:: FRIDAY, MARCH 28 - THURSDAY, APRIL 3 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Karen Sperling’s THE WAITING ROOM (US)

Block Cinema (at Abbott Hall/Wirtz Center, 710 N. Lake Shore Dr.) – Thursday, 7pm

“Here's an intriguing bit of lost film history,” begins a 2010 entry of a  blog, The Dead Next Door: A Field Guide to Regional Horror films, that I found while researching Karen Sperling’s THE WAITING ROOM, “...an independent film, made entirely by a crew of women filmmakers, featuring cinematography by none other than New York's own Roberta Findlay. Anyone know what happened to the 1973 production DOUBLE CIRCLE, a.k.a. THE WAITING ROOM? … Sperling was the daughter of producer Milton Sperling and granddaughter of Harry Warner. She previously made the film MAKE A FACE (1971).” Unseen for more than 50 years, the film has recently been given new life, as Block Cinema screens a new digital transfer they commissioned as part of the SCMS Annual Conference. “The original prints and negatives of both Sperling’s films have been lost or discarded, with only U-matic tape transfers remaining,” per Block Cinema’s website, the organization having “commissioned industry leaders BAVC to create new transfers of these tapes, preserving Sperling’s uncompromising, ahead-of-her-time creative vision for future generations of curious viewers.” But the curiosity doesn’t stop once you’ve watched it—filmed in the deserted wing of a psychiatric institution on Manhattan’s Ward Island, THE WAITING ROOM is a veritable fever dream uncannily evocative of its setting. I’ve watched it twice now, and I don’t so much understand what’s happening as I intuit it; for all intents and purposes, it centers on a young woman who’s received a marriage proposal and, vis-à-vis her relationship with the other women in her life, begins contemplating the implications of such an entreaty. At times toeing the line between inquietude and delirium—largely owing to the setting, low lighting, and Findlay’s cinematography, which anyone familiar with her work will recognize—it’s that uncertainty of tone that makes it at once shivery and menacing, like a dream on the precipice of a nightmare. The abovementioned blog post includes a 1973 newspaper clipping with the headline “All-Woman Crew Makes Film on New York Isle”; in it Sperling describes the film as being “an experiential drama about a woman between 16 and 26, her dreams and fantasies and the way she looks at marriage.” She also remarks that “the story… is a personal one: The dreams are dreams she had, the people are people in her life”... and that it’s “very personal, but maybe it goes all the way around and becomes personal to everyone who sees it,” which was absolutely my experience, as I’m still reflecting on the meaning of the film overall and what it means to me specifically. Sperling also said that none of those involved in the making of the film were really active in the women’s movement, but that the all-female crew nevertheless “reinforces the [film’s] conception.” THE WAITING ROOM is thus an apt title that reflects a profound ambivalence that I imagine many women feel about various aspects of their lives, and that Sperling herself may have felt in relation to the film, considering it received no distribution. But to be in the waiting room isn’t necessarily to be lost or even ultimately forgotten. It means just that, a wait, one that’s now over for Sperling’s cinematic reverie. Sperling will appear for a post-screening discussion with Block Cinema curator Michael Metzger, Prof. Peter Alilunas (University of Oregon), and Marya E. Gates, author of the recently published Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words. (1973, 90 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]

Jane Campion's BRIGHT STAR (Australia/UK/France)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11am

Jane Campion returns to feature-length film after six fallow years with a work, at first glance, most unlike its perverse and steamy predecessor, IN THE CUT (2003).  BRIGHT STAR may be her sweetest and simplest film, but it gives up none of the ground she's gained in mapping people's private motivations. These two works are apposite in Campion's world, making clear that regardless of whether her characters have sex, or whether she depicts it, her interest is in the knotty impulses of desire and fear, not strictly in where they lead. One striking feature that sets BRIGHT STAR apart from IN THE CUT (and earlier films like SWEETIE and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY) is the clarity of both characters' desire; as Fanny Brawne and the poet John Keats grow to love each other we don't lose sight of her petty vanities or his meek submission to the will of his friends, but we can also see that their love is tender and direct. Campion's attunement to history accounts for some of this; in England in the early 19th century, social manners had nowhere near the repressive intensity they would fifty years later under Victoria. Keats and the Brawnes are bound to their circumstances by money worries in an uncertain economy, but Fanny's dresses are uncorseted: she makes many of her own intimate decisions, and propriety is only one consideration. Both young lovers speak and move freely through the charmed time they spend together. BRIGHT STAR's world and language are plausible, but more than that they are intoxicating. When the final letter inevitably arrives, Fanny's loud, desolate sobs shake you awake and give you a real moment of grief. (2009, 119 min, 35mm) [Josephine Ferorelli]
---
Followed by a post-screening discussion and book signing with film critic and Cinema Her Way author Marya E. Gates moderated by Cine-File co-managing editor Kat Sachs.

Directed by Paul Schrader at the Gene Siskel Film Center

See below for showtimes

Paul Schrader's CAT PEOPLE (US)
Friday, 8:30 pm
Amidst the suffocating humidity and Southern gothic allure of New Orleans, Cat People roam. Paul Schrader's CAT PEOPLE stars Nastassja Kinski as Irena, a young woman who reunites with her estranged brother, Paul (Malcolm McDowell), only to learn the terrifying truth of their shared DNA. Irena and Paul are descendants of feline shapeshifters—they turn into black panthers when overcome with sexual desire and are only able to return to human form when they have killed. A loose remake of Jacques Tourneur's CAT PEOPLE (1942), Schrader's film dials the kinkiness up ten notches. Immediately upon the siblings’ reunion, there is an incestuous tension between Irena and Paul, priming the viewer for the strange, titillating carnality on display. Skin and fur, sweat and blood; it's a sumptuous, lurid film, swollen with unsettling eroticism. McDowell gives an expectedly exaggerated performance—he's so wide-eyed, if he strained much more his eyes might pop right out of his head. He is grotesque opposite Kinski's almost comical naivete, perky and pouty as a young woman on the cusp of self-discovery. Both actors turn in effectively animalistic performances when the time comes, a strange channeling of feline agility and human cumbersomeness. Each transformation is accompanied by grisly, sensational practical special effects. With a synth score by Giorgio Moroder and a theme song by David Bowie, there's a funky gloom penetrating every interaction, every glance. The camera often glides, surveying as if on the prowl. Supernatural suspense claws at the surface of the picture and, in the end, when it is finally ripped open, the viewer is left with a dark sense of grief and despair. CAT PEOPLE functions as a deeply sad, metaphorical tale of sexual repression transforming one from human into animal. (1982, 118 min, 35mm) [Olivia Hunter Willke]
---
Paul Schrader's LIGHT SLEEPER (US)
Monday, 6pm
John Letour, a man in his late 30s, is about to take on a major lifestyle change. He’s going to lose his friends he made in the business as he makes a career change from drug dealer to elite New York society. LIGHT SLEEPER returns us once again to Schrader’s lonely underworld as a man, played by Willem Dafoe, navigates life as his supplier (Susan Sarandon) leaves the business to start fresh. First shattering the world of cinema with the screenplay TAXI DRIVER (1976), Schrader established himself as a filmmaker with films such as BLUE COLLAR (1978), AMERICAN GIGOLO (1980) and MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (1985). The lonely dark horse is familiar territory for the legendary screenwriter/director. “A man alone in a room waiting for something to happen” is a trademark for Schrader, an original archetype he openly boasts of in interviews even with his recent film THE CARD COUNTER (2021). This trademark, “transcendental style” filmmaking, seeks to spiritually move the viewer by having no comment on the action within the story. As Schrader puts it, “Most films today will grab you by the throat to maintain your attention; transcendental style film leans away from the viewer, inviting them to lean in." He even wrote a book on this style, Transcendental Style in Film (1972), having first been exposed to the practice after a screening of Robert Bresson’s PICKPOCKET (1959) in his early 20s. (This film even mirrors the ending of the Bresson.) Schrader’s protagonist journaling alone in his apartment waiting for something to happen never feels formulaic. Each of his films that share this similarity always feel personal and raw, a trait to which this film is no exception. In many ways, LIGHT SLEEPER is Schrader at his most vulnerable and optimistic. Dafoe, having associations with the director through his breakout role in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988), gives an effectively hollow and reserved performance. Leads in each of Schrader’s transcendental films always receive direction to not emote; Dafoe glides from scene to scene, melting into the style and carrying the film. Other notable performances come from cameos of young David Spade, Sam Rockwell, and the versatile Victor Garber. (1992, 103 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]
---
Paul Schrader's FIRST REFORMED (US)
Thursday, 6pm
Paul Schrader’s angry, austere new film stars Ethan Hawke as Ernst Toller, a tormented priest grappling with personal and ecological apocalypse. A pregnant parishioner offers Toller a chance at salvation but forces him to confront the slow suicide that has been his life in the aftermath of a personal tragedy. Watching the movie, I kept thinking of Robert Bresson's DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1951) and Schrader's own original screenplay for TAXI DRIVER (1976). I have little use for religion in my everyday life, but there is no way around the fact that a lot of my favorite art is consumed with faith. Schrader's belief feels genuine, so I can accept it without having to buy into it for myself. The thing that sets this story apart from much of Schrader’s prior work is an acknowledgement of shades of grey, in place of his usual moral absolutism. That nuance is personified in the pastor of a megachurch (a perfectly cast Cedric The Entertainer), who might have logically been the heavy here, but is instead presented as a fully dimensional, flawed but earnest, and responsible community leader. The hopeless, fanatical, often sin-filled and ugly longing for grace and meaning that has always been Schrader’s calling card is on full display, but the resolution he leaves viewers with offers some newly-found hope. Toller has a lot of Travis Bickle in him but manages to walk himself back from the annihilation fantasy that haunts them both.(2017, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
---
Also screening is Schrader’s MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (1985, 120 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 5:30pm. 

MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (2025) (US/Experimental)

Onion City Experimental Film Festival at FACETS – Thursday, 7pm

Almost one hundred years ago, Dziga Vertov’s MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929) reinvented the language of cinema to the point where it still feels revolutionary. The film’s explosive use of montage to chronicle daily Soviet life lulls the viewer into a daze with cascading images piling through and on top of each other, ultimately asking the viewer whether its man or whose camera (or both) holds true command of the moving image. Now, a collective of over twenty-one teams of directors have created a response to (or continuation of?) Vertov’s piece, exploring how far the language of cinema has come over the past century. I’d go so far as to say that if Vertov were to watch this herculean effort, his head might explode. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (2025) feels disorienting to the point where you're at once baffled and amazed, its tri-screened imagery collecting a panoply of security camera footage, anime, video game cut-scenes, news footage, gen-AI sludge, YouTube poops, and what I’m fairly certain is footage of audiences arriving to watch a film at Chicago’s own Gene Siskel Film Center (accompanied by shots of a digital projector being booted up, a fitting entry to the piece). The is both reveling in and perhaps thumbing its nose at the short attention span culture so often ascribed to younger generations, the experimental arthouse equivalent of those TikToks featuring a clip from “Family Guy” side-by-side with footage from a mobile video game (and yes, both of these are featured at separate points here). In one of the film’s most inspired and infuriating sequences, the top screen in the tri-screen pyramid of imagery simply shows someone walking around watching Vertov’s MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA on their phone, the washed-out imagery and compressed framing a hearty middle finger to any good cinephile. This is accompanied by the bottom left screen refracting the same film footage through 3D-rendered backgrounds, while the bottom right screen attempts to recreate the original footage using the digital tools of the modern day. It’s the closest the film comes to achieving a more linear and visually compelling approximation of the original film, before things explode in a collision of further video-game footage, home movies, and Nikocado Avocado mukbang videos. Vertov’s original film opens with an intertitle explaining the film’s goal of “creating a truly international language of cinema based on its absolute separation from the language of theatre and literature.” There’s no question that MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (2025) accomplishes this same feat. Are we willing to accept that this is the new evolution of the language of cinema? (2025, 68 mins, Digital Projection) [Ben Kaye]
---
Check back next week for additional coverage of the Onion City Experimental Film Festival, running from Thursday through Sunday, April 6.

David Lean’s BRIEF ENCOUNTER (UK)

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

Along with SUMMERTIME (1955), BRIEF ENCOUNTER represents the best of David Lean’s small-scale pictures; the emotions are so finely etched that even the smallest gestures speak volumes. It’s a movie about resignation disguised as a movie about passion and shot (by Robert Krasker, just a few years before he teamed up with Carol Reed to make ODD MAN OUT [1948] and THE THIRD MAN [1949]) like a crime film, which may help explain the richness of the tone. Adapted from a one-act play by Noël Coward called Still Life, it takes place during a month some time before the war when a suburban housewife and a city doctor, both married to other people, have an affair, then call it off once the excitement gives way to feelings of guilt and paranoia. Celia Johnson (who received an Oscar nomination for her work) and Trevor Howard (in his first major role) are the leads, and they strike a remarkable balance between restraint and movie-star expressiveness—which is exactly what they’re supposed to do, given that they’re playing normal people experiencing the thrill of living outside their normal routine. One could argue they’re as much the auteurs of BRIEF ENCOUNTER as Lean, Coward (who also produced), Krasker, or Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame (who both co-wrote the script with Lean and co-produced the movie uncredited); like a lot of classic studio films, it’s kind of an authorless work and yet no less cinematic for it. Does it matter who decided to break with the general air of realism and have the lights go dark around Johnson just before her pivotal epiphany, or who decided to “open up” Coward’s play by having it told in flashbacks? Probably not. Through a combination of talents and ideas, BRIEF ENCOUNTER exquisitely conveys feelings of middle-class repression and furtive romance—feelings that are evidently common enough to warrant the film’s enduring appeal. Screening as part of the Something in Your Eye: Early Meet Cutes series. (1945, 86 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, Midnight

FEMALE TROUBLE stands out as the high point of John Waters' '70s cycle, and a pivot point in his artistic trajectory. He had already established his proficiency as a tasteless provocateur, but this is the film where his equally irrepressible tastefulness as a filmmaker (evidenced in his tight screenwriting and potent cultural criticism, which only get sharper as his career continues) becomes obvious. Instead of trying to top the shit-eating gimmicks of PINK FLAMINGOS, here he takes a turn for the operatic, creating a trashy, tragic, hilarious meditation on glamour, crime, filth, and celebrity that invokes several artists from his pantheon—the Kuchar brothers, Douglas Sirk, Andy Warhol—and does justice to each of them. It's also his most fully realized collaboration with Divine, whose unforgettable Dawn Davenport brilliantly transforms from a rebellious teen to a degenerate art star to a blissfully deluded death row inmate over the course of the film's three acts—a narrative arc that feels epic in spite of its modest run time. Divine even breaks out of drag (his most famous talent, but certainly not his only one) for a few scenes, to co-star opposite himself as the man who deflowers Dawn and becomes the deadbeat father to her petulant child. But while FEMALE TROUBLE is unquestionably Divine's movie, Waters' entire cast of Dreamlanders provides amazing support. Chief among them is Edith Massey, as the sordid, sultry, straight-hating Ida, decked out in a strappy vinyl suit that can barely contain her abundant flesh. Massey manages to steal almost every scene she's in and has the honor of delivering the film's best line—an astute observation that could very well stand as the thesis of Waters' entire oeuvre: "The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life." (1974, 89 min, 35mm) [Darnell Witt]

Alain Guiraudie's MISERICORDIA (France)

Landmark's Century Centre Cinema and Gene Siskel Film Center — See Venue websites for showtimes

Alain Guiraudie, one of contemporary cinema's great regionalists—he documents rural life in the south of France as reliably as Bruno Dumont does in the country's northern enclaves—returns to his old stomping grounds with a sublime and slippery work that is generating an unexpected amount of buzz for the perennially unsung maven of pastoral surrealism. It is without a doubt the most attention Guiraudie's work has received since his 2013 breakthrough STRANGER BY THE LAKE, a minor masterpiece that was nonetheless notable for its eschewal of a number of his signature directorial flourishes, notably a certain proclivity for freewheeling absurdism and surrealistic diversion (Guiraudie's cinema represents, above all, a bracingly cold plunge into the murky waters of the unconscious mind) as well as an unspoken and wholly unquestioned pansexual thrust that renders his characters as potential romantic vectors for virtually anybody with whom they might cross paths. MISERICORDIA follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), a journeyman industrial baker, who leaves the modest city of Toulouse for the remote village of Saint-Martial to mourn the death of the town boulanger, under whom he apprenticed during his youth. As it turns out, Jérémie long harbored an unrequited love for the recently deceased baguette purveyor, although he might also be attracted to his newly widowed wife Martine (Catherine Frot) as well as their son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) and perhaps a few other village inhabitants for good measure. Tensions rapidly escalate (with a singular, devastating act of violence looming on the horizon) as Jérémie settles into Vincent's childhood bedroom and indicates no desire to ever leave, having found himself swept up in comforting the grieving widow, foraging for wild mushrooms, and basking in the uneasy embrace of childhood nostalgia. That last part is crucial, as the film feels particularly raw and vulnerable; Guiraudie admitted as much in a recent Chicago Q&A, during which he explained that the film is a meditation on his own Catholic upbringing and a total exorcism of uneasy coming-of-age reminiscences, adding that he deliberately scouted a shooting locale that would be a dead ringer for his actual place of birth. MISERICORDIA is in part a film about the elaborate rituals and clandestine intensity that come with the territory of queer life, particularly for an emissary of an older generation like Guiraudie. Through all manner of cheeky allusions, the film explicitly links that constant sense of shame and dire need for secrecy to the Catholic faith. God loves you—in a way that is certainly quite gay—but you have blood on your hands, and you really ought to spend more time with the parish priest in order to allay some of that guilt. The film also posits, much like Thomas Wolfe, that you really can't go home again, lest you discover the town to be even smaller than you remember, or that your former friends are your friends no longer. Perhaps they've changed too much. You have definitely changed. Perhaps too much. (2024, 102 min, DCP Digital) [David Whitehouse]
---
Read co-managing editor Ben Sachs’ interview with Guiraudie at our blog here.

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Andrei Tarkovsky's MIRROR (USSR)

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

Long before the great TREE OF LIFE euphoria of 2011, another film (from another director's famously sparse oeuvre) went off uncharted into the space between memories past and present, mapping onto them a universal significance. Andrei Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR may lack dinosaurs and metaphorical doors in the desert, but it does set a mean precedent for everything a passion project can be when an auteur is working on such an intensely personal level. Long a dream project of Tarkovsky's, it was only in the wake of SOLARIS that he was able to secure funding, and armed with a meager allotment of film stock, he began production in late 1973. Given the non-linear, dreamlike progression of the film, such obstacles aren't hard to comprehend, and they perhaps explain why this is his most fleeting film outside his debut, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD. Drawn across the middle of the 20th century, THE MIRROR takes a stream of consciousness journey through familial memories, with actors in dual roles as father and son, as wife and mother. Woven in are poems penned by Tarkovsky's own father, assorted clips of wartime newsreel footage, and the quiet, ethereal imagery characteristic of all his films. It all makes for a hazy dream of cinema, one from which you tragically wake too early. But lest the length should fool you, this is not Tarkovsky for beginners. No surprise that at his most personal, he's also at his most esoteric, so an afternoon spent with one of his aforementioned films would be a good primer. As for those already in his thrall, this is imperative viewing. Screening as part of the State and Revolution: Film Under the Boot series. (1974, 108 min, 35mm) [Tristan Johnson]

Michelangelo Antonioni's RED DESERT (Italy)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6pm

Antonioni's first film in color (and how!) begins deliberately out-of-focus; it seems as though the theater projectionist has erred until the credits appear fully legible. There are plenty of similar tricks throughout RED DESERT, which befits the theme of humanity's disorientation from modern life. Various settings—namely the chemical plant owned by the heroine's husband—suggest science-fiction until the film reveals their real function; and major sequences begin without explaining how the characters arrived and end without suggesting they're going. For several films, the director had innovated formal strategies to convey the transience and spiritual poverty of industrial society: In L'AVVENTURA (1960), he famously had the main character disappear from the film one-third of the way in, never to return; and the final seven minutes of L'ECLISSE (1963) removed people from its urban setting entirely. But RED DESERT represents the full-on Antonionification of the world, a film in which individuals make little impact on their surroundings, whether they inhabit them or not. (Hence the quiet heartbreak of the film's conclusion, which some viewers misinterpret as anticlimax: the heroine simply realizes there's nowhere for her to escape to.) Monica Vitti's Giuliana has recognized this crisis, and her failure to respond to it has driven her to madness. The film depicts an unspecified period following her release from a sanitarium, a series of abortive attempts at emotional connection. Giuliana stares abjectly at a factory workers' strike, a monumental new device that will allow people to "listen to the stars," and an aristocratic party that tries and fails to transform into an orgy. The last of these accounts for one of the great sequences of Antonioni's career, and it alone is worth the price of admission. It's staged in a shipyard shack where Giuliana and several of her husband's friends—including the introspective engineer (Richard Harris) with whom she's contemplating an affair—have retreated for an extended bacchanal. The two-room structure becomes a microcosm for the already-cloistered world of the shamefully rich; and within Antonioni's masterful frames it becomes as frightfully imposing as any of the giant industrial structures owned by any of the characters. As the camera finds numerous snaky passages through the space, time itself seems to have been elongated; these characters, so full of imagination and drive, transform the space into a little paradise. But the air turns chilly the following morning, and the men and women proceed to demolish the wooden walls and furniture to add to the furnace. As Giuliana (and Antonioni himself) knows all too well, the heedless dive into pleasure will give way to destruction, leaving a sense of gaping absence in its wake. Screening as part of the Curated by Paul Schrader series. (1964, 118 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Brad Bird’s THE IRON GIANT (US)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am

THE IRON GIANT is a story born from grief—first as Ted Hughes’ 1968 novel The Iron Man, written to help his children cope with their mother’s death, and later as Brad Bird’s 1999 film, tied to his own personal loss. Hughes’ tale follows a colossal metal being feared by humanity until a boy named Hogarth befriends him, teaching him the values of empathy and understanding. When Earth faces annihilation by a cosmic “Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon,” the Iron Man triumphs through cunning and competition rather than violence. These pacifistic heroics emphasize Hughes’ themes of resilience and redemption—an echo of his own attempt to guide his children through tragedy after the 1963 suicide of their mother, Sylvia Plath. Decades later, Bird reimagined the story through his own lens of sorrow. His sister was killed in a murder-suicide by her estranged husband—a tragic act of gun violence that deeply shaped his approach. As Bird states in the 2016 documentary THE GIANT’S DREAM: THE MAKING OF THE IRON GIANT, “When you shoot somebody, you’re not just killing that person. You’re killing a part of all the people that love that person.” Dedicated to her memory, THE IRON GIANT was conceived with the question: What if a gun had a soul and didn’t want to be a gun? Bird set the film during the Cold War to provide a level of historical realism that reflected a time of paranoia and nuclear dread—fears that can be felt as clearly today as they were in 1999 or 1957. With heavy themes such as the loss of innocence, nuclear anxieties, pacifism, and preconceived destiny, it may seem strange to see the Academy Award-winning director of Pixar darlings THE INCREDIBLES (2004) and RATATOUILLE (2007) at the helm. But Bird’s journey in animation was already remarkable. At 13, he completed his first animated short, which impressed Disney. A year later, he was mentored by one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men," legends of animation like Milt Kahl. Bird got his start as an animator, assisting on films such as THE FOX AND THE HOUND (1981), THE PLAGUE DOGS (1982), and THE BLACK CAULDRON (1985). Soon, he was directing episodes of Amazing Stories and The Simpsons. With the death of his sister in 1989, Bird spent the ’90s developing THE IRON GIANT. In the film, the Giant (voiced by Vin Diesel) crash-lands on Earth near the picturesque seaside town of Rockwell during the Sputnik era and finds an ally in Hogarth. But his presence sparks government suspicion, embodied by the paranoid, bumbling agent Kent Mansley. Hiding in the scrapyard of beatnik artist Dean McCoppin (voiced by Harry Connick Jr.), the Giant eventually faces inevitable confrontation when the military arrives. When he mistakenly believes Hogarth is dead, his peaceful nature is overridden by his destructive programming, transforming him into the weapon he was designed to be. He forgets his vow to be more like Superman. As chaos unfolds, it is ultimately the Giant—once feared as a monster—who must save the town from a nuclear catastrophe triggered by Mansley’s recklessness. Despite critical acclaim, THE IRON GIANT did not perform well at the box office, due in part to Warner Bros.’ lackluster marketing and its release being overshadowed by THE SIXTH SENSE. Yet, over time, it has earned recognition for its emotional depth, anti-war message, blend of traditional and CGI animation, and the iconic declaration: “You are who you choose to be.” A heartfelt homage to 1950s sci-fi, the Giant’s design echoes Gort from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, while its narrative repurposes Cold War fears through the eyes of the “monster.” Once overlooked, THE IRON GIANT now stands tall—a testament to the power of storytelling in confronting loss, fear, and the choice to be something greater. Who knew a giant metal man could teach us all what it means to be human? Screening as part of Music Box’s ongoing Animation Adventures series. (1999, 90 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Takashi Yamazaki’s GODZILLA MINUS ONE (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Filled with sweeping music, heartfelt pep talks, and a melodramatic subplot about an orphaned child, GODZILLA MINUS ONE is practically daring you not to fall in love with it. It’s saccharine in a way that’s so sincere it’s undeniable. It’s no wonder the film was such a hit with audiences in 2023. GODZILLA MINUS ONE follows a kamikaze pilot, Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), who witnesses the large aquatic lizard creature, Godzilla, attack the small island on which he’s based—only he and a Navy air mechanic, Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) survive. Plagued by survivors’ guilt, he returns home to find his parents were killed in the bombing of Tokyo. He stumbles into a stable familial relationship with the people around him: an annoyed but ultimately generous neighbor (Sakura Ando), and, especially, an orphaned young woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who herself is caring for an orphaned baby, Akiko (Sae Nagatani). He also builds community after finding a job aboard a minesweeper with a congenial crew of men, though they themselves are also dealing firsthand with the now—due to US testing—nuclear-mutated Godzilla. Time passes, and, trying to rebuild amid struggling through the trauma and continuing hardship and loss of post-war Japan, Shikishima must also help find a way to defeat a giant monster terrorizing Tokyo. The look of GODZILLA MINUS ONE is a love letter to B movies, with this Godzilla’s notable massive spikes and blue-hued atomic ray rendered in CGI in a way that at times feels cheesy and yet completely works; it’s a testament to the kaiju film’s emphasis on both striking imagery and character, that special effects whatever their cost or form can be wholly engrossing and entirely support the emotional narrative at hand. A contemporary take on the original 1954 film, GODZILLA MINUS ONE demonstrates how multifaceted and complex the Godzilla franchise can be, not solely as an allegory for global shifts and historical events or as a conversation about evolving visual effects, but in how it insightfully uses those elements to deploy and transcend both genre and storytelling. Screening as part of the Lecture of War series. (2023, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin’s ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 1:45pm

“’Do you think it’s in bad taste to have done a comic book about the Holocaust?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I think the Holocaust was in bad taste.’” This recollection by cartoonist Art Spiegelman of an interview about his Pulitzer-Prize-winning graphic book Maus more or less sums up the lifelong attitude of the subject of ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE. Spiegelman is a painfully truthful satirist and self-confessional chronicler of his life and times who is arguably without peer. It was he who broke the ice to allow the explosion in graphic novels and nonfiction works we see today from such artists as Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, 2000­–2003) and Joe Sacco (Palestine, 2001). He also has joined hundreds of other authors whose books have been banned from public schools and libraries in Texas, Florida, and many municipalities throughout the United States because these “conservative” enclaves just can’t handle the truth. Spiegelman really didn’t have that choice. Both of his parents were Holocaust survivors who lost nearly all their relatives, including their son Richieu, who was poisoned by the aunt to whom he was entrusted because she was afraid they would be caught and sent to the gas chamber. Spiegelman’s mother killed herself when he was 19. Shortly thereafter, he spent a few months in a mental institution and thereafter committed himself to cartooning as a way to make a living, comment on the ills of the world, and process his internal traumas. Bernstein and Dolin present a comprehensive, mainly chronological account of Spiegelman’s career and artistic influences, from his love of MAD Magazine and the horrorcentric EC Comics of the 1950s through to his creation of the satirical Topps trading cards “Wacky Packages,” his influential magazine Raw, his covers for The New Yorker, and In the Shadow of No Towers (2004), his depiction of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. An account of the 13 years he spent creating Maus, which chronicles his father’s experience of the Holocaust, is about as harrowing as anything I’ve ever seen, and his inevitable inability to escape from its shadow in the public’s mind humbling. There is far more in this dense documentary than I can ever cover in this small space, but every moment, especially interviews with his wife and The New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly, is electrifying and vital to understanding not only this uncompromising artist, but also the underground comic scene that helped him make sense of his life. Followed by a post-screening Q&A with producer Alicia Sams and cartoonist Emil Ferris, moderated by Mark Bazer of WTTW’s “The Interview Show.” (2024, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

A frequent narrative trope in John Carpenter’s films is groups of people attempting to keep the forces of evil from entering a house or other building. The characters look out windows, peering across streets into the inky darkness, unsure what is watching them and trying to find entry. These uninvited guests include the blood-pact street gangs waging war on an abandoned police station in ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, the Shape drifting across a suburban street towards Laurie Strode and the children she’s protecting in HALLOWEEN, the phantom-lepers seeking vengeance on the residents of Antonio Bay in THE FOG, the team of men huddled inside an arctic weather station in THE THING, and the tribe of outer space savages waging war on the remote rescue team in GHOSTS OF MARS. Bands of people grouped together for the purpose of keeping out what shouldn’t be in takes its grandest shape in PRINCE OF DARKNESS. The film not only signals Carpenter’s triumphant return to relatively low-budget filmmaking following STARMAN and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, it also showcases what may be Carpenter’s most exacting formalist construction of space and tension, or as the director himself put it, “Every shot I can see, every shot is basically set to a purpose, where in some films I will let things go (…) Every shot in here is specifically designed to communicate something.” The film’s premise is fairly simple: just before the sun goes down (very similar to the start of ASSAULT) a group gathers at an abandoned church to try to figure out what a mysterious vial of green liquid found by Father Loomis (Donald Pleasance, here playing a different Loomis than the Doctor he portrayed in HALLOWEEN) actually is. Loomis believes the goo contains something evil and sure enough, the slime turns out to be the disembodied Son of Satan, the Anti-God. The liquid seeps out in search of hosts (similar to the alien in THE THING), members of the research team are taken over by the Satanic host, and an army of possessed schizophrenics takes guard outside, not allowing anyone to escape, or to come in. It’s a twist on Carpenter’s familiar “under siege” theme—there is no keeping evil out, it's already inside (save for the seemingly undead horde waiting outside). These minions of the Anti-God don’t come inside, suggesting subservience to something far more insidious, and complicating the usual narrative of alien-zombie-ghosts or disturbingly human murderers. With PRINCE OF DARKNESS, it’s as if the alien from THE THING succeeded; evil has gained a secure foothold in our world. While Carpenter’s next film, THEY LIVE, would continue this idea, with increased pessimism and hopelessness, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is the most apocryphal film Carpenter has made; the evil is not after vengeance or mere survival, but rather the total domination of everyone within its reach. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1987, 102 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]

David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Wednesday, 6:15pm and Thursday, 6:30pm

An admirer of David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD, Mel Brooks lobbied to get Lynch hired as director for this historical drama about Joseph Merrick, a profoundly disfigured young man who became a minor celebrity in Victorian-era London after he was taken under the care of the physician Frederick Treves. Brooks also fought executives to let Lynch shoot the film in black-and-white and incorporate some experimental dream sequences reminiscent of his underground classic. The producer’s victories are worth mentioning not only because they speak to Brooks’ magnanimity, but also because they helped shape THE ELEPHANT MAN into the gorgeous work that it is. A quick scan of IMDB’s trivia page for the film reveals that it’s highly inaccurate with regards to Merrick’s life: he was never abused by the proprietor of the freak show where Treves discovered him, nor did the proprietor ever abduct him from the hospital where he came to live. Yet Lynch’s film is still a deeply moving fairy tale on the themes of friendship and compassion, imagining how caring individuals can elevate a person long held in low esteem by others and himself. The scenes of Merrick tearfully accepting the kindness of his benefactors are among the most forthrightly emotional in Lynch’s filmography; as realized by John Hurt (and an extraordinary team of makeup artists), the character is perhaps the most beautifully vulnerable Lynch would consider prior to Alvin Straight in THE STRAIGHT STORY. The film’s aesthetic adds greatly to its emotional impact—the sooty and shadowy black-and-white imagery, the dreamlike dissolves, and the haunting sound design (co-created by Lynch and as dense in industrial noises as the soundtrack of ERASERHEAD) evoke a decaying world where kindness seems an especially rare commodity. You feel almost as grateful as Merrick when you sense its presence. (1980, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Albert Magnoli's PURPLE RAIN (US)

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

Unbearably campy in its daytime scenes and nearly sublime in the nighttime sequences (Donald Thorin, who shot this, was also the cinematographer on the greatest of all Night Movies, THIEF), PURPLE RAIN, Prince's Albert Magnoli-directed Minneapolis Sound creation myth/excuse-for-concert-footage forms a strange counterpart to UNDER THE CHERRY MOON, the 1986 follow-up. While the little man from Paisley Park remains a cipher—more of an overwrought presence than a star in his own film—Morris Day and Jerome Benton steal the show, gamely embracing the sort of 30s-influenced dialogue humor that would dominate CHERRY MOON. A theory: every generation produces a group of people who could conceivably become classical Studio Era character actors, but only in the 1930s to the 1950s did any of them fully embrace that potential. Day, with his shoulder-twitching cockiness and oversized suits, and Benton, who walks a fine line between straight man and comic foil, join Divine's turn in TROUBLE IN MIND as the finest representatives of that tendency to come along in the 1980s. Screening as part of the Doc and Roll: Rockstars of the Silver Screen series. (1984, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Ignaity Vishnevetsky]

Carson Lund’s EEPHUS (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

It’s a beautiful autumn day in Massachusetts, with the trees painting the sky various shades of green and orange, and the clouds taking up just enough space to leave room for plenty of sunshine. Sounds like a great day to play some baseball. Carson Lund’s debut feature—focused around a rec-league of ball players and their final game before the town baseball field is paved over to become a school—revels in this pristine sense of atmosphere, creating a baseball film less interested in who ends up winning than the feeling of watching the sun go down while heading into the ninth inning. Baseball is, after all, more than just the game; it’s the old man in the stalls muttering to himself, the crotchety obsessive keeping score in his worn-out notebook, the food truck parked nearby peddling slices of pizza for passersby, and the friendly barbs thrown back and forth between teammates. EEPHUS somehow lands somewhere between “Slow Cinema” and indie dramedy without ever feeling self-indulgent or crass, its respect for its suburban characters too earnest in practice. There’s something inherently noble and relatable about the seriousness with which the players take their sport; here's a group of men who don’t do this for a living but feel some kind of pull towards the game, whether it's passion, obligation, or just an excuse to get out of the house. That Lund’s film is able to capture the tactility of a New England autumnal day, and carry such emotionally lofty material without feeling overly sentimental, and have some of the funniest dialogue in a film I’ve heard in recent memory, is no small feat. Perhaps it’s notable that the first character we hear in the film is voiced by legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, maybe a nod to the film’s pursuit of capturing life’s circuitousness, the great American pastime acting as grand metaphor for all great things having their great moment in the sun, until we’re well into the night, and it’s time to pack it in. After all, there’s always next year. (2024, 98 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (US)

Wilmette Theatre – Thursday, 6pm

A crucial film in Robert Altman's filmography, if not necessarily one of the best, this is significant for being Altman's first major commercial success, thereby paving the way for one of the most fascinating—and downright unpredictable—careers of any Hollywood director. The movie marks Altman's first experiment with overlapping dialogue: some scenes have as many as four conversations going on at once. As in subsequent Altman features, the organized cacophony was achieved through an atmosphere of much improvisation. By some accounts, less than one-quarter of the dialogue that made it into the final cut had been scripted. (Ironically, the movie still won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.) The movie's success has less to do with its technical innovation, however, than with Altman's anti-authoritarian views, which struck a deep chord with the anti-war movement of the time. Though M*A*S*H was set during the Korean War, Altman removed all references to Korea during editing so that the setting might be mistaken for Vietnam. The jivey and often sick humor—which, in hindsight, screams late-60s counterculture—only makes things blurrier. (1970, 116 min, Unconfirmed Format) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
A mystery screening called Mystery Machine takes place Monday at 7pm. 

Law Kei’s 1977 film THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (96 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Chicago Latino Film Festival
The 41st Chicago Latino Film Festival opens with DEAR GENTLEMAN (90 min, DCP Digital), actress and novelist Patricia Castañeda’s feature debut about the fight of Colombian women to win the right to vote, on Thursday at the Davis Theater. Doors open at 5pm, and events will start at 6pm. The post-screening gala will be held at the nearby DANK Haus German American Cultural Center (4740 N. Western Ave).

Check back next week for further coverage of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, running from Thursday through Monday, April 14. More info here.

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

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Hu Bo’s 2018 film AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL (230 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Driving Towards the End: An East Asian Perspective series.

Ulrike Ottinger’s three-part documentary TAIGA (1985-1992) screens Saturday, 3pm (Part One), Sunday, 1pm (Part Two), and Monday, 7pm (Part Three) as part of the Four by Ulrike Ottinger series.

James Mangold’s 2024 Bob Dylan biopic A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (141 min, DCP Digital screens Saturday, 6:30pm as part of the New Releases and Restorations series.

Frank Darabont’s 1994 film THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (142 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, 9:30pm, as part of the Board Picks series.

Three short films by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub—MACHORKA-MUFF (1963, 18 min, 35mm), NOT RECONCILED (1965, 55 min, 35mm), and THE BRIDEGROOM, THE ACTRESS, AND THE PIMP (1968, 23 min, 35mm)—screen Sunday, 4pm, while Huillet and Straub’s THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH (1968, 94 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm. Both are part of the History Lessons of Straub and Huillet series.

A collection of shorts by Rose Lowder and Francisco Rojas (1979-2024, Total Approx. 65 min, DCP Digital and 16mm) screen Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Encounters in the Cinema series. More information about all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS
The 2025 Chicago Film Frenzy takes place through Sunday.

Johnny Lange’s film SPLIT PERSONALITIES ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS screens Tuesday at 6:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.)
The Action! Documentary Double Feature, including Cathryne Czubek’s 2021 film ONCE UPON A TIME IN UGANDA! (94 min, DCP Digital) and Néjib Belkadhi’s 2006 film VHS – KAHLOUCHA (80 min, Digital Projection), screens Thursday, 7pm, in partnership with the Renaissance Society as part of Wakaliga Uganda: If Uganda Was America. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Leonardo Van Dijl’s 2024 film JULIE KEEPS QUIET (100 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

The 2025 National Theatre Live production of Sean Foley’s Dr. Strangelove (180 min, Digital Projection), starring Steve Coogan, screens on Sunday at 2pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Tracie Laymon’s 2024 BOB TREVINO LIKES IT (102 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Austin Snell’s 2024 film THEY CALL HER DEATH (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday and Saturday at 11:45pm.

Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight.

Park Chan-wook’s 2000 film JOINT SECURITY AREA (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday, 7pm, followed by a post-screening discussion with historian Bruce Cumings moderated by Tae-nyun Kim.

Stacey and Michael's Showcase of Shorts IX screens Tuesday at 7pm.

The Sound of Silent Film Festival 2025 takes place Wednesday at 7:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫Sisters in Cinema Media Arts Cinema (2310 E. 75th St.)
Julie Dash’s 1991 film DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (112 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 1pm, as part of the Reclaim, Remember, Resist – The Vision of Julie Dash series, followed by a conversation with Cheryl Lynn Bruce and Floyd Webb, diving into the film’s cultural impact and Dash’s groundbreaking storytelling. Afterward, explore the Dash archive exhibit and connect with fellow film lovers. More info here. 

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
Wendy Clarke: Love is All Around screens as part of VDB's new virtual program, curated by Kristin MacDonough. This program features a selection of five excerpts from Clarke’s iconic LOVE TAPES series, showcasing personal reflections on love from 2,500 diverse individuals. The LOVE TAPES project, ongoing since the late '70s, explores various interpretations of love, from lust and friendship to first love and familial bonds. This VDB TV program highlights newly remastered works, preserved by Clarke and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. More info here. 

CINE-LIST: March 28, 2025 - April 3, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // John Dickson, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Josephine Ferorelli, Shaun Huhn, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye, Dmitry Samarov, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, David Whitehouse, Olivia Hunter Willke, Darnell Witt