:: FRIDAY, JANUARY 24 - THURSDAY, JANUARY 30 ::

🎉 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 ZOO (US/Documentary)
Friday, 8:15pm
The cinema of Frederick Wiseman is invariably anthropocentric, filled with the pleasures of watching and learning about people. It’s only fitting, then, that a film of his called ZOO would largely focus on humans. Wiseman often figures them in parallel to the animals in the Miami Zoo where he films, observing through his camera the assortment of visitors observing, with their own cameras, the creatures on display. A lesser filmmaker might have cynically driven this analogy into the ground, but Wiseman only complicates it, his inductive approach revealing new layers and connections that subtly modulate our perspective. During one of those elephant “dance” shows, for instance, we become less attuned to the pachyderms than the goading chant of their trainer, which carries on eerily after the scene has ended. Wiseman lavishes loving attention on the bounty of gorgeous creatures, but his curiosity, as always, gravitates deeper and toward more unexpected subjects: amateur filmmakers disguising the tiger habitat as wilderness footage for their picture, or a tent filled with giant animatronic sea creatures, or the monorail that hovers overhead as a constant reminder of the fundamentally artificial environment of the zoo. If there is a central idea that accrues across ZOO, it is this concept of the titular institution as an uncannily synthetic space, one designed for the human species to assert its dominion over the animal kingdom. Wiseman emphasizes this notion by showing, in frequently graphic detail, the work of the veterinarians and zoo staff, who don’t only care for the animals but intervene, Godlike, into their life cycles. We see vets attempting and failing to revive a stillborn rhino, then eviscerating it for its organs and incinerating its remains. Dead chicks are fed to a Komodo dragon; a gorilla is knocked out for a physical, a dog to be neutered; alligator eggs are incubated by lab technicians; and a feral pitbull is hunted and killed after it slaughters some deer. For Wiseman, death is as integral to the zoo as life, but it’s something his human subjects are curiously above, as if their position at the top of the food chain makes them impervious to the animal mortality they deal with and facilitate each day. ZOO builds up an existential chill recalling nothing so much as Peter Greenaway’s A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS (1985), and it comes to a head during a finale set at an evening gala. As the zoo’s members and donors line up at the buffet, the irony that meat is on the menu comes as no surprise. (1993, 130 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Frederick Wiseman’s NEAR DEATH (US/Documentary)
Saturday, 11am
Legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman is famous for his thoroughness and objectivity even if he’s not quite as unimpeachable in these areas as some of his partisans claim; AT BERKELEY (2013), for instance, gave surprisingly short shrift to the title university’s professors while letting its administrators ramble on forever. NEAR DEATH, however, has both of these qualities in spades and is a monumental achievement of the documentary form. NEAR DEATH takes as its subject the medical intensive care unit of Boston’s Beth Israel hospital but, unlike many of Wiseman’s most well-known films, does not focus on the organizational/bureaucratic aspects of the hospital as “institution” (Wiseman already made that film with 1970’s HOSPITAL). Instead, the narrow and immersive focus here is, as the title implies, on the human dynamics between terminally ill patients, their loved ones, and the doctors and nurses who care for them. While the epic length might seem daunting to those unfamiliar with Wiseman’s work, the running time is not only justified but ends up feeling practically required by the subject matter, and the experience of watching the film is as easy as breathing (Errol Morris has even said that he thinks it is too short). Wiseman presents the ICU as a kind of self-enclosed world and structures the film around lengthy passages devoted primarily to three different intubated patients, all of whom are experiencing various degrees of internal organ failure. These interior scenes are occasionally punctuated by shots of the mundane world outside—cars in traffic, a Citgo gas station sign—that only serve to heighten the hermetic, sealed-off quality of the ICU. Wiseman’s distanced, observational camera is aided by the Academy aspect ratio and grainy, black-and-white film stock, both of which reduce the amount of visual information available to the viewer—purifying the images and allowing one to focus on what’s most important: Wiseman’s profound exploration of ethical questions (chiefly, to what extent is it worth keeping someone alive who has no quality of life left?) as well as the emotions swirling around the circumstances of the dying patients, an approach that ends up feeling exhaustive. Seemingly every perspective on the sometimes-harrowing subject is covered and the middle third of the film is taken up by a particularly gripping series of scenes where two doctors have differing interpretations of whether an elderly female stroke victim who has difficulty communicating is telling them that she does or does not want to be resuscitated. The most emotional scenes, however, are saved for last, as the grieving wife of a man suffering from lung disease has a couple of long conversations with one Dr. Taylor, a man so compassionate and patient that he will single-handedly increase your respect for the medical profession. (1989, 358 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Glover Smith]
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Frederick Wiseman’s HIGH SCHOOL (US/Documentary)
Saturday, 5:15pm
One of Frederick Wiseman’s first films, HIGH SCHOOL is titled the way so many of his works would go on to be titled, evoking a solitary object turned under the light and offered as an eternal form that will inevitably collapse into its own cinematic shadow. So, this is high school, a microcosm at once particular—a relatively conservative Pennsylvania public school that can just barely hear the trumpets of global student uprising through its white brick walls—and universal—that Foucauldian institution where subjectivity is deftly hammered into shape, resembling the discursive regulation of social space that Wiseman explored in his other early films. This 1968 documentary about Philadelphia's Northeast High School unfolds as day-in-the-life vignettes that narratively calcify one on top of another and proceed mostly in close-up, from class to class, from literature and typing to gym and home economics. Beginning with HIGH SCHOOL’s opening scenes, Wiseman adheres to an ironic dialectic structure that can’t help but admit to the film’s allegory, its “reality fiction” to use the filmmaker’s own turn of phrase. A teacher’s patronizing promotion of the school bulletin as potentially life-altering literature is succeeded by shots of a Spanish class practicing their pronunciation of the phrase un filósofo existencialista. A parent-teacher conference is charged by parents’ heated ethical pleas against their daughter’s failing marks, while a dean’s reprimand over a disputed incident assigns a student convoluted agency with the cynical aim to “establish that you can be a man and you can take orders.” Sex education elaborates shifting divisions of labor and sexual technique for the boys, birth control regimens and STD biology lessons for the girls. Teachers’ warmth and humor in these interactions reveal ideological impartment to be a process of soothing naturalization. Wiseman is focused on the school’s power imbalanced dyads caught up in exacting moments of self-assured authority, where unique threads of empathy at times pull loose. In numerous scenes, teachers and administrators perform their torn-ness between supporting students’ self-actualization and defending institutional norms, foregrounding very human negotiations against a backdrop of rote jurisprudence. Between its various disciplinary traumas, HIGH SCHOOL inserts the tender texture of read-aloud classroom atmospheres. In the middle of the film, a young teacher quotes at length from Simon & Garfunkel’s 1966 song "The Dangling Conversation" before playing the tape for her class. The saccharine swell fills the room: “...In the dangling conversation / And the superficial sighs / The borders of our lives…” Here, Wiseman cuts to students’ contemplative pen twirling and the inertia of a wristwatch, perhaps as torn as the film’s flustered administrators, at once teasing out the ironic poetry of teenage malaise and offering up the beauty of connection in the classroom. The second half of the film will go on to explore the sociopolitical and economic instruction of the school through guidance counselors’ and teachers’ pontifications on family life, work ethic, race and gender relations, as well as the labor movement. Ultimately, we trace the rebellious contours of an institutional critique drawn from within the student body, only to see it quashed by an endless stampede of adult axioms which are frequently banal and occasionally violent. (1968, 74 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Elise Schierbeek]
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Frederick Wiseman’s BALLET (US/Documentary)
Sunday, 11:30am
BALLET is one of Frederick Wiseman’s purest works of portraiture. Much of it presents the New York-based American Ballet Theatre in rehearsal or performance, and these sequences are veritable celebrations of the human form in motion. (In this regard, BALLET inaugurates a cycle of films that Wiseman would return to a decade and a half later with LA DANSE [2009], BOXING GYM [2010], and CRAZY HORSE [2011].)  Generally working in medium-wide shot instead of his customary close-up, Wiseman considers how people express themselves with their whole bodies, not just their faces; one comes to appreciate the athleticism as well as the artistry of ballet. Wiseman still satisfies his lifelong interest in systems and processes—it only takes about five minutes for him to cut to an administrator on the phone, trying to raise money for the company, while the rehearsal scenes situate each dance within a greater cycle of instruction, practice, and fine-tuning. Wiseman sometimes captures this entire process within individual shots, making BALLET a showcase for his late-period long-take approach. This is not just a good Wiseman movie, but also a superior example of the fine arts documentary, a subgenre that tends to undermine its own good intentions with subpar filmmaking. Wiseman’s long takes don’t just show respect for real time; they show respect for the ebb and flow of the artistic process—or, in other words, the nitty-gritty of creative work that lesser filmmakers tend to gloss over. The scenes in the administration office are wonderful too, as they reflect a sophisticated understanding of the economics of art and a refreshingly uncynical appreciation for the people who excel in this field. One administrator gets a show-stopping aria when she chews out her contact at a prominent New York venue after the venue books a Russian ballet company with a similar repertoire around the time the ABT is scheduled to perform there. The administrator’s focused, eloquent rage is priceless; ditto Wiseman’s insert shot of the two packs of cigarettes on her desk. BALLET switches gears for its final hour, when Wiseman follows the ABT on tour in Athens and Copenhagen. This section feels less rewarding than the first two-thirds, since it doesn’t follow the same dramatic pattern of wind-up and payoff—it’s really just all payoff. Still, the dances are excellent, and they gain depth from appearing after we’ve seen all the hard work that went into them. (1995, 170 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
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Frederick Wiseman’s LA COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE (US/France/Documentary)
Wednesday, 5:30pm
It’s hardly a new observation that a grand unifying mission across Fredrick Wiseman's gargantuan filmography is his funneling of various facets of life through the lens of labor. This becomes particularly notable in LA COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE, where the magisterial theater company of the title (the oldest repertory theater company in the world, still performing to this day) is uncoupled as an organization from its glamorous presentation of French classical works and instead compartmentalized into various departments of work, each with its own laborious tasks. For my money, the most illuminating passages are often the ones where no actual plays are performed, with the inner workings of theatrical production and administration bringing with them their own excitement and theatrics—from the round-the-block line of eager ticket buyers snaking through the theater lobby, which is filled with distraught customers ready to complain to the overworked box office staff, to the endless administrative meetings about the ins-and-outs of government subsidies and labor disputes with the stagehands, to the directors and repertory performers' intense dramaturgical battles about what the word “Eh” means in the context of a given scene. Wiseman additionally stuffs the film with scenes of seamstresses hand-stitching costume pieces and wigs, stage crew hoisting set pieces up into the heavens, and stage managers attentively calling performances and heeding every particular light cue and sound effect. The scenes of actual performance we do see—fragments of the French classical canon from the likes of Molière, Racine, Marivaux, and Feydeau—are delivered quite ably, with each actor honed in to the grand presentational style suited to each respective work (ranging from raucous sex comedies to dour tragedies), though the most exciting aspect is seeing the transformation in performance from rehearsal room exploration to fully designed presentation in front of an audience. These high contrasts are what makes Wiseman’s world here most worthwhile, where the audiences are privy to a polished theatrical product at night, minutes away from the glittering moonlit Seine. But then the sun rises, the glamour is gone, and the work is afoot. Here, in this realm, the real show begins. (1996, 223 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Kaye]
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Frederick Wiseman's PUBLIC HOUSING (US/Documentary)
Thursday, 6pm
Reality is the life blood of documentary filmmaking, but there are many ways to cut reality to fit a documentarian’s objectives and timeframe. Singular among documentary filmmakers is Frederick Wiseman, whose professional brief is the observation of American ecosystems. The 91-year-old director’s incredible curiosity and social conscience has led him to record, largely without comment, a ballet company, the U.S. legal system, medical facilities, research work, and many more of the moving parts that make up the U.S. body politic. His absolutely riveting PUBLIC HOUSING documents life in the now-demolished Ida B. Wells Homes, which stood at the heart of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. The development, which was finished in 1941, had become a broken-down tenement community by 1997, the year Wiseman’s film was released. Wiseman and cinematographer John Davey enter the apartments, offices, and meetings of Wells residents, beginning with Helen Finner, the indefatigable advocate for the residents who spends all day, every day arguing with the Chicago Housing Authority about maintenance work that is months overdue. We see her secure one or two successes, but can imagine those hard-fought battles are lost more often than not, as the bureaucrats at the Daley Center wade through the piles of forms we learn the residents are required to file to get something as simple as a leaky faucet fixed. We also see some maintenance workers helping elderly residents with pest control and plumbing problems, and are impressed with their respectful and helpful behavior. We also get different sides of the Chicago police who are ever-present at the complex. Several cops harass Black men crossing the common areas, and one warns a 30ish woman to stop hanging around a known drug corner. In the first case, the man being questioned is very respectful despite the cop’s threatening behavior; eventually, he is let go and warned not to walk in that area again. In the second, the cop says he sees potential in the woman and is trying to keep her off the drugs he clearly suspects her of waiting to buy. In large part, PUBLIC HOUSING documents efforts by the residents and those who serve them to battle against the circumstances in which they all find themselves. Scenes showing attempts to help residents start businesses, educate and tend to the project’s children, act as positive male role models, prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and end the scourge of crack cocaine, one person at a time, present a poignant and damning picture of how these people—all of whom are Black—have been isolated and excised from the majority society. How Wiseman was able to film an extremely candid interview between a social worker and a convicted felon who is trying to get into a drug treatment program is beyond me, but then, that is the genius of this invaluable filmmaker. Somehow he engenders trust and allows the people being filmed to be themselves, for good or ill. His more than 50 years’ worth of documentaries provide the most complete record of the US social contract we will ever have—and what a treasure it is! (1997, 200 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Also screening this week are New 4K DCP digital restorations of Wiseman’s ASPEN (1991, 146 min) on Friday at 5:15pm and HIGH SCHOOL II (1994, 220 min) on Saturday at 7pm.

Raoul Ruiz’s CITY OF PIRATES (France/Portugal)

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

CITY OF PIRATES finds Raoul (né Raúl) Ruiz firing on all cylinders, spinning out archaic storylines as though he had an infinite supply of them. As in the director’s THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR (released less than a year earlier), the abundance of premises becomes something of a joke in itself—the spectator comes to feel like Buster Keaton in THE NAVIGATOR (1924), burdened with a ridiculous amount of a good thing. Isidore (Anne Alvaro) is a housemaid working for a cruel older couple in a house by the seaside; the time, according to an early title card, is “one week before the end of the war.” (Ruiz never reveals which war it is, nor do the characters ever mention one, making this bit of exposition one of many Buñuelian non-sequiturs.) The film charts what happens after Isidore is visited by a ten-year-old boy named Malo (Melvil Poupard, in the first of numerous collaborations he’d make with Ruiz over the next three decades), a wandering orphan who may or may not have murdered his family. Isidore ends up leaving home, only to end up in a castle occupied by a lonely soul named Toby (Hugues Quester) who’s even stranger and more dangerous than Malo. That’s the plot in a nutshell, but there are so many digressions that it may be best not to get into the weeds. Every character seems to have an elaborate backstory and everyone is bound by knotty coincidences—likely the results of Ruiz having written the film immediately after waking up from his afternoon naps. Naturally, CITY OF PIRATES has the feel of a dream, not only in its narrative sub-logic, but in the way Ruiz often traverses silliness to approach the profoundly mysterious (and vice-versa). The tone is a deadpan mock-up of old adventure movies, complete with a ‘40s Hollywood-style score by Ruiz’s frequent composer Jorge Arriagada, while the visuals are beautifully expressionistic. The first ten minutes alone contain enough wild camera setups to be worth the price of admission. I especially like the shot from inside a character’s mouth. Screening as part of the Love Torn in a Dream: The Illusory Odysseys of Raúl Ruiz series. (1983, 111 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Barbara Rubin's CHRISTMAS ON EARTH (x2) (US/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Shot by eighteen-year-old Barbara Rubin over the summer of 1963 in a Manhattan loft painted bleach white, CHRISTMAS ON EARTH would emerge as the purest product of the New American Cinema. If Jack Smith's FLAMING CREATURES locates nirvana in a lascivious Orientalism-by-way-of-von-Sternberg trash pail aesthetic, Rubin's movie orgy is comparatively free of clutter, an abyss rather than an homage. With its simple, contrasty compositions, elemental couplings, and giant close-ups of genitalia rendered with the stupefying literalism of a medical filmstrip, CHRISTMAS ON EARTH remains Cinema Year Zero. (COCKS AND CUNTS, the working title of this prehistoric stag film, would have been wholly accurate, too.) The deceptive artlessness of Rubin's assemblage is belied by the expansive promise of its presentation. Three decades earlier, Joseph Cornell had projected ROSE HOBART through colored glass and substituted the roar of the soundtrack for some Nestor Amaral samba records. Rubin's key contribution in CHRISTMAS ON EARTH is the refusal of fixed form altogether: the projectionists are encouraged to pass colored gels before the lenses at random while the silence is filled by a radio with its dial tuned to "a nice cross-section of psychic tumult like an AM rock station, turned on and played loud." Most famously, the two reels are meant to be projected one inside the other, "literalizing the film's interest in penetration" in J. Hoberman's aptly clinical observation. I've only had the privilege of seeing CHRISTMAS ON EARTH once in 16mm, but each screening is a unique experience—a cosmic confluence that exists for that moment and then drifts back away. (And yet, Rubin's notes on the can end with an earnestly uptight post-script: "PLEASE PROJECT MY FILM IN THE IMAGE IN WHICH IT WAS CREATED– i.e. EXACTLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROJECTION INSTRUCTIONS! –B.R.") In a moment when the underground's male vanguard regarded film as a perfectable plastic art, a table setting for interior anguish, a playground of classical archetypes, or a pseudo-mathematical means of translating the music of the spheres into a sequence of frames, Rubin treated cinema not as an end in itself but as a portal to destinations unknown. Her example remains radical because the movie is the least important part. Can we recover its spark? In 1964 in one of his 'Movie Journal' columns, Jonas Mekas cited CHRISTMAS ON EARTH as one of several prominent works that existed only as an original object, their makers wary of striking multiple prints and undercutting the 'Spiritualization of the Image.' Thankfully, and seemingly against her wishes, Rubin's film has been preserved (by Mekas yet!) and can still be projected in 16mm. Per the Siskel Center website, CHRISTMAS ON EARTH will be presented as it was meant to be seen: on two 16mm projectors running simultaneously, with one reel of the film projected smaller, centered, and superimposed on top of the second reel which fills the screen. The film will be accompanied by music that would have been found on AM rock radio in 1963 and color gels will be alternated in front of the projectors. After the film finishes, there will be a short intermission after which the film will be screened a second time with the reels swapped, and with live radio as the soundtrack. (1963, Total approx. 60 min, 16mm) [K.A. Westphal]

Guy Maddin's MY WINNIPEG (Canada)

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

Like Todd Haynes' I'M NOT THERE, Guy Maddin's essay on his hometown attempts to capture the essence of its subject by honoring its mythology, as well as inventing a few choice legends of its own. But where Haynes is schematic, Maddin is, as always, intensely personal, staging reenactments of traumatic childhood incidents (starring DETOUR's Ann Savage as his mother!) and mourning the corporate-sponsored destruction of his favorite haunts with righteous anger. Perversely, this densely layered dreamscape is being billed as a documentary, but considering the prevalence of fog machines, somnambulists, and tongue-in-cheek sexual hangups, it is more likely a conclusion to the autobiographical trilogy Maddin began with the COWARDS BEND THE KNEE (2003) and BRAND UPON THE BRAIN (2006). Like those, this follows the esoteric, free-floating whims of Maddin's particular brand of MOS cinema—ever since HEART OF THE WORLD (2000), his visuals have had an impulsive spontaneity that Maddin has been straining to replicate to in his audio tracks, recently assembling a formidable rotating cast of narrators for BRAND UPON THE BRAIN, and here reputedly improvising the rambling, evocative voiceover in a sort of aural equivalent of automatic writing. If Maddin's pipes lack the theatrical gravitas of, say, Crispin Glover or Isabella Rossellini, the intimacy, humor, and imagination afforded by this gambit more than makes up for it, uncovering the ecstatic truth Werner Herzog has been scouring the globe for in recent years on his first try, and right in his own backyard. Preceded by an 8-minute Guy Maddin trailer reel (35mm). (2007, 80 min, 35mm) [Mike King]

Andrei Tarkovsky's ANDREI RUBLEV (USSR)

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

A strong contender for the greatest Soviet film, Andrei Tarkovsky’s second feature (completed in 1966 but not shown publicly until 1969 and not released in its native country until 1971) is immersive and overwhelming, steeping viewers in a stunningly detailed recreation of the medieval world and offering profound meditations on human suffering, the social value of art and religion, and the possibility of achieving transcendence. It’s also one of the most formally accomplished of all movies, featuring some of the densest mise-en-scène you’ll ever see and unfolding in meticulously choreographed long takes that suggest a ghostlike presence moving through the material world. “At once humble and cosmic, Tarkovsky called RUBLEV ‘a film of the earth,’” J. Hoberman noted in his essay for the Criterion Collection. “Shot in widescreen and sharply defined black and white, the movie is supremely tactile—the four elements appearing as mist, mud, guttering candles, and snow. A 360-degree pan around a primitive stable conveys the wonder of existence. Such long, sinuous takes are like expressionist brush strokes; the result is a kind of narrative impasto.” The film charts the adult life of a 15th-century monk and painter who developed his talent as an artist around the same time as the Tatars were invading Russia. Tarkovsky presents the glories of Rublev’s creative process and the horrors that surrounded him, dramatizing the eternal struggle between the best and worst impulses of humankind. Interwoven throughout this struggle fare visions that register as spiritual epiphanies, from the allegorical opening sequence (which imagines another artist who manages to fly above the world, only to destroy himself in the process) to the audacious re-imagining of the Crucifixion in a Russian snowscape to the reverential close-ups of Rublev’s paintings that conclude the film. Screening as part of the Inner Voyages series. (1966, 205 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Hal Hartley's AMATEUR (US)

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

Hal Hartley's first genuine attempt at postmodernism—and his densest and most ambitious film until HENRY FOOL (1997)—is an odd mix of drollness and earnestness, conceptual hipness and moral seriousness, jokey cool and genuine yearning. Not all of it works, but that's beside the point: Hartley's aim isn't to accomplish anything in particular (though he does), but to try to tackle in an American film subjects nobody in American cinema ever talks about because they're considered either too high-brow (culture, art) or too low-brow (religion, treated somewhat seriously), using techniques no one in American cinema uses—many borrowed from late Godard, but a few taken directly from theater (including, notably, having a young woman play a boy). Cast with a Sternbergian ear for accents, the film stars longtime Hartley lead Martin Donovan as an amnesiac who gets involved with a virginal pornographer (Isabelle Huppert), unaware of his own connection to an icy porn star (Elina Löwensohn). Hartley throws in some intrigue and thriller action, but everything's really just a vehicle for the dialogue, which gracefully circles around a handful of contradictory themes. This is as good an introduction as any to one of the most underrated American filmmakers. 35mm print from the Chicago Film Society collection at the University of Chicago Film Studies Center. Screening as part of the Board Picks series. (1994, 105 min, 35mm) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Olivier Assayas’ BOARDING GATE (France)

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

One of Olivier Assayas’ most New Wave-ish films, BOARDING GATE finds the former Cahiers du cinéma critic riffing on various films and film genres in order to communicate his feelings about the state of the world. The overarching subject, as was often the case for Assayas in the 2000s, is life under late capitalism, while the creative points of reference are Abel Ferrara (namely his theme of navigating a life based on sin) and Hong Kong action films. Asia Argento stars as a likely continuation of her character from Ferrara’s NEW ROSE HOTEL (1998), a one-time sex worker who used to collude with corporate bigwigs by seducing their business rivals and stealing their secrets. When BOARDING GATE opens, Argento’s Sandra is now employed in the world of fashion import-export and living in Paris; she finds herself drawn back to a former employer/lover (played with Ferrara-esque intensity by Michael Madsen) when he enters into dealings with her current business partners. For most of its first half, the movie is an unnerving chamber drama in which these two characters confront their sick past as well as the erotic charge that brought them together. Assayas presents abusive, sadomasochistic sex as a matter of course with these late-capitalist power players, as if to say that their inhuman worldview (which permits any action, no matter how immoral, in the name of making money) has prevented them from being able to love normally. Though shooting in widescreen, Assayas often works in closeup, creating an uneasy (and perhaps unwanted) sense of intimacy, particularly when BOARDING GATE turns violent around its midpoint. It’s also around here that the location shifts to Hong Kong and Assayas starts taking cues from such local masters as John Woo and Tsui Hark. When Sandra loses her trust of all the people around her and has to run for her life, the violence is as quick and striking as you’d expect from any action movie shot in Hong Kong, and Assayas achieves a genuinely upsetting sense of peril. (And just when you think the movie couldn’t get any more exciting, Kim Gordon shows up, yelling in Cantonese to a group of gun-toting henchmen!) The overall brutality of Sandra’s situation may approach that of Woo’s movies—or even Ringo Lam’s—while certain shots evoke the poetry of Tsui or Johnnie To. One view of a high rise’s daunting edifice recalls the classic set piece of Tsui’s TIME AND TIDE (2000), and I’m sure Assayas could name at least a dozen other Hong Kong masterpieces he had on the brain when he was making BOARDING GATE. Yet all the cinephilia on display doesn’t overshadow the director’s moral seriousness, even when BOARDING GATE becomes a full-on action film; Sandra’s fight for her life simply represents the end point of a system in which people are considered disposable. Screening as part of the Lust & Intrigue: Erotic Thrillers series. (2007, 106 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

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Jane Campion's IN THE CUT (US)

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

Though many things in recent years have made me think to myself, “Hey, the kids really are alright,” one in particular chuffs me to no end: the re-evaluation by younger critics of Jane Campion’s 2003 erotic thriller IN THE CUT. Lambasted upon its initial release—one critic at the time said it “feels only vicariously dangerous, like a coffee-table collection of images from the inferno”; another declared it a “puzzling affair of murky motivations and leaps of logic that no amount of Meg Ryan skin and no number of faked orgasms can hide,” an assessment that didn’t age particularly well—Campion’s adaptation of Susanna Moore’s 1995 novel is, like many films of its caliber, one that graciously unveils itself only to those receptive of its brilliance. The reward is a blisteringly sexy and almost egregiously cool genre turn in which a woman’s sexuality is as much a mystery as the bizarre serial murders (a bizarre but nevertheless accurate equivocation). Meg Ryan, in perhaps her best performance, stars as Frannie, a New York City English teacher who becomes embroiled in the hunt for a serial killer after remnants of a murdered woman are found in her garden; she’d also been at the same bar as the victim, meeting with a student she consults on slang for a project she’s doing. Indicated by the film’s idiomatic title, a fascination with language persists throughout, as Frannie collects words and phrases from all over, even diligently observing community poetry displays on public transit. It's clear that Frannie doesn't make much time for romance, evidently having been put off by her parents’ disastrous marriage. That changes, at least to an extent, when she becomes involved with the investigating officer on the case, Detective Malloy (pre-Marvel Mark Ruffalo, when he was actually an interesting actor). Their affair accounts for the erotic sex scenes, which effectively disrupt the male gaze as much as anything that might lay claim to that achievement. (In her excellent capsule for the screening, Chicago Film Society member and fellow Campion devotee Rebecca Lyon notes that the film was pitched to investors as something akin to David Fincher’s SE7EN; both have myriad virtues, but I’m more interested in Campion’s answer to the question, “What’s in the box?”, which Malloy does his best to find.) Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Frannie’s half-sister, Pauline, a hopeless romantic who’s the complete opposite of Frannie in her near-histrionic vulnerability. When the murders become personal for Frannie, her suspicions over Malloy potentially being the killer come to a head, leading to a dramatic but still provocative conclusion, fitting of both the genre and Campion’s interpretation of it. All this is made even more impactful by Dion Beebe’s cinematography, which presents Campion’s anguished grittiness superlatively. The visual aesthetic accomplishes many things, representing various elements at play within the film, from the literal violence of the murders to the emotional violence of the ever-apocryphal search for romance. As do the camera movements and shot compositions, which are heady and revelatory at most every turn, even as the dimness of the light sometimes obscures the action. That’s an apt metaphor for the film itself: there’s more there to what you can’t see than what you can. The abiding enigma of intimacy and the secrets that people, especially women, hold within are here appreciated for their unremitting mystery. Screening as part of the Lust & Intrigue: Erotic Thrillers series. (2003, 119 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Raoul Walsh's PURSUED (US)

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

Long an auteurist chestnut and perhaps something more—Paul Willemen even elevated it to a kind of Lacanian super-text in the early ‘70s—PURSUED recently received a more mixed assessment from Dave Kehr, a hardcore Walsh partisan. Kehr favors Walsh the self-effacing protean formalist, judging PURSUED a form-content mismatch because its director "specialized in bodies in motion more than psyches in torment." It's true that PURSUED is equally a Niven Busch picture—an extreme example of the psychological western (these days promoted as the more saleable "noir western") that screenwriter Busch more or less invented. It's bookended by two bold cinematic translations of Busch's novels—DUEL IN THE SUN (directed by King Vidor, et al.) and THE FURIES (directed by Anthony Mann)—that together constitute a sustained case of psychoanalysis turned against itself. If Freud plundered the classics to give name to the tragic patterns observed in his patients, then Busch projects these psychoanalytic lessons back to the archetypes themselves. In marrying the monumental and the clinical, Busch creates a preposterous brand of diagrammatic art. Unconscious motivations cripple Busch's characters—until the moment when they embrace the destiny prescribed by their psychic makeup. Is this dated? Busch's ideas are certainly reflective of his moment, but there's something more. There's a scene in PURSUED when Teresa Wright wills herself to become ruthless and evil. Wright's face in this shot perfectly registers the totalizing clarity (intellectual, artistic, historical) that Busch and his cohorts sought in Freud. Today, the clearest psychological profile is Busch's own. Screening as part of the Raoul Walsh: Adventures in Filmmaking series. (1947, 101 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Djibril Diop Mambéty's THE LITTLE GIRL WHO SOLD THE SUN (Senegal)

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

Really, the most fitting adjective for Djibril Diop Mambéty's THE LITTLE GIRL WHO SOLD THE SUN is "happy." It is about the remarkable will of a bright, unsinkable preteen girl named Sili (Lissa Balera), who lives in a shantytown on the outskirts of Dakar, propelling herself around on crutches. Whereas a lesser artist might have exploited her for pathos, Mambéty simply gives us a determined, hopeful young girl, matter-of-factly going about her business. While Mambéty's landmark first feature, TOUKI BOUKI (1972), was experimental and Godardian, this short film, his last before lung cancer took him at 53, is more-or-less straightforward, though no less playful and wry. The second installment in a planned trilogy of shorts celebrating unsung Senegalese, it has a frank, unsentimental, life-affirming spirit. Sili goes into the city to provide for her blind grandma, but when she gets knocked over in a rush of pushy street urchins hawking Le Soleil newspaper, she has an inspiration: she'll be a vendor, as well. "I'm not a boy," she concedes, before declaring, "What boys do, girls can do, too!" When Sili, sprawled midway down a ramp, pulls herself back to her feet to the jubilant swell of bagpipe and drum, it's absolutely exhilarating. (The movie's infectious, electrifying score is by Wasis Diop, Mambéty's brother.) A chance encounter with a sympathetic wealthy man leaves her with a windfall of 10,000 francs. Meanwhile, she's unintimidated by the roughhouse tactics of a crew of rival paper pushers, who don't like her selling on "their" turf. A few regular onlookers follow her vicissitudes. One is a wheelchair-bound boy (Moussa Balde), who, for a few coins, will gladly play the boom box he's always cradling. When Sili and her girlfriends dance down the street as his radio plays, the moment is celebratory, unforgettable. She also has an admirer in a local teenage boy (Tayerou M'Baye), who looks out for her while respecting her independence. It's a cliché, perhaps, the idea that we get to carry each other, but it also happens to be a key principle of any decent society, and their friendship embodies it as both plain fact and effective, moving metaphor. The film is a political allegory, then—and in some ways a fantasy of a little girl's power. Yet it all feels utterly natural, the magic rooted in everyday life, like a summer storm, as seamless as air or water. Mambéty ribs his people's quirks, gently, while his camera attentively documents the vibrant details of their rich culture: the fascinating hybrid of French and African, the colorful Senegalese clothing. THE LITTLE GIRL WHO SOLD THE SUN is just about everything I look for in film, as a statement of resilience, for the goodness on display in the people. Sili does the best she can with what she's got—which, by our standards, is less than nothing. Yet, the fact of her, and her happiness, is undeniable. It's as simple, and as inspiring, as that. "We continue!" Preceded by Ousmane Sembène’s first film, the 1963 short BOROM SARRET (20 min, Digital Projection). Screening as part of the Pan-African Cinema series. (1999, 45 min, DCP Digital) [Scott Pfeiffer]

Gregg Araki's THE DOOM GENERATION (US)

FACETS Cinema – Thursday, 9pm

I loved this film when I first saw the incomprehensible Blockbuster Video cut when I was 13. I had no idea it had been destroyed by Hollywood, and I probably wouldn't have cared if I did know. THE DOOM GENERATION is lab-made for angsty teens in the 1990s. A propulsive industrial/shoegaze soundtrack. Stunt casting featuring Skinny Puppy, Perry Farrell, and Heidi Fleiss. Sex, leather jackets, drugs, blood, and the kind of socio-political messaging and metaphors tailormade for punk teens first reading Chomsky by way of hardcore punk record liner notes. Queer, but not too queer. Like Kurt Cobain wearing dresses on TV queer. It is "A Heterosexual Movie by Gregg Araki," after all. This is a quintessentially American film: a road trip filled with romance, danger, crime, and cases of mistaken identity. The logical end of film noir nihilism at the end of the American Century. And now I love this 4k restoration with the proper letterboxing (finally!) and extended scenes that haven't been seen since its first festival screenings. Originally bought by MGM out of Sundance, it was dropped when Goldwyn himself saw it and was personally disgusted. After it was picked up and brutally butchered by its next distributor (not counting the aforementioned insanely confusing Blockbuster version), who didn't even fix the letterboxing for the film's DVD release, Araki basically left THE DOOM GENERATION to rot until he personally ended up with the rights again. The definition of a cult film, it was barely released in theaters initially, only gaining infamy via word of mouth and VHS rentals—and the absolutely crucial film soundtrack. Thankfully, this time around Araki was able to team up with his old friends at Strand Releasing (who released his previous features THE LIVING END and TOTALLY FUCKED UP) and finally got his film the way he always wanted it. This is the perfect time for THE DOOM GENERATION, and Araki's work in general, to get re-released and reappraised. At a time when American cinema seems bifurcated between mainstream movies of sexless, mindless, puerile frivolity for adult children and indie, eat-your-vegetables, gimme an Oscar, "this is capital-A Art" dryness, THE DOOM GENERATION is the perfect reminder of the halcyon days of '90s American Indie films—when you could have an exciting, sexy, pulpy, dangerous, offensive, action-driven film that still had something to say. In retrospect, the bleak, almost nihilistic, hopelessness of Gen X seems to have been more of a Cassandra curse than bored, apolitical, slacker malaise. Younger millennials and Gen Z understand this on a fundamental level. While us Xennials and Gen Xers saw the world get slowly fucked, they were born into one that was already, well, totally fucked up. I have a feeling (and hope) this film will resonate with them the way it did with us nearly 30 years ago. THE DOOM GENERATION is a powerful film, and we're lucky to finally have it in all its intended glory. Co-presented by the SAIC Film Club. (1995, 83 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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Preceded by FACETS Film Trivia at 7pm. 

Sergio Martino’s YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (Italy)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7:30pm

Get out your giallo BINGO card for Sergio Martino's YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, a film packed with genre staples: J&B bottles, a black-gloved killer, a sprawling mansion, full-frontal nudity, artistic murders, beautiful people behaving terribly, suspects galore, LGBTQ+ intrigue, and a lush soundtrack. Martino’s three-year stretch of giallo films starting in 1971 defines the genre’s essence. Martino debuted as a director with WAGES OF SIN (1969), a mondo-style documentary shot with cinematographer Florian Trenker. The duo captured free-love Europe through a mix of jazzy rhythms and sardonic narration, forging a collaboration that would shape Martino’s career. As a second unit director on Mario Bava’s THE WHIP AND THE BODY (1963), Martino eventually decided to develop his own distinct giallo style, which he unveiled with THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971). The film starred Edwige Fenech—who was married to Martino’s brother at the time—and became an instant success. With Fenech’s captivating presence, Trenker’s dizzying camerawork, and Martino’s scathing view of the elite, the film set a new benchmark for the genre. It even hinted at Martino’s future work with a cryptic note in the plot: "Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key." Martino’s quintet of giallo masterpieces continued with THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL (1971), THEY’RE COMING TO GET YOU! (1972), YOUR VICE, and TORSO (1973). In each, Martino refined his style. YOUR VICE, his third collaboration with Fenech, stands out for its Gothic decadence and intricate characters. While Anita Strindberg shines as Irina, a submissive wife trapped in a marriage to a misogynistic, failed writer, Fenech’s Floriana steals the show. Floriana’s sexual freedom and whimsy starkly contrast Irina’s vulnerability, making her a target for the impotent killer. The film’s aesthetic and score by Bruno Nicolai amplify the narrative. By the time Martino filmed YOUR VICE, Giancarlo Ferrando (mentored by Trenker during MRS. WARDH) had become Martino’s main cinematographer. Ferrando and Martino’s synchronized style—roaming cameras, zooms, quick focus shifts, extreme close-ups of faces moistened by sweat and tears, and full frontal soft-lighting—enhances the story’s themes of abuse, adultery, incest, and greed. The crumbling mansion of Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli) becomes the perfect stage for this operatic descent into depravity, where cruelty, desire, and revenge blur. The film revels in its Gothic excess. Oliviero’s sadistic torment of Irina, their twisted entanglement with their mysterious niece, a psychopathic killer, and a one-eyed cat named Satan create a macabre tapestry. Beneath the lurid surface lies a simmering irony: Irina, a victim turned possible mastermind, orchestrates a dynasty’s downfall with a tragic, almost poetic inevitability. YOUR VICE is the perfect blend of a “Good For Her” narrative and the ironic morality of Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Black Cat." It’s proof that in giallo, even the most locked rooms can unleash chaos—especially if you’ve got the key, or a screeching cat. And if you’re wondering, yes, Satan the cat definitely deserves his own BINGO square. Screening as part of the January Giallo 2025 series. (1972, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Ridley Scott’s LEGEND (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, 11pm [SOLD OUT]

Grounded in the real world, it’s easy to understand why a fantasy film like LABYRINTH (1986) has found its audience in the years since its release. Ridley Scott’s LEGEND, on the other hand, hasn't had as widespread a nostalgic resurgence. Plagued by post-production squabbles about the length and soundtrack, the film has ended up with several theatrical versions and a director’s cut. All that, however, overshadows what is, in any of its forms, a spellbinding piece of fantasy filmmaking. Light on dialogue, the film's visual texture is so corporeal that its make-believe feels equal parts beautifully and terribly tangible. Though Brothers Grimm-inspired in its threatening tone, LEGEND doesn’t make clear its childhood lesson. Rather, it’s an amorphous tale about good versus evil, and the loss of innocence—perhaps even in relation to the natural world; contrasting scenes of light and dark are effectively rendered, the mise-en-scene feeling fully authentic despite the fantasy. Drawn in as bait, innocent Princess Lili (Mia Sara) touches a wild unicorn, allowing a literal and figurative Darkness (an iconic, devil-horned Tim Curry) to descend upon a magical forest. Woodland resident Jack (Tom Cruise) adventures with a band of magic creatures to rescue Lili and save the unicorn. If there is a notable theme to be found, not that there needs to be, it perhaps lies with Lili and the unicorns in a heavily visually symbolic coming-of-age story. One outstanding scene occurs as Lili wanders Darkness’ castle, spellbound by an enchanted dancing black dress, allegorically seduced by Darkness; the garment entices her so much that she becomes one with it, following its choreography and eventually magically transforming from her now tattered white gown to a dramatically gothic princess. A final note on LEGEND’s scores: the American release features an essentially '80s fantasy synth score by Tangerine Dream that regularly features in my personal playlists. With a live preshow performance by Grelley Duvall. (1985, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

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

FACETS Cinema – Thursday, 7pm

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]

Mamoru Oshii's GHOST IN THE SHELL (Japan/Animation)

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

Through miles and miles of cables, an unfathomable amount of data is created every day, and the horizon is plastered with copy-and-pasted skyscrapers looming silently above. It's 2029 Japan, and life is getting more complex every day. Take our main character: Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg public-security agent who ponders her identity in between chasing criminals. She’s not only concerned about what she is but also why she is. It's explained she has some sort of brain despite her body having been manufactured by a tech company, but her enhanced strength and senses come at the cost of knowing who she was or even if she was. It's all a bit confusing, frankly—the philosophical dialogue is delivered quickly and can be a bit dense—however, it works perfectly. Mamoru Oshii gets how our minds and bodies are constantly overloaded with work demands, social media blasts, food cravings, car horns, gunshots, and so on. But he offers brief reprieves from all this, like when Motoko takes a serene dip in the water outside the city despite the potential damage she could cause to her “shell.” The film takes such detours between action set pieces and heavy text; in other films, it could all get tiresome, but in this one, the pacing is perfect. The animation is no joke either—every scene is meticulously designed to create something particularly spectacular. After she gets embroiled in a case teeming with mystery and political intrigue, Motoko finds herself down a path that could help answer the questions plaguing her. She may be trapped in a system programming her purpose, but the virus of rebellion propagates slowly, perhaps even offering some sense of freedom. (1995, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]

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]

Jonathan Demme's STOP MAKING SENSE (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, Midnight

In nearly every shot, STOP MAKING SENSE makes the case that Jonathan Demme was the greatest director of musical performance in American cinema. It isn't difficult to convey the joy of making music, but Demme's attention to the interplay between musicians (and, in some inspired moments, between the musicians and their crew) conveys the imagination, hard work, and camaraderie behind any good song.  And, needless to say, the songs here are very, very good. By this point (the performances are culled from three concerts from 1983), Talking Heads were the headiest American band to achieve their degree of success, and they made the most of it, doubling their line-up to include back-up singers and a few instrumentalists from the golden years of George Clinton's Funkadelic. It's never openly acknowledged that the five new members are Black and the Heads are white; the sheer creativity of the music, which fuses everything from soul to traditional African rhythms to then-advanced electronic effects, is fully utopian in its spirit. (1984, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Brandon Cronenberg's INFINITY POOL (Canada)

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

Due to the multifaceted nature of the director and his undeniable influence on horror cinema, there’s maybe no term more overused and misunderstood in criticism as "Cronenbergian." Further complicating this is the fact that the Don of body horror’s son, Brandon, is slowly carving out his own adjacent but equally expansive lane. Following the premiere of the uncut version at Sundance, the younger Cronenberg's newest film INFINITY POOL is now in Chicago in an edited but (presumably) no less intense form. It opens on James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman) who are away at a resort on the fictional remote island of Latoka, ostensibly so James can find inspiration for his next book. Shy and feeling emasculated due to his writer’s block, he’s ripe for manipulation when he meets Gabi (Mia Goth), a fan of the one book he’s written so far. Gabi’s an actress who specializes in commercial acting where she plays the type of people who fail miserably at everyday tasks, eventually being saved by the company’s product. There’s an undeniable chemistry between them, something confirmed when Gabi jacks off James in secret while at a beach outside the resort. But when James accidentally kills a local with Gabi’s husband’s car driving back, he’s let in on a unique tradition on the island: for a price, you can have a clone made to serve your sentence (death by execution, always) for you. From here, James descends into Gabi’s community of swingers stuck outside of time, living life with no consequences as they revel in seeing versions of themselves be repeatedly murdered. Fans of Cronenberg’s last film POSSESSOR (2020) will find a lot to love here, as the director continues his interests in the deadening effects of violence and contemporary consumption. He’s in class-critique mode here, where half the horror lies in just how quickly morality goes out the window when you have a lot of money. James is a pathetic man; he’s not especially interesting for a writer, and we discover later that his only book to date was eviscerated by critics. His access to this class comes only via his wife, and to her via her wealthy father (in what may be a wink at Brandon’s own nepo-baby status). Like so many dangerous men, James doesn’t have an identity of his own, his entitlement cut with the nagging awareness of how small he really is. It’s with this dynamic that Goth especially shines as a horror villain whose scariest quality is her controlled submission to James, dragging him down in the muck with her but convincing him it’s his idea. Her words to James echo the self-help jargon of pick-up artists and men’s rights activists, insisting that primal violence is the order of life and that James’ value as a man relies on his capacity for rage. In a bit of a surprise, these dialogues are the strongest part of the film and show that Cronenberg is making a habit of this more character-based work, allowing gross and all-too-recognizable psychological detail to drive the horror. Similar to Christopher Abbot’s layered acting in POSSESSOR, Skarsgård gives a range-y performance that’s alternately ferocious and sniveling, grounding the film’s critique of masculinity as often both. Throw a rock and you’ll probably hit someone commenting on this film’s over-the-top violence. But this may mislead viewers, just as discussions of Cronenberg Sr.’s films tend to wrongly suggest that they all have the same gross-out consistency as, say, THE FLY. While his debt to his father is clear, young Cronenberg is a bit more conventional with his viscera, mostly preferring shooting- and stabbing-based gore to the bizarre prosthetics associated with his father. Still, the visceral effect lingers after the film’s close, due more to the upsetting context of the violence than the actual onscreen imagery. The film’s ick factor (and much of its humor) derives from the fact that this is all, ultimately, fine. The rich will always self-victimize, and personal growth is a non-starter when you can just pay your way out of trouble. The film is certainly a Bad Time, but one that adopts a controlled mean-spiritedness in its pitch-black satire that can feel righteous as much as upsetting. We could all certainly stand to see more rich people die violently at the movies. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2023, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

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]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Eugenio Martín’s 1972 film HORROR EXPRESS (88 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series. More info here.

⚫Alliance Française de Chicago
Brad Bird’s 2007 film RATATOUILLE (111 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 10, as part of the Au Menu series. Doors open at 9:30am. Snacks and children’s activities facilitated by AF-Chicago youth programs instructors will be available in the Eleanor Wood Prince Salon during and after the screening. Enter on 54 W. Chicago Ave. More info here.

⚫ The Brewed (2843 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
The Brewed’s Monster Movie Club presents John Carpenter’s 1982 film THE THING (109 min, Digital Projection) on Friday at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers 
QUEER HYBRIDITY: Short Documentaries at the Edge, a screening of four short films by LGBTQ+ filmmakers, takes place Friday, 7pm, followed by a panel discussion, book signing, and after party in celebration of the release of Austin Bunn’s new book Short Film Screenwriting. More info here. 

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

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Michael Snow’s 1982 film SO IS THIS (49 min, 16mm) and his 1970 film SIDE SEAT PAINTINGS SLIDES SOUND FILM (20 min, 16mm) screen Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Back and Forth, Around and Around: Michael Snow on 16mm series. More info here. 

⚫ FACETS Cinema
A.B.L.E. presents a 10th anniversary screening of Lawrence Kern’s 2014 film THE CURSE OF THE TEMPEST JEWEL on Monday at 6pm. Tickets include a catered meal before the screening and a talkback event with the cast. Proceeds support A.B.L.E.’s performing arts programs for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

German Kral’s 2023 film ADIÓS BUENOS AIRES (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7pm, preceded by a reception with appetizers and a cash bar at 6pm, as part of the Reel Film Club. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.)
John M. Stahl’s 1931 film SEED (96 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Graduate Student Curatorial series. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Walter Salles’ 2024 film I’M STILL HERE (136 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

The National Theatre Live production of Suzie Miller’s play PRIMA FACIE (2022, 120 min, DCP Digital), starring Jodie Comer, screens Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.

Deepa Mehta’s 1998 film EARTH (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Shadows of War lecture series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Mimi Wilcox’s 2024 documentary BAD HOSTAGE (2024, 39 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 11:30am, with Wilcox and producer Max Asaf in attendance for a post-film Q&A moderated by haydée souffrant, manager of Filmmaker Programs at Kartemquin Films. 

Howard Hawks’ 1965 film RED LINE 7000 (110 min, 16mm) screens Sunday, 11:30am, as part of the Silver Fox: Howard Hawks Matinees. Free for Music Box members. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
Bobby Abate's SYLVANIA (2005) and Barry Doupé's AT THE HEART OF A SPARROW (2006) stream for free on VDB TV. Programmed by Emily Martin. More info here. 

CINE-LIST: January 24, 2025 - January 30, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Mike King, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer, Elise Schierbeek, Michael Glover Smith, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Drew Van Weelden, K.A. Westphal, David Whitehouse