:: FRIDAY, JANUARY 10 - THURSDAY, JANUARY 16 ::

🎉 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 SINAI FIELD MISSION (US/Documentary)
Sunday, 10am
I don’t know if drinking games are conducive to Frederick Wiseman films; as they certainly have throughlines, it’s more film-to-film rather than occurring frequently in just one. Maybe the most ubiquitous motif is that of a janitor or sanitation worker performing their duties, intercut among scenes of action pertaining to the institution under consideration. In SINAI FIELD MISSION, the scene—not quite that of a janitor or sanitation worker but whose movements recall one—occurs at the beginning of the film rather than somewhere midway through; it shows a worker in the desert driving out to a random spot and, on the side of the road, unearthing and fixing a sensor before burying it again and sweeping sand back on top of it with a large push broom. It’s as if to highlight not just the unique location of the film’s institution, but the uniqueness of its existence altogether. Sprawling and exhaustive in its consideration of the Sinai Field Mission, it’s a multi-faceted probe into the organization, ranging from the core tenets of the mission to various elements of life on base. The Sinai Field Mission was established after Israel agreed to withdraw from a spot between two strategic passes in the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for third-party monitoring following the country’s 1973 war with Egypt. As Vice President Walter Mondale phrased it, the United States’ role was to act as "the eyes and ears of peace,” safeguarding access to the passes from within and outside the buffer zone between the two countries. (Per the Nobel Prize website, “According to the Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Carter ought to have been awarded the Prize as early as in 1978, when he successfully mediated a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.” SINAI FIELD MISSION was filmed in the summer of 1977.) Details of the mission are neatly explained early in the film, complete with a large map—one wonders how Wiseman got fortunate to have this laid out so adroitly, but it’s a handy primer for those of us decades removed. Made up of State Department and contract workers from Texas, the mission is altogether more administrative and bureaucratic than “exciting.” Peace is boring, one might surmise, but Wiseman mines the scenario for both inanity and humanity. It’s about halfway through the film when we start to see the workers at rest and play; in one scene, in a makeshift bar, two workers talk about one of the men’s recent diagnosis, the cause for his leaving the mission. One man says, “Well, I hope their diagnosis is wrong.” The other responds, “Well, if it ain’t, it’s something I already accepted. I already accepted it.” Institutions are composed of people and are therefore fallible as a result. But it’s also this humanity that makes them worthy of documentation, and for better or worse Wiseman excels in mining this from the turbid and benevolent alike. There are elements that also feel like they come from a narrative film, specifically the opening sequence, right before we see the man fixing the sensor, of his car, emblazoned with ‘SFM’ on the side, traveling up a winding desert road, with cuts to a surveillance station, broken-down vehicles and even camels. It’s an interesting entryway into so varied an examination of a particular time and place, the institution in question more ephemeral than most of the others Wiseman has depicted. Yet still there is and always will be someone with a broom, attempting to burnish up the best they can humanity’s detritus. (1978, 127 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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Frederick Wiseman’s MANOEUVRE (US/Documentary)
Sunday, 12:30pm
If war is absurd, then what does it mean to prepare for war? That’s the central question of MANOEUVRE, the third film of Frederick Wiseman’s unofficial militarism trilogy that began with CANAL ZONE (1977) and SINAI FIELD MISSION (1978). The movie finds Wiseman in a surprisingly lighthearted register—that he devotes several minutes to one of the most nauseating jokes you’ll ever hear may provide a clue to his thoughts on the proceedings. Released the same year Jimmy Carter delivered his infamous “malaise” speech, MANOEUVRE is a portrait of Cold War fatigue. It follows a US infantry tank company in northern Germany as they take part in an annual war game staged by NATO to test the readiness of US reinforcements in the event of a ground war in western Europe. Apart from the US Army band (who perform a not-bad rendition of “We’ve Only Just Begun” at the commencement ceremony), no one seems to know why they’re there. With nuclear war a very real and much more terrifying threat, the idea of a ground-and-air conflict along the lines of World War II seems ridiculous, almost quaint. The soldiers seem to recognize this, and whenever given a free moment they cavort like boys at summer camp; similarly, when a commanding officer gives a foul-mouthed speech telling his subordinates to put more effort into the maneuvers, he comes across like the hard-ass camp counselor whom everybody dislikes. Throughout MANOEUVRE, Wiseman will cut to a shot of a confused-looking German villager who stumbles onto the war game, their bafflement dashing whatever verisimilitude the organizers were hoping to achieve. Yet this running gag has a spectacular pay-off when, late in the film, Wiseman gives screen time to a German woman who explains to some American soldiers why the people of Germany might not want to be reminded of ground war even three decades after the end of WWII. It’s one grimly funny moment among many; tonally, this may be the closest an American filmmaker has gotten to a Czech New Wave comedy. (1979, 115 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
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Frederick Wiseman’s MODEL (US/Documentary)
Sunday, 3pm
If John Ford is American cinema’s greatest landscape painter, then Frederick Wiseman is its greatest portraitist—whether working in medium shot or closeup, he always conveys fascination with the human face and the psychology it can express. Given his fixation on faces, it was perhaps inevitable that Wiseman would make a film about people who pose for a living. Yet MODEL is in no way a two-hour fashion spread; in fact, the other Wiseman film it resembles most is probably BASIC TRAINING (1971). That movie (as I wrote a couple weeks ago) concerns the process by which young men are transformed into anonymous soldiers to fight in the Vietnam War; this one concerns the ways in which individuals are transformed into living mannequins in order to sell products. Wiseman often returns to scenes of photographers, agents, and advertising directors instructing men and women how to look and move, sometimes down to the smallest gesture. It can be infuriating to spend time in this world, in which people seem determined to stamp out all the spontaneity around them. But the longer Wiseman looks at some of the agents, for instance, the more he seems to appreciate their ability to navigate the advertising world, which seems as knotty and susceptible to micro-level power struggles as any other institution he’s depicted. Likewise, the photo shoot sequences de-romanticize the modeling profession by presenting it as a job like any other, replete with passages of banality and frustration. MODEL may be one of Wiseman’s most prosaic films when it considers actual modeling work; at the same time, the interstitial shots of Manhattan in the late 1970s comprise some of the director’s most ravishing imagery. Wiseman vividly captures the city’s mix of grit and glamor, making the film as distinctive a portrait of New York as anything by Scorsese, Lumet, or Ferrara. (1980, 129 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Michael Snow’s *CORPUS CALLOSUM (Canada/Experimental)

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

When making *CORPUS CALLOSUM, Michael Snow engaged a team of animators to digitally alter some of his live-action footage. This was expensive then as it is now, of course, so the film was delayed until Snow was awarded a Telefilm Canada grant for low-budget features, which, ironically, was intended for young filmmakers. But there’s a “young-at-heart” quality to the film, described by J. Hoberman as “almost a self-curated retrospective of Snow's career; but with a twist,” referring to the way in which the images therein are being continuously manipulated. As Snow has said, “I realized I could use the entire cartoon vocabulary with real people,” and that’s an apt description of what happens in the film. At the beginning we’re taken into the *Corpus Callosum—the structure in the middle of the brain that connects the right and left hemispheres; it was once believed to be the home of the soul—depicted here literally as a generic office space and representing, metaphorically, the space between illusion and reality. In the office, Snow’s signature continuous pans scan the space, with increasing levels of manipulation  applied to the actors. In one part, two people become a conjoined rectangular block; in another, a huge penis emanates from a man, growing toward a woman splayed on all fours atop a table. There’s another setting, more an embodiment of the aforementioned cartoon vocabulary, a colorfully decorated room in which a family sits on a couch watching television. This, too, the people and objects both, begin to metamorphose, which is the film’s core motif. “The whole thing,” he says, “on every level, is about representation and the changing of shapes.” It’s funny he mentions “entry level” because on its face, the concept feels nakedly basic, harkening back to the appropriate irony of awarding a grant intended for young filmmakers to one in his seventh decade. Because in many ways Snow was always a young filmmaker in the sense of being on the forefront of the avant-garde, metamorphosis being as much in his nature as in his films. He found in digital filmmaking a philosophical consideration, exclaiming that “electronic imagery isn’t optical. In a strange sense, it’s not even visual. Computer imaging is a way of seeing that is more neural: It’s as if it’s already in the brain, and it has bypassed the eyes, so that that mutability, or clay-like quality, is still present—it’s like a surface that’s agitated. The image isn’t a result of light falling on things. It’s not so much photons as it is electrons. There’s an inherent instability to electronic images.” Snow embraces that volatility to an impertinent and altogether irreverent effect. The waggishness extends also to such elements as the extensive end credits, which occur midway through the film, and what occurs at the end in lieu of those, a primitive line animation created by Snow in 1956. Look how far we’ve come, the sequence seems to suggest, and here I still am. Screening as part of the Back and Forth, Around and Around: Michael Snow on 16mm series. (2002, 92 min, 16mm) [Kat Sachs]

Raoul Walsh’s THE BIG TRAIL (US) and David Cronenberg’s CRASH (Canada/UK)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm (BIG TRAIL) and Thursday, 9:45pm (CRASH)

An experiment in widescreen cinema, THE BIG TRAIL(1930, 122 min, 35mm) is a showcase of Raoul Walsh’s genius for the carnal, the action-packed melodrama. John Wayne stars in this barely plotted adventure, leading a group of settlers across the Oregon Trail, tracking a group of murderers, and wooing a mostly offended but predictably seducable woman on the wagon train. I say ‘barely plotted’ because the film rapidly seems to lose interest in its characters, using them as opportunities to play with the vastness of its 70mm aspect ratio. Walsh’s best films (THE BOWERY, MANPOWER, PURSUED) tend to be driven by society’s need to reject male rage, and this is no exception. Indeed, it takes the theme to its limits in a way, exploring an unforgiving, inhuman space of dust and terrain against which the mere humans are figures of weariness, inadequacy, and futility.  The men in this film rage, but as they rage against one another—revenging slights, swindling comrades, assassinating one another—the landscape surrounds them, dwarfs them, shows the insignificance of their arguments. The world being penetrated, colonized, is one that not only does not welcome people but one for which the presence of people is irrelevant.  The wind will continue to blow. The chasms widen. The rivers flush to sea.  It is a vision of technological hubris: in our quest to ‘tame’ the wilderness through our machinery (the wagon, the crane, the firearm) we end up only domesticating ourselves. It is an elegiac, meditative film (an outlier for Walsh!) that mourns the loss of uninhabited land. While THE BIG TRAIL imagines a world indifferent to us, CRASH (1996, 100 min, 35mm) subjects us to a world in which we have become superfluous, in which people long for the cool, brutal purity of the machine. Largely a five-person piece, Cronenberg’s film drives characters played by James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, and Ronanna Arquette into increasingly disturbing variations on a theme that equates automotive collision with orgasm. This is an apocalyptic film, not in the weak sense of a film that depicts an end of the world, but in a much stronger sense: CRASH is a fantasy that aims to discover what it means to exist within a world we have engineered to be uninhabitable by humans. Radically evacuated of interiority, the central characters of Cronenberg’s film are maneuvered as precisely and dispassionately as chassis of show cars: all gleam, all flawless exterior, but nothing underneath the skin. When first released, CRASH was acclaimed by a certain subset of the critical establishment, but also decried as just a half-step away from pornography. Nothing could be further from the case: in comparison to other entries in the curiously long list of people-wanting-to-fuck-cars films, this is almost the least erotic ever made. (Even Mater from Pixar’s CARS franchise is more erotically charged than the loveless, desperate couplings on display here.) Where Walsh’s real subject matter is the land, with the people on it at best interlopers, Cronenberg’s passion is the machine, with the humans driving it mere vestigial organs in a new flesh of chrome and steel, speed and gasoline. When the ground has been turned to freeways, when the air is but exhaust, when all that is left is internal combustion, concrete, and gears, Cronenberg seems to be saying, the only thing for us remaining humans to do is fuck ourselves to death. Perhaps the greatest film by the world’s best living narrative filmmaker. THE BIG TRAIL screens as part of the Raoul Walsh: Adventures in Filmmaking series, and CRASH screens as part of the Lust & Intrigue: Erotic Thrillers series. [Kian Bergstrom]

Michael Powell's BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE (West Germany)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 12pm

A cinematic exile in the wake of his initially derided, now adored post-Pressburger masterpiece PEEPING TOM, erstwhile British national treasure Michael Powell sought refuge in West German television for an adaptation of Béla Bartók's only opera. Recently unearthed by the director’s widow (famous in her own right as Martin Scorsese’s editor) Thelma Schoonmaker, this much-rumored curiosity makes a rare appearance this weekend. At once wildly expressionist and starkly minimalist, Powell’s 60-minute descent into the psychosexual abyss consists entirely of Bluebeard (producer/star Norman Foster) revealing a series of increasingly dark secrets to his new bride (Ana Raquel Satre) on an unsubtitled tour of his castle, represented by heavily geled, flagrantly unrealistic sets. Despite the outré conceit, Powell isn’t exactly on unfamiliar ground: TALES OF HOFFMAN is the major antecedent in his oeuvre for this level of expressionistic chutzpah, and the sparse translation (by Powell’s design) recalls the wordless centerpiece of THE RED SHOES. Though downscaled to the size of a school play compared to the Archers' heyday, Hein Heckroth's otherworldly production design carries even more weight than in those earlier touchstones, and Powell’s visual direction is characteristically precise. More of a footnote than a victory lap, BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE is nonetheless essential viewing for anyone with an interest in Powell's work. Presented in partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (1964, 60 min, DCP Digital) [Mike King]

Tsui Hark's ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA (Hong Kong)

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

From its opening sequences, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA sets a standard not only for the wuxia genre but for all period-set action films to follow. It demonstrates extraordinary set pieces with its visually stunning credit sequence depicting the protagonist, Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung (a career defining performance by Jet Li), training his militia in martial arts on the beach, the landscape presenting a stunning backdrop for the choreography. Set in Foshan in the late 19th-century Qing Dynasty, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA thematically focuses on Westernization, not just politically, but culturally. Director Tsui Hark uses objects, like technology and weapons, and especially costuming—in one fight sequence, Wong sports a boater hat and sunglasses—to humorously and effectively emphasize these tensions at the center of the film; the clothes worn, as well as changes in personal fashion are key plot points and political and cultural statements by characters throughout the film. The oppressive intrusion of Western politics and culture is also addressed throughout the film as a larger global issue, including human trafficking and labor. At one point Wong speaks to a man who's returned from working in America, detailing the horrible labor conditions and discrimination of the Chinese overseas; this also provides a historical connection to the first film to don the oft-used title format: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. A martial artist and physician of traditional medicine, Wong himself becomes the symbol of Chinese sovereignty, culture, and identity as he and his followers fight against the Western imperialist influence in Foshan and grapple with impending modernity. Not surprisingly, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA's incredible fight scenes are ultimately what stand out, and are also the most demonstrative of the film's distinctive fluid and kinetic oscillation between tone and genres: kung-fu, comedy, melodrama, romance. It's a lot for one film, but with Tsui's masterful use of costumes, set pieces, and props, cleverly combined with memorable action sequences and clever camerawork and movement—including some precisely placed slow motion shots—ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA truly earns the descriptor of "epic." Screening as part of the “Martial” Arts series. (1991, 134 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Ousmane Sembène’s XALA (Senegal)

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

One of the most punk rock movies ever made, XALA can kick the ass of pretty much any satire not directed by Paul Verhoeven since the end of the Cold War. Its anger is righteous, persuasive, and direct; like many a great punk recording, its power is heightened, not diminished, by its unadorned aesthetic, which makes the message feel unpretentious and true. That Sembène clearly drew inspiration from folklore gives his anger a timeless quality as well, as if he were summoning forces from the past to strengthen his curse on the present. The main character of XALA is also the villain of the story, which is a deliciously protracted saga of his downfall and humiliation. A stand-in for profiteering post-colonial politicians all over Africa, El Hadji Abdoukader Beye is a money-grubbing businessman who has secured a position in Senegal’s new government. By the time the story begins, he and his fellow cabinet members have received untold sums in bribes from French elites in exchange for allowing European business interests to continue calling the shots in Senegal. El Hadji’s lifestyle is as ostentatious as his corruption, and he revels in both. In a characteristic early scene, he callously passes a group of homeless people outside his office, tosses a handful of coins at them, then stays just long enough to watch them fight over the pittance. The film takes a turn on the night of El Hadji’s marriage to his third wife, when he discovers that someone has cursed him with xala, a Wolof term meaning temporary impotence. The ensuing narrative follows our protagonist’s increasingly desperate efforts to revoke the curse; El Hadji becomes so obsessed with curing his impotence, in fact, that he doesn’t realize he’s under investigation for his crimes or that his marriages are falling apart. All this unfolds in a cheerful tone and bright colors, as though there were nothing more wonderful than watching this piece of shit get what’s coming to him. It’s worth noting that XALA has a hero as well as a villain, but per the radical cinematic tradition to which Sembène belongs, that hero is not an individual but rather the collective will of the People. Sembène personifies this through a variety of lovingly observed supporting characters, from El Hadji’s fed-up wives and kids to the beggars he encounters all over Dakar. Appropriately, it is the People who get to have XALA’s last word—or, rather, its final, unforgettable sounds. Screening as part of the Pan-African Cinema series. (1975, 123 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Mojo Lorwin and Lee Breuer’s MOI-MÊME (France/US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 6pm

Mabou Mines is a renowned theatre collective based in New York that for more than 50 years has created avant-garde works based on the precepts and methods of the Berliner Ensemble, the Living Theater, and Jerzy Grotowski, all of which they studied firsthand in Europe during the 1960s. While in Paris, the troupe’s cofounder, Lee Breuer, directed a short, experimental film featuring future Mabou Mines collaborators that weaved an improvised narrative with footage of the student protests that rocked the City of Light in 1968. No sound was recorded, and the film was never finished. In the early 2020s, Mojo Lorwin, Breuer’s son and a former Cine-File contributor, took the black-and-white footage, wrote a script, hired a cast, and fashioned a 65-minute feature that melded old images with new dialogue to examine the creative process. Twelve-year-old Kevin (Kevin Mathewson) dreams of making a film about himself, “Moi-Même” (“Me” or “Myself”). We see his imagined film as his alter ego (Patrick Martin) goes through a plot that involves a girlfriend, some goons, a sleazy producer, and small group of compatriots. He worries about having enough money and ends up stealing cans of film to shoot his film. MOI-MÊME has echoes of Godard’s obsession with American gangster films—indeed, French director makes a cameo appearance here. MOI-MÊME displays a wry sense of humor and a sophistication that belies its DIY look. The doubling effect of the two Kevins is well handled and develops a rhythm I found quite pleasing. Hats off to Mr. Lorwin for bringing this charming blast from the past back to life. Screening as part of the Blow-Up Arthouse Film Festival, a three-hour program of short experimental films. (1968/2024, 65 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Brady Corbet's THE BRUTALIST (US/UK/Hungary)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Poised high atop the crest of a wave of giddy anticipation and propelled onwards by a swell of rave festival reports, a clean sweep of major awards at the Golden Globes, as well as the most eyebrow-raising trailer in recent memory, THE BRUTALIST is finally set to come crashing into a theater near you, clocking in at a whopping thirteen reels of 70mm film stock. Seven years in the making, three and a half hours in length (featuring an intermission, to boot), shot on an improbable budget of less than ten million dollars, and boasting a sprawling narrative that spans more than three decades of American history, this is a rare feat of megalithic classical ambition: a capital "A" Art film, a capital "E" Event film, something like a capital "F" Film per its own maddening sense of self-assurance and exaggerated scope of vision. It is difficult not to evoke THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007) and THE MASTER (2012), Paul Thomas Anderson's black-hearted oil rush parable and his mystifying examination of quackery and spiritual devastation in post-war America, respectively, in the course of evaluating Corbet's latest. Those kindred American epics—one, an authentic western epic, the other, a crass parody of one—represent not only the clearest antecedent for THE BRUTALIST in terms of their sweeping scale and material fetishism, but also the raw material from which the film is forged, as Corbet has nimbly synthesized the two modes of period filmmaking into a final product that is alternately dingy and lavish; crude and grandiloquent; didactic and frustratingly ambiguous. Adrien Brody stars as László Tóth, a formerly-renowned Hungarian-Jewish architect who, in a subversive visual riff on László Nemes' SON OF SAUL (2014), survives the horrors of the Holocaust and washes ashore in New York in the film's opening minutes. While he waits for his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), to secure her immigration papers, he plans on supporting himself working for a distant cousin's furniture store in Pennsylvania. Through several accidents of fate, his life will soon be dominated by his arduous relationship with a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce) who recognizes Tóth's talent and recruits him to design a monumental city center, one whose elegant Brutalist design sensibility will gradually be disfigured by the competing demands of the local township and the patron himself, who demand in turn that the building fulfill the function of library, church, gymnasium, and town hall simultaneously. An aspiring enfant terrible, or at the least a burgeoning provocateur (lest we forget that Corbet's previous film VOX LUX [2018] opens with the Columbine massacre and breezes through the events of September 11 in rapid succession), Brady Corbet has produced in THE BRUTALIST a film that will likely generate white-hot discourse about its precise political intentions. Against the more conventional backdrop of an immigrant being led to the desert in search of the always-illusory American Dream, the film, much like Jonathan Glazer's recent THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023), examines the ideological foundation—the raw historical material—that underpins Zionism and informed the creation of the Jewish state, reflecting on the immense trauma of wayward survivors of the Shoah and centering a harsh dilemma: endure relentless othering abroad and toil under the tyranny of American capitalist enterprise, or attempt a rebellion against history itself by heeding the call of a fledgling Israel. (2024, 215 min, 70mm) [David Whitehouse]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Raul Ruiz's THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR (France)

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

As James Monaco put it, Raul Ruiz, who died in 2011, provided "more intellectual fun and artistic experimentation, shot for shot, than any filmmaker since Jean-Luc Godard." He was "a poet of fantastic images whose films slip effortlessly from reality to imagination and back again... A manipulator of wild, intellectual games" and labyrinthine narratives. As a boy who loved Lewis Carroll, this all connects with me. The Film Society of the Lincoln Center's capsule for THREE CROWNS gives us the situation ("an encounter between a student who has just committed a brutal murder and a drunken sailor") and the setting ("brothels and Latin American ports" which "Ruiz and master cinematographer Sacha Vierny fashioned out of real locations in Paris and Portugal using a series of ingenious optical effects.") THREE CROWNS was the first Ruiz film to enjoy relatively wide international exposure, though Jonathan Rosenbaum feels it may have made "a less than ideal introduction to Ruiz's work for viewers on this side of the Atlantic," in that it is "difficult to absorb without any understanding of Ruiz as a multifaceted phenomenon." However, he praises "the film's dazzling employment of wide-angle, deep-focus color photography (intermittently suggesting a comic book version of Welles) and many arresting and disturbing surrealist conceits." Who, then, was Ruiz? An artist who, according to Tony Pipolo, had an unmatched "passion for and knowledge of international literature," he fled his native Chile during the fascist coup against Salvador Allende in 1973, living in exile in Paris ever after. According to Adam Thirlwell, his career "can be understood as a sustained resistance, a manic guerrilla operation, against two forms of power: the violence of Pinochet’s dictatorship, and the control on conventional movie-making exerted by Hollywood." For Rosenbaum, his films defy classification, except in their unpredictability and their sense of "pure stylistic play." They are "closet comedies bent on undercutting" virtually all forms of solemnity. (Monaco notes his B-movie influence and his refusal to differentiate between "high" and "low" art.) For Dave Kehr, Ruiz was "the only real maker of fantasy films I know of," meaning his work is fantastic on the level of form, not just content. The "interpenetration of form and content—this endless circulation, really, of form into story into form into story—is the basis of Ruiz's cinema," creating "beautiful blurrings of sense" in which Ruiz's system of imagining "devours" the system of language, with images finally "free to signify everything and nothing." Finally, David Thomson feels "you could have a terrific time with" THREE CROWNS, adding that "especially if you're American, Ruiz is one of those figures you owe it to yourself to sample, to become obsessed with, for all the wonderful non-American ways he knows of holding the screen and turning your passing involvement into a critical model of what it is to be you." Screening as part of the Love Torn in a Dream: The Illusory Odysseys of Raúl Ruiz series. (1983, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Scott Pfeiffer]

Eugenio Martín’s THE FOURTH VICTIM (Spain/Italy)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

Eugenio Martín’s THE FOURTH VICTIM is an elegant anomaly—a giallo without the usual hallmarks of the genre. It sidesteps lurid bloodshed, black-gloved killers, and gratuitous nudity, opting instead for a noir-inspired detachment. Less concerned with who did the killing, it delves into why its characters behave as they do—a psychological chess game wrapped in murder mystery. Based on C.B. Gilford’s short story “The Sixth Mrs. Pendrake” from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, the film retains a rare literary sophistication for its genre. Martín uses the basic premise—a man acquitted of killing three wives is pursued by a beguiling blonde with ulterior motives—as a springboard to explore manipulation, deceit, and obsession. Carroll Baker shines as Julie Spencer, the enigmatic femme fatale who seduces Arthur Anderson (Michael Craig), a widower notorious for his wives’ suspicious deaths. From the wordless opening sequence, Martín sets a deliberate rhythm. A wife drowns in a swimming pool, and her husband Arthur becomes the immediate suspect. Suspicion deepens as he and the housekeeper bizarrely clean and redress the body before calling the police. Guglielmo Mancori’s cinematography amplifies the psychological unease with soft shadows and muted tones, evoking a noir atmosphere rather than the garish violence of contemporaraneous giallo films. While Bava and Argento revel in bold, bloody strokes, Martín’s palette is subdued but brimming with tension. The mystery unfolds through character dynamics rather than action. Arthur, acquitted thanks to the housekeeper’s dubious testimony, resumes his life with unsettling ease—until he meets Julie, a woman unnervingly eager to step into his cursed world. Julie, far from a helpless victim, is played by Baker with a captivating mix of fragility and menace. She dominates every scene, leaving both Arthur and the audience unsure if she might be the real threat. Unlike traditional giallo films, THE FOURTH VICTIM avoids genre indulgences. There’s no trail of J&B whiskey bottles, no masked killer, no elaborate murders, and no parade of red herrings. Instead, Martín focuses on the emotional violence simmering between Julie and Arthur. The central tension isn’t about identifying a killer but unraveling the characters’ peculiar motivations. Each keeps the other—and the viewer—off balance. Piero Umiliani’s restrained score complements the film’s understated aesthetic. Best known for his whimsical hit “Mahna Mahna” (popularized by the Muppets), Umiliani here crafts a spare, evocative soundtrack that underscores the psychological games without overwhelming the narrative. THE FOURTH VICTIM may frustrate viewers seeking the visceral thrills of DEEP RED (1975) or BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964). Its measured pacing and lack of overt violence place it closer to Hitchcockian suspense than giallo excess. Martín borrows the narrative structure of the genre but strips away its sensationalist or sleazy flourishes. If Hitchcock taught us suspense lies in waiting, Martín stretches that principle, trading the catharsis of revelation for the disquiet of uncertainty. Compared to its peers, the film is subdued. Where Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE pulsates with energy and stylized violence, Martín’s work focuses on mood and psychology. Its spirit aligns more with Hitchcock’s REBECCA (1940) than Bava’s technicolor savagery in A BAY OF BLOOD (1971). Yet for all its restraint, THE FOURTH VICTIM lingers, offering a mystery that works through suggestion rather than spectacle. At its core, the film poses a deceptively simple question: can two people, both suspected of killing their spouses, truly trust each other? Like its characters, THE FOURTH VICTIM refuses to reveal everything, leaving audiences with questions that resonate long after the credits roll. Screening as part of the January Giallo 2025 series. (1971, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Pedro Almodóvar’s THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (Spain/US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Pedro Almodóvar has cited Ingmar Bergman’s chamber dramas as primary influences on THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, his first feature film in English, and the connection to those touchstones could not be plainer. Like those films, it features few characters and concentrates with unwavering intensity on the themes of death and identity; it’s also, like many of Bergman’s films, an actors’ showcase. Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, and (to a lesser extent) John Turturro are called upon to channel complicated, even painful emotions, and because there’s little to distract from their performances, one really gets to savor their efforts. But while Almodóvar may admire the Swedish master, he seems constitutionally incapable of making a film as cold as PERSONA (1966) or CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972). THE ROOM NEXT DOOR still feels like the work of the director of THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995) or ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999): the colors, whether expressed through Bina Daigeler’s costumes or Inbal Weinberg’s production design, are vibrant and varied; the film regards sex as part of life and thus something to be enjoyed, like cooking or fashion; and Almodóvar inspires warm, grateful feelings about friendship. Indeed, camaraderie is often presented as the ultimate reason for living in the Spanish master’s films; in THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, he argues that it is a necessary part of dying as well. Swinton plays a former war correspondent who’s dying of stage III cervical cancer; Moore plays the novelist friend whom she turns to when she wants assistance ending her life. Almodóvar introduces the premise with hardly any exposition—however quietly, the film plunges us into characters’ experience, refusing to talk around Swinton’s impending death. There’s a fascinating narrative digression into Swinton’s estranged grown daughter and her memories of her daughter’s father, but this too feeds into the larger concern of the character’s preparation for dying. Moore’s character is just as important, as she has to process her friend’s decision and stand as a totem of emotional support; Almodóvar gives her as much, if not more, screen time than Swinton, balancing the theme of death with an equally important theme of living. There’s another, more urgent theme to THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, and it’s given voice eloquently by Turturro, who plays Moore’s climate activist friend and former lover—that is, the foreseeable decline and possible end of the human race due to climate change. Almodóvar intertwines the considerations of humankind’s collective suicide with the central narrative of Swinton’s suicide, arguing that our species as a whole might learn something from how her character approaches death: without fear and emboldened by the love of others. (2024, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Francis Ford Coppola's THE GODFATHER CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 6pm-ish

As he did with the unfairly maligned THE COTTON CLUB, auteur/movie-brat/winemaker Francis Ford Coppola has hit the editing room, re-worked another dogged-on jewel of his canon, THE GODFATHER PART III, and retitled it MARIO PUZO’S THE GODFATHER CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE. THE COTTON CLUB was initially uneven due to studio-head (and Las Vegas mob) tinkering, which removed the majority of the Black characters’ storylines (on the grounds that they made the movie “too muddled”), along with many of the enrapturing musical numbers. On the other hand, the problems of THE GODFATHER PART III were the result of slight re-structuring, rather than re-making. There are some who claim that GODFATHER PART III was great the way it was, but that never stopped the masses from parroting a now basic quip that went something to the tune of, “The first two are great but the third… yikes.” Maybe for this reason did Francis Coppola feel it was time to try to wrest PART III out of the mires of failure. That’s admirable, but here's the thing: the new version is almost the same movie. THE COTTON CLUB benefitted from re-editing, with crucial scenes restored that effectively changed the experience. GODFATHER CODA (much like Coppola buddy Brian De Palma’s recent, overlooked RAISING CAIN re-cut) simply restructures the original film, with a slightly tweaked ending and a new opening scene (pulled from about 30 minutes into the original movie) involving Michael Corleone’s “legitimate” business with the Vatican. The re-positioning of the scene underscores the film’s theme of how corruption finds ways to transform and mutate. Case in point: Michael’s teen daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) is put in charge of the “legitimate” wing of the organization. I suppose no one wanted to see THE GODFATHER’s characters in a late '80s setting. They also might not have been ready for Michael’s new haircut, softened demeanor, or his diabetic scene with a cardinal. But could there be a more fitting destination for Michael Corleone? Michael failed where his father succeeded—namely, in maintaining his family despite his criminal behavior. Michael murdered his brother Fredo, lost the love of his wife Kay and the respect of his son Tony, and has turned to his hot-headed, mildly psychotic nephew Vincent (Andy Garcia), Sonny's bastard son, to help maintain his empire. Where, in the past, the family’s deals were conducted “man to man,” now everything happens through lawyers, puppet bosses, and foundations—things Vito Corleone despised. GODFATHER PART III moves away from the rich character development of the first two installments to the complexity of systems the characters inhabit. If much of the film feels procedural up until the show-stopping opera house climax, that may be by design; GODFATHER PART III is a funerary waltz to the slow fate that Michael haphazardly called upon himself and his family. So what exactly has kept its reputation buried all these years? Was it Sofia Coppola’s performance, which underwent intense, unwarranted scrutiny from the press? Was it Andy Garcia’s? Was it due to the near-simultaneous release of GOODFELLAS, a film whose exhilarating energy contrasts heavily with GODFATHER PART III’s slowed rhythm and pensive attitude? Could it be because Coppola had already messed with the beloved series before? (The mashing together of all three films, THE GODFATHER LEGACY, not only served zero purpose, but severely hampered the brilliant dichotomy of character created by GODFATHER II’s generational cross-cutting.) Maybe it's because Coppola’s reputation never recovered from the “reckless auteur” branding brought on by his never-ending work on APOCALYPSE NOW, along with the mountain of debt and bad press created by ONE FROM THE HEART? GODFATHER III’s pared-down style seems tame compared with the fever dream imagery of RUMBLE FISH or the subtle camera-trickery of PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED, but it remains the rich, pensive work of a master. This new version of an already fine film provides another chance to appreciate its many strengths while shrugging off the dated criticisms surrounding it. (1990/2020, 157 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]
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Screening with Coppola’s THE GODFATHER (1972, 175 min, DCP Digital) and THE GODFATHER PART II (1974, 202 min, DCP Digital) as part of the Settle In series.

Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI (Japan)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday and Wednesday, 2:15pm

How many artists have created not only canonical works, but works whose style, structure, or theme is imitated for decades, and maybe eventually even centuries, thereafter? And how many of those artists can claim not just one but several masterpieces whose basic elements have been the schema for newer works, many of which garner the same commendation? Akira Kurosawa is indeed one of them; his work is concurrently modern and classic, deriving from personal, cultural, and artistic influences that span decades and oceans. His 1954 epic SEVEN SAMURAI is perhaps the best and most popular example of this, both within his oeuvre and the whole of Japanese cinema. At almost three and half hours long, it’s the outstretched tale of a village in sixteenth-century Japan that hires seven hungry, masterless samurai (otherwise known as ronin) to defend them against bandits. Like many canonical works, its story is relatively elementary, and it’s since been remade outright (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN in both 1960 and 2016) and less obviously so (a theory about the film’s influence on Disney’s A BUG’S LIFE went viral a few years back). It’s also fiercely entertaining in a way that might remind viewers just how hard it is to achieve that nebulous goal—to amuse as well as to awe. It may be for this reason that it’s referred to as being Kurosawa’s most “Americanized” film, though it could likewise be considered his gift to the West. (1954, 207 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]

Jeremy Saulnier's GREEN ROOM (US)

FACETS Cinema – Friday, 9:45pm

Director Jeremy Saulnier's follow up to 2013's BLUE RUIN is an audacious new thriller that draws inspiration from SID AND NANCY and AMERICAN HISTORY X. A struggling punk band books a show at a backwoods bar after which they witness a murder and fight to survive against a group of Neo-Nazis. Patrick Stewart's Darcy, the bar/concert venue owner, is ruthless and methodical, akin to Brian Cranston's Heisenberg in BREAKING BAD. Saulnier's mise-en-scene is gritty, dirty, and claustrophobic. Characters hang along the peripheries of the frame, constantly looking for a way to escape their "nightmare" situation. Saulnier's narrative plays out like a scuba diving expedition: escape attempt excursions that end unsuccessfully, forcing a return to the haven of the green room for "air." The film is self-aware and never succumbs to its baser undertones as a horror movie. Instead, it eases some of the razor-thin tension with tongue in cheek dialogue punctuated by punk rock jargon and music references. The prevalent extreme violence is showcased in a way that only Alex DeLarge in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE could approve of. GREEN ROOM doesn't pretend to make any profound statements; rather it embarks on a thrilling ride that's entertaining and taut throughout. Screening as part of the new Hollywood Babylon series, with the fresh post-punk stylings of Chicago’s Early Country at 9pm before the screening. (2016, 94 min, Unconfirmed Format) [Kyle Cubr]

Johan Grimonprez’s SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Belgium/France/Documentary)

FACETS Cinema – Saturday, 7:30pm and Sunday, 3:30pm

If you don’t know about the CIA’s involvement in the overthrow of democratically elected Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1960, SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT offers an essential history lesson; and befitting a movie with soundtrack in the title, the music is killer as well. That’s because, in addition to being about geopolitics, SOUNDTRACK covers one of the most robust periods in jazz history, touching on the bebop and free jazz movements through such figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus. These artists, along with Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong, were also unwitting actors in the Cold War, it turns out. Drawing on impeccably documented research, SOUNDTRACK explains how their music was used to sell American culture to people around the world (particularly behind the Iron Curtain) and how “goodwill concerts” in African nations were often fronts for espionage activity organized by the CIA. Director Johan Grimonprez cuts between footage of various jazz giants and vintage documentary material of the United Nations, the Congo, and other crucial sites in the short history of the Pan-African movement, culminating with Lumumba’s assassination; in doing so, he conveys how far-reaching the Cold War was while creating an engaging sense of counterpoint between political and artistic histories. The musicians profiled here represented the vanguard of Black creative expression, while some of the other subjects (Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X) represented the vanguard of Black political thought; they’re united by the fact that the CIA undermined them all. Grimonprez highlights this historical obscenity by relating the excitement around both jazz and revolutionary Black political movements in the late 1950s, which inspired people to believe in alternatives to white supremacy in both culture and third world politics. Ultimately, the film is about how different the world seemed when these alternatives were being seriously considered and the dominance of Western corporate interests over global affairs wasn’t so depressingly certain. (2024, 150 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

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

FACETS Cinema – Friday, 7pm and Saturday, 3pm

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]

Wim Wenders' PARIS, TEXAS (West Germany/France/US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm and Saturday, 3pm

One of the most revealing pieces of dialogue in PARIS, TEXAS occurs when, following a screening of an old family movie, the eight-year-old Hunter is getting ready for bed. Hunter had noticed the way his father Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), who’s just returned from an unexplained four-year estrangement, watched the footage of his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who’s been absent for the same length of time. The boy explains to his adopted mother that he believes Travis still loves Jane. “But that’s not her,” he pointedly adds. “That’s only her in a movie.” A beat, as a cheeky smile forms across his face. “A long time ago. In a galaxy far, far away.” What begins as a remarkably lucid insight about the illusion of the cinematic image, and about the fantasies on which it hinges, can’t help but be capped off by a quote that then reinforces those very illusions. This is PARIS, TEXAS in a nutshell: a world of willful, even blithe mirages and imagos, in which all understanding of other people is mediated by the idealized myths of mass culture. Wenders is not above speaking the language of these myths, even as he meticulously dismantles them. Written by the all-American Sam Shepard and L. M. Kit Carson, the film radiates a love for the aesthetic and narrative iconography of the American West, from the wide-open tableaux of towering mesas and endless road to Travis’ rugged, archetypal masculine loner, whose quest to rescue a woman and tenuous attempts to reintegrate into society remix that of Ethan Edwards in THE SEARCHERS. Like so many other émigré artists ensorcelled and perturbed by the U.S., including compatriots like Douglas Sirk, Wenders doesn’t merely indulge in the grammar of Americana but defamiliarizes it to reveal, from an outsider’s critical distance, how truly melancholy, strange, and even menacing it can be. From Wenders’ vantage (and from the extraordinary camera of Robby Müller, who really hits the patriotic reds and blues copiously supplied by art director Kate Altman and costume designer Birgitta Bjerke), the West is no longer a grand frontier of imperialist expansion but a desiccated strip of roadside advertisements, diners, and motels. Not only is our would-be hero Travis a Man With No Name, he’s practically a Man With No Self, an icon emptied of past and presence and purpose, set to roam perpetually in the desert to which he’s withdrawn himself. He clings desperately to the idée-fixe of a measly plot of land he’s bought in Paris, which he and his parents wished was in France. Unfortunately, it’s really just in this godforsaken Southwestern dust bowl, and like Jane in that family movie, it’s nothing but an image. Travis’ illusions, and his dawning understanding of his need to atone for all the damage they’ve caused, finally lead to PARIS, TEXAS’ famous peep-show scenes, where mirrors and screens—those quintessential analogs of the cinema apparatus—give way, ironically, to piercing disillusions. In Wenders’ ambivalent but heartfelt ode to Americas dreamed and (uncertainly) lived, such revelations are a bittersweet matter of course. It’s what you do with them that counts. Screening as part of the Inner Voyages series. (1984, 145 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

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, 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
FACETS Cinema – Saturday, 5pm and Sunday, 1pm

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]

Danny DeVito's MATILDA (US)

Davis Theater – Sunday, 1pm

Children’s literature is often focused on abandonment—a child who's a missing parent or even orphaned completely, on one’s own or placed in the care of heartless guardians. Roald Dahl’s Matilda is rather about the struggle of dealing with selfish and incompetent parents. In his adaptation, Danny DeVito plays Mr. Wormwood, Matilda’s scheming father. He also provides a voiceover throughout the film as an omniscient narrator. It may seem unnecessary, but in a children’s film about child abuse, DeVito’s dual presence provides a balance to the horrors that Matilda (Mara Wilson) faces every day. He also provides an off-kilter cinematic world, with saturated bright colors and exaggerated camera angles and close-ups to emphasize a child’s perspective. It’s not a storybook, but the style is exaggerated just enough to steady the implications of real horror the characters face. Born to the Wormwoods (Rhea Perlman plays her mother, in stupendously kitschy costumes and makeup), Matilda learns to take care of herself at a very young age, her intellect allowing her to manage on her own—and develop telekinetic powers. She also finds comfort in books, escaping into the fictional worlds they provide. She finally gets her wish of going to school and is there provided some much-needed comfort from her sweet teacher, Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz); however, she continues to be mistreated there, now by the terrifying principal Miss Trunchbull who actively hates children. Played with impressive unhingedness by Pam Ferris, Trunchbull is the true villain of the film. While the Wormwoods are cruel, they rarely come off as truly threatening, providing much of the comedy of the film. Trunchbull gets in some hilarious one-liners, but she is an unambiguously violent character. Again, MATILDA uses exaggeration here to counteract any realistic violence, but the horror of angry and hateful adults is ever present. Fortunately, MATILDA is ultimately a story of resilience, friendship, and the profound effect of small and big kindnesses alike. Screening as part of the Coming of Age series. (1996, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Masaaki Yuasa’s 2004 film MIND GAME (103 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday, 7pm, as part of the World of Animation series. 

Christopher Webster’s 1993 film THE CHILL FACTOR (86 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series. 

Fantastic Fest presents Jack Henry Robbins’ 2019 film VHYES (72 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 7pm.

Adam Rehmeier’s 2020 film DINNER IN AMERICA (106 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.

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

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Digging Deeper Into Movies with Nick Davis looks at “Great Things in Small Packages” on Saturday, 11am, at the Alliance Française de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn St.). Suggested viewings are I SAW THE TV GLOW, GHOSTLIGHT, JANET PLANET, or THE PEOPLE’S JOKER, all available on major streaming services. Tickets are free. Doors open at 10:30am. Please use the Dearborn St. entrance for admission. More info here.

⚫ Davis Theater
Doc10 presents Bruce David Klein’s 2024 documentary LIZA: A TRULY TERRIFIC ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY (104 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday, 6:30pm, followed by a virtual Q&A with the director. 

Oscarbate presents Trust Fall on Thursday, 8:30pm, where the audience will put their implicit and unwavering trust in the Oscarbate Film Collective to safely deliver outstanding surprise films for each screening. This month’s film is largely unknown, but a bonafide crowd-pleaser with a must-see-it-to-believe-it cast and directed by a notable genre pioneer. More info on all screenings here.  

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Sean Baker’s 2024 film ANORA (139 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at 6pm and Sunday at 3pm.

David Fincher’s 2011 film THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (158 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 9pm, as part of the Board Picks series. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Maura Delpero’s 2024 film VERMIGLIO (119 min, DCP Digital) continues screening. See Venue website for showtimes. 

Mystery Movie Monday takes place Monday at 6pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Media Burn Archive (Virtual)
Join Media Burn Archive on Thursday at 6pm CST for a virtual screening and discussion with artist Nina Sobell, tracing her groundbreaking BrainWave Drawing video installations throughout her career, moderated by art historian Cristina Albu. More info here.

CINE-LIST: January 10, 2025 - January 16, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Mike King, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Scott Pfeiffer, David Whitehouse