:: FRIDAY, JUNE 27 - THURSDAY, JULY 3 :: s

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Destination Ghibli: Celebrating 40 Years

Music Box Theatre – See below for showtimes

Isao Takahata's ONLY YESTERDAY (Japan/Animation)
Friday, 1:45pm and Tuesday, 9:15pm
Never released in the U.S. in theatres or on Region 1 DVD, the reflective tear-jerking masterpiece ONLY YESTERDAY is almost certainly the best Miyazaki production you haven't seen. Combining Truffaut at his most personal and critical with Ozu at his most laid-back (with just a touch of Rohmer), ONLY YESTERDAY follows the shy office worker Taeko as she vacations to the beautiful rural Yamagata valley to work on her cousins' small farm. Her journey, interspersed with poignant and recognizable flashbacks to various crucial and/or awkward moments from her life as a 5th grader, is a sort of interiorized epic which takes impressive advantage of the contemplative stillness and quick movements that are both a labor-saving device and a stylistic advantage of hand-drawn animation. However, hovering just above the surface of this seemingly introverted and peaceful film (with the usual Ghibli didactic environmentalism) is a subtle but deadly serious critique of bureaucratic public schooling: every remembered letter grade, red mark, and moment of institutionalized inequality or humiliation is etched onscreen with a razor-blade precision, and what appears to be Taeko's interior battle with herself is progressively revealed as a battle with the traumas of the cultural reproduction of cram school society. It's also a hypnotic ode to the nature-and-technology dialectic of country life; if downtown Chicago doesn't seem completely transformed to you when you walk outside, you might have watched the wrong movie. (1991, 118 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]
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Hayao Miyazaki's PONYO (Japan/Animation)
Friday, 4:30pm, Saturday, 4:15pm, and Wednesday, 4pm
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. (2008, 101 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Hayao Miyazaki's NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (Japan/Animation)
Friday, 7pm and Monday, 9:45pm
NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND by the beloved animation factory Studio Ghibli is the film that made their whole operation possible, and—if we're setting aside all modesty—ushered in a veritable golden age of animation. It is in so many ways the prototypical Hayao Miyazaki film: a sprawling environmentalist parable with a headstrong female protagonist, a girl with blinding, childlike optimism who faces down a world thrown into chaos. Recurring Miyazaki themes, including his fascination with flight and his abiding love of nature, are front-and-center here, all wrapped up in a cavalcade of cartoon adventure for all ages. A princess with more agency, not to mention spunk, than Disney had yet to devise, Nausicaä is the favorite daughter of the Valley of the Wind, one of the world's last refuges against the ever-encroaching Toxic Jungle, the inhospitable fallout of a global war occupied by giant insects known as the Ohmu. Gradually, a larger picture of the world is painted, as neighboring military powers Tolmekia and Pejite threaten the safety of the planet in their misguided quests to push back against the Jungle. The film packs in an alarming amount of back-story, thanks largely to Nausicaä's knack for interior monologue, a habit forgivable not just because this is still ostensibly a children's film, but also for the gasp-inducing visuals that often accompany her chronic narration. Joe Hisaishi's score is a marvel too; an oscillating mix of nostalgia-inducing synthesizers and his typical swelling orchestral compositions. NAUSICAÄ remains one of Miyazaki's most arresting and under-appreciated masterpieces. (1984, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]
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Hayao Miyazaki's PRINCESS MONONOKE (Japan/Animation)
Friday, 10pm and Tuesday, 6:30pm
As morally complicated as it is visually complex, PRINCESS MONONOKE was Hayao Miyazaki’s darkest, most contemplative film prior to THE WIND RISES. Like WIND, MONONOKE advances a skeptical view of war and technological progress. It adopts a Medieval setting to portray, in the director’s words, “the very beginnings of the seemingly insoluble conflict between the natural world and modern industrial civilization.” What makes the film intellectually challenging, however, is that Miyazaki refuses to demonize industrial civilization in delineating the story’s conflict. MONONOKE takes place in a mythological feudal Japan where humans interact freely with gods and demons. Much of the second half concerns the persecution of forest spirits by the denizens of Irontown, a refinery/village that’s producing the first iron Japan’s ever seen and which it wants to destroy parts of the surrounding forest in order to expand. In a simpler film, Irontown would be a land of dumb brutes, yet Miyazaki presents the village as progressive, even enlightened. The town’s leader, Lady Eboshi, radically refuses to acknowledge the Emperor’s authority, putting her centuries ahead of her time; she also employs former sex workers, lepers, and other social outcasts in the town’s operations. (Miyazaki claims to have taken inspiration from John Ford’s westerns in his depiction of a diverse small community.) One can’t help but admire the resolute spirit of Irontowners even as they aspire to commit genocide against the gods—Miyazaki’s humanism is so profound that he sees good even in characters that perform evil deeds. Similarly, the film’s hero, Ashitaka, often seems callow and insecure when doing good. Ashitaka is attacked by a demon at the start of the film and spends the rest of the picture slowly dying from a curse that’s placed on him. The young man’s fate parallels that of the forest spirits: he’s doomed to die, but he’s determined to use whatever strength he has left to fight for the protection of the natural world. And as depicted by Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli team, the natural world seems magisterial enough to die for. Stop by the Music Box Lounge between 5:30pm - 7pm for origami making with the Japanese Arts Foundation/Japanese Cultural Center. (1997, 134 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Hayao Miyazaki's KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (Japan/Animation)
Saturday, 2pm and Monday, 4:15pm
In movies about witchcraft, especially those centered on female teenage protagonists, magic is often a metaphor for the emotional vicissitude that is coming of age. The same is true of KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, except that its director, Hayao Miyazaki, extends it to also include the young witch’s pragmatic development. In this world, derived from Eiko Kadono’s eponymous novel, witchcraft is as much an amendable skill as it is an innate gift; Kiki has a knack for flying (using a broomstick, as a witch does), and her mother is shown using her own magic to brew medicine for the locals. Though their skills are otherworldly in nature, it’s required that witches leave home at 13 to find a town that doesn’t have any witch inhabitants and make a living using their powers. With her sassy black cat Jiji in tow, Kiki starts her own delivery service, transporting various items around town with minimal effort but maximum mishaps. As is the norm with Miyazaki, there is no easy fix for Kiki’s problems—magic, unfortunately, can’t replace tenacity or account for a lack of self-esteem. “Magic in the film is a limited power no different from the talents of any average kids,” he wrote in a director's statement for its DVD release. About Kiki’s gender, which is an identifying factor of the film, that it’s concerned so intently with a young girl’s maturation, Miyazaki also said that “[s]he represents every girl who is drawn to the glamour of the big city but finds themselves struggling with their newfound independence.” This reflects the conflict between tradition and modernity that’s common in much of Miyazaki’s work. Also present is a preoccupation with flight that started in his childhood—his father manufactured fighter plane rudders during World War II. Despite said fascination, he does not give Kiki her powers so easily. At one point, she loses them altogether; talented painter and new friend Ursula tells Kiki that the same happens to her, that sometimes she’s completely unable to create. The film’s profound display of maturity and all that precedes its acquisition is standard for Studio Ghibli fare but decidedly less so for childrens' films in general. Its happy ending is predicated on the understanding that to be happy, one must persevere through bad times, sad times, and any doldrums in between. As always, its animation style is wholly ataractic, much like the Romantic and Impressionist painters beyond whose captivating canvases lay a whole complex world, both halcyon and tremulous, as honest as they are illusory in their artistic dissimulation. (The novel on which it’s based is set in northern Europe, and Miyazaki cited a couple of cities in Sweden as influences on the design. Yet another hat tip to the idea that even the most tranquil seas swell from time to time.) It’s the first Ghibli film distributed by Disney, a partnership that’s only recently come to an end with Disney granting home media distribution rights of the studio’s films to GKIDS, who’ve held the theatrical distribution rights since 2011. Miyazaki originally intended to just produce the film but decided to direct after being reluctant to cede his vision for the project. One can only assume that Kiki, in all her dewy wisdom, would do the same as it pertains to her witchy industry. Final note—and a spoiler: Perhaps the most heartbreaking-to-me scene in cinema is when Kiki stops being able to speak with Jiji, who’d previously been able to talk to her as if he was another human. If there’s a more apt metaphor for the transition from adolescence to adulthood, I have yet to hear of it. Still, though the magic of childhood may cease, there’s still some to be found on the other side. Join Red Door Animal Shelter in the Music Box Lounge for adoptable cats before the screening. 10% of all ticket proceeds will be donated to Red Door Animal Shelter. (1989, 103 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
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Hayao Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY (Japan/Animation)
Saturday, 9:15pm and Thursday, 6:30pm
For evidence that Hayao Miyazaki works from a different playbook than his Disney counterparts, look no further than the dynamic, kaleidoscopic world of SPIRITED AWAY. In this coming-of-age story set in a modern-day wonderland, the animation grandmaster creates a detail-rich realm of the spirits where the only rule seems to be that the rules can always change. Here, physiologically impossible characters shape shift through various forms, villains quite suddenly prove themselves to be friends, and the plot itself refuses to settle into a groove, redefining the boundaries the moment we become aware of them. What begins as a spectral plunge down the rabbit hole takes an abrupt shift the moment young Chihiro lands on her feet, and it's not long before she is neck-deep in the politics of the magical bathhouse at the center of this world. She is tugged at in all directions by the denizens therein, including the disproportioned governess, Yubaba, the dragon-boy, Haku, and the ghostly No-Face, whose part in the story temporarily takes us into horror movie territory, and lest we think the world of SPIRITED AWAY is confined to this singular, vibrant location, the final chapter opens the world even further, allowing neither Chihiro nor the viewer to grow too complacent. The film, like any great imagination, knows no bounds, and its scope and soaring ambition have rightly marked it as Miyazaki's masterpiece. Okonomiyaki from Gaijin will be available in the Music Box Lounge between 5:30pm - 9pm.  (2001, 125 min, 35mm) [Tristan Johnson]
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Hayao Miyazaki's LUPIN III: THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO (Japan/Animation)
Saturday, Midnight
The first theatrical feature for which the great Hayao Miyazaki received directorial credit, THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO grew out of Miyazaki’s work on the Lupin III TV series (1971-72), an animated spin-off of Monkey Punch’s hugely popular manga series, which in turn was inspired by the Arsène Lupin stories by French author Maurice Leblanc. Given how far into global popular culture the film’s roots extend, it’s remarkable how much it feels like a Miyazaki work proper. The glorious set pieces demonstrate the director’s distinctive talents for building and sustaining suspense (tellingly, Steven Spielberg has long expressed admiration for them), while the winning humor reflects his good-natured humanism. In fact, Miyazaki received some flak for softening the edges on the character of career thief Arsène Lupin, who was typically portrayed as a cynical rogue but in this film emerges as a rake with a heart of gold. Yet the focus of CAGLIOSTRO isn’t really on Lupin (or Wolf, as he’s called here), but rather on the intricate settings and narrative twists, which conjure up an imaginary version of Europe to get lost in. Western culture is full of fantastical visions of the East; Miyazaki’s fantastical visions of the West (which arguably reach their apotheosis in HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE) provide fascinating counterparts to the Orientalist tradition. CAGLIOSTRO begins in medias res, as Lupin and his sidekick flee a casino on the Riviera in a car full of stolen money, the police following closely behind. During a rousing chase along mountain roads, the hero realizes the stolen money is counterfeit. He deduces that the phony bills were made in the small, fictional country of Cagliostro, then decides to head there and take advantage of the counterfeit printing presses. Lupin’s travels lead him to the title location, an immaculately designed fortress on the water marked by towering edifices, narrow spires, and lots of secret passages. Once inside, he encounters a princess who’s being forced to marry a devious count (one of the few purely evil characters in Miyazaki’s filmography); this news awakens the chivalrous hero in Lupin, and he plots to stop the wedding while seeking the castle’s fabled treasure. Naturally, he succeeds on both counts, but as Miyazaki has shown throughout his career, great storytelling has little to do with whether the outcome is surprising and much more to do with the emotional significance granted to every object, complication, and bit of characterization. (1979, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Isao Takahata's GRAVE OF THE FIREFRLIES (Japan/Animation)
Sunday, 2pm
In his period animation GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Isao Takahata creates a proud Japan during the Second World War where, despite the numerous air raids, the people seem to be eerily firm in their belief in their Emperor and their country's power. Seita, brother to young Setsuko, is a young boy who is left in charge of his even young sister after an American air raid caused their mother's death. With their father away on war duty, Seita bears the burden and stress of surviving and remaining spirited while everywhere the pair goes, bombs destroy familiar villages. Nationalism is personified in Seita, who continues to hold his country in high esteem even after rations and much-needed items are restricted even more as the war continues. The duo descends further into despair; Japan declines until its ultimate surrender to the American government. Emotionally-draining in a most positive manner, the audience will know the film's outcome but may wish for another alternative in order to ease the plight of hero and heroine. Takahata creates an animation that is more human than many live-action war films. Followed by a Q&A with Professor Yuki Miyamoto (DePaul University), Professor Savneet K. Talwar (SAIC) and Saira Chambers. (1988, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Shealey Wallace]
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Hayao Miyazaki's HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (Japan/Animation)
Sunday, 4:30pm, Wednesday, 9:15pm, and Thursday, 3:45pm
Hayao Miyazaki’s films were one of the first things my brother and I bonded over. He’s just shy of a decade older than me, so when I was growing up I desperately wanted his seal of approval. I often found myself spending hours on end watching animated movies and cartoons with him in an attempt to know what the cool older kids were talking about. He first showed me Miyazaki’s folklore-heavy SPIRITED AWAY, albeit at far too young an age for either of us to really understand it. But even still, we both knew that there was something about it that was magical. Every time I watch a Miyazaki film, I feel like a kid again. Wide-eyed and brimming with a child-like wonder as I marvel at the distinct worlds he’s able to create time and time again. The one that sticks with me the most in adulthood, though, is HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE. Sophie, a young and soft-spoken hat-maker, gets swept up by a charming wizard named Howl. A vengeful witch jealous of Sophie’s beauty and newfound relationship with Howl turns her into her worst fear: a 90-year-old woman. Howl and Sophie then embark on a journey to reverse the curse, a journey filled with kitschy side characters and a magically mechanical moving castle, and set against a backdrop of a kingdom at war. In many ways Sophie feels like an audience surrogate, falling into Miyazaki’s weird and fantastical world with the same curiosity as those watching. In addition to its intricate beauty, HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE is a deeply political work, with strong anti-war sentiments directly inspired by Miyazaki’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Miyazaki’s films cover a lot of ground, and HOWL’S may be especially hard to keep up with at times, but it would be a mistake to pass up the chance to revel in all of its complexities. (2004, 119 min, 35mm) [Cody Corrall]
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Hayao Miyazaki's THE WIND RISES (Japan/Animation)
Sunday, 7:15pm
Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki brought down the curtain on an estimable career when he announced that THE WIND RISES, a biopic of aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi and his first film aimed squarely at an adult audience, would also be his last. As seen by Miyazaki, Jiro's life plays out against a moving backdrop of 20th century Japanese history, including such key events as the 1923 Kanto earthquake, the tuberculosis epidemic (represented by Jiro's doomed romance with his sickly wife Nahoko) and, of course, World War II. This latter aspect engendered controversy when some among the left in Japan condemned Miyazaki's refusal to condemn Jiro for designing fighter planes during the war (though the fact that the film simultaneously alienated Japanese conservatives for being "anti-Japanese" is surely an indication that he was doing something right). Miyazaki instead chooses to portray Jiro as an apolitical dreamer caught in the jaws of history; the way the character's fantasy life is placed on the same plane as reality—as evidenced by his repeated encounters with his hero, a famous Italian engineer—results in something mature, beautiful and profound, and adds up to a kind of self-portrait on the part of the director. Also, if you want to know why good old-fashioned hand-drawn animation is aesthetically superior to its digital counterpart, look no further than here: the painstaking work required to produce Miyazaki's breathtaking 2-D images lends the film a human touch—and consequently a sense of warmth—that the digital behemoths of Hollywood cannot match. Everything about THE WIND RISES feels handcrafted and deeply satisfying—like a good craft beer. (2013, 126 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
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Hayao Miyazaki's PORCO ROSSO (Japan/Animation)
Sunday, 9:45pm and Tuesday, 4pm
It's the age of aviation in the Adriatic and even pigs are flying, or at least one pig, an ace pilot of the Great War cursed to live out his days as a swine protecting the skies. PORCO ROSSO is hardly the odd man out in Hayao Miyazaki's canon—in fact it's entrenched in his sense of moral ambiguity and vivid visions of flight—but the silly central conceit coupled with an unlikely adult protagonist has left this one easily dismissed. More's the pity, as the animation grandmaster has seldom painted a clearer picture than this antiwar parable set upon a magnificent Mediterranean canvas. Curiously, the film is not an origin story. The pilot known as Porco Rosso has long since been resigned to his condition, and the world itself has accepted him as just another unfortunate byproduct of World War I. He has an old love, the glamorous Madame Gina; a moustache twirling rival, the debonair American pilot Curtis; and eventually, a plucky young sidekick in the over-eager Fio. In the course of his high-flying adventures, he contends with a scrappy band of pirates, goes head-to-head with Curtis for Gina's affections, and witnesses the beginnings of Italian fascism, all while reluctantly keeping Fio in tow. It's all appropriately thrilling, and the seaside vistas are as breathtaking as the dogfights, but Miyazaki saves the best for last as an aerial duel devolves into the best fist fight since THE QUIET MAN, pounding home the futility of all this mechanized aggression. (1992, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]
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Hayao Miyazaki's CASTLE IN THE SKY (Japan/Animation)
Wednesday, 6:30pm and Thursday, 9:15pm
The runaway success of NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND gave Hayao Miyazaki and longtime cohort Isao Takahata the momentum they needed to found their own animation factory, and in 1985 Studio Ghibli was formed. One year later and Ghibli was debuting its first feature, the heartfelt adventure CASTLE IN THE SKY, providing an exhilarating standard for things to come. Taking cues from a long tradition of adventure stories—Gulliver's Travels being the obvious one, but you can feel the influence of Hergé here as well—Miyzaki's third film is certainly his most action-packed, and if it lacks some of the quieter pleasures associated with his later films, it more than makes up for this in the bounty of thrilling set pieces that stretch from the rails of a rustic mining town to the pirate-infested skies far above. Beyond it all is the mythical floating castle of Laputa, sought after by various parties including power hungry Colonel Muska accompanied by a seemingly inexhaustible standing army, tough-as-nails ski-pirate Ma Dola and her rowdy boys, and the two intrepid kids caught up at the center of it all, restless Pazu and the enigmatic girl he rescues, Sheeta. Amidst breathtaking battles with airships and automatons, the film achieves something more than merely introducing Ghibli to the masses; it makes a case for what animation is truly capable of. Released from the live-action burden of special effects, CASTLE IN THE SKY slips more comfortably into the ranks of the timeless adventure stories than just about any film since, retaining today every ounce of wonder that it packed when it launched the celebrated studio. On Wednesday, stop by the Music Box Lounge between 5:30pm - 7pm for origami making with the Japanese Arts Foundation/Japanese Cultural Center, and on Thursday, okonomiyaki from Gaijin will be available in the Music Box Lounge between 5:30pm - 9pm. (1986, 126 min, 35mm) [Tristan Johnson]
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View the full schedule here.

Robert Altman Centennial

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

Robert Altman’s IMAGES (UK)
Saturday, 2pm
The least mural-like film of Robert Altman’s ‘70s period, IMAGES nonetheless advances a fascinating approach to widescreen filmmaking; it will surely benefit from big-screen presentation. The movie finds Altman consciously working against the strengths he’d developed in M*A*S*H (1970), BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), and McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), limiting his cast to only a half-dozen actors and creating mostly minimalist, rather than maximalist, compositions. It’s his homage to Ingmar Bergman—specifically the Bergman of the “Silence of God” trilogy and PERSONA (1966)—a chamber drama about mental illness, marriage, and the creative process that’s set in a stunningly beautiful yet painfully remote location that makes the characters’ inner turmoil seem more pronounced. Susannah York plays an author of children’s novels who goes to a country retreat with her arrogant husband (Altman regular Rene Auberjonois) to work on her new book. While she’s there, she finds herself interacting with the ghost of her dead lover (Marcel Bozzuffi) and fending off the advances of a friend of her husband (Hugh Millais), who comes to visit with his preadolescent daughter. In addition to Bergman, IMAGES evokes Roman Polanski’s REPULSION (1965) and Alain Resnais’ LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) in how Altman uses film form to convey the heroine’s unstable grasp on reality, employing shocking edits that reflect her jumps between fantasy and unadulterated experience. This may be the closest Altman got to making a horror movie, so it’s telling that it contains no villains; even when trying to scare audiences, he couldn’t drop his bemused affection for his characters. IMAGES isn’t devoid of humor (which is where it differs markedly from Bergman’s work), as the writer-director peppers the dialogue with corny jokes to keep things from getting overly serious. Still, the film feels relatively cold for Altman (could it be all the negative space in the mise-en-scène?), which would make it feel like an outlier in his filmography if not for the earthy, spontaneous performances. (1972, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Robert Altman's CALIFORNIA SPLIT (US)
Wednesday, 6pm
CALIFORNIA SPLIT is ostensibly a movie about two guys getting loaded on booze and gambling, moving from bender to bender, racetrack to casino. However, over the course of the film CALIFORNIA SPLIT reveals itself to be a tale of personal sadness coupled with the longing to be accepted and liked by another human, any human who will welcome them as they are. Altman's trademark cross-dialogue denseness, captured using multiple boom mics, achieves beautifully dizzying heights, as massive blocks of dialogue are rendered barely discernible. But whatever is made ambiguous by this audio jumble is given full clarity when the characters’ veneers drop off, leaving nothing but their emotional center. In one of the movie's most remarkable scenes two prostitutes, played by Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles, sit in a bed together after one of them has had their sexual advances rebuffed by leading man George Segal. Her friend consoles her by stroking her hair and promising that she has a great client for her to entertain instead, softly promising another, better man who will treat her kindly. The dialogue is delivered very matter-of-factly, with not a lot of conviction behind it, but it foregrounds a dream of companionship, if even for a few hours, which is the soul of this underrated film. The aforementioned scene is a wonderful representation of the film as a whole, which on paper seems like just another buddy-heist-comedy. Altman, being a wonderful subverter of genre stereotypes, delivers less of a kooky comedy of errors, and more of a Cassavetes-influenced genre hybrid, very similar to another of its miraculous ilk, Elaine May's flat-out masterful MIKEY & NICKY. (1974, 108 min, 35mm) [John Dickson]

Summer Camp

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (US)
Friday, 6pm
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]
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Josef von Sternberg’s THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN (US)
Saturday, 6pm
The last of the seven Sternberg-Dietrich collaborations, THE DEVIL IS WOMAN is as ornate as some of the previous entries but decidedly colder, visually sumptuous—specifically in Dietrich’s stunning array of costumes—yet lacking a certain emotional tenor that may have more so endeared viewers to earlier efforts. But per Sybil DelGaudio’s Dressing the Part: Sternberg, Dietrich, and Costume, “It was Dietrich’s ‘cool indifference’ that Sternberg was most drawn to, an indifference which appealed to his attraction to film’s duality: accessible yet inaccessible, available yet elusive.” That description applies especially to Dietrich’s Spanish femme-fatala Concha, who works her way to fame and fortune as a singer by stringing along affluent suitors. The legend of Concha is conveyed via flashback, a young, handsome Spanish Republican (Cesar Romero) being advised by an older aristocrat (Lionel Atwill) to avoid her seduction, having been lured into her charms time and time again. Unfortunately, in real life Dietrich’s star power had been waning, their previous collaboration THE SCARLET EMPRESS a critical and commercial failure, a fate soon to plague THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN. It’s not my favorite of their films together, frankly due to that aforementioned chilliness, but it is especially interesting because of its connection to Sternberg himself, as Atwill’s character is largely read as being a stand-in for the director, even in his appearance as well as his slavish devotion to Dietrich. A certain resentment seeps through, portending Sternberg’s firing from Paramount by incoming production manager Ernst Lubitsch (the film is based on Pierre Louys's novel The Woman and the Puppet and also evokes  Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Caprice Espagñole; the film’s original title was to be, accordingly, CAPRICE ESPAGNOL, but was changed by Lubitsch). In this light, Dietrich becomes a stand-in for Hollywood, an alluring yet ultimately cruel mistress who will discard you as easily as they pulled you in. As it’s set during Carnaval in Spain, the film’s inherent coldness is dressed up in dazzling decor and out-of-this-world costumery for Concha. The elevated artificiality complements the frigidness, adding a sense of irony that Dietrich’s performance also embodies. She’s almost hammy—mention of the film appears in Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp, specifically called out but included in a point referencing all of the collaborations due to their “outrageous aestheticism.” That’s certainly the case here, but I also think Dietrich’s performance is an element of a slightly self-aware camp, as her duplicitous intentions are never wholly subdued but rather dressed in an over-the-top brattiness that also helps to turn the older man/younger ingenue trope on its head. Many have extolled the film’s virtues, the author of the notes for a screening at MoMA going so far as to call it “perhaps the most perfect film ever made in some ways… If Sternberg is any closer to understanding Dietrich, he is unwilling to solve the puzzle for the audience; the film remains one of the most beautifully realized enigmas in the history of the cinema.” Dietrich also said it was her favorite of her and Sternberg’s collaborations. Maybe it’s somewhat alienating quality is protection of sorts, guarding the nuances of Deitrich and Sternberg’s relationship even as they illuminate it with unparalleled visual splendor (enforced doubly by Sternberg, who also shot the film). (1935, 79 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
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Lloyd Bacon's 42ND STREET (US)
Monday, 8:30pm
Between this, FOOTLIGHT PARADE, and the inaugural GOLD DIGGERS installment, Busby Berkeley launched a delirious overhaul of the movie musical in 1933, a genre previously dominated by staid Broadway recreations. Following Rouben Mamoulian's lead, Berkeley scrapped the proscenium arch and extravagantly embraced the possibilities of the medium, conjuring enough geometric choreography, bird's-eye camera angles, and endless rows of anonymous pawns to earn a famous (if unfortunate) comparison to Leni Riefenstahl by Susan Sontag. But for all Berkeley's grand indulgence, the let's-put-on-a-show plots propping up his spectacles are mired in the Depression-era desperation that was by now Warner Bros' streetwise trademark (William Wellman crafted WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD and HEROES FOR SALE there that same year). While Ernst Lubitsch's contemporaneous Paramount confections promised audiences all-encompassing escapism, 42ND STREET's show-stoppers were an ecstatic release for the characters and spectators alike, an 11th-hour liberation Berkeley neatly subverted with the audaciously morbid finale of GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935. (1933, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Mike King]
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Also screening as part of the Summer Camp series is Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1993 film KING KONG (100 min, DCP Digital) on Sunday at noon.

Nicholas Ray's THE LUSTY MEN (US)

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

A bare synopsis of THE LUSTY MEN makes it sounds like a standard-issue sports movie: a head-strong wannabe with dreams of fame and fortune, a grizzled veteran itching to get back in the game, a love triangle that threatens everything inside and outside the stadium. Much of the rodeo footage comes from stock shots so poorly integrated that they may as well be kinescope discards. The screenplay is functional and nothing more, chiefly notable for its power to inculcate the audience with the conviction that 'rodeo' is a verb as much as a noun. And yet I know no one who has failed to come away from THE LUSTY MEN reporting anything less than total emotional devastation. THE LUSTY MEN possesses the power to inspire great and unassailable personal devotion. I once hung a lobby card for THE LUSTY MEN in my office and anybody who had ever seen the film remarked upon it automatically. Since the studio has no print of THE LUSTY MEN in circulation and there's still no DVD on the market, I've spent an unhealthy amount of time mentally cataloging the whereabouts of four 35mm prints I know to be extant; the worn-but-watchable 16mm print screened by Doc has its own accumulated history, having been acquired by the student film group decades ago in its first flush of auteurist fervor. I detail all this not for good trivia, but because THE LUSTY MEN itself exudes an anguished fragility. Attribute that to the sensitive direction of Nicholas Ray or the heart-aching performances of Robert Mitchum, Arthur Kennedy, and, yes, Susan Hayward. Either way, it's a movie under perpetual threat of floating away, or perhaps of becoming one with the dirt. Lee Garmes' cinematography, one of the movie's major assets, captures trailer parks and dance halls with an unfussy solidity; they're present-tense ruins for a trio of stubborn ghosts. Screening as part of the Neo-Westerns of the ’50s and ’60s series. (1952, 114 min, 35mm) [K.A. Westphal]

William Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am

Relentless. Gene Hackman's sensational turn as Popeye Doyle only works because of his foils: jaded, unflappable Roy Scheider and bourgeois, urbane Fernando Rey. And New York City, as much a character as any human being on screen. Friedkin thrusts us into the middle of a hellish, grubby, chaotic city, a place where the glass of beer sitting on the bar gets drugs, cigarette butts, and junkie's works dumped into it so Doyle can mix up his patented milkshake. Handheld, documentary-like camerawork, working hand in glove with jagged, quick cutting; the car chase may never be duplicated for sheer adrenaline, but the little offhand details are what make the film a fully formed world. The bicycle in Hackman's apartment, ugly wallpaper in Weinstock's living room, orange drink in the subway, nighttime steam rising from the pavement. Don Ellis' soundtrack is also key to the atmosphere, rife with spooky horns and percussion. The shootout in a dripping, ruined warehouse serves as an abrupt, almost existential ending. It seems to pose the question: "Is that all there is ... to life?" Screening as part of the Films of Gene Hackman series. (1971, 104 min, 35mm) [Rob Christopher]

John Sturges’ BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 4pm and Thursday, 7pm

In John Sturges’ BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, Robert Ryan’s Reno Smith dons a red cap that makes him look almost boyish and, upon the hollow depths of his character being revealed over the course of this enigmatic film, resembles in more than just his accessories a facile, small-town approximation of the recreant demagogue who is now president. As is the American way, the source of Smith's antagonism and the outcome of the mysterious main character's descent upon the titular enclave is racism, pure and simple (it was produced by MGM production head Dore Schary, who’d made it a point to explore social restitution through cinema); though I won’t spoil it here, considering that it’s set in 1945, a few months after the end of World War II, and the person whom Spencer Tracy’s one-armed war vet Macreedy comes to Black Rock to find is named Komoko, one can suspect what flavor of bigotry is at play. It’s revealed gradually, though, beginning with Macreedy’s arrival in the town, via a train that’s stopping for the first time in four years. The tension activated amongst the townspeople, mostly cowboys who seem only to linger menacingly, is palpable, their  violent attitude toward the stranger increasing from the get-go; Pauline Kael, who otherwise liked the film, called its plot “crudely melodramatic.” Indeed, the film has a melodramatic cadence, relishing in the intensity of the town's secret that Macreedy is soon to uncover, yet the eventual divulgement is an almost Brechtian affront. What's revealed isn’t the stuff of cinematic histrionics but rather the prejudices of real life inspired by fear and insecurity (when Macreedy discloses the source of his injury as having been from the war—which connects also to why he’s come to Black Rock—Smith tells him that he tried to enlist the day after Pearl Harbor but was rejected). Written by Millad Kaufman, who lent his name to Dalton Trumbo for the script for GUN CRAZY after his blacklisting (an ironic piece of trivia considering the film is often read as an allegory for anti-McCarthyism), this was Sturges’ only revisionist Western, though it feels both entirely as such, but also timeless, a story of the old West, the new West, and all the many directions America has taken, made even more impactful by the stunning Technicolor and VistaVision cinematography. The casting is impeccable, from Tracy and Ryan to Western stalwart Walter Brennan as the only townsperson initially to want to help Macreedy and Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin as Smith’s minions. It’s hard to believe that it’s under 90 minutes, an economy that mimics the single day-long span of the film’s plot; as we see time and time again, the composite of several years’ silence can boil over in a single day, but this time it's to a more cathartic effect. Screening as part of the Neo-Westerns of the ’50s and ’60s series. (1955, 81 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

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Brian De Palma's BLOW OUT (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 4pm and 8:45pm

The tides of auteurist reputation seem to be turning away from BLOW OUT and toward CARLITO’S WAY as De Palma’s finest achievement. Not, as they say, that there’s anything wrong with that; CARLITO is an undersung triumph and is held in special esteem by the director himself. But BLOW OUT remains De Palma’s signature moment, the nexus of so many strains of his directorial temperament: the longstanding fascination with technology blooming into fullest mastery of the filmmaker’s toolkit, the use of lens and angle to force the viewer into a way of seeing; the political bent of his young career metastasizing into a vision of macro- versus micropolitics no less despairing for their couching in pop thriller verities. John Travolta’s Jack Terri, a sound man reduced to working on T&A bloodbath B’s who finds himself front and center in an assassination conspiracy, seems like Keith Gordon’s whiz kid from DRESSED TO KILL now grown up, ostensibly wised up, but marinating in cynicism. He’s too young to be this beaten up, but beaten he is, phoning it in at the job, taking weakish jabs at the political operative who wants him to disappear after fishing escort Nancy Allen out of a river-sunk Presidential candidate’s car. Travolta is marvelous, by turns giving and withdrawn, petty and playful—a wounded romantic if ever there was one. (Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is rightly renowned for its inky blacks, split diopters, and bravura 360-degree moves, but the cherry on the sundae is his lighting of his star’s eyes, which reaches Golden Age heights of expressiveness.) Travolta here embodies an underreported trait of De Palma’s—his deeply felt political sense, a foursquare sense of right and wrong that runs through his career from HI, MOM! to BLOW OUT, the furious CASUALTIES OF WAR, and REDACTED. Travolta processes every deception as a personal affront, and proceeds as such, bringing his technical prowess and sheer cussedness to bear, to the point of finally using Allen as bait to expose the conspiracy. The movie was originally to be called PERSONAL EFFECTS, and it never strays far from that title’s resonance. Travolta and Allen’s give and take, their flirts and terrors, their romance that dies aborning, is among the sweetest and saddest things you’ll ever see. (Allen is every bit the screen presence as Travolta, or at least as nearly beloved of the camera. Her comic timing is impeccable, and her character’s upshot heartbreaking.) BLOW OUT is, along with THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, the finest of modern American romantic tragedies, released at a point in time when the moviegoing public had no inclination to buy tickets for such bitter pills, no matter how expert and tantalizing their coating. But what remains is that De Palma-ness: the whiz-bang and the mourning, the fetish and the hard truth, the sex and the lie. With Dennis Franz, John McMartin, and a scarifying John Lithgow. (1981, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Jim Gabriel]

SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! at the Music Box Theatre

See below for showtimes

Fred Dekker’s NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (US)
Friday, 11:45pm
In the afterglow of a slasher-dominated decade when video store shelves beamed with garish promise and Freddy Krueger’s glove could still carve an audience, Fred Dekker’s NIGHT OF THE CREEPS shambles in like a tuxedoed corpse with a corsage and a one-liner. A Romero-esque zombie in a post-RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) world had to be kidding itself. But CREEPS is no joke. It’s a giddy, grotesque, and oddly touching love letter to thirty years of horror cinema. From 1950s creature features to 1980s slasher supremacy, the film isn’t just referencing horror history, it’s throwing a kegger for it. It begins with an absurd alien in a rubber suit jettisoning a canister toward Earth. What follows is a black-and-white prologue complete with sorority sisters, lovers' lane, an escaped mental patient with an axe, and a cop who should’ve called in sick. All worlds collide at Corman University, launching a film that constantly changes its Halloween costume every few minutes: alien invasion, zombie plague, teen sex comedy, ‘50s monster movie, and even a dash of Raymond Chandler noir. Like the brain slugs at its core, it all merges into something wriggling with affection and encyclopedic genre knowledge. Dekker’s script is an Easter egg hunt for the horror faithful. Characters are christened with names like Cronenberg, Carpenter, Hooper, and Raimi. A corpse rises to walk just as someone declares, “Corpses that have been dead for 27 years don’t just get up and walk away”—a quote and joke payoff Shane Black and Dekker would include again in THE MONSTER SQUAD (1987). PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1957) plays on a TV as a serial killer zombie bursts through the floorboards. These aren’t shallow homages; they’re blood-soaked valentines. It’s as if the film itself grew up on late-night creature features and wanted to invite them all to the formal. And then there’s Tom Atkins. As Detective Ray Cameron, he delivers the immortal line: “Thrill me.” But beneath the Chandlerian sass is grief and unraveling. He’s not cracking jokes for laughs—he’s haunted. Reading The Big Sleep in a noir-shadowed den while '40s music drones like a funeral hymn, Cameron isn’t just battling the undead, he’s searching for a reason to keep breathing. Dekker, just 25 at the time, funneled every cent of his $6 million budget onto the screen. He wasn’t content just writing—though he had early treatments for THE RETURN OF GODZILLA (1985) and what would become HOUSE (1985). His unfinished short film became a calling card that earned him the helm of CREEPS. While in school at UCLA, he lived in the “Pad O’ Guys”—an unofficial filmmaker frat house with Shane Black and Ed Solomon—where John Woo fight sequences were recreated on the lawn. Dekker infuses his debut film with his own collegiate antics making CREEPS undeniably fun, but its humor never undercuts the horror. The effects used are glorious thanks to Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger. The final act is chock full of head-exploding zombies and flamethrower chaos. Not all of the proceedings are filled with fun and games. When JC, James Carpenter Hooper, meets his fate in a bathroom graffitied with “GO MONSTER SQUAD,” his death hits with surprising pathos. He’s wisecracking, handicapable, and coded queer, but his death feels real, not referential. This is what elevates CREEPS—its punk-rock snarl balanced with genuine heart. It flopped on release, but like the best B-movie monsters, it refused to stay dead. Its cult status is a resurrection, its influence undeniable. James Gunn would later create SLITHER (2006) as a spiritual sequel. The good news is, your dates are here. The bad news? They’re dead. Raise a glass to the monsters, the misfits, and the midnight movie maniacs, because NIGHT OF THE CREEPS doesn’t just thrill us. It gets us. (1986, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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Tom Holland’s FRIGHT NIGHT (US)
Saturday, 11:45pm
If you’re looking for kitsch, look no further than Tom Holland’s FRIGHT NIGHT. The big hair, the fashion disasters that we thought were so hip and funky, and the technopop music with a driving backbeat that turns you into a bobblehead whether you like it or not—all of these wonderfully awful ’80s artifacts are on splendid display. The story is pretty simple. Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is a typical horny teenager. The film opens with him making out with his perky girlfriend, Amy Peterson (Amanda Bearse), on his bedroom floor while his favorite TV show, “Peter Vincent: Vampire Killer” (Roddy McDowell), plays in the background. When she refuses to go all the way, Charley gets mad. They’ve been going together for a year, after all. Charley looks out his window to avoid Amy’s hurt gaze. He doesn’t notice that she has moved to his bed and is willing to give him what he wants. He’s too busy watching an elaborate coffin being moved into the house next door. The next day, Charley passes an attractive woman on the street who is looking for the address of his new next-door neighbor. The fact that she is a hooker initially escaped me because a lot of women dressed like her back then—tight, short skirt in an impossibly bright blue; big, blonde hair; shocking nail polish. When next he sees her using that very ’80s movie accoutrement in movies—binoculars—she is stripping in his neighbor’s house. But his voyeurism ends with a big shock when he sees the man of the house bite her. A very cool shot of three rivulets of blood trickling down her bare back caps the scene. Now Charley is sure his new neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), is a vampire. When he tries to confront Dandridge, he is stopped by smarmy Renfield-like houseboy Billy (Jonathan Stark). To stop Charley from snooping, Dandridge trashes Charley’s already trashy-looking car. Don’t ask me how that’s an effective deterrent. Now Charley is in full vampire hunter mode. He brings a cop over to his neighbor’s home to see the coffin and convince him that the murders being reported in town—in a very blasé way, I might add—are Dandridge’s doing. The cop laughs and leaves. Not only does Charley get dismissed, but as in any self-respecting teen-centered movie, his clueless single mother (Dorothy Fielding) is brought in to trigger a plot twist—inviting the vampire into her home—and then disappears from the film. Charley is now in grave danger because the vampire can enter his home at will. Enter Charley’s favorite vampire stalker, a fraud willing to take a $500 savings bond as payment for services he has no expertise in rendering. The film has the obligatory smoky disco scene, with Dandridge in ’80s dressed-to-kill garb hypnotizing Amy and bringing her onto the dance floor. Suddenly, Amy is transformed into an ’80s-style vamp, her perky, barrette-clad hair poofed into seriously big hair and her unadorned face painted and seductive. We get a lot of disco-beat close-ups of Dandridge manhandling Amy, putting his hand up her skirt, and then whisking her off to his lair, with Charley in hot pursuit. The corny vampire-hunting scenes in Dandridge’s home reveal some of the silliest-looking vampires I’ve ever seen. Roddy, with his clown-whited hair, is perfection in a seriocomic role, performing with conviction to give the kids in the audience a thrill while maintaining a certain ironic distance. This isn’t great art, and it’s not even a major comic addition to the vampire canon. But, all the “don’t worry, be happy” vibes of the 1980s found in the abundant tongue-in-cheek horror movies of the era—in its own way, much smarter than the humor of today—still make for a great evening of popcorn viewing. (1985, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Every ticket includes a limited edition pinback button (new design each night), and every show kicks off with killer giveaways donated by the Shadowboxery, Cryptid Craft Studio, Night Natalie, Drive-In Asylum, and Full Bleed Zine for the first folks who answer our trivia questions. The category is queer horror, so get ready.

Frank Henenlotter's FRANKENHOOKER (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 9:45pm and Wednesday, 10:30pm

In 1818 when Mary Shelley was 20 years old, she unleashed a story so singular that it could only be copied by each generation after her. Through personal loss, intellectual conversations, scientific curiosity, and a ghost story creative challenge, horror was forever changed. Frank Henenlotter is as proudly indebted to Shelley’s work as James Whale was for the creation of his FRANKENSTEIN (1931). FRANKENHOOKER is a scrappy, low-budget film that is exactly what you'd expect it to be: a bizarre and campy mash-up of Mary Shelley’s debut novel with sex workers. In reducing Henenlotter’s cult film to just that doesn’t do justice to the bizarre charm and provocative themes it offers. The film follows Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz), a med school dropout whose fiancée, Elizabeth (Patty Mullen), tragically dies in a freak lawnmower accident. Overcome by grief and teetering on the edge of sanity, Jeffrey concocts a plan to bring her back to life using the body of a sex worker. His initial attempt at finding the perfect woman involves interviewing potential candidates, but things don’t go as planned when the women accidentally consume Jeffrey’s stash of explosive crack cocaine. In a chaotic scene, they all explode, forcing Jeffrey to scavenge through the wreckage to find the best parts to create a new body for Elizabeth. Henenlotter’s film embraces its absurdity at every turn, diving headfirst into camp, practical effects, and over-the-top gore. However, beneath the surface of this chaotic narrative, FRANKENHOOKER hints at heavier themes such as the male gaze, objectification of women, ethics of scientific hubris, body horror, sex work, and even urban decay in 1980s New York. When Elizabeth is brought back to life, she has an uncontrollable urge to return to her patched-together body’s old life as a sex worker—something Jeffrey can’t accept. Like in Frankenstein, the true monster here is the one who plays God and who distorts life for their own selfish needs. Jeffrey reduces the women to mere body parts, reinforcing his view that a woman's worth is tied solely to her physical appearance. His "perfect" woman is a grotesque symbol of dehumanization, designed solely for his desire and control. As in Henenlotter’s other films like the BASKET CASE trilogy, BRAIN DAMAGE, and BAD BIOLOGY, grotesque body transformations take center stage. The dismemberment and reassembly of Elizabeth highlights the film’s body horror while also raising questions about bodily autonomy, identity, and agency. Through her transformation, Elizabeth is liberated from her former life and from Jeffrey’s control. Empowered, she exacts revenge on men who try to dominate her, turning the film into a feminist revenge fantasy. It’s hard to pin down exactly how to interpret FRANKENHOOKER, as it plays out with gleeful irreverence, deadpan one-liners, and over-the-top performances. The outlandish special effects, surreal tone, and oscillation between horror and comedy give the film a distinct, trash-cinema aesthetic. Neon makeup, non-sequitur, and exploitation satire only further add to the chaos. One of the best examples of the film's dark humor comes when Jeffrey says, "I've lost the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad. I'm scared, Ma. I feel like I'm plunging headfirst into some black void of sheer and utter madness." His mother, played by the underutilized Louise Lasser of BLOOD RAGE, simply replies, "You want a sandwich?" Screening as part of the Killer Cuts series. (1990, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Juzo Itami's TAMPOPO (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 9am

Frequently billed as a ‘ramen western,’ the satirical TAMPOPO follows the SHANE-esque Goro who decides to help the bubbly Tampopo turn around her struggling noodle shop. Tampopo wants to learn the secret to making the perfect ramen. Although Jûzô Itami’s film was only marginally successful in Japan upon first release, it has since been received with almost universal praise thanks to its delightfully whimsical interweaving of food, sex, and death. TAMPOPO is episodic in nature: Itami’s free flowing narrative draws influence from the work of Luis Buñuel. Each humorous sequence flows freely into the other, often aided by sheer preposterousness that works charmingly well. The real star here is the food. Dish after dish, meal after meal, it’s impossible not to feel hungry when watching this film. A foodie’s ultimate dream, the impressive showcase of culinary offerings is staggering, and their preparations are shown in great detail. There’s a prevailing sense of joy permeating the entire film that delights in simple pleasures like cooking, lovemaking, and sometimes the two combined. Like some of the tantalizing ramen presented onscreen, TAMPOPO is a hearty visual feast best enjoyed in the company of others and with a ferocious appetite. Screening as part of the Rise & Shine series. (1985, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Tim Burton's PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (US)

Davis Theater – Sunday, 1pm

By 1985, Paul Reubens' bow-tied TV man-child Pee-wee Herman had claimed a successful stage run, HBO series and specials, and sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall. The culmination of this popularity was PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. The premise of the BIG ADVENTURE is simple: Pee-wee's beloved bike, an awesome cherry-red cruiser, has disappeared and, bindle in hand, Pee-wee sets across the country to recover it, come what may. In store for Pee-wee are phantom adventures on the American highway, a trip to the Alamo, and the hazards of a thousand other oddball incidents, leading to a roaring, studio-crashing finale that rivals the best of Mel Brooks. PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE is of course the feature debut of Tim Burton, who is perhaps the perfect directorial match for Reubens' funhouse comedy, and the film offers the curious objects, candy colors, and spoiled suburban malaise that have since become the hallmarks of Burton's all-too successful career. Some of the comedy has become even more relevant and complex (and unintentionally ironic) as the years have gone by, such as when Dottie asks Pee-wee if he would like to take her to the movies: Pee-wee responds that there are things she doesn't know about him—"Things you wouldn't understand, things you couldn't understand... Things you shouldn't understand." The two do eventually end up at the movies together, but thankfully Dottie and the audience are spared a TAXI DRIVER moment. Screening as part of the Coming of Age series. (1985, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Liam Neff]

Marnie Ellen Hertzler's CRESTONE (US)

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

Aspects of this peculiar documentary hybrid, about a group of Soundcloud rappers living in a remote desert hideout, evoke motifs commonly found in sci-fi films. Arid landscapes, neon colors, and a score laden with the mysteries of the universe—all this fits with the notion one gets that this group of people are aliens among us, not naturally of this earth and having found in it a place suitable for their not-of-our-world predilections. Filmmaker Marnie Ellen Hertzler documents in this hybrid curio several young men, some of whom she knew in high school, who’ve taken to the desert in Crestone, Colorado, where they’ve formed a collective called Deadgod, releasing their struggle rapper anthems into the void; they also grow weed. Hertzler, visiting them for the summer, decided to make a film about their unique living arrangements, which include residing in veritable squalor with limited access to food and water. In stark contrast to their humble abode are the devices with which they frequently interact, despite claiming to revile the impact of technology on our society. (Other reviews of the film mention the mens’ utopian ideals and claim their surroundings to be post-apocalyptic; these similarities are evident to me, too, but I maintain the group’s status as extraterrestrials, if only in the sense that they’re certainly being extra when it comes to being terrestrial.) They record music, post it online, and make videos for social media; they’re even equipped with a drone, VR headset, and a full tattoo set-up, which they utilize without impunity. Furthermore, they have a crowdfunding profile, where the group’s de facto leader, Sloppy, appears in a video decrying the contemporary mode of being. “You don’t even get the chance to be a human,” he says of the modern-day world, an observation apropos of an alien, albeit one who might consider himself more a human than the rest of us, observing people in our now-natural habitat. To that end it’s Hertzler who’s come from the outside world with her natural biases and prejudices (however gentle) in tow. This isn’t a knock against Hertzler, who in fact documents the group with exquisite tenderness and brings to the film a perspective needed to illuminate their genial oddity. She gives them the benefit of the doubt, assuming their intentions to be in earnest, even if sometimes problematic and often, unintentionally, hypocritical. In a pivotal moment, Hertzler documents the men as they passively observe an emergency alert on their TV warning of nearby wildfires. She, the resident interloper, panics, while the group merely shrugs, seemingly unfazed by the nearby catastrophe. It’s here that her attitude toward them shifts, not maliciously, but perceptibly enough for viewers to pick up on her frustration with their childish utopia. Some elements of the film are supposedly fictional, though it’s difficult to say what’s real and what’s not, so unreal does all of it seem. Concocted for sure are two segments wherein the rappers perform their music, the scenes like stand-alone music videos inserted within the narrative. To be frank, there’s much about this film I’d dislike (its arthouse trappings, including the one aforementioned, are undeniable) if it weren’t for the purported sincerity of its subjects and the broad-minded engrossment of its maker. (2021, 73 min, DCP Digital) [Kathleen Sachs]

Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY (US/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

A particular audio clip of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is used twice in A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. In it, he comments on the art of photography, stating, “Life is once forever.” Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s personal documentary is about many things: photography, memory, archive, time, loneliness. It is mostly, however, about loss and how media can both mitigate and highlight that loss; that perhaps it can allow for time to extend and the past to be revisited or revived. The film is focused on the fascinating life and pioneering work of photographer and journalist Sheila Turner-Seed, the filmmaker’s mother. She passed away in 1979, when the director was only 18 months old, and Seed is driven to learn more about the mother she barely knew. In the process, A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY becomes as much about her as her mother, and Seed’s own art and personal life becomes blended within the subject matter. Seed continually recognizes the mirroring between her life and her mother’s; they also look and sound very much alike, blurring the audience’s understanding of the two women. Through Turner-Seed’s interviews with the world’s most famous photographers—like Gordon Parks—the art and history of the medium throughout midcentury America is also threaded throughout, all intertwined into the personal experiences of the Seeds. It’s intimate and affecting, with Seed’s voiceover mingling with archival audio of her mother. What is most honest about the film is how Seed grapples with the way in which these archival items—her mother’s writing, audio, photos—are all windows into the past and yet limited in their scope. Seed remarks while watching a home video of her mother speaking to her as a baby that the audio and movement aspect allow her to recall the event not as media but as memory—"real" memory. The documentary questions the relationship between memory and media, that both are recordings and neither can ever be the whole truth, and that they can influence one another, creating something new. A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY argues there is absolutely illumination to be found in the extensive media archive, but there’s also a melancholy to learning more—that it is a tease of what might have been and is still nowhere near enough to make up for grief and loss. (2024, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Alex Ross Perry’s PAVEMENTS (US)

Davis Theater – See Venue website for showtimes

The first time I watched PAVEMENTS, Alex Ross Perry’s abstract cinematic nesting doll disguised as a music documentary, I was a practical novice concerning the history and discography of the ‘90’s slacker rock group Perry cheekily refers to as “The World’s Most Important and Influential Band.” By the film’s triumphant final montage, I wanted to become Pavement’s biggest fan. Amidst a culture awash in hagiographic film projects dedicated to propping up your favorite musical artist through corporate-approved “truths,” Perry’s sly, introspective approach instead chooses to probe our collective fascination with the myriad ways one attempts to engage with and honor our heroes of the music industry. To call the methodology of accomplishing this task “meta” feels like an understatement; the kayfabe established in PAVEMENTS leads us to believe that, alongside the band’s very real reunion tour, the cultural revival of Pavement has also extended into a museum filled with a vast collection of memorabilia being erected in their honor, a jukebox musical being staged to recontextualize their oeuvre in a new medium, and an awards-bait biopic being filmed to further dramatize and embellish the band’s "sordid" history. As confusing and esoteric as this might appear, the film is refreshingly accessible and entertaining throughout; on a technical level, Robert Greene’s structural editing is unmatched, weaving streams of storylines and archival footage seamlessly through and around each other, creating a collage of film that fits together both linearly and thematically. There’s also heaps of humor in Perry’s skewering (intentional or otherwise) of the various tropes found in the jukebox musical and biopic treatments here, though the latter undeniably achieves the most mileage when it comes to unabashed critique and scorn (in particular, Joe Keery gives a masterful performance as a method actor version of himself going to laughably bizarre lengths to capture the essence of Pavement lead singer Stephen Malkmus). But there’s something worth celebrating at the heart of these artistic tributes, even the corniest and most cringe among them, as they pull apart and put back together how we all experience art in our own unique ways. Somebody might love Pavement because of the band members themselves, or because of the poetry of their lyrics, or because of the atmosphere and energy their music creates, and all of these reasons contain validity. This is a film about one specific rock group, but Perry’s gambit succeeds by extending this into a film about how we all find bizarre, earnest, multifaceted ways of expressing our love for the art that shapes us, as contradictory as it all may be. As Malkmus once wrote, “the stories you hear, you know they never add up.” (2025, 128 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) 
Katsitsionni Fox’s 2024 film KANENON:WE - ORIGINAL SEEDS (27 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 6pm, followed by a talk with Becky Webster, special guest from the film and Haudenosaunee seedkeeper. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The CFA Open House takes place Sunday from 1pm to 4:30pm at their office on 329 W. 18th St., Suite 610. More info here.

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

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Timothy David’s 2024 film KANGAROO ISLAND (113 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum. The screening is free to attend but currently standby only. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Diego Ongaro’s 2021 film DOWN WITH THE KING (100 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 4pm, as part of the Needle Drop: A Hip-Hop Film Sample series. More info here.

⚫ Elastic Arts (3429 W. Diversey Ave.)
Tone Glow presents Rotating Signals: The Contemporary Korean Avant-Garde, a program of 10 short films highlighting the current landscape of experimental film in Korea, as well as from those in the Korean diaspora around the world, on Wednesday starting at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ FACETS
Marissa Mejia and Mandy Qua’s documentary HASIK (Digital Projection) on Friday, 6:30pm, followed by a discussion and Q&A. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Sarah Friedland’s 2024 film FAMILIAR TOUCH (90 min, DCP Digital) begins and Celine Song’s 2025 film MATERIALISTS (113 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Roger Beebe visits the Film Center for his first full solo performance in Chicago in 10 years on Monday, 6pm, as part of Off Center: Films for One to Eight Projectors screening. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for lineup and showtimes.

Wes Anderson’s 2025 film THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (101 min, DCP Digital) continues screening. See Venue website for showtimes.

Miguel Silveira’s 2021 film THE LAST ELECTION AND OTHER LOVE STORIES (72 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 7pm, with Silveira and writer-producer Missy Hernandez in attendance to discuss current events and their approach to making a feature film with just one day of principal photography. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Rewind Room at Casa Cactus (4595 N. Elston Ave.)
Jack Hill’s 1974 film FOXY BROWN (80 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 7:30pm, as part of their summer series at Casa Cactus. More info here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
Selections from the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive, in conjunction with the announcement of the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive Collection, streams free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: June 27, 2025 - July 3, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Rob Christopher, Cody Corrall, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jim Gabriel, Shaun Huhn, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye, Mike King, Liam Neff, Michael Glover Smith, Shealey Wallace, K.A. Westphal, Darnell Witt