📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Tsai Ming-liang’s THE HOLE (Taiwan/France)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
In the midst of the pandemic, Tsai Ming-liang’s THE HOLE resurfaced as opportune viewing because of its being about a mysterious virus plaguing Taiwan on the brink of the new millennium (the film itself was originally conceived for a French TV anthology about that precipice—another apocalyptic instance, though one with more forewarning); incidentally one of the main characters also hoards toilet paper, the quirk du jour of 2020. In the context of the film, as throughout Tsai's oeuvre, this is a kind of strange behavior that makes sense only to the person doing it. What was humorously absurd soon became a reality during our real-life pandemic, suggesting the ways that the odder details of Tsai’s films, outside of themes like loneliness and isolation, are bizarrely relatable. But those larger themes are prominently on display here as well: Tsai stalwart Lee Kang-sheng plays a young man living alone in a dilapidated Taipei high-rise, in which he also runs a small grocery store. Toward the beginning of the film, a plumber comes to assess a leak and drills a small hole in the dwelling's floor that never gets filled. The female occupant below (Yang Kuei-mei) is understandably frustrated, and the two enter into a screwball-esque battle of wills as the virus rages on around them and they remain in the building, defiant of orders to evacuate. Intermittently there are sequences wherein Yang Kuei-mei performs musical numbers dressed as and lip-synching to Grace Chang, a Hong Kong actress and singer. (After the credits there is an intertitle that declares “In the year 2000, we are grateful that we still have Grace Chang’s songs to comfort us.”) These tuneful respites are unusual amidst Tsai’s oeuvre, then and now, and what they mean is just as opaque as any other of his enduring motifs that suggest rather than explicate. For example, as is often the case in Tsai’s films, water is a constant; those, like the protagonists, who do not evacuate the affected areas will lose access to their water supply when it’s shut off on January 1, 2000. Outside, however, rain pours down torrentially, presumably a factor in what drives cockroaches, the plague’s vector, further into peoples’ homes. It’s the insects that people start acting like once they’ve caught the disease—this accounts for some of the film’s physicality, as well as the hole itself, which becomes the primary source of communication between the man and woman. That such an intrusion facilitates their connection is evocative of the premise itself; the cure to loneliness might just be something like a virus. (1998, 89 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
James Benning’s TEN SKIES (US/Experimental)
Siskel Film Center — Monday, 6pm
The cinema of James Benning rests upon patience above all else. Over the course of a half-century of filmmaking, he has drilled into and wrestled with the bonds between image and duration, and the ways in which time molds the world around us, and vice-versa. TEN SKIES exemplifies this ethos as perfectly as one can imagine, taking a daringly simple and symmetrical premise—ten shots of ten different skies, lasting ten minutes each—and providing the audience with the space to do with these moments what we will. Each segment carries a genuine sense of character and momentum, the formations of clouds and the various hues of blue and gray filling the frame with endless possibilities of time, place, and feeling. Though all of the skies, shot on 16mm film, were captured near the town Val Verde, California, one could perhaps imagine the second sky—fiery smoke consuming the atmosphere—in their own hometown, or the tenth sky—a nighttime scene accompanied by chirping crickets—in their own backyard, our own memories often punctuated by what the world above looked like at that particular moment. Benning’s juxtaposition of scenes brings a further jolt to the experience, the calm peaceful blues and fluffy clouds of the fourth sky veering drastically into the fifth sky, a vortex of dark clouds layered on top of one another with the sun fighting to break through the center. Each sky wields the simplest elements to convey such weight, be it a particular shade of blue or the force of a smoke stack billowing in the breeze or the bevy of imaginative shapes that a cloud can take on. Benning conceived of TEN SKIES as an anti-war film, saying he wanted the “peaceful and serene” shots to act as an antithesis to the “arrogance of the current administration and their violent so-called solutions.” More than twenty years on, our world, and the skies, sadly haven’t changed too much. Screening as part of Off Center. (2004, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
Éric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales
Music Box Theatre — See Venue website for showtimes
Éric Rohmer’s THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU and SUZANNE’S CAREER (France)
Éric Rohmer said that it was only after the success of the subsequent features in the Six Moral Tales that THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU (1963, 23 min, DCP Digital) and SUZANNE’S CAREER (1963, 55 min, DCP Digital), both shot in 1962, were given any attention. He also expressed dissatisfaction with the two films, citing what he considered their poor technical qualities, though in hindsight they seem important, presenting in miniature the ideas he’d flesh out in his major features. BAKERY GIRL and SUZANNE’S CAREER find Rohmer deploying for the first time what he called a moraliste (not to be confused with the English-language “moralist”) approach to cinematic storytelling, which concerned itself with the characters’ inner lives. And both showcase his interest in characters decades younger than himself, a predilection he’d continue to indulge for the rest of his filmmaking career. Rohmer was already past 40 when he made this short and featurette, and they’re both about characters in their 20s. And while they have a surface-level edginess that feels more like the early films of Rohmer’s Cahiers colleagues (both BAKERY GIRL and SUZANNE’S CAREER were shot on black-and-white 16mm and snappily edited Nouvelle Vague-style), they also reflect a gentle wisdom that comes with having lived and learned from one’s mistakes. BAKERY GIRL is a comedy about a college student who becomes enamored with a young woman he meets in the street. He tries to cross paths with her again by returning to the same corner day after day and, because he misses lunch to continue his search, winds up ordering a treat (or two or three) from the same corner bakery… where another attractive young woman happens to work. Will he give up his fool’s quest and strike things up with the bakery girl, who seems to be interested in him? To hear him tell it, the protagonist’s romantic troubles were the stuff of Tolstoy, when in actuality he comes across as desperate and naive. Rohmer still bestows a miracle upon the poor schmuck, reminding us (as he would in such features as THE GREEN RAY [1986] and A TALE OF WINTER [1992]) that fate can be benevolent sometimes. By contrast, the ending of SUZANNE’S CAREER isn’t so sweet; indeed, it’s probably the bleakest of the Moral Tales. It concerns the humiliation of another college student, this one named Bertrand. First his frenemy steals away Suzanne, the young woman he’s interested in; then Suzanne, whom Bertrand sulkily comes to dislike, takes her revenge on him in a way that he doesn’t recognize until the end of the film. Bertrand’s hard-won insight into the ways of women may be a minor-key epiphany for Rohmer, but it still conveys the filmmaker’s faith in people’s ability to better themselves. [Ben Sachs]
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Éric Rohmer's LA COLLECTIONNEUSE (France)
LA COLLECTIONNEUSE was Éric Rohmer's first work in color, and boy does he ever take advantage of it. Working with master cinematographer Nestor Almendros, Rohmer creates an intoxicating portrait of a world in bloom. The imagery is simple—grass, stones, water, and sand are recurring visual motifs—yet vividly rendered; many of the shots achieve a transcendent beauty. In classical fashion, form mirrors content, with characters musing and acting on their notions of the beautiful. (As always Rohmer creates the impression that he would have been very much at home in the late 18th century.) Adrien (Patrick Bauchau) is a 30-ish art collector who gets left alone when his fashion model girlfriend leaves for London for six weeks over the summer. He decides to idle away the time at the country manor of a distant acquaintance; joining him are another dandyish friend, Daniel (Daniel Pommereulle), and Haydée (Haydée Politoff), a gaminish woman about ten years their junior. Haydée likes to sleep around, and Adrien, who has little else to do, amuses himself by wondering whether she’ll sleep with him. Adrien also narrates LA COLLECTIONNEUSE, and the film is subtly modernist in how it draws attention to the subjective viewpoint behind the images. Consider a conversation between Adrien and Haydée on a beach; as the latter talks, Rohmer cuts to a flattering shot of the young woman’s bare legs—clearly a reflection of what Adrien is thinking about. Subjectivity informs the images in subtler ways, as when Adrien’s self-aggrandizing narration undercuts the natural beauty that’s all around him. And then there’s the dialogue, which Rohmer wrote in collaboration with the three leads. Few filmmakers make conversation seem as erotic as Rohmer did; the discussions of beauty are delivered so sensuously and suggestively that they intimate physical pleasure better than most renderings of lovemaking in cinema. (1967, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Éric Rohmer's MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S (France)
On a December evening in Clermont-Ferrand (the birthplace of Blaise Pascal), Christmas lights flickering against storefronts, Jean-Louis glimpses a blonde woman at Catholic Mass. Éric Rohmer places the camera inside Jean-Louis's car as he follows her through the streets. The sequence borrows the grammar of an action film but strips away all spectacle: no swelling music, no frantic editing. It is some random guy stalking a woman trying to get home from church; and does it make it better that he has already decided they are in love? Jean-Louis' first line of narration records his decision that Françoise will be his wife. Françoise, the blonde, the Catholic. That’s all Jean-Louis needs, but the rest of the film will attempt to sway him from this decision. The third entry in the director's Six Moral Tales is drenched in Catholicism, but it's the philosophy-of-self-deception sort. Rohmer's greatest irony is that he had no interest in moralizing; instead, he designed his Contes Moraux around the beliefs people invent to justify their desires. Jean-Louis' carefully constructed world begins to shift when he runs into Vidal (Antoine Vitez), a school friend he hasn't seen in fourteen years. Their chance meeting in a café that neither has visited before sparks a debate between gambling odds and belief in gods. Jean-Louis, ever the mathematician, insists the odds aren't remarkable at all. Rohmer gently exposes the gap between probability and lived experience. Jean-Louis believes life can be explained through reason, even as chance continues to meddle. This motif recurs throughout the narrative: at each moment Jean-Louis believes he is in full control, something—that he would prefer not to call chance— interferes. Blaise Pascal's Pensées becomes an anchor for Rohmer's film, specifically Pascal's Wager. Jean-Louis insists that if Pascal is a Christian, "then I am an atheist." If belief in a god offers infinite reward at no cost while non-belief denies any reward, is it not better to wager that gods exists? Jean-Louis considers this spiritually hollow, reducing faith to a lottery. Vidal counters that conviction itself gives life direction, whether or not the universe ever validates it. One of Rohmer's many obsessions: belief creates action before truth is verified. An alternative path is laid out for Jean-Louis, one filled with brutal honesty, adventures, and passion. Jean-Louis builds fate from his own ideas, even when a series of coincidences attempt to lead him toward a life with Maud. Walking through the door, Maud engulfs the screen and immediately teases the two men: "You both reek of holy water." She is witty, perceptive, flirtatious, and entirely unimpressed by Jean-Louis' carefully constructed morality. No one in the film, including Jean-Louis himself, understands him better than the woman he believes he should resist. Rohmer stages the ensuing triangular conversation with confidence; the three flow effortlessly between religion, sex, mathematics, marriage, desire, and free will. The narrative skeleton begins to show when Vidal leaves and Maud and Jean-Louis are alone. Many of Rohmer's moral films involve a romance that pivots toward a new desire only to return to the initial partner. Rohmer suggests that we don't master chance so much as narrate over it, transforming coincidence into destiny only after the fact. As Jean-Louis's narration suggests, though he doesn't seem to grasp, he bet on the blonde from Mass in his own Pascalian wager. The film's final moments force Jean-Louis to contend with a truth that he'll never speak and a corruption of his steadfast beliefs. MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is one of cinema's great films of ideas. It never forgets that ideas belong to the viewer just as much as the characters. Rohmer doesn't illustrate philosophy; he lets philosophy flirt, hesitate, tease, and fall in love. By the end, it becomes clear that meaning demands an absurd leap: to live as though our choices mean more than chance allows. (1969, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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Éric Rohmer’s CLAIRE’S KNEE (France)
Vain, lecherous, and devoid of self-awareness, the diplomat Jérôme (played by Jean-Claude Brialy and his mountainous beard) in CLAIRE’S KNEE is easily the least likable protagonist of Éric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales. Still, he proves to be the ideal subject for some worthwhile artistic experiments, so maybe he isn’t that bad after all. One of the wonderful achievements of Rohmer’s first film cycle is that it brought a literary sense of subjectivity to cinema. In most of the Moral Tales, the male hero narrates the action, but rather than simply restate the onscreen events, he also adds his interpretations of them—which are often misguided or else unsupported by reality as we see and hear it. Jérôme doesn’t narrate CLAIRE’S KNEE, but Rohmer still illustrates through his conversations with a novelist friend named Aurora (Aurora Cornu) what a clueless boob he is, especially when it comes to women. The film begins, characteristically for Rohmer, with the protagonist at the start of a vacation. Jérôme bumps into Aurora while boating around the lakeside resort town near the Swiss border where he’s staying, and in catching up, she introduces him to the woman she’s staying with (Michèle Montel), that woman’s teenage daughter Laura (Béatrice Romand), and Laura’s stepsister Claire (Laurence de Monaghan), who’s around the same age. Aurora, perhaps seeking inspiration for her next book, decides to orchestrate a romantic plot in which Jérôme—who’s engaged to be married in a few months—will have a fling with the precocious Laura, whom she thinks has a crush on him. Her plot doesn’t come to fruition, though Jérôme manages to explain away his being rebuffed by Laura as proof of his chivalry. As delusional as that may seem, the diplomat soon tops himself, when he turns his sights to Claire and sublimates his sexual desire for her by fixating, with comically verbose justification, on touching her bare knee. CLAIRE’S KNEE may feature the Moral Tales’ most obnoxious man, but it also features the series’ most interesting female characters. Laura, for one, is one of the most sharply drawn adolescents in movies: clever but not “wise beyond her years,” sensitive but never inexplicably moody, radiant but still awkward. She’s a testament to Rohmer’s exacting imagination as a screenwriter and his astonishing ease as a director of actors. Romand, in the first of several great performances she’d deliver for Rohmer, simply inhabits the character; Laura never comes across as the creation of a middle-aged man, but as a fully formed human being. (1970, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Éric Rohmer's LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (France)
Each of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales tells more or less the same story: a man who’s attached to one woman becomes tempted by another, mulls on his attraction, and ultimately decides to remain faithful to the first. Yet this premise proved inexhaustible for the French writer-director, who employed it to consider subjects ranging from social mobility (in SUZANNE’S CAREER) to Catholicism (in MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S) to the art-making process (in CLAIRE’S KNEE). In LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (originally released in the US as CHLOE IN THE AFTERNOON), Rohmer considers nothing less than human beings’ place in the universe, advancing a cosmic perspective that encourages viewers to meditate on notions of free will and social organization. The film’s prologue introduces Frédéric, a thirtysomething lawyer who lives in the suburbs of Paris with his infant daughter and schoolteacher wife, who’s pregnant with a second child. Short, briskly edited scenes lay out Frédéric’s daily routine, his primary relationships, and his innermost thoughts—it’s as though Rohmer is presenting him from the vantage point of an inquisitive, compassionate God. Frédéric admits in his narration that he fantasizes about other women, but adds that he wouldn’t dare cheat on his wife; he doesn’t want to disrupt the comfortable life he’s created. Yet disruption—or at least the threat of disruption—appears in the form of Chloé, the former girlfriend of one of Frédéric’s old college friends. The free-spirited Chloé returns to Paris after several years abroad and seeks out Frédéric in search of a job; they start meeting regularly during his lunch breaks and become exceedingly close. Their conversations are sexy and probing in classic Rohmer fashion, and the leads generate intoxicating chemistry. But while the film creates suspense from the question of whether the two will sleep together, its real concern is the extent to which Frédéric values the bond of monogamy that he claims to value so highly. This bond means more to Frédéric—and to Rohmer—than just his marriage; it represents his connection to the entire social order. That order may be somewhat arbitrary (“If I lived in a polygamous society, I would be polygamous,” Frédéric says to Chloé late in the film), but it gives meaning to life nonetheless. In choosing monogamy, the hero makes more than a moral decision; he reaffirms his footing in a universe that can so easily erupt into chaos. What’s most remarkable about the film is the gentleness with which Rohmer approaches these heavy ideas, easing viewers into philosophical meditation with the effortlessness of a master. (1972, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Brian De Palma’s SNAKE EYES (US)
Alamo Drafthouse — See Venue website for showtimes
SNAKE EYES announces its kinetic energy from its panning opening shots. Set entirely in one location and over one night, Brian De Palma’s late ‘90s political thriller feels quite familiar in its emphasis on camera movement and voyeurism. Here, however, the camera itself is the decisive spectator, a dynamic participant in the dramatic proceedings, stressing that no one subjective perspective has the whole story. It sees more and reveals more, and De Palma’s emphasis on televisual commentary and surveillance technology feels continually relevant. On the eve of a tropical storm in Atlantic City, a heavyweight boxing match is interrupted by an assassination of one of the attendees, the current Secretary of Defense. Also in attendance is Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage), a corrupt police detective, as well as his longtime friend, Navy Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinese). Suspicious of the circumstances surrounding the killing, Rick begins to investigate, learning there’s way more corruption at hand than his own. Especially considering the film from today’s perspective, it’s refreshingly colorful. The casino setting is filled with purples and golds, a welcome reprieve from the common greys and blues of most modern political thrillers. Colorful, too, are the performances; unsurprisingly, Cage’s is most notable, his enthusiastic energy matching that of De Palma’s camera. Balancing its wild tone between satire and sincerity, SNAKE EYES ultimately investigates both performative and political violence, and the way American culture tends to make a spectacle of both. As Rick notes at the end of a bloody night: “Oh what the hell—at least I got to be on TV.” (1998, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Lino Brocka's MACHO DANCER (Philippines)
Alamo Drafthouse — Saturday, 9:15pm
There is a merciless quality to Lino Brocka’s work—when bad things happen in his films, they tend to feel coldly inevitable. MACHO DANCER is a harrowing account of one sex worker’s descent into a living hell, and one thing that distinguishes it from other movies that follow this trajectory is that the protagonist isn’t especially happy or idealistic when he sets out. When the film begins, Pol is a young man who lives in the countryside and supports his family as the paid lover of an American soldier. When the soldier leaves, Pol finds he needs to find another source of income. A friend just back from Manila tells Pol that he’s making good money at a sex club there and invites Pol to go back to the city with him, where he might be able to get him a job. Pol accepts, and within days, he’s working at the club as a nude dancer; he’s also exposed to Manila’s criminal milieu, as some of the dancers with whom he bonds are selling drugs and performing other nefarious favors for the corrupt cop who “protects” the place. Brocka presents all this bluntly, factually, as if to underscore how commonplace this story must be. (His painful cinematic realism suggests an update of what Buñuel achieved in LOS OLVIDADOS [1950].) The director’s approach is especially pulverizing when Pol joins another dancer, Noel, in his search for his younger sister who has gone missing, a journey that takes them into the world of sexual slavery. MACHO DANCER asks us to confront a society in which people are little more than pieces of meat and life seems to hold little value. Even the friendships that exist seem like mere reprieves from lives defined by exploitation and abuse. (Notably, Pol and Noel struggle to find time off from work in order to pursue their search.) Brocka depicts those reprieves with such tenderness that they stand in stark relief from the rest of the movie; however, they remind us of the humanity that these characters are otherwise so cruelly deprived. (1988, 133 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
Angela Schanelec's I WAS AT HOME, BUT... (Germany)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) — Friday, 5pm
The international distribution of Christian Petzold’s films in the 21st century, resulting in his critical coronation as contemporary German cinema’s preeminent auteur, has been a welcome development in the world of cinephilia. It is regrettable, however, that the films of Thomas Arslan and Angela Schanelec, Petzold's formidable colleagues in the movement known as the “Berlin School” (the first generation of graduates from the German Film and Television Academy to make their mark after the reunification of Germany), remain largely unknown outside of their native country. As critic Girish Shambu points out in a recent video essay, the Berlin School has been called a “counter cinema” for the way these filmmakers have reacted against the aesthetically and narratively unadventurous mainstream German movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s and have taken inspiration from the glory days of Fassbinder and the New German Cinema of the '70s instead. Schanelec is generally regarded as the most challenging of the Berlin School directors: her would-be 1998 breakthrough PLACES IN CITIES was panned as a “joyless snoozer” by Derek Elley in Variety who claimed Schanelec’s movies “throw out no emotional lifelines for the viewer.” I would argue, however, that, while devoid of obvious emotional signifiers and easy character identification techniques, Schanelec’s work, like that of her hero Robert Bresson, can be emotionally overwhelming if one is watching and listening correctly. I WAS AT HOME, BUT…, Schanelec’s latest, is an ideal introduction to her unique brand of cinema: a fragmentary, elliptical and non-linear tale of a young teen boy’s return to the home where he lives with his single mother and younger sister after having run away a week previously. Upon returning, the boy, Phillip, resumes rehearsing a grade school production of Hamlet in which he plays the title role, while also attempting to navigate life in a still grief-stricken home two years after the death of his father; one scene, where Philip and his sister Flo continually attempt to console their mother Astrid, who rebuffs them while cleaning a kitchen sink, is ingeniously staged by framing the characters from behind in a static long take that goes on for so long it eventually evokes a feeling of cosmic wonder. Astrid (the superb Maren Eggert), meanwhile, has a few misadventures of her own: one amusing subplot details her failed attempt to buy a bicycle from a man with a tracheotomy, and another sequence, gut-bustingly funny, sees her haranguing a Serbian filmmaker (Dane Komljen, playing himself) in the street after having walked out of his movie. Finally, a parallel story involving one of Phillip’s teachers (TRANSIT’s Franz Rogowski) debating whether to have a child with his own girlfriend may seem random initially but ends up poignantly underscoring Schanelec’s aim of painting a complex portrait of the joys and sorrows of parenthood. While her title may reference Ozu’s coming-of-age classic I WAS BORN, BUT… and a prologue and epilogue featuring a donkey obviously nod to Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, Schanelec ultimately generates a sense of majestic spirituality through an employment of image and sound that is entirely her own. This is nowhere better exemplified than in a remarkable, time-hopping sequence, scored to M. Ward’s muted cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” that begins in a cemetery at night before flashing back to years earlier in a hospital room then flashing-forward again to the present in a museum. A masterpiece. Screening as part of the Four by Angela Schanelec series. (2019, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
Brian De Palma's CASUALTIES OF WAR (US)
Alamo Drafthouse — Monday, 6:45pm
Jean-Luc Godard once praised veteran filmmaker Brian De Palma for his “work on the image,” a notion that once irked Chicago-film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, but in turn gave him pause to afford the filmmaker another look. Second looks, sights missed on first glance—the very DNA of some of De Palma’s best movies—create a necessity for looking twice at the director and his films. First it was John Travolta unable to reverse the mistakes of his past in BLOW-UP, and in CASUALTIES OF WAR it’s Michael J. Fox who becomes an unwitting protagonist, robbed of his ability to see/act, as he traverses the fields and jungles of Vietnam. One night, after a hellish battle with unseen enemies in underground tunnels, Private Max Eriksson’s (Fox) fellow troops go AWOL and decide to kidnap a young Vietnamese girl from her home, intending to hold her as a hostage in retaliation for the deaths of their squad members. Eriksson, feeling powerless and unable to intervene, remains impotent on the sidelines, unable to act. He is like many of De Palma’s characters, who are usually too late, and unable to shake the memory of not acting. Conventional opinion often misunderstands more recent films by De Palma—one of the most provocative New Hollywood masters—probably because he has operated so far outside the system for over a decade. Critics seem to think he has grown angrier over the years with films like THE BLACK DAHLIA (2006) and PASSION (2012); many who rightfully praise works like BODY DOUBLE (1984) and CARLITO’S WAY 1993) miss just how angry those films are. His latest, 2019’s DOMINO (maybe his meanest), was met with almost unanimous befuddlement for some obvious reasons, some not so. It was plagued by production problems and a producer who removed nearly half of the footage De Palma had intended to include in his film, leaving it feeling like one of his most abandoned (though with the director’s recut of RAISING CAIN (1992) surfacing a few years ago, there is hope yet for De Palma’s vision of it). As altered as the film is, there is still a wealth of beauty and horror to pore over, familiar elements for anyone who has been properly steeped in De Palma’s kinetic cinema. Another film of his, 2007’s Cahiers du cinéma-lauded REDACTED, also faced a critical hostility and sabotage (this time at the sticky hands of the film’s producer Mark Cuban). REDACTED couldn’t be more important—it is a virtual retread of CASUALTIES, with the same plot, except this time the solider we follow is fighting in the also senseless Iraq War. De Palma’s anger of the last decade plus and continuing full-on in REDEACTED, isn’t suddenly or reckless; it’s been there all along, but working in an continually uglier present has made his recent output seem more ugly and more visibly so. Love her or hate her, Pauline Kael was one of the first critics to understand the importance of CASUALTIES, and were she still alive, she’d probably have also understood REDACTED. In the words of Kael herself, “De Palma has such seductive, virtuosic control of film craft that he can express convulsions in the unconscious (…) His art is in controlling everything, but he still can't account for everything. He plans everything and discovers something more.” Whether or not we start another unjust foreign war, it’s going to be hard not to think of CASUALTIES and REDACTED, movies that show us how the senseless brutality of war can start to feel like an endless loop that we will be forced to watch one way or another. You can’t really blame De Palma for being so angry. (1989, 112 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]
Akira Kurosawa’s RASHÔMON (Japan)
Alamo Drafthouse — See Venue website for showtimes
Ever since it won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, RASHÔMON has been many a westerner’s gateway to Japanese cinema. It’s also routinely taught in film schools and high school literature classes (I remember having to write a paper comparing it with the two Ryûnosuke Akutagawa stories it’s based on in freshman English), and even the title entered the popular lexicon as shorthand for a narrative with multiple narrators. Yet RASHÔMON remains electrifying in spite of its ubiquity—Akira Kurosawa’s mastery over such filmmaking fundamentals as composition, blocking, performance, and editing ensures that every shot draws the viewer directly into some aspect of the characters’ emotional experience. (If you want to know why Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola have always revered Kurosawa, look no further than RASHÔMON.) For a movie about the elusive nature of truth, it’s awfully easy to engage with; Kurosawa’s direction is so effective in moving the narrative forward that you rarely stop to think about how it works. Nonetheless, the film’s puzzle-like structure, with its flashbacks that conflict and yet build upon one another, is worth scrutinizing once you get past the surface-level brilliance. Kurosawa cited silent cinema as the primary influence on RASHÔMON, and this principally comes through in the rich atmosphere. Who can forget the rain pouring down on the muddy ruins of the temple gate at the film’s opening, or the clearing of the rain at the end? Another thing that often gets overlooked about the film is that it has only three locations—the vividness of each setting, combined with the multitude of perspectives, makes the story feel more expansive than it actually is. At the same time, the film’s themes are epic, and its conclusions about human nature are profound. Donald Richie has argued that RASHÔMON achieves a heroic finale when Kurosawa makes a case for the importance of human goodness in a world marked by randomness and evil. As to whether the conclusion marks an organic coda to the story or a sentimental cop-out on Kurosawa’s part, we’ll be debating that for generations to come. (1950, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Felipe Bustos Sierra’s EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET (UK/Documentary)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET recounts a stirring act of collective resistance that occurred in Glasgow in May 2021. On the morning of Eid, one of the holiest days of the Muslim calendar, immigration enforcement agents attempted to detain two Muslim men who were living on the titular residential street. Yet before the officers’ van could leave with the detainees, some of the men’s neighbors spread the word about what was happening, and within moments a crowd formed to block the vehicle from moving. The crowd grew and so did the police presence, and a huge standoff took place. Director Felipe Bustos Sierra recounts the events as though presenting a thriller, cutting between various activists and Kenmure Street residents, who take turns sharing their perspectives while moving the narrative forward. Some of the people involved didn’t want to be interviewed, and so Sierra has actors deliver their testimonies; this adds to the overall texture of the film and reinforces how cinematic the whole situation was. Emma Thompson plays an activist known only as “Van Man,” who crawled under the immigration officials’ vehicle and clung to the axles to prevent it from leaving. She reads her lines while lying under a van, and this makes the story seem like it’s unfolding in the present tense—which, in a sense, it is, given that deportations like these continue to terrorize communities, and not just in Scotland. EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET finds hope in this ongoing situation in the actions of concerned neighborhood residents, who are shown coming together to protect victims of state persecution. It’s a heartening reminder of the power of community, something that fascists the world over are trying to undermine by stoking divisions between people. The film ends on an optimistic note, reinforcing the notion that togetherness is always more powerful than segregation. The Friday, 8:15pm, and Sunday, 2:30pm, screenings will be introduced by Fred Tsao, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights. (2026, 99 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Pedro Almodóvar's ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Spain)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
In a review of Pedro Almodóvar’s PARALLEL MOTHERS, New York Times critic A.O. Scott refers to the Spanish writer-director as being perhaps the “most prodigious world builder” among living filmmakers, employing a phrase that’s typically used to describe sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero narratives. Nevertheless, it’s true that Almodóvar has created a world entirely his own, where characters—whose identities are fluid, changeable at a moment’s notice, and whose appearances run the gamut from the highest of high fashion to the lowest of whatever low life has subjected them to—live in large, meticulously decorated apartments and encounter problems that even soap operas wouldn’t dare broach. Almodóvar’s ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER involves a degree of overlap sporadically present in his films, suggesting an inter-awareness among the seemingly disparate endeavors. In his earlier film, THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995), there figures a nurse called Manuela, who appears in a training video for doctors on how to communicate with family members of potential organ donors; in ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, Almodóvar regular Cecilia Roth stars as Manuela, an organ procurement coordinator who must decide whether or not to have her son’s organs donated after he dies in a car accident. The two Manuelas are not the same exact character, but it’s emblematic of the potential for the characters and locations in Almodóvar’s films to exist in the same raffish universe. For its part, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is an encapsulation of all that’s particularly wondrous about the Spanish master’s kaleidoscopic sphere, one that also earned him his first Oscar. After her son dies, Cecilia leaves Madrid for Barcelona in hopes of finding her son’s father, now a transgender woman called Lola; there she reunites with an old friend, another transgender woman named Agrado (Antonia San Juan), and makes new friends with a young nun named Rosa (Penélope Cruz) and the actress Huma (Marisa Paredes), who had been performing as Stella in the production of A Streetcar Named Desire that Cecilia and her son had gone to see the night of his death. That play and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s ALL ABOUT EVE factor heavily into the film: the former because it marks Cecilia’s life at two crucial junctures and the latter because, in addition to being a film that Cecilia and her son had watched together, the plot of this movie at times recalls that of the other. Like many of Almodóvar’s films, this is a long, magnificently rambling love letter to the things and people he loves most: cinema, theater, actresses, women, and above all, his own mother. (An epigraph at the end declares exactly this.) In Cecilia’s decision to take Rosa and eventually Rosa’s son under her wing, the film emanates the rapture of selfless love that, like other facets of Almodóvar’s pellucid auteurism, permeates the ostentation of his bittersweet melodramas. Screening as part of the 20th Century Queers series. (1998, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Sally Potter's ORLANDO (UK)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
Sally Potter's ORLANDO is not so much an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel as it is an interpretation respective to the nuances of its medium. "It would have been a disservice to Woolf to remain slavish to the letter of the book," Potter wrote. "For just as she was always a writer who engaged with writing and the form of the novel, similarly the film needed to engage with the energy of cinema." And it does, with such finesse that at times it's rather slow and mundane, just as life is often slow and mundane. Roger Ebert so eloquently wrote in his review of the film that "it is not about a story or a plot, but about a vision of human existence. What does it mean to be born as a woman, or a man? To be born at one time instead of another?" Potter doesn't attempt to answer these questions but instead relishes in their very existence. In addition to such existential ruminations, themes of gender, art, and conformity are also confronted, just as in the book. Titled Orlando: A Biography, Woolf's novel was meant to be something of a spoof inspired by her lovers' turbulent family history. (The lover in question was fellow writer Vita Sackville-West.) Both are about a young Elizabethan nobleman who mysteriously turns into a woman. In the book it's never explained, but in the film, eternal youth is granted to the teenaged Orlando by Elizabeth I, who's played to perfection by gay icon Quentin Crisp. It's fitting, then, for this and other obvious reasons, that Tilda Swinton was first able to explore her own conspicuous androgyny in the title role. For those all too familiar with her now archetypal aesthetic, ORLANDO will breathe new life into one's appreciation of her as both an actress and an icon. Potter's talents are no less extraordinary; a penchant for transformation is evident in most of her films, though it's realized more explicitly in this one. Director Jane Campion best spoke to its metamorphic capabilities: "When my son died, on the third day, I was devastated, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to see ORLANDO. It was so beautiful. This earth can be transformed. There are moments of extreme wonder… and that's all worth living for." Screening as part of the 20th Century Queers series. (1993, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
SUPER-HORROR-RAMA!
Music Box Theatre — See below for showtimes
John Carpenter’s CHRISTINE (US)
Friday, 11:30pm
CHRISTINE is John Carpenter’s only Stephen King adaptation, which may be surprising, but the director took on this high-profile adaptation as more of a necessary career move than anything else; his previous film, THE THING (1982), was critically panned and a box office disappointment. The result is a warped and entertaining take on late-century obsession with '50s American culture. Unpopular teen Arnie (Keith Gordon) buys a red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury, named Christine, but the seller (Roberts Blossom) leaves out some sordid details about the vehicle–namely that Christine is possessed with an evil mind. As Arnie starts restoring the car, he becomes more than a little obsessed. He begins to change, taking on the personality of a hardened '50s greaser, and those who mess with either him or the car come to bloody ends. Arnie's best friend (John Stockwell) and new girlfriend (Alexandra Paul) attempt to help, but they must get through Christine first. The film includes standout supporting performances from character actors like Blossom, Robert Prosky, and, most noteworthy, Harry Dean Stanton; as Arnie, Gordon gives an anxious performance, appropriately uncomfortable as he transforms from nerd to aggressive car-obsessive. It’s impressive how Carpenter’s camera slowly pans over Christine, giving, with the help of lighting, the often-unmoving car an eerie life of her own. It remains one of my favorite Carpenter rewatches, and it doesn’t hurt that it boasts one of his greatest scores—juxtaposed against the '50s tunes that Christine plays, the moody main theme is the very best of '80s synth soundtracks. (1983, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Stephen King's MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (US)
Saturday, 11:30pm
Stephen King's sole directorial effort was panned by critics upon release. King has admitted he barely remembers filming it due to heavy cocaine use, which may explain its erratic pacing. He adapted his novella Trucks to focus on machinery rather than people, as he felt too shy to direct actors. The result is a film where sequences of homicidal diesel rigs, rocket-launching vending machines, and steamrolled little leaguers show more competence than any of the dramatic moments inside the Dixie Boy Truck Stop. King originally wanted Bruce Springsteen for the role of Billy (eventually played by Emilio Estevez), an odd fit for a film scored entirely by AC/DC. The movie opens with Earth engulfed by a green atmosphere from a rogue comet's tail. The apocalypse begins with a bank marquee changing from time and temperature to "Fuck You!" King shows up with his white suit and topaz boater hat in his best cameo. Text on an ATM screen leads to the line: "This machine just called me an asshole." Now we know how the comet feels about humans. Other cameos include a young Giancarlo Esposito electrocuted in an arcade and Marla Maples surviving a watermelon attack. Most memorable is Yeardley Smith (future voice of Lisa Simpson) as a shrill newlywed who asks her husband, "Curtis, are you dead?" Angus Young screams “Who Made Who” as the title appears gearing us up for a fast-paced thrill-ride. While the tempo slows to a near-stop trying to develop a romance between Billy and Brett (Laura Harrington), other characters are highlighted, such as the real villain of the film, Bubba Hendershot (Pat Hingle), owner and proprietor of the Dixie Boy. Bubba exploits free labor from his ex-convict employees and calls everyone "Bubba" as if erasing their identities. The film never explains what in the comet's tail animates machines, or why some vehicles are possessed while others aren't, how a hair dryer strangles someone with its cord, or how it controls sprinklers. These inconsistencies contribute to the film's overall messiness, but also its cult appeal. The vacuous non-criticism of so-bad-it’s-good is often used to describe King’s film; however, there is such proficiency in the action sequences that MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE refuses to be a bad film. Critics questioned why Estevez, fresh from THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985) and ST. ELMO'S FIRE (1985), would star opposite a truck with a Green Goblin hood ornament. His resume at the time included: Francis Ford Coppola, Alex Cox, John Hughes, Joel Schumacher, showing an actor strategically collecting directors. Estevez enjoyed the experience and concept enough to start writing an unauthorized sequel in 2023. The movie's themes of labor exploitation followed by enslavement to machines we’ve built to make our work easier is more of a reality now. Today, with only 85 seconds left on the Doomsday Clock and mere moments away from sentient artificial intelligence, the fears that may have elicited a laugh in 1986 are sobering now. The film's June 19, 1987, setting gained eerie significance when, exactly 22 years later, King was struck by a vehicle while walking on a roadside shoulder. King had spent his career foreshadowing such events in many of his novels, including Pet Sematary, Monkey Shines, and of course Trucks. King's film has outlasted its reputation to become a genuine cult classic, not despite its flaws, but because the chaos, cocaine, and AC/DC created something uniquely unrepeatable. (1986, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
Anime Club presents Satoshi Kon's PERFECT BLUE (Japan/Animation)
FACETS — Saturday, 3:30pm
Many consider PERFECT BLUE to be Satoshi Kon's magnum opus—and for good reason. The film’s impact on culture reaches far beyond that of most other anime films, arguably rivaling the work of contemporaries like Hayao Miyazaki and AKIRA creator Katsuhiro Otomo. Those filmmakers regularly utilize the format to explore new, colorful worlds of fantasy and science fiction, which was also true of Kon. However, his work in the late '90s and early 2000s was more grounded in reality, exploring a dreamy aesthetic instead through his characters’ psychoses and fractured senses of self; Kon's approach led him to adapt Yoshikazu Takuchi’s novel of the same name, its story acting as a vehicle through which he could explore these themes. The film introduces us to Mima Kirigoe, a pop singer who leaves her idol group to become an actress. Between disappointed fanboys, mysterious deaths in her agency’s circle, and an acting role that increasingly mirrors her struggle to self-identify, Mima begins to lose herself in the horrors around her. This film would not be the last time Kon used cinema to tackle a character’s identity; he further explored the concept in his next original screenplay, MILLENNIUM ACTRESS, which he penned with frequent collaborator and PERFECT BLUE screenwriter Sadyuki Murai. Where that film uses cinema as a positive additive, heightening a tale of lost love and legacy to dramatic peaks, PERFECT BLUE hones in on the anxiety of performance, depicting an actress who loses herself both on camera and in the public eye. To categorize this film as a great work in anime is to do it a disservice; it's a masterclass in psychological horror that holds its own in one of the latter genre’s most memorable decades. (1997, 81 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Bates]
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Presented in partnership with Agita Publishing (the publishing imprint of Cine-File contributor Michael W. Phillips Jr.) and introduced by Cat Voleur, author of the new book Queer Tastes: Unconventional Representation in Horror Films.
Anime Club presents Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s PULSE (Japan)
FACETS — Saturday, 9pm
Like Olivier Assayas’ DEMONLOVER (which was released the following year), PULSE gives poetic expression to anxieties of the early internet era. The film imagines an army of ghosts taking over the world wide web and influencing living users to commit suicide. It’s an eerie scenario that reflects how many of us recognized the internet’s potential at the dawn of the millennium but were uncertain of what that potential would give rise to. Viewed two decades later, the film’s conceit seems to anticipate how many people now give over their lives to online activity, losing sense of their bodily form in the process. Kiyoshi Kurosawa foregrounds this sense of displacement through his detached view of the film’s characters and through his quirky, unpredictable mise-en-scene, often placing the camera in the corner of a room or behind a stack of objects—you might feel like you’re spying on the action rather than simply watching it. These odd perspectives are a hallmark of Kurosawa’s work, and they command attention even when PULSE doesn’t seem to be advancing on a narrative level. What other director can conjure up such a vivid air of dread around an empty college computer lab? The film’s abandoned warehouses (which harken back to Kurosawa’s 1998 diptych of SERPENT’S PATH and EYES OF THE SPIDER) feel no less menacing. Kurosawa’s scrupulous manipulation of mood makes his early horror films the true heirs to those produced by Val Lewton, who famously overcame his low budgets by suggesting horror instead of showing it. The most frightening image of PULSE may be that of a door with its frame sealed with red tape: Kurosawa leaves it to the audience to imagine what lies on the other side, making the forbidden room a repository for all sorts of fears about what the future has in store. (2001, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Screening as part of a double feature with Nobuhiro Yamashita's 2005 film EGG (115 min, DCP Digital) at 7pm.
Anime Club presents Hayao Miyazaki's PONYO (Japan/Animation)
FACETS — Sunday, 2pm
Like its understood predecessor, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO–released 20 years prior–PONYO is a film about the magic and uncertainties of childhood, with the protagonists’ real-world experiences shaped by mythological creatures of nature. Director Hayao Miyazaki’s take on the tale of the Little Mermaid, PONYO stands out for its soft pastel watercolor visuals, which perfectly represent the life within and around the ocean. Its characters, too, are striking in their depictions, as Miyazaki weaves in themes not just of childhood, but aging and parental responsibility. Young but dependable Sōsuke lives in a house on a cliff by the ocean with his gregarious mother, Lisa–his father, a sailor, is often away at sea. While playing at the water’s edge, he discovers a goldfish stuck in a bottle and, naming her Ponyo, decides to keep her. Ponyo is not, however, an ordinary goldfish. She is the rebellious daughter of a wizard and longs to escape the confines of her father’s underwater lair. She uses her connection to Sōsuke and her father’s magic to turn herself into a human, and this sets off an imbalance in nature that results in dangerous winds, rain, and the moon falling from the sky. Most significantly, the ocean begins to rise, engulfing Sōsuke’s hometown. Sōsuke’s dedication to caring for Ponyo is ultimately put to the test to restore balance to the natural world. PONYO’s depictions of the ocean are pure wonder; this is evident from the film’s opening moments, and Ponyo’s journeys out of the ocean, but is particularly astonishing in the aftermath of the tsunami when the water has risen to Sōsuke’s doorstep and ancient ocean creatures swim above city streets. PONYO is often dialogue-less, which allows a focus on the dazzling imagery. The film’s magic doesn’t just reside in its enchanting visuals, but in the moments of ordinary childhood; the scene in which Ponyo sleeps over at Sōsuke’s is full of small moments of play and excitement as the two excitedly eat dinner and get ready for bed. Despite being one of the Studio Ghibli films that is most decidedly geared towards a young child audience, PONYO provides some complex themes. Key set pieces at both a school and senior living center, reflecting multiple stages of life and the childlike wonder to be found at all of them. The adults often act like children—especially Lisa, who throws a tantrum when she realizes her husband isn’t coming home when promised. These scenes aren’t a judgment of the film, but rather an exploration of the intersections between selflessness and childishness—PONYO gracefully argues these two things aren’t always too far apart. Part of Family Sundays and hosted by educators Colleen Kilcoyne and Brandon Lopez, Family Matinees introduce young audiences to the art of animation in all its forms. Stop by the Animation Lab ANIMATION LAB after the screening for a hands-on stop-motion activity where kids and families can create their own mini films using food as their medium. (2008, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Boots Riley's SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (US)
FACETS — Thursday, 7pm
Boots Riley’s debut feature about a Black man who can only become a success in America by using a white voice at his bottom-feeder telemarketing gig is a trenchant, by turns hilarious and horrifying take on the state of our country. Cassius “Cash” Green (Lakeith Stanfield) can’t make headway interrupting people’s lives on the phone until an older coworker (Danny Glover) shows him how to use a white man’s voice to project confidence and trust, enabling him to become the star of the office. But his newfound talent and riches come at the cost of losing his girlfriend and friends, who are all battling an economic system that is literally turning citizens into chattel. Riley uses conspiracy theories and surreal horror to illustrate the very real situation many Americans, but especially African-Americans find themselves in—trapped in a cutthroat system which values profit over basic human decency at every turn. While Armie Hammer’s evil mogul may be an ugly caricature, he will not be unfamiliar to any halfway-informed resident of 2018 United States of America. His company, Worry Free, which offers food and shelter in exchange for freedom, is like a funhouse mirror version of gig economy juggernauts like Uber or AirBnB. They offer a cheerful illusion of independence as they’re robbing their customer/workers of basic rights. By the time the horse-people appeared, I was ready to accept anything Riley threw in front of me because his feel for setting and tone is so assured that even the most out-there moments fit the overall premise. He has created a parallel world not unlike the ones found in the work of Gogol, Kafka, or Paul Beatty’s great 2015 novel, The Sellout, where people are turned into monsters and do outrageous and reprehensible things and no one bats an eye. Much of what he shows has already come to pass and the rest will as well unless we fight like hell against it. Screening in celebration of Art House Theater Day. (2018, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
Sidney Lumet's NETWORK (US)
The Davis Theater — Thursday, 7pm
A common complaint among detractors of NETWORK is encapsulated by this customer review found on Amazon: "My apologies to this movie's many diehard fans, but I've always had a problem with Paddy Chayefsky's work. Nobody... and I mean NOBODY... actually talks like his characters, so the plaudits he routinely receives for his 'realism' are a mystery to me... plunge into the purple thicket of dialogue for yourself and see. But pack a machete; you may need to do a lot of hacking to get back to daylight." These same charges were often leveled against Rod Serling's work, another writer who came of age during the golden age of live television drama in the 1950s. That line of criticism misses the point. Serling's best Twilight Zone episodes and Chayefsky's screenplay for NETWORK still resonate precisely because of the "purple thicket of dialogue." Of course Chayefsky's characters don't talk like "real" people; they talk the way that Chayefsky wished they could talk, replete with virtuosic articulations of their inner philosophy. And of course the brilliant performances of William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and especially Peter Finch vividly bring those words to life. Ned Beatty's famous speech on corporate cosmology is a tour de force, the prescience of which each succeeding generation discovers for itself—like the rest of the movie, it's as timely now as it was during the Me Decade. Screening in celebration of Art House Theater Day. (1976, 121 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Rob Christopher]
Peter Weir's MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (US)
Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Ln., Northbrook) — Wednesday, 2pm
The films of Australian director Peter Weir feature characters who must face incredible breaks in their everyday reality, on both small and large scales; his 2003 period epic MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD does this on an extremely large scale while still centering the personal. Based on the book series about Royal Navy captain Jack Aubrey (here played most steadily by Russell Crowe) by British author Patrick O’Brian, the film features the minute details of life aboard a warship during the Napoleonic Wars—MASTER AND COMMANDER famously begins with an intertitle stating "OCEANS ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS." Caught off guard off the coast of Brazil by a French privateer, Aubrey and the crew of the HMS Surprise must out-sail and outwit the superior ship—notably recouping in the Galápagos Islands. It oscillates between the claustrophobia of experiencing wartime trapped on a ship and expressing the sense of wide adventure that sea life offers. The empathy and care Aubrey shows for his crew, particularly for the much younger sailors on board, is complicated by the many tough decisions he must make throughout; it’s also complemented by his friend Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), the ship’s surgeon, who isn’t afraid to gently question Aubrey’s leadership. MASTER AND COMMANDER is also a film that focuses a great deal on education and skill, with scenes of Aubrey and Maturin teaching the crew about sailing and nature. In addition to the impressive shots of the ships themselves, Weir emphases objects and tools. The detail here is not just minutiae or historical grounding; it underscores that each crew member not only has a particular job, but also a particular story. The comradery of the crew in moments of singing sea shanties and playing music, as well as unsettling loss of life, are at the heart of the film. Like Maturin, MASTER AND COMMANDER also questions modernity and progress through its examination of war, imperialism, and their effect on the nature of men; the film is devoid, it should be mentioned, of women, with arguably the ships themselves being the only female characters. But just as important to the film’s larger themes are the shots of the ships in battle on the ocean and the stunning cinematography from long-time Weir collaborator Russell Boyd. A striking early shot of a massive amount of crew members climbing around the rigging demonstrates Weir’s skillfulness at piecing together arrestingly beautiful imagery grounded in specific time and experience. Screening as part of the Life Aquatic film series. (2003, 138 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Ross McElwee’s REMAKE (US/Documentary)
Music Box Theatre — Friday, 1pm
In film, auteurism is the consistent inclusion of the personal into work that might otherwise have been generic; ironically, this label isn't generally applied to, say, experimental and documentary filmmakers, whose work is explicitly, and sometimes interminably, personal. The distinction might lie in the lack of impediment to the filmmaker's personal expression. Even so, the ability to be fully personal doesn't automatically make the result successful. Ross McElwee is among the rare documentarians for whom it does—like Jonas Mekas or, from another mode, Joan Didion, his life experiences transcend the corporeal into the offhandedly existential, inspiring in others journeys and realizations of their own. After an almost 15-year break, McElwee has come back with what might be his most personal work yet. Ostensibly a documentary about the making of the narrative adaptation of his own 1986 documentary SHERMAN'S MARCH, it's actually about the death of McElwee's son, Adrian, from an accidental drug overdose in 2016. (In expanding the connection between McElwee and Didion, the latter's own daughter also died from addiction issues. In an interview with the International Documentary Association, he quotes Didion on her daughter's death: "Memories are what you no longer want to remember," something he challenges himself to do in the film.) Outliving a child is an unimaginable grief that resonates universally, and McElwee embraces the discomfort of it, letting something beautiful, if admittedly very painful, arise from this tension. Much of the film is footage of McElwee's family, much of it shot during the making of his previous films—namely IN PARAGUAY (2008), about the adoption of McElwee's daughter, and PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY (2011), which was partially about Adrian's struggles—creating a throughline in McElwee's oeuvre that connects directly to his relationship with his son. The parts about Adrian eclipse anything about the SHERMAN'S MARCH adaptation specifically, and the film becomes, in effect, about McElwee's filmmaking philosophy overall, looking back in order to qualify the present. Ultimately, it is the emotional weight that makes everything else feel secondary; by the end I felt as if I'd known Adrian and lost him as well. (2026, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Ross McElwee’s SHERMAN’S MARCH (US/Documentary)
Music Box Theatre — Sunday, 11:30am
There are things about Ross McElwee’s SHERMAN’S MARCH that shouldn’t work, or, at the very least, might not have aged well. That it’s a documentary centered almost entirely on the white, male, heterosexual filmmaker’s search for romance sounds problematic when put in summary. Yet, through McElwee’s unconventional talent as a non-fiction filmmaker working in a distinctly personal register, it transcends its conceit and emerges as a profoundly empathetic, organically idiosyncratic treatise on life and love, both as it pertains to McElwee and, somehow, universally. Setting out to make a documentary about Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea, McElwee instead—one might say “also,” but the personal comes almost entirely to eclipse the historical, the latter becoming a supplement to the former rather than the other way around—ends up detailing his search for love in the American South, from which he hails. The film becomes a compendium of the women he encounters during this extended period of time, and in turn also brief portraits of the women themselves, whose personalities represent a vast range of interests and temperaments. McElwee depicts them almost ethnographically, though still as people rather than merely subjects, his romantic interest in them existing alongside rather than diminishing his curiosity. (To his credit, McElwee doesn’t completely exonerate himself from stereotypically male tendencies. One woman asks that he document her bizarre but nevertheless titillating anti-cellulite exercises and he readily complies; another, he playfully grills on camera about her history of having had love affairs with her linguistic professors.) Some reviews of the film can be disparaging of the women, citing them as being reflective of a shallowness inherent to the South or just generally nutty in unjustifiable ways. McElwee clearly finds them fascinating, as do I—my favorites, so to speak, are those of the anecdotes cited above. The former, Pat, is an aspiring actress who views herself, though somehow not egotistically, as a sort of female prophet (she describes a prospective screenplay in which her head, having been cut off by her lover, who’s also her toxic boyfriend in real life, dispenses wisdom that resonates with the whole world). The latter, Winnie, could be her exact inverse: a linguist working on her dissertation on a remote island off the Georgia coast near Savannah, where McElwee had obtained permission to film material relating to Sherman's campaign. These women embody the kind of attractiveness you see in old photos of your mother or grandmother, natural beauty that now often feels eclipsed by the pursuit of Instagram Face. Sherman is as much a “character” as they are; in one hilarious and edifying sequence, McElwee, having returned home from a costume ball, drunk and still dressed in a Confederate uniform, waxes poetic about the misunderstood general. Dressing as a Confederate soldier wouldn’t be acceptable in such a film nowadays; politics as they relate to the Civil War aren't expressly broached, only facts conveyed, though there’s a contemporary undercurrent pertaining to nuclear war that’s signaled by the film's subtitle, A MEDITATION ON THE POSSIBILITY OF ROMANTIC LOVE IN THE SOUTH DURING AN ERA OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION. This is evoked by longstanding dreams McElwee has of nuclear disaster, stemming from the rare but perhaps accursed opportunity to witness an overwater nuclear test as a boy. It’s a parallel to the concept of total war that Sherman infamously employed in his march to the sea, something McElwee fears becoming more fully realized in the era of nuclear proliferation. This throughline asserts an unexpected symmetry that's become a hallmark of today's facsimiles of the mode he helped pioneer; all of this feels undergirded by a famous assertion from the film, made by one of its most memorable characters, Charleen. She’s desperate to connect him with eligible women, and in doing so becomes frustrated when he doesn’t stop filming to take seriously her matchmaking, screeching at him, "This isn't art, it's life!” Much like life, the film is the sum of its parts, having aged only inasmuch as time has passed since it was made and first released. (1985, 158 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
John Early's MADDIE'S SECRET (US)
Alamo Drafthouse, Davis Theater, and the Music Box Theatre — See Venue websites for showtimes
Social media can be a real villain to self-image, causing us to unfavorably compare ourselves to others or worry about how we’re being perceived. When Maddie (John Early) unexpectedly lands a job as an online food influencer, her deep-seated insecurities about her body are triggered in destructive ways. She appears to be a total natural when presenting her new recipes on camera, but what people don’t see is her chronic struggle with bulimia nervosa, a condition that only becomes harder to handle when cooking and eating are her very vocation. The directorial debut of comedian, actor, and writer John Early, MADDIE’S SECRET exhibits the askew tone of some of his previous projects, mixing camp, earnestness, melodrama, and satire in ways that bring to mind John Waters and Douglas Sirk. His use of high-key lighting and expressionistic color (particularly deep blues and reds in the scenes in Maddie’s home) create a heightened, off-kilter atmosphere, while the more broadly comic elements, such as the performances from Conner O’Malley, Vanessa Bayer, and a deliciously hammy Kristen Johnston, tie the film to a playful sketch-comedy sensibility. Early is dealing with serious subjects — eating disorders, parental abuse, psychiatric treatment — and he manages to give them sufficient weight while still winking at the audience. Perhaps what is most admirable about MADDIE’S SECRET is the uncommonness, indeed the queerness, of characters rarely seen on screen in quite this way, from Maddie’s doting teddy bear of a husband Jake (Eric Rahill) to her lesbian best friend Deena (Kate Berlant). The most unusual might be Maddie herself, played by Early like a more sedate Divine from POLYESTER. No comment is made about this woman being portrayed by a man in drag; it’s just another element revealing the arbitrariness of body-image standards, and how feeling comfortable in your own skin is for nobody but you to decide. (2025, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Peter Bogdanovich's 1993 film THE THING CALLED LOVE (116 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 12:15pm and Wednesday at 12:30pm.
Jesús Franco's 1980 film DEVIL HUNTER (102 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series.
Jill Sprecher’s 1996 film CLOCKWATCHERS (96 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.)
Robert Rodriguez's 2001 film SPY KIDS (88 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 12pm, at the Claudia Cassidy Theater, as part of the Chicago Film Office's Family Matinees series. Free admission; no RSVP required.
The Chicago Film Office presents On Set: Conversations Directing the Craft with Jennifer Reeder, Christopher Rejano, & Adri Siriwatt on Monday, 6:30pm, as part of the Directing the Craft series. Free admission; RSVP required. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Chicago Public Library
The Chicago Public Library's Community Cinema program presents free film and TV screenings at dozens of neighborhood branches throughout the week. See the full schedule here.
⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Thomas Stuber's 2025 German film THE FROG AND THE WATER (113 min, Digital Projection) screens
Saturday, 1pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.), presented by the Goethe-Institut Chicago and Cinema/Chicago as part of the Free Summer Screenings series. Introduced by Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick (University of Wisconsin–Madison), co-editor of Charting Asian German Film History.
The Chicago International Film Festival presents a Movie Trivia Fundraiser on Sunday, 1pm, at Midwest Coast Brewing Co. (2137 W. Walnut St.).
Eric D Seals’s 2023 documentary BIKE VESSEL (85 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.), as part of Cinema/Chicago's Free Summer Screenings series. Both screenings are free admission; note that tickets are sold out online, but a standby line will be available at the venue. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Cinemanita
Cinemanita presents Naoko Ogigami's 2006 film KAMOME DINER (102 min, Digital Projection) on Friday, 8pm, at Chicago Art Department (1926 S. Halsted St.). The evening begins with a free yoga session hosted by Wendy Wei with live ambient music by Laurentse from 6:30pm to 7:30pm. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Whit Stillman's 1998 film THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (113 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 8pm, as part of the Disco Nostalgia series.
J. Robert Wagoner's 1979 film DISCO GODFATHER (93 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 5pm, also as part of the Disco Nostalgia series.
Angela Schanelec's 2007 film AFTERNOON (95 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 8pm, as part of the Four by Angela Schanelec series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Eyewash Station
Mark Romanek's 2002 film ONE HOUR PHOTO (96 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 7pm.
Kôji Shiraishi's MALICE@DOLL (Digital Projection) screens Tuesday at 7pm.
A program of SURVEILLANCE CAMERA MAN COLLECTED WORKS + THE PRICEMASTER screens Thursday at 7pm. Details forthcoming. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ FACETS
Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble presents MY FIRST MOVIES, a short film program (50 min) for children ages 2–6, on Sunday at 10:30am, followed by Make and Play hands-on craft activities at 11:25am.
Divine Sung's 2026 film SUMMER'S CAMERA (82 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 7pm, presented by Open Space Arts and followed by a post-screening conversation in the lounge.
The Reel Film Club presents Ricardo de Montreuil’s 2026 film MISTURA (101 min, Digital Projection) on Tuesday, 7pm, preceded by a reception at 6pm and followed by a Q&A with film critic Alejandro Riera. More info at facets.org.
Sweet Void Cinema presents a screenwriting workshop on Wednesday from 6pm to 9pm in the Facets Studio.
Big Teeth Small Shorts Film Festival presents its Summer 2026 Live Screening on Wednesday at 7:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Filmmaker Friday Chicago and the Midwest Film Festival
Filmmaker Friday Chicago and the Midwest Film Festival present a day of film screenings and panel discussions on Friday starting at 9:30am at the Ramova Theater (3520 S Halsted St.). The day opens with a free breakfast, coffee, and a 15-minute presentation on funding your project, followed by screenings of Midwest Film Festival selections with panel discussions. Networking follows, with Verve Credit Union on site to discuss individual funding needs. Free admission with RSVP. More info here.
⚫ Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N. Michigan Ave.)
Lateral Entrant, a site-specific exhibition by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Maya Nguyen incorporating video, photography, and performance, exploring migrant strategies of camouflage and adaptation across languages and visual cultures connecting Vietnam, Germany, and the United States, is on view through Friday, July 31. Public viewing hours are available by advance registration on Eventbrite, and a state- or federally-issued photo ID is required for building check-in. More info here.
⚫ Mouse Arts and Letters (555 W 31st St.)
Ivan Dixon's 1973 film THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR (102 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday at 7pm. Presented by the Independent Labor Club of Chicago. Free admission; food, drinks, and merch available for purchase, with proceeds supporting ILC Chicago's community building and labor solidarity efforts. More info here.
⚫ Movies in the Parks
The Chicago Park District's Movies in the Parks series continues throughout the summer, bringing free outdoor screenings of Hollywood classics, family favorites, and local films to parks across the city for its twenty-sixth season. Check the Park District website for the full schedule of dates, locations, and titles. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Christopher Nolan’s 2026 film THE ODYSSEY (172 min, 70mm) and David Wain’s 2026 film GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS (93 min, DCP Digital) continue. See Venue website for showtimes.
Huang Chiang-hua's 2000 film LEGEND OF THE SACRED STONE (100 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, Sunday and Wednesday at 9pm and Saturday at 7pm. With a Deaf Crocodile pop-up shop before and after the film. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Parkway Social
Ava DuVernay's 2014 film SELMA (128 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 8:30pm, in the courtyard of the Parkway Ballroom (4455 S. King Dr.), presented by Parkway Social and Sandy Film Festival as part of the Feature Fridays: Kings on King series. Free admission. More info here.
⚫ Siskel Film Center
Encore screenings of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s AMORES PERROS (153 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) take place Saturday at 2pm and 7:30pm.
Carolina Cavalli's 2025 film THE KIDNAPPING OF ARABELLA (108 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 6pm, followed by a Q&A with Cavalli. More info on all screenings here.
CINE-LIST: July 24- July 30, 2026
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Rob Christopher, John Dickson, Megan Fariello, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Dmitry Samarov, Michael Glover Smith