intimacy, and violence. The series delves deeper into Josef’s psychological complexity, particularly his manipulation of human compassion. Each victim is ensnared by fabricated narratives designed to exploit their empathy, which ultimately precipitates their downfall. By exploring these dynamics, THE CREEP TAPES extends the franchise’s examination of the fine line between vulnerability and predation. Streaming weekly on the Shudder streaming service, THE CREEP TAPES is an exploration of Josef’s psyche and his interactions with unsuspecting victims. The series reinforces the central tension of the films, balancing moments of disarming humor with pervasive unease. Ultimately, the CREEP franchise reminds viewers that the most unsettling monsters are not those lurking in shadows but those who wear the guise of humanity—offering trust with one hand and concealing a shiny new axe in the other. Free and available for Music Box members only. Featuring three episodes from the series handpicked by Brice, who will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. (2024, 72 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden’s THE BLACK SEA (US/Bulgaria)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

Entirely improvised and shot over 16 days, THE BLACK SEA is surprisingly solid, in large part because of co-director Derrick B. Harden’s remarkable charisma. Harden stars as Khalid, a Black man from Brooklyn who finds a Bulgarian sugar mommy on Facebook (we see her in the beginning being told by a fortune teller that she can only be healed from her illness by a Black man’s touch, hence why she turns to social media to find him) and leaves his life behind for the Balkan nation. When he arrives, however, he finds out she’s died. Stranded with virtually nothing—his passport is stolen early in the film—Khalid wanders about and slowly establishes his presence in the seaside community, meeting the owner of a small travel agency and starting a cafe making matcha and some kind of Bulgarian sandwich. It’s all of these random elements that, along with Harden’s charm, drive the story forward in a way that feels natural, in fiction mirroring the filmmakers’ laissez-faire philosophy. That Khalid is Black isn’t an issue, per se, but it’s definitely a rarity where he is in Bulgaria. Instances of locals liking elements of Black culture become a connection between them and him, a sweet and subtle nod to that which might bring us together, things like music and fashion, before external forces work to tear us apart. The film has an energy that broadens the possibility of what happens when one goes with the flow and embraces the joy of life’s minutiae. Should I ever find myself in similar circumstances—hell, even not-so-similar circumstances—I hope I’ll respond like Khalid, finding the glass half full where others might see it as being broken. (2024, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:45pm

AFTER HOURS conveys, like nothing else in the director’s body of work, the sheer joy that Martin Scorsese derives from making movies. It’s funny, playful, and invigorating, with a style that positively whooshes you through the action. Working with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (best known at the time for his run of films with Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Scorsese executes breathtaking camera movements indoors and outdoors alike, creating a sense of furious activity that betrays the film’s limited playing space. Most of it takes place in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, where Griffin Dunne’s lonely office drone goes to meet the alluring woman (Patricia Arquette) whom he picked up at a cafe. Searching for easy sex, Paul winds up in a nightmare. His long night consists of one misadventure after another, as he gets bounced around the neighborhood (and into other parts of the borough) like a pinball; the story culminates with Dunne getting mistaken for a wanted criminal and hunted down by an angry mob. As twisty and as witty as Scorsese’s direction, Joseph Minion’s script (originally written for an NYU screenwriting class taught by Dusan Makavejev) operates under a calculated illogic that many have compared to the writing of Franz Kafka. And like a Kafka protagonist, Dunne has the misfortune of living in a universe that just doesn’t like him; his bad luck seems almost cosmic in nature. Adding to his misfortune, almost everyone Dunne meets is some kind of kook, and the colorful supporting cast plays those kooks for all they’re worth. Of special mention are Teri Garr, who plays a flaky artist, and John Heard, who reveals a deep reservoir of angst in his brief turn as a bartender. Screening as part of the Decoding Kafka: A Cinematic Interpretation series. (1985, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Robert Redford’s ORDINARY PEOPLE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 5:45pm

Judith Guest’s 1976 debut novel Ordinary People is a profound exploration of grief, survivor’s guilt, and generational trauma while ascribing to a Lake Forest, Illinois, view of societal normality. These complex themes are masterfully transposed in Robert Redford’s 1980 film adaptation, his directorial debut. Departing from the lighthearted or action-oriented roles he was known for, Redford chose Guest’s somber material, resonating deeply with his own experience of loss—his first son, Scott, died of sudden infant death syndrome at just three months old. This personal connection lent authenticity to his work, making the story of a middle-class family grappling with tragedy all the more poignant. Despite initial skepticism from studios, Redford’s clout as an actor-producer prevailed and the project moved forward. His risk was richly rewarded when ORDINARY PEOPLE earned six Academy Award nominations, ultimately winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (Alvin Sargent), and Best Supporting Actor (Timothy Hutton). While Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore were overlooked for their performances as Calvin and Beth Jarrett, their portrayals remain strikingly relevant. The film begins with Conrad “Connie” Jarrett (Hutton) singing Canon in D Majorduring choir practice, only to be jolted awake as if it were a recurring nightmare. The tension is immediate—something is clearly wrong with Connie. As the story unfolds, we learn that Connie recently returned home from a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt, triggered by survivor’s guilt after his brother Bucky accidentally drowned in Lake Michigan. These events leave Connie emotionally fragile and struggling to reconnect with his perfectionist mother, Beth (Moore), and his sensitive father, Calvin (Sutherland). At Calvin’s insistence, Connie begins seeing a therapist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch), whose unconventional methods help him confront his guilt and pain. (It's a narrative blueprint for Gus Van Sant’s GOOD WILL HUNTING [1997].) As therapy progresses, Connie starts to heal; a budding romance with Jeannine (Elizabeth McGovern), also helps. Calvin, observing his son’s progress, begins his own sessions with Berger, seeking clarity in his strained marriage. However, Beth remains an obstacle to the family’s healing journey. Fixated on societal appearances, she refuses to confront her grief or acknowledge Connie’s pain. Her emotional distance stems from seeing Bucky as her favored child, and Connie’s survival—marred by his suicide attempt—only complicates her need for control and perfection. Clinging to tradition and an air of composure, Beth shields herself from the vulnerability required to process her loss. Redford’s direction captures these dynamics with understated precision, turning ORDINARY PEOPLE into an enduring study of familial disconnection and the silent weight of tragedy. Over forty years later, its themes remain profoundly resonant, offering a haunting yet hopeful lens on the complexities of grief and healing. Screening as part of the Heartland series. (1980, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Mike Cheslik's HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (US)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 7pm

A largely silent film that draws on Looney Tunes aesthetics as well as video game logic, HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS balances slapstick, sight gags, and sound effects with a genuinely arresting visual aesthetic, combining live action with animated elements. While all the features are familiar, together they create an imaginative modern approach and clever take on cinematic comedy. Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who also co-wrote the film) is a popular applejack salesman, but when he loses his business in an explosion, he’s forced to find a way to survive in the snowy Midwestern wilderness. Desperate to find food, Kayak must learn the ways of a northern fur trapper, receiving help from some locals, though mostly struggling on his own to succeed; his goal to earn better equipment—and ultimately the hand of a local merchant’s daughter—​by selling pelts is where HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS draws on a video game style, including recognizable sound cues, animations of how many pelts earn him which tools, and Kayak’s sneaking into the beavers’ hideout; it all adds to the uniqueness of the film’s storytelling. The cunning animals themselves are an annoying barrier to Kayak’s success. Larger creatures (such as the titular beavers) are performed by actors in mascot costumes, but director and effects designer Mike Cheslik also rounds out the animal residents with animation, puppets, and stuffed animals—​which themselves are filled with stuffing guts; there’s a constant concurrence of the adorable, the gross, and cartoonish violence. Shot in black and white in both Wisconsin and Michigan, the film also looks striking, the backdrop of the forest landscape grounding the silly antics that ensue. Due its silent nature, the jaunty score by Chris Ryan is also an important driving force in the film, demonstrated in its first few moments with a catchy theme song about Kayak’s popular applejack. (2022, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Payal Kapadia’s ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (France/India/Italy/Netherlands/Luxembourg)

Gene Siskel Film Center - See Venue website for showtimes

Premiering as the first Indian film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in thirty years, Payal Kapadia’s sophomore feature—and her first official foray into fiction filmmaking—dazzles with a confidence of voice and spirit that continues her emerging canon of poetic and politically charged narratives. Kapadia’s vision of feminine perseverance through lives of longing crafts a sprawling and complex vision of Mumbai as a nocturnal city that shines menacingly with wonder and opportunity. Voices that open the film tell us of the entrancing promise of money and stability that can be found in Mumbai, yet such gifts can only realistically be bestowed on the lucky few. For everyone else, you may end up like Prabha (Kani Kusruti) or Anu (Divya Prabha), two women living together and working together at the same hospital, each with varying levels of dedication to their work. Kapadia’s slice-of-life storytelling mode often finds these two at their most intimate and vulnerable in silent moments alone, each desperately working to take in the overwhelming world and circumstances around them. Prabha is stuck in time, her husband working abroad in Germany, with no attempts to contact her in months, save for a recent delivery of a rice cooker; Anu is conversely fixated on the promise of future love, with her nights spent with her new love—the charming Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon)—embarking on that most epic of quests: trying to find a place to hook up. Just like her previous film A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING (2021), the repressive politics of mainstream Indian society find themselves hideously seeped into the fabric of the story, most prominently with Shiaz’s Muslim faith becoming a roadblock for any future life with Anu in an overtly Hindu nationalist society. Yet love, lust, and independence fight their way through to Kapadia’s hopeful ending, where a trip away from Mumbai literally uproots our protagonists from the horrors of living lives of passivity, and provides them each with opportunities to finally move forward in their respective lives. The gift of Kapadia’s film is in how major of a work it feels even with such slight and understated tools, the power of these emotional bubbles filling up to the point of bursting in ways cathartic and mystical and joyously communal. (2024, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Annie Baker's JANET PLANET (US/UK)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm and Sunday, 4pm

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. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2024, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Andrea Arnold's AMERICAN HONEY (US/UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2:30pm

Reviews of Andrea Arnold’s AMERICAN HONEY, from those found in such notable publications as The New York Times, The Guardian, and The A.V. Club, as well as smaller outlets like local newspapers and little-known blogs, are rife with the phrase “at once.” According to these reviews, the film, its characters, and even its director, are “at once” any number of paradoxical adjectives, an assessment that’s as accurate as it is hackneyed. The first American feature from the extolled British director, AMERICAN HONEY is an epic film shot almost exclusively handheld and in 4:3; a coming-of-age proclamation that’s uncannily wise beyond its years; a road movie that eschews genre clichés. The young protagonist, Star (played by Sasha Lane, who Arnold discovered while she was on spring break from college), takes care of two young children, who may or may not be her siblings, while enduring sexual abuse from a man she calls ‘Daddy’ but whose exact relationship to her is unclear. The ambiguous exposition is reminiscent of much of Arnold’s oeuvre, down to the gritty details—her Academy Award-winning short film WASP (2003) and narrative feature FISH TANK (2009) are both about disenfranchised families whose circumstances are less than desirable. Having previously witnessed her dumpster diving for food, Star’s lot seems to improve when she unexpectedly meets Jake (Shia LaBeouf in a role that benefits from his ignominious intensity) and his band of roving misfits, otherwise known as Team 071, a group of young magazine sales people from similarly proletarian backgrounds. The ensuing two and a half hours (Arnold’s audacity in regards to length would be worthy of praise even if the film wasn’t so adroit, if not plain masterful) focuses as much on this wily lifestyle as it does the emerging romance between Star and Jake, with a few violent non sequiturs that both pull us from our reverie while likewise evincing the realities of the characters’ socio-economic status. “I grew up with a lot of Hollywood films,” Arnold told The A.V. Club in an interview. “Cozy farm houses, cowboys, nice flats in New York. Especially as a kid, those things have a huge impression on you. If you see films like that all the time, you think that’s how it is.” She later explained: “I think the film became the mix of my leftover fantastical ideas—you know, I grew up seeing farmhouses on the prairie. Then when we go there, a lot of the farmhouses are run down, and that’s how it is now.” Much of the criticism towards AMERICAN HONEY is directed at her depiction of working-class youth. In his review of the film for The New Yorker, Richard Brody writes that “[p]erhaps the most distressing cliché that afflicts many movies about poor people is that they’re depicted as being poor in language, poor in thought—as if people who don’t have money talk about their lives any less, or any less well, than people who do." This critique is similarly cavalier in its assumption that Arnold is necessarily striving for authenticity, or that people with money actually talk about their lives in any meaningful way. And perhaps it’s silence that unifies us more than words—or maybe music. Not only is the film named after a Lady Antebellum song (“Nothin' sweeter than summertime/And American honey…”), but it features a wide array of contemporary American pop music, with songs from the likes of Banky W, Bruce Springsteen, and Rihanna, to which the characters know every word. Their reverence for this music is almost fanatical, reflecting relationship with the medium rivaling that of any “person with money.” Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, AMERICAN HONEY seems to have mostly flown under the radar following its early fall release. For me, it’s tied with Kelly Reichardt’s CERTAIN WOMEN as my favorite film of 2016; both are about women from small places who lead small lives, but with big hearts. That people are wary of Arnold’s film shows that perhaps we’re uncomfortable with the idea that an outsider, whether that status for her is defined by gender or country of origin, sees us better than we see ourselves.  Screening as part of the Heartland series. (2016, 163 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

The 41st Annual Music Box Christmas Sing-A-Long & Double Feature

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 ills weigh heavy 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 that he would later exploit for Alfred Hitchcock, Stewart renders Bailey as complicated as Capra himself—a child and ultimate victim of the American Dream. 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), 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]
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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 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]

Tim Burton's BATMAN RETURNS (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 9:15pm

No one else captures the nostalgic kitsch and dark melancholy of Christmastime with perfect balance like Tim Burton. His first feature after one of his other Christmas classics, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990), BATMAN RETURNS shifts the gloomy holiday cheer from the suburbs to Gotham City. The constructed sets and detailed production design have produced some of the most iconic images in a career filled with memorable visuals. The story involves Gotham industrial businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) teaming up with twisted crime lord Penguin (Danny DeVito), who’s searching for his origins. Superhero vigilante Batman (Michael Keaton) is out to stop them, but everyone’s plans are complicated by Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), Shreck’s meek secretary who seeks revenge against her boss as the formidable, whip-brandishing, latex-wearing Catwoman. It's hard to argue that this isn’t Pfeiffer’s movie, as the submissive cat lady violently transforms into the dominant Catwoman, one of the great cinematic femme fatales. Her early scenes, set in her baby pink apartment, where Selina talks to herself to cope with the loneliness of her life are unexpectedly moving, so much so that her story looms over the other characters'. Through her, the film presents complex themes about duality and female sexuality. She also helps to make the film more noir than anything else, despite its titular superhero; like its conflicted approach to the holiday season, BATMAN RETURNS is funny and morbid, beautiful and grotesque, ridiculous and sincere—one of Burton’s best. (1992, 126 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
John Waters’ 1974 film FEMALE TROUBLE (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday, 3:30pm, and Wednesday, 4:15pm, and Steven Spielberg’s 1974 film THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS screen Sunday, 4pm and 7pm, both as part of the Alamo Time Capsule 1974.

Hideo Nakata’s 2002 film DARK WATER (101 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of Terror Tuesday.

Grigori Kromanov’s 1979 film DEAD MOUNTAINEER’S HOTEL (84 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of Weird Wednesday. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago
Claude Zidi’s 1976 film L’AILE OU LA CUISSE (THE WING OR THE THIGH) (104 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 6:30pm, followed by a post-screening discussion with François Peltier, Foreign Policy & Diplomacy Service Assistant at the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago. More info here.

⚫ 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.

⚫ Consignment Lounge (3520 W. Diversey Ave.)
Alexander Payne’s 2023 film THE HOLDOVERS (133 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Nathaniel Dorsky’s CARACOLE (FOR IZCALI) (2023), CANTICLES (2019) and MARGINALIA (2016), and Jerome Hiler’s CARELESS PASSAGE (2024) and RULING STAR (2019) screen Sunday, 8pm, all on 16mm, as part of the The Devotional Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Connor Doyle’s 2024 film IN THE FLESH (43 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 7pm.

Rudy’s Movie Play-Along, featuring screenings of the Rankin/Bass holiday classics RUDOLPH’S SHINY NEW YEAR and THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS, begins Saturday at 1pm with a live performance by Old Town School of Folk Music’s Wiggleworms. Between the films there will be Reindeer Games in the Studio, an immersive winter wonderland experience included with all tickets, hosted by Chicago Danztheater Ensemble.

Anime Club’s Weird Holiday Special takes place Thursday beginning at 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Also screening as part of the Heartland series are Chris Smith’s 1999 film AMERICAN MOVIE (107 min, 35mm) on Friday at 8:30pm; Richard Brooks’ 1967 film IN COLD BLOOD (134 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 8:15pm; and Alexander Payne’s 2013 film NEBRASKA (115 min, 35mm) on Sunday at noon and Wednesday at 8:30pm.

Mystery Movie Monday takes place Monday at 6pm.

Bill Morrison’s 2023 film INCIDENT (30 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday at 6:15pm, followed by a dialogue between Morrison and Jamie Kalven, founder of Invisible Institute, moderated by Invisible Institute's Yohance Lacour. 

Kiwi Chow’s 2021 film REVOLUTION OF OUR TIMES (152 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Propaganda and Counterculture Lecture Series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera’s 2023 film YOU ARE NOT ME (99 min, DCP Digital) begins and Sean Baker’s 2024 film ANORA (139 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

The Found Footage Fest: 20th Anniversary Show takes place Wednesday at 7pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! presents Welcome to Primetime: Holiday Edition. On Thursday three surprise TV Christmas specials around the theme of alien invasions will screen starting at 7pm, with a social hour starting at 6pm. Every social hour includes a live set by local DJ Leah Lachesis Lazuli; two limited edition pinback buttons included with every ticket, with new designs each week; and every screening is preceded by additional giveaways donated by House of Movie Monsters and The Shadowboxery for people who answer trivia questions correctly. More info here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Tone Glow presents Unknown Nostalgia, the first complete retrospective of Will Hindle’s filmography, on Sunday starting at 1pm.

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

CINE-LIST: December 6 - December 12, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Nicky Ni, Scott Pfeiffer, Elise Schierbeek, K.A. Westphal, David Whitehouse