🎉 YEAR-END LISTS
Here at Cine-File we like to wait until the year actually ends to publish our “best-of” lists, which abide by whatever rules the contributor chooses. View them on our blog here.
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
The Worlds Of Wiseman
Gene Siskel Film Center – See days and showtimes below
Frederick Wiseman’s JUVENILE COURT (US/Documentary)
Friday, 5:15pm
Interestingly, this Wiseman documentary doesn’t have a formal title sequence, however understated they may be in his other films. Instead, a shot at the beginning is of the sign in front of the Memphis Juvenile Court 616 that reads simply Juvenile Court 616. It’s a clever efficiency that aptly reflects the building as what it is to the film, both the sole location and the chosen institution of concern. Given its relatively pointed focus—juvenile court is defined as being a court of law responsible for the trial or legal supervision of children under a specified age, hence why it applies also to issues such as neglect, abuse, and child support—the bulk of the film consists of cases being mediated and tried. The Memphis Juvenile Court at this time only had one judge, and it tried approximately 18,000 cases a year; as Wiseman explained to Studs Terkel in a radio interview from 1973, he chose this circuit because the judge granted him permission to film where it would otherwise have been difficult to find courts that would. The cases involved run the gamut from what might be termed regular childhood mischievousness to more glaringly egregious indiscretions, both perpetrated by and against the young people. One of the more disconcerting throughlines involves a young boy accused of molesting a little girl he’d been babysitting. At one point the boy, the victim, and the girl’s mom are all together in the judge’s chambers. Just the fact that the victim and her perpetrator are in the same room is mind-blowing, but also is how casually (and almost amiably) the girl’s mother discusses her long-standing fear of having a male babysitter, even disclosing that to the boy and his mother beforehand. It’s an uncanny sequence, illuminating a certain inanity about even the more sensational of human experiences. It was also interesting to think about how contemporary viewers might respond to the judge and social workers’ methods of handling these volatile situations. Admittedly much of their approach would today be considered non-PC at best, odious at worst. Nevertheless it’s clear that these people care about the children and their burden of serving them in this specific way. How they express that most explicitly is through their words, pragmatically motivational—but ultimately just that, words, leaving one to question how real progress might be made. “One consequence of the experience of making a lot of documentary films and seeing some of these events as they happen is that you begin to doubt the value of that kind of rhetorical persuasion,” Wiseman told Terkel. “Not because you don’t believe in it or want it to happen, but the problems themselves are so complicated that they’re not susceptible to that kind of quick change.” As always the purpose of an institution may sound relatively simple, juvenile court, as emblazoned on the sign, but inside this one is a labyrinth of especially delicate and uniquely impactful bureaucracy. (1973, 144 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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Frederick Wiseman's PRIMATE (US/Documentary)
Friday, 8pm
In PRIMATE, Frederick Wiseman turns his eye to Emory University’s Primate Research Center, a facility that both at the time of filming and now has been mired in controversy for its treatment of animals. In Wiseman’s chronology, we see the center’s increasingly granular study of the animals, beginning with extensive material about the animals' mating and birthing habits before moving on to more bizarre neurological testing and eventually dissection. The talking heads are kept to a minimum as usual, but the film’s one direct-to-camera address offers the team’s most explicit justification for their work: they’re indirectly studying humans by looking back through our evolutionary chain. This close human resemblance adds a layer of queasiness to the already rough-going treatment of the primates, but it also heightens the absurdity of moments like when the scientists put one monkey in a fast-spinning box to study the effects of low-gravity environments on the animal. The lab’s work is a sort of Wiseman film within a Wiseman film, trying as it does to thoroughly understand each social and biological facet of the object of study. We see it at a remove that only emphasizes the artifice inherent to lab-made “neutral” study environments where every parameter is controlled, and here we learn the most about the scientists themselves, drowning in minute data about blood chemicals and average ejaculation speeds in a mad dash for understanding. (1974, 105 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Frederick Wiseman’s WELFARE (US/Documentary)
Monday, 5pm
One of the more pernicious evils of Ronald Reagan’s proto-fascist regime was its perpetuation of the myth of the “welfare queen”—a racist and classist caricature who allegedly scammed government assistance programs in order to live comfortably without working. A single viewing of Frederick Wiseman’s WELFARE reveals why this myth is not only offensive but downright impossible; to scam a system this disorganized, counterintuitive, and oftentimes nonsensical would seem to require sheer luck rather than cunning. Moreover, contending with the vicissitudes of the American welfare system is pretty much a job in itself. WELFARE, which was shot inside a New York City welfare office during the winter of 1973, is one of the most exhausting experiences in cinema; even though Wiseman would go on to make films with greater running times, it will always feel like his longest movie. That is, of course, by design—what Wiseman wants to convey above all is a sense of endless stagnation. Over and over, the film presents scenes of welfare applicants (or people already on welfare) trying to claim benefits but facing some bureaucrat who tells them they lack the proper form or that they’re in the wrong office. Occasionally the applicant complains that they’re in a wild goose chase or that the system seems designed not to work for the people it’s intended to serve, only to be shuffled out of the appointment and back into the labyrinth of the system. Wiseman has cited Samuel Beckett as one of his primary influences, and in no other film with the possible exception of SINAI FIELD MISSION (1978) does that influence feel more pronounced than in WELFARE. (This would be true even if the film didn’t end with a shout out to Waiting for Godot.) Like the authors of the theatre of the absurd, Wiseman sees the comedy within a hopeless situation, and WELFARE abounds with spiky gallows humor. At a couple of critical moments, the camera zooms out from a close-up of a complainant in the middle of an emotional monologue… to show that they’re vying for attention with another person just inches away with the same complaint. Specifically Beckettian is Wiseman’s use of repetition, not only within individual scenes (Who can leave this movie without the phrase “food money” resounding in their head?) but across the entire running time. Because the same conflicts keep coming up—and because Wiseman never shows us the world outside the welfare office—you gradually lose your sense of time as the movie unfolds; it might as well have been called “Purgatory.” Wiseman brings us nearest to Hell in WELFARE’s longest segment, which runs over 15 minutes and occurs right around the film’s midpoint. Directly inside the entrance to the office building, a 51-year-old white military veteran berates a Black police officer with appalling racist invective, getting more and more riled up until the cop and a few colleagues forcibly eject him from the building. The sequence, one of the most astonishing in Wiseman’s filmography, addresses some of the most uncomfortable areas of American race relations while being masterfully edited for maximum tension. (Again, there are moments of sick humor to be found in the circuitous conversation.) Yet even the belligerent racist never comes across as a caricature; Wiseman’s probing, Bressonian perspective honors what is unique in every face and gesture, granting a rich humanity to everyone who passes before the camera. (1975, 167 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
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Frederick Wiseman’s MEAT (US/Documentary)
Tuesday, 6pm
With MEAT, Frederick Wiseman didn’t need to go to any great length to reveal the innate brutality of the institution at hand; rather, it plays at a more harmonious pace than some of his other films, allowing for the almost hypnotic clip of the activity to transfix as well as potentially shock, luring as much as it might also reasonably disgust. Filmed at the Monfort Meat Packing Company in Greeley, Colorado, the documentary oscillates between the bloody and the banal, showing in detail the entire process of whole animal fabrication. It’s unceremoniously explicit: everything from the tearing of skin off dead animals’ carcasses to the crushing of their skulls is depicted as bluntly as the actions undertaken, the resulting stupefaction more potent for being so. Wiseman isn’t taking a stance on the practice; where some of his films may imply an ostensible position on either the efficacy or even the overall purpose of a certain institution, here any underlying feelings on what’s being shown are more opaque. The sequences in which the dead cows and sheep are being taken apart are terrifying to a degree, but a lack of narrative context—exposition, music, or any kind of positioning that might make what’s taking place “scary”—reduces the action to what it is, an almost mechanical process that, when viewed dispassionately, might be either more or less unsettling than previously considered. There’s a bureaucratic element as well (and as always—Wiseman could wryly distinguish the bureaucracy of a Girl Scout troop) with the economic and political aspects of the industry also on display. The more illuminating of these sequences is a bargaining meeting in which union representatives argue that a specific job requires two people instead of one. This connects the unfeelingness of what’s happening to the animals to what’s happening to the workers—it’s hardly a stretch to notice the similarities. The core of their work is attributable to an anonymous brutality of a particular kind of automation, wherein both worker and product are cogs in the machine. Like everyday life, Wiseman’s films are sometimes unexpectedly peppered with morsels of insight that astound in their aptness. An especially prescient instance of this occurs in MEAT, when an unidentified man being interviewed says, “I don’t think any more big wars are really going to be fought on ideology, communism versus free enterprise. We’re getting to where we’re using enough of our potential resources, whether they be energy or food, where I think… big wars [will] result from shortages of essentials to people.” These are the wordier sections; otherwise the nitty-gritty of the fabrication itself is accompanied only by the sounds of animals and machinery. It’s a reflective kind of silence, reminiscent of that old western virtue; stunning cinematography toward the beginning reinforces that while later shot compositions of the fabrication process are framed evocatively, ensuring maximum access to the process in question. Wiseman always shows to tell, and MEAT may be one of the purest embodiments of that. (1976, 113 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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Please note that Wiseman’s 1977 documentary CANAL ZONE (174 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) screens next Friday, January 10, at 2:45pm.
Sergei Parajanov x 2
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
Sergei Parajanov's SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (Ukraine)
Sergei Parajanov's adaptation of Mykhailo Kotsibuynsky's novel is a sweeping epic, a Romeo and Juliet story about a boy and a girl from a small Ukrainian village who try to overcome the animosity of their families through love. But the film is not really about the story or its characters, but rather the wild pageant of Ukrainian village life that Parajanov and crew create through costume, landscape, and, most importantly, a unique and baroque style of camerawork. Cinematographers Yuri Ilyenko and Viktor Bestayev's camera seems totally unhinged, liable to take off running at any time, park itself miles from the action, or take on the identity of a murder weapon as it sees fit. And yet we always have the sense that the whole strange universe of the film is all around us, just out of frame. As the film goes on and the characters grow up, the profusion of technical wonders begins to slow and the story takes more of a center stage. We find ourselves in a world more D.H. Lawrence than Shakespeare, a bleak pastoral world of small farmers, bad memories, and marital frustrations (albeit hinted at with a coded Soviet prudery). But naturalism is never a priority for Parajanov or his actors, who jump back and forth between mad happiness, dull resignation, and murderous rage so quickly that it can be a little confusing. The romantic leads are wooden and stilted, but the craggy ensemble, whose expressionism and physicality borders on mime, is wonderful. (1965, 97 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Mojo Lorwin]
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Sergei Parajanov's THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES (Ukraine)
In 1968 director Sergei Parajanov made one of the most artistically uncompromised and unique expressions in the history of cinema with THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES. Upon submitting it for Soviet approval his movie was taken away and while he was serving time for it in custody it was re-cut and wasn't allowed to leave the Soviet Union until 1983. His charges: "secretism," "decadent aestheticism," perpetuating an "excessive cult of the past" and "latent anti-Sovietism." Though his five-year jail sentence and artistic hijacking are, of course, deplorable, it's hard not to agree with the charges. Parajanov made an iconoclastic movie. Instead of following the party line, he celebrated things non-Soviet. The movie is an ode to pre-Soviet culture; it celebrates the life of an Armenian poet, and it certainly isn't in the style of socialist realism. The film is defiantly arcane. It rhapsodizes the rituals, dress, customs, and poetry of a place and time very few audience members will be familiar with (which contributes to the film's mystery). It doesn't explain either, it just shows. Through use of gorgeous, Byzantine tableaux and cryptic excerpts of poetry (seen as text and spoken as like incantations), Parajanov gives us a tantalizing glimpse into his occult world of beauty and hugger-mugger. The film, in a similar style to that of Pier Paolo Pasolini (whose work Parajanov admired) moves through cuts rather than camera movements. His frames are filled with mystery: every person, place or thing is purposely positioned a certain way, but why they are placed that way isn't entirely clear. Spoken words are replaced by body movements as the means of communication: every gesture, turn, rhythm and pulse seem to want to whisper something to you. This unusual technique is employed to give expression to the poetry and life of the poet Sayat Nova, whom the film was originally titled after. POMEGRANATES is a movie that, while being highly concerned about the visual, seems to be striving more for the invisible. The visible manifestations of this can be seen in the wind that blows through pages of hundreds of books, the "invisible" strings that hold and twirl props, in the small holes in the fabric that one character seems to be reading. For all of its attention to the details of the material world, the film appears to be trying to say things that can't be said—and that's what poetry, especially this poetry, does well. It speaks to the mind, soul, and imagination. (1969, 78 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kalvin Henley]
Howard Hawks’ A GIRL IN EVERY PORT (US/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am
Howard Hawks had directed several movies by 1928, but film historians generally agree that A GIRL IN EVERY PORT marks the first iteration of key themes and motifs that would repeat throughout his directorial career. It is chiefly, as numerous critics have pointed out, Hawks’ first “love story between two men.” The director would tell quite a few more such love stories—see ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939), RED RIVER (1948), THE BIG SKY (1952), and RIO BRAVO (1959) for further evidence—which makes A GIRL IN EVERY PORT of special significance for kicking off this cycle of masterpieces. But beyond being historically revealing, the film is just a rousing good time in Hawks’ trademark fashion, with plenty of good humor and expertly staged fight scenes. The humor, incidentally, is bawdy in a way that American movies wouldn’t get to be after the introduction of the Hays Code a few years later; indeed, the movie sometimes plays like an adaptation of an elaborate sex joke. The phallically named Spike and Salami (Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong, respectively) are two sailors who love traveling the world and seducing women wherever they go. Spike comes to learn of Salami’s existence when he starts noticing that all his paramours are sporting the same heart-and-anchor tattoo—the Zorro-like mark of a sexual conquistador who works on a boat stopping at all the same ports as his. (Particularly Hawksian is the way the director repeats this small detail to generate dramatic significance across multiple scenes.) The two men finally cross paths in a saloon in Central America. When their barroom brawl gets broken up by police, Spike and Salami discover they’d rather fight the cops than each other (the film’s jovial “fuck the police” sentiment is really icing on the cake), and soon a close friendship is born. The two take up on the same boat, and life proceeds smashingly, until Spike falls in love with a circus performer in Marseille (Louise Brooks in an early role), and his romance threatens to overshadow his relationship with Salami. This is one of the only films on which Hawks took an onscreen writing credit, and the story was clearly personal to him. Like Spike and Salami, Hawks was something of an adventurer, having dabbled in soapbox racing and aviation (including a stint in the US Signal Corps during World War I) before he started making pictures; he was also a hard-drinking, hard-fighting macho type who could boast of having drunkenly punched Hemingway in the face. A GIRL IN EVERY PORT is very much a comedy by someone who would boast of that experience, yet it is more than a fist that unites Hawks and Hemingway. One reason why the director is one of the greatest that America ever produced lies in his instinct for specific detail, which allowed him to hone in on his characters’ most important experiences and strip away extraneous narrative information, much like Hemingway did with his prose. Hawks also had a knack for paring down performances, creating a naturalism out of modest gestures and expressions. No matter how contrived A GIRL IN EVERY PORT gets in its narrative, there’s always a believable and ingratiating quality to the acting that makes the film feel modern. Preceded by the 1936 Fleischer Studios short A CLEAN SHAVEN MAN (7 min, 16mm). With live musical accompaniment by David Drazin. (1928, 78 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Howard Hawks' RIO BRAVO (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am
RIO BRAVO marks the symphonic culmination of themes that Howard Hawks had been developing for most of his directorial career, and the film delivers such a profound sense of coming together that it’s easy to understand why many Hawks fans consider this his greatest work. On one level, it’s a passionate love letter to Hollywood movies (which explains why it was such a crucial text for the French New Wave). The actors aren’t playing characters, per se, but rather larger-than-life variations on their screen personas; and the archetypal premise, about a group of committed good guys working together, reflects on ideas central to the western in general and Hawks’ filmography in particular: namely, the beauty of teamwork and the desires of the individual versus the needs of the society. On another level, RIO BRAVO is an audacious experiment in film form, as Hawks (working from a script by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, two of the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood history) frequently relinquishes any sense of narrative momentum to consider niceties of character and the joys of hanging out. Starting around the mid-’40s, Hawks claimed to have stopped approaching films as stories and started looking at them as collections of scenes, and RIO BRAVO shows this method at its finest. The film contains funny scenes, poignant scenes, romantic scenes, and suspenseful scenes—it’s as though Hawks, who famously worked in every Hollywood genre, wanted to condense his entire career into a single feature. Yet for all his ambition, Hawks maintains the direct, understated visual style that was as central to his filmmaking as any of his themes. Screening as part of the Silver Fox: Howard Hawks Matinees series. (1959, 141 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
FROM GROUND ZERO (Palestine/France/Qatar/Jordan)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 5:30pm [Sold Out]
After watching Rashid Masharawi’s film anthology project FROM GROUND ZERO, my mind immediately jumped to the term “empathy machine," which was coined by the late Roger Ebert. As Ebert described it, cinema in its purest form functions as “...a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.” That is undeniably chief to the mission of FROM GROUND ZERO, an artistic vessel telegraphing the realities of contemporary Palestinian life in Gaza to those unwilling to watch the news or check their social media app of choice to keep up with the near-constant wanton devastation still occurring. But as necessary and vital as the film stands as a piece of political activism, its artistic merits shine through in their own right, creating a beacon of joyous filmmaking craft and vigor, a beating heart and a yearning soul stretching across oceans to reach us. There’s something to gain from meaningfully engaging with the 22 exciting and visionary voices being showcased here, each making distinct visual, structural, and emotional choices, and all doing so under the umbrella of rampant militaristic atrocity on a daily basis. Consider the visual experimentation of works like Mustafa Kulab's ECHO and Basil El Maqousi's FRAGMENTS, each finding exploratory ways of showcasing wartime atrocity with expansive visual palettes; or Khamis Masharawi's SOFT SKIN and Mahdi Kreirah's AWAKENING, which use stop-motion animation and puppetry, respectively, to transmit unique and devastating stories. Some of these films even act as vessels for further artistic discovery in Gaza, like the stand-up comedian at the center of Nidal Damo's EVERYTHING IS FINE, the visual artist leading Neda'a Abu Hassnah's OUT OF FRAME, or the filmmaker yearning to make crowd-pleasing genre movies in Ahmad Hassunah's SORRY CINEMA. Amidst the various shorts acting as visual diaries of life in a land torn asunder by constant bombings and chaotic military action, there are a few notable attempts at fiction filmmaking to communicate emotional turmoil, perhaps the most devastating being Etimad Washah's TAXI WANISSA, a short film about a taxi driver beholden to his donkey that is abruptly cut short when the director addresses the camera to tell us that her brother and his children were killed during the making of the film, her desire to continue making the short now completely obliterated. It’s another notable sticking point when thinking about the tens of thousands of lives (and counting) that have been taken in this never-ending conflict; amidst the often nameless numbers and statistics tossed around, these are real people at stake, many of them artists, with distinct voices and perspectives and visions, each with a right to be heard and a right to be free. Presented by the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. (2024, Total approx. 115 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (Italy)
Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm
Mario Bava’s BLOOD AND BLACK LACE is the director’s second foray into giallo filmmaking, but its rippling influence can be seen later on in the works of Dario Argento (especially SUSPIRIA) and American slasher films of the 1980s. A masked figure, dressed in black and looking akin to H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man, stalks and kills women of an Italian fashion house. After the police become involved, a notebook with incriminating evidence on all of the models surfaces amongst one of the victim’s belongings. Everyone remains a suspect in this whodunit, as alibis are examined and the body count continues to grow. Bava’s film is full of breathtaking imagery; an explosion of bright colors and ominous shadows paint the frames, providing ominous hiding places in which the killer could be hiding in every scene. Many sequences at the fashion house as well as at some of the characters’ homes feature standing mannequins, adding to the sense of foreboding. Bava’s extensive use of the color red not only reminds the viewer of the danger that is ever-present but also heightens the film’s themes of passion, jealousy, and violence. The film’s jazz lounge-esque score adds a smooth fluidity that compliments the onscreen actions. BLOOD AND BLACK LACE maintains a level of morbid intimacy as the murders are presented in close-up shots, with looks of terror on the victim’s face and unyielding hands used to perform the deed. It is a cornerstone film in the entire giallo pantheon. Screening as part of January Giallo 2025. (1964, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]
Brendan Bellomo & Slava Leontyev’s PORCELAIN WAR (Ukraine/US/Australia/Documentary)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Slava and Anya are married artists in eastern Ukraine who make intricately designed porcelain figurines. Their division of labor in making the little sculptures reflects the healthy, supportive nature of their partnership, which began when the two were children: he constructs the figurines, and she paints the designs. Their artistic process is so essential to their lives together that they’ve continued making figurines throughout the Russian military invasion of their country, which they also help to fight against. PORCELAIN WAR is a tribute to the citizen-soldiers of Ukraine, who come from all sorts of backgrounds and are united in their patriotism. One of the more eye-opening moments of the film comes when it introduces the people whom Slava and Anya are fighting alongside, relating what everyone’s profession was before the invasion. No one seems to have had any military experience, which makes their bravery in combating the invasion all the more admirable. The film also shows how the war is being fought; there’s even a short introduction to how the citizen-soldiers use drones. But what shines through is the central portrait of the married artists and their efforts to maintain some sense of normalcy amidst calamitous times. Some of the scenes that show them making their figurines are even soothing, showing how art can be a salve during difficult times and why the defense of Slava and Anya’s lives in particular is crucial to the fate of Ukraine on the whole. (2024, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Robert Eggers' NOSFERATU (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Director Robert Eggers has consistently been interested in the nature of belief and faith—and how those things not only influence the individual but history as a whole. This perhaps is no better manifested in his first full-length feature, THE WITCH, as American history is explored through the wild and dangerous beliefs of the Puritans. His latest feature, NOSFERATU, focuses a bit more on the individual and relationships to examine belief and how that manifests within the body. A remake of the landmark 1922 German expressionist film by F.W. Murnau and the 1979 version by Werner Herzog, Eggers’ NOSFERATU takes inspiration from both. His dedication to historical accuracy is still discernible, most notably seen in the sumptuous costuming. Costume designer Linda Muir, who’s worked with Eggers on all his films, uses pre-Victorian era fashion to create storytelling within the narrative. Not only do the costumes comment on class and position, but heavy fabrics, textures, and patterns create dense and at times overwhelming barriers to the internal and visceral. This is particularly true of the female characters, namely Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), whose supernatural connection to the vampire Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) is what sets the story in motion. At times she violently rips away at her ornate dresses, desperate for release and to make others understand her visions and dreams are portent. Through costuming, set design, and occult-ish objects, Eggers creates a gothic tale that addresses the sensuality aspect of the vampire in twisting and interesting ways—the vampire as cultural myth is so much about consumption and consummation. Impressive, too, is the way in which the hysteria at the heart of the story is not relegated to the female characters (including Ellen’s best friend, Anna, played by Emma Corrin), who have an accurate understanding of what’s happening to them. Ellen’s husband, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), who sets off for Transylvania to meet with Count Orlok on a real estate assignment, really becomes the focus on the film’s central scares, a more often feminine role in the horror genre. None of the other fumbling male characters have a clue either as to how to defeat this monster, except the occult professor (played by Willam Dafoe), whose expertise also concludes it is solely Ellen who can. (2024, 132 min, 35mm and DCP Digital [See Venue website for format]) [Megan Fariello]
Andrei Tarkovsky's MIRROR (USSR)
Alamo Drafthouse – Sunday, 12pm
Long before the great TREE OF LIFE euphoria of 2011, another film (from another director's famously sparse oeuvre) went off uncharted into the space between memories past and present, mapping onto them a universal significance. Andrei Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR may lack dinosaurs and metaphorical doors in the desert, but it does set a mean precedent for everything a passion project can be when an auteur is working on such an intensely personal level. Long a dream project of Tarkovsky's, it was only in the wake of SOLARIS that he was able to secure funding, and armed with a meager allotment of film stock, he began production in late 1973. Given the non-linear, dreamlike progression of the film, such obstacles aren't hard to comprehend, and they perhaps explain why this is his most fleeting film outside his debut, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD. Drawn across the middle of the 20th century, THE MIRROR takes a stream of consciousness journey through familial memories, with actors in dual roles as father and son, as wife and mother. Woven in are poems penned by Tarkovsky's own father, assorted clips of wartime newsreel footage, and the quiet, ethereal imagery characteristic of all his films. It all makes for a hazy dream of cinema, one from which you tragically wake too early. But lest the length should fool you, this is not Tarkovsky for beginners. No surprise that at his most personal he's also at his most esoteric, so an afternoon spent with one of his aforementioned films would be a good primer. As for those already in his thrall, this is imperative viewing. Screening as part of the RaMell Ross Guest Selects series. (1975, 108 min) [Tristan Johnson]
Don Siegel’s DIRTY HARRY (US)
The Wilmette Theatre – Thursday, 6pm
Don Siegel began his filmmaking career as an editor in the 1930s, contributing to notable projects like CASABLANCA (1942) before transitioning to directing. His first two short films won Academy Awards, establishing his reputation and paving the way for a prolific career. Throughout the 1950s, Siegel became renowned as a master of B movies, crafting tightly paced narratives laced with intelligent subtext. His 1956 sci-fi classic INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS deftly allegorized Cold War-era fears of communism under the guise of alien infiltration. Siegel’s creative partnership with Clint Eastwood began with COOGAN’S BLUFF (1968), a blueprint for the hyper-masculine cop archetype that would later define Inspector Harry Callahan in DIRTY HARRY. This collaboration flourished WITH TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA (1970) and THE BEGUILED (1971) before culminating in their most iconic effort, DIRTY HARRY. Examining Siegel's earlier works is crucial to understanding the film. Upon its release, critics were polarized. Many celebrated its vigilante cop as a voice of justice in a failing system, while Pauline Kael decried its right-wing fantasies and simplistic societal critiques, highlighting the action genre’s latent flirtation with fascism. Modern audiences might view the film as a prescient critique of police overreach, framing Harry as an "All Cops Are Bad" archetype. Set in San Francisco, DIRTY HARRY opens with a sniper, Scorpio, killing a rooftop swimmer, underscored by Lalo Schifrin's quintessential cop-thriller score. Scorpio taunts the police with ransom demands, while Callahan has been working the case. Callahan’s disdain for bureaucracy and his relentless pursuit of justice quickly establish him as an antihero. A standout early sequence cements Harry’s reputation: mid-hotdog at a diner, he spots an idling car outside a bank. Sensing a robbery, he preps for action, ultimately thwarting the criminals in a dramatic shootout that includes his iconic line: “Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?” While thrilling, the sequence exemplifies the recklessness of the “loose cannon cop,” a trope that continues to define action films. DIRTY HARRY also serves as a cultural catharsis for a city reeling from the Zodiac Killer's terror. Siegel parallels Scorpio with Zodiac, caricaturing him as a sniveling, misogynistic, and ineffectual villain which must have infuriated the actualZodiac. Andrew Robinson’s portrayal includes subtle nods to emasculation, underscored by Scorpio’s flustered remark upon seeing Harry’s gun: “My, that’s a big one.” The film’s narrative escalates as Harry’s pursuit of Scorpio clashes with legal constraints. Scorpio’s sobbing invocation of his rights, coupled with the inadmissibility of evidence due to Harry’s lack of a warrant, underscores the system’s failures. Unrestrained, Scorpio abducts a school bus, forcing Harry to abandon protocol entirely to save the children. In Harry’s own words, “Now you know why they call me Dirty Harry, they give me every dirty job that comes along.” Critics accused DIRTY HARRY of glorifying police brutality and endorsing vigilante justice, while others argued it condemned an ineffectual judicial system. Siegel himself described Callahan as a borderline vigilante whose disillusionment with bureaucracy fuels his extralegal actions. Eastwood, in contrast, saw Harry as a man bound to his badge despite his disdain for the system. Siegel’s signature fast pacing, nuanced social commentary, and gritty aesthetic made DIRTY HARRY a cultural touchstone of its era. More than a cop thriller, it’s a lens through which societal anxieties and the complexities of justice are refracted. Revisiting it today, the film remains a compelling artifact, equal parts provocative and entertaining, proving that in cinema—and law enforcement—nothing is ever black and white. Screening as part of the Cult Classic Film series. (1971, 102 min, Digital Projection) [Shaun Huhn]
Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA (Sweden)
Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 12pm
Ever since it exploded onto the international art film scene in the mid-60s, PERSONA has continued to keep audiences guessing and discussing. At once a simple story of an emotionally traumatized actress and her nurse and a complex meditation on the nature of cinema, Bergman himself cited it as the work where he went "as far as he could go" as a film artist. After a stunning avant-garde prologue, the film moves fluidly between realistic and dream-like passages, culminating in some space where the two converge. For all the different cinematic forms on display, its most memorable sequences are arguably two highly theatrical monologues delivered by the nurse (Bibi Andersson, in her greatest performance)—frank considerations of sex and psychology that marked a new triumph over film censorship. Readers who aren't familiar with the criticism devoted to this hallmark work are encouraged to check out Susan Sontag's essay on the film, anthologized in her collection Styles of Radical Will. Screening as part of the Pedro Almodóvar/Tilda Swinton/Julianne Moore Guest Selects series. (1966, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Jacques Demy's THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (France)
Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, 9:15pm and Sunday, 3:45pm
Jacques Demy is a cinematic alchemist. Ever present in his body of work is an uncanny ability to transform standard, even banal, elements of various genres into 'gold'—or, rather, something so luminous and rarefied that it can only be Demy who's created it. THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is arguably the best of his films, and almost certainly the first film of his to so fully bend genre and style convention. Demy was a member of the French New Wave and, like several of his peers, he had an unabashed love for Hollywood studio musicals of the era. Demy's most 'New Wave-ish' films preceded THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG; LOLA (1960) and BAY OF ANGELS (1962) were shot in black and white, and dealt more straightforwardly with themes inherent to the movement. Both hinted at Demy's progression, but THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, when viewed in the context of his first three features, certainly stands out. (For example, it’s his first film in color.) In an essay about the film for the Reader, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum admitted that he originally considered it to be a commercial sellout, comparing it to other "corny pretenders" allegedly borne of the New Wave but merely ascribing the label where it didn't belong. Demy's vision is understandably confounding, as he uses elements that, when mixed, shouldn't create something this spectacular. Virtually undefinable, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is neither just a musical nor entirely an opera. The film's narrative is completely conveyed through song, with a jazzy score by longtime Demy collaborator Michel Legrand providing the music against which the sung dialogue is set. It's about a young couple, Guy and Genevieve; she's the too-young daughter of an overbearing mother who owns an umbrella shop in Cherbourg, he's a mechanic who hasn't yet served his time with the French military. Their courtship is shown in the first part of the film, titled "Departure." Naturally, he's drafted to fight in the Algerian War and soon thereafter Genevieve learns she is pregnant. In this part, titled "Absence," Genevieve's mother compels her to consider the overtures of a well-to-do jeweler while Genevieve wonders if her and Guy's love is waning. (It was common among the New Wave filmmakers to reference other films in their work, and here Demy references himself. The jeweler, Roland Cassard, was a suitor of Lola's in LOLA, and Lola herself returns in Demy's 1969 film MODEL SHOP.) Genevieve soon gives in to Roland, who accepts that she is pregnant with another man's child. In the third and final part, "Return," Guy is back from the war and spiraling out of control, likely due to Genevieve's desertion. The ending is bittersweet and surprisingly cynical, two hallmarks of Demy's romantic pragmatism. It has this in common with his previous films, and somewhat separates it from his 1967 film THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, in which all is happy in the end despite Demy's overall tone of deceptively joyful endurance. This and THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT are noted for their use of color, but the schemes are distinct. In the latter, the fluffier of the two, sunny pastels and bright whites obscure any hint of grimy realism. In THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, which is more operatic in tone and structure, Demy utilizes bolder, more primary colors. This further allows for hints at the film's fateful bitterness. All that glitters is gold in Demy's world, but his is a gold that illuminates the screen while revealing its own artifice. (1964, 91 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
Andy Sedaris’ HARD TICKET TO HAWAII (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Wednesday, 9:30pm
The 1980s were defined by larger-than-life action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, whose very presence elevated any project. But what happens when a filmmaker lacks a blockbuster budget or A-list talent? If you’re Andy Sidaris, you make the most of what you have. HARD TICKET TO HAWAII is less a movie and more a kaleidoscopic fever dream of its era. Sidaris embraced the outrageousness of Western action cinema, crafting works that were unapologetically kitschy and excessive. HARD TICKET TO HAWAII has transcended its initial obscurity to become a cult classic. Dubbed the maestro of "Bullets, Bombs, and Babes," Sidaris didn’t just create action films—he orchestrated absurdist spectacles. At its core, HARD TICKET TO HAWAII is a cheerful affront to coherence. The plot involves two undercover agents battling drug smugglers on a Hawaiian island while dodging a mutated snake contaminated by cancerous rats. Viewing it as a mere low-budget oddity misses the point. Sidaris’s work prioritizes wild set pieces and cheeky one-liners over narrative logic, delivering an exuberant straight-to-video experience. Sidaris carved a niche in the market by blending the testosterone-fueled machismo of 1980s blockbusters with self-aware camp. Schwarzenegger had muscles, but Sidaris had a Frisbee lined with razor blades and a defiance of zoology with his mutated snake. His films thrive on the "BBB Formula"—a confection of explosions, bikinis, and improbable twists. The women in Sidaris’ films, often cast from Playboy magazine, were far from passive tourists. They wielded weapons, cracked wise, and upended genre conventions, though the male gaze lingered a bit too long. These heroines embraced the ridiculous, making each film a playful nod to its audience. HARD TICKET TO HAWAII’s exotic Hawaiian setting wasn’t just eye candy but an invitation to escape into a world where logic was optional and fun mandatory. Sidaris’s films didn’t take themselves seriously, creating a direct connection with viewers through their campy charm. Over time, the movie’s most outlandish moments—a rocket launcher taking out a blow-up doll, or a skateboarding assassin—found new life in the digital age, becoming viral sensations. Beneath the camp, Sidaris slyly critiqued action tropes, reveling in and satirizing the genre’s excesses. This paradox lends his films an enduring appeal. HARD TICKET TO HAWAII isn’t merely a nostalgic artifact; it’s a celebration of unrestrained imagination. Sidaris’ audacious approach reminds us that cinema doesn’t always need to be serious. In his world, the ridiculous reigns supreme, leaving us with a spectacle that’s unforgettable. HARD TICKET TO HAWAII stands as Sidaris’ magnum opus, a gleeful tribute to the power of playful abandon in filmmaking. Screening as part of the Weird Wednesday series. (1987, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
George Miller's MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (Australia)
Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 6:15pm
There's no shortage of films set in a distant future gone horribly awry, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a dystopia as colorful and horrific as the gory Australia George Miller present in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. The third sequel to MAD MAX (1979) and an effective reboot of its franchise, FURY ROAD felt inescapable upon its release in 2015; it was on the radar of anyone who even mildly identified with nerd culture. After grossing $375 million at the box office and winning plenty of accolades, it still holds up as a raw, relentless depiction of an oppressive, post-apocalyptic world—and a blast from start to finish. Tom Hardy makes his debut here as Max Rockatansky, a role held in the late '70s and early '80s by Mel Gibson. While his brooding performance is captivating, Hardy's real function is to act as the eyes through which we meet Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron. In a wasteland ruled by cult-leader Immortan Joe and his militia of "war boys," Furiosa, Max, and a truck full of Joe's escaped wives must fight for bodily autonomy, basic human rights, and, as Furiosa replies to Max's question of intent, redemption. For fans of the original trilogy, this offers a new world that's true to the aesthetics of its predecessors but unlimited by '80s special effects; for first-timers, it delivers a unique action-adventure universe free of Marvel-style tropes and overbearing cameos. FURY ROAD feels too huge to be contained by any single screen, but with something of this magnitude, finding the biggest one you possibly can is paramount. (2015, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Bates]
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]
Gints Zilbalodis’ FLOW (Latvia/Animation)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:45am and Sunday, 11:15am
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]
🎞️ ALSO SCREENING
âš« Alamo Drafthouse
Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (136 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 9:30pm; Tuesday at 6pm; and Wednesday at 7pm.
Anthony Waller’s 1995 film MUTE WITNESS (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of Terror Tuesday.
Pedro Almodóvar’s 2024 film THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, in advance of the longer run continuing next Friday. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
âš« Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Raoul Walsh’s 1924 film THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (149 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday, 7pm, as part of the Raoul Walsh: Adventures in Filmmaking series.
An advanced screening of Brady Corbet’s 2024 film THE BRUTALIST (215 min, DCP Digital) takes place Tuesday at 7pm. Free admission; UCID required.
Raúl Ruiz’s 1978 film THE HYPOTHESIS OF THE STOLEN PAINTING (66 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Love Torn in a Dream: The Illusory Odysseys of Raúl Ruiz series.
Robert Clouse’s 1973 film ENTER THE DRAGON (102 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the “Martial” Arts series.
Sam Raimi’s 2000 film THE GIFT (112 min, 35mm) screens Thursday at 9:30pm. More info on all screenings here.
âš« FACETS Cinema
FACETS Anime Club presents “Revenge and Romance: Anime’s Golden Age,” featuring two works from one of anime’s most visionary directors, on Thursday starting at 7pm. Free and exclusive to FACETS Film Club members. More info here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Maura Delpero’s 2024 film VERMIGLIO (119 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s 2015 film HAPPY HOUR (317 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 11am, as part of the Settle In series.
Pedro Almodóvar’s 2024 film THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, in advance of the longer run continuing next Friday. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) screens Friday at midnight.
Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult classic ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight. Every screening has a shadowcast of the film by Midnight Madness. More info on all screenings here.
CINE-LIST: January 3, 2025 - January 9, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Maxwell Courtright, Kyle Cubr, Megan Fariello, Kalvin Henley, Shaun Huhn, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye, Mojo Lorwin