:: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Hollis Frampton's HAPAX LEGOMENA (US/Experimental)

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

Euclid: "Given a straight line, and a point exterior to that line, only one line may be drawn through the point that is parallel to the line." This ancient theorem has long been taken as axiomatic, and it is, provided a number of unspoken, perhaps wrongly assumed conditions are first met. Much like Grecian geometry, film theory has provided for itself several of its own axioms which Hollis Frampton, cinema's lonely mathematician, has attempted to either set the parameters of or to disprove. From this work comes the seven-part series HAPAX LEGOMENA, named after the literary phenomenon in which a word appears only once within a text or written language. Such words must have their meaning derived from context, and Frampton uses this notion conceptually to frame his own definitions of cinematic axioms. Through the singularity of these works, Frampton attempts a radical redefinition of what he and other film theorists consider the essential qualities of cinema by recontextualizing them. Narrative development (NOSTALGIA, 1973), the camera's iris (TRAVELING MATTE, 1971), editing strategies (REMOTE CONTROL, 1972), synchronicity between sound and image (CRITICAL MASS, 1971), the creation of spatial continuity (ORDINARY MATTER, 1972), the film frame (SPECIAL EFFECTS, 1972), and even image composition (POETIC JUSTICE, 1972) are all dissected and examined piece by piece, each redefined through their absence or their overuse. Screening as part of the Infinite Cinema: The Films of Hollis Frampton series. (1971-1973, 202 min, 16mm) [Doug McLaren]

Peter Watkins’ PUNISHMENT PARK (US)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm [Free Admission]

I don’t know if I should find it discomfiting or actually comforting that almost everything I’m thinking and feeling about the present-day political situation is echoed in PUNISHMENT PARK, set during the Vietnam War and trading in speculative, worst-case-scenarios of that turbulent moment. Discomfiting for obvious reasons, but comforting because, as it turns out, we’re not all that special. We joke about yearning for “precedented” times, but it’s possible those never existed. What we thought was political and economic stability was an illusion; the power of hope circa 2008 and our high standard of living, comparative to 99% of everybody else on earth, tricked us into believing things might be okay. But it’s always been there, lingering underneath the surface, waiting for the cracks to get bigger and bigger and then oozing out of them, resulting in our current dire situation. A pseudo-documentary in which the documentary is being filmed by a European TV crew, PUNISHMENT PARK centers on the titular “park,” a long swath of desert where dissidents detained under the recently invoked McCarran Act are brought as a possible alternative to jail time, supposing they’re able to reach the American flag after three days walking through the Californian desert while being pursued by the police. It focuses on two groups: one already sentenced and on their way through the desert, and another being tried for their alleged crimes, things like draft evasion and writing incendiary music that inspires radical behavior. The hearings are led by a kangaroo court (modeled after the proceedings of the Chicago Seven) with a jury composed not of their peers but a panel of conservative blowhards. There’s an element of additional conflict when a prison guard is found to have been killed, giving the police an excuse to be especially brutal toward the detainees. The park altogether is intended to provide the police with more training, echoing a recent suggestion by Trump that American cities be used as military training grounds. In going back and forth between the group in the desert and the group on trial, Watkins creates a disorienting, Kafka-esque effect. Joan Churchill’s cinematography is chillingly effective, as are the actors’ performances, even as many of them were non-professionals; all told it’s too scarily like a real documentary. Upon its initial release the reviews were largely negative. In his review for the New York Times, Vincent Canby declared that “PUNISHMENT PARK poses as a warning about what might happen here, but because it does little more than confirm our worst fears, it invites—quite recklessly—apathy instead of action.” Is it apathy or the realization of actuality? Admittedly, the latter can cause vanquished inaction—at first. But in the absence of hope Watkins raises the stakes; even if he’s not suggesting as such, it’s possible that fighting back may be all the more important when it’s futile. (1971, 91 min, Watkins’ personal 35mm print) [Kat Sachs]

Jacques Tourneur's THE LEOPARD MAN (US)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Thursday, 7pm

Anytime discussion of the magnificent and spellbinding filmmaker Jacques Tourneur takes place, someone always praises the pioneering CAT PEOPLE, made at RKO in 1942. As great as the movie is, it seems to always supersede his other horror efforts from that era, likely due to high praise by Martin Scorsese, its 80’s re-imagining by Paul Schrader, and recently, its induction into the Criterion Collection. Only one year later however, Tourneur would make two other films: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and THE LEOPARD MAN. The former, though also famously lauded by Scorsese, still seems to evade popular audience acclaim due to the fact that it is hardly a “zombie” movie at all. Instead, it is a poetic musing on lives lived in error, with regret and sadness haunting the past as it moves from what was, into its static present. Its dialogue hardly registers as reality, opting instead to reach somewhere beyond the screen and into a dimension all its own. THE LEOPARD MAN, albeit a slightly different film, is no less stunning at conjuring its own distinct brand of cinematic poetry. This special and extremely ahead-of-it’s-time film from the extraordinary team of Tourneur and producer Val Lewton has been unduly hidden in the shadows of the two previous works. This would be the last film the duo would make together, but to regard it as a minor work, lesser than its predecessors, would be a negligent mistake. Under another director, the movie’s plot may have emerged as ordinary and trite with just enough room for little pockets of suspense, but under Tourneur, it soars above its budget and its means. Although the narrative structure of the film spirals in many mysterious directions, its core is a simple premise: a wild leopard gets loose in a small Mexican village and begins to kill young women, or something does, and a pair of amateur detectives attempt to solve the murders. The film doesn’t identify too closely with its characters, which may be what many have mistaken as its weakness. The perspectives leap around, seemingly at random, but with a closer look, expose an intricately linked chain connecting each character, passing its themes from one to another in a collective mapping of guilt and its transference. The narrative itself is less concerned with who or what is committing these murders, than it is with the quieter implications of its tertiary characters, who each collectively contribute, in tiny fated ways, to the film’s mounting sense of dread and carnal violence, and to the guilt that lingers after each of its victims has met their end. Not only does the movie boast spectacular moments of suspense, but it stays true to its own ambiguity, surrounded by the unknown forces of a country reeling from its blood-soaked past. In taking this film’s particular brand of character identification forward, one need only look at the games the film plays with the conventions of cinematic suspense. Seemingly ordinary tracking shots that follow a character for an unknown reason, presumably with death around the corner, reveal themselves to be not so, at least, not in the way we are accustomed to. Cuts that should link the close-up of a character’s face to an adjacent horror, cut away instead to medium shots of the character, the film’s viewpoint settling itself in the shadows and clouds of a more omnipresent force, possibly that of the viewers themselves? Mirrors and doublings of events, subtly reproduce scenes, sometimes inverted, sometimes not, but tacitly pushing the film into patterns of repetition, not unlike a dream. As one young victim muses on her fading childhood, another wants nothing more than to innocently meet up with her lover in private on her birthday, while a third victim, who at first seems to hover outside the pattern being set, is revealed to be nothing more than a double (a triple) of the previous two, weaving a tapestry of fate, a signature of the work of Tourneur. The coming and going of innocence, to guilt and regret, exist solely in the passing of time, or as one character remarks, “Time is strange, a moment can be as short as a breath, or as long as eternity.” Not only does this line of dialogue speak to the plot itself, but also to the very construction of a false reality made up of camera angles, tiny movements, and precise cuts. This film has been called clumsy and mismanaged more than once, but it really is an object of rich mystery, that not only does away with techniques of cinematic suspense developed in the medium’s then-recent infancy, but also, maybe more than any horror film pre-1960, it points towards the future, most notably the giallo genre that would spring up in the 1960s and 70s with Mario Bava, Sergio Martino, and Dario Argento. (1943, 66 min, 35mm) [John Dickson]

The Chicago Film Society presents CELLULOID NOW (Shorts/Experimental)

Siskel Film Center and the CFS office – See festival schedule for showtimes

Celluloid Now has proven itself as one of the most essential cinema experiences that Chicago has to offer. The event, which is Chicago Film Society’s semiregular experimental and independent film festival, is in its third edition, and while austerity measures have led to a decreased budget, the programming remains essential. Celluloid Now began last night at Constellation, setting the stage for a communal and spirited run of films that included local artists, longtime friends, and even a few unlisted surprises. The messaging is obvious: this is a film festival for the love of the artform, for the love of the community. This is why the most exciting programming this year emphasizes these ideas. On Saturday, a program at noon held in CFS’s intimate office space will feature two expanded cinema pieces: Malcolm Le Grice’s CASTLE ONE (1966, 16mm) and Chae Yu’s ANNA (2024–2025, 16mm). The former suspends a light bulb in front of the screen, flashing alongside newsreel footage. The latter is a performance that sees Yu cutting a lens in with a knife in real time, the resulting display of color and light a quiet, shapeshifting marvel. On Sunday, two programs magnify different regional filmmakers. The first, dubbed Celluloid City Seoul, is an especially rare screening featuring an array of Korean experimental films made throughout the 21st century. Minyong Jang’s THE DARK ROOM (2001, 16mm) is one of its biggest highlights, utilizing a massive camera obscura in San Francisco to conjure mystical images of the ocean. In striking blues and greens, the water arrives and disappears as a spectral entity—textural, moody, enveloping. Celluloid City Chicago will present works from local artists. Especially crucial is Tristen Ives’ CLOUD FILM (2024, 16mm), a barrage of flickering images where rapid cuts and stark, high-contrast images feel like the filmic embodiment of lighting: it’s startling, dramatic, and eminently beautiful. Also in the program is Ben Creech’s MICROBUDGET (2025, 16mm), an installation that presents independent filmmaking at its most cheeky, frugal, and creative. Made for a single dollar, Creech literally cut rectangular strips from the bill, added sprocket holes, and presented a film that isn’t made of any film at all. Other highlights at Celluloid Now include Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu’s SEA 404 (2019, 16mm), taking place in the Notes & Threads program. A brief study of the horizon line, its moody images of the sea are clearly indebted to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes photographs, finding the painterly in our everyday surroundings. A nice contrast is Johann Lurf & Christina Jauernik’s REVOLVING ROUNDS (2024, 35mm), taking place in the Revolvey & Bullwinkle program. The camera slowly traverses agricultural fields, and as we see greenhouses, we’re eventually brought into pure abstraction, like the viewers themselves are plants receiving sunlight. Its energy is simultaneously uncanny and alive. With over 50 films screening at Celluloid Now, the festival has plenty to offer, and exploring any of its programs will leave one impressed by what is possible in the world of independent filmmaking. [Joshua Minsoo Kim]
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More info here. 

Michael Wadleigh’s WOLFEN (US)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Wednesday, 7pm

In Michael Wadleigh’s WOLFEN, the victims of apathy are also the victims of the titular lycanthropic figures, which feast upon the sick, impoverished and generally anyone who won’t be missed, thereby sustaining themselves on society’s throwaways. These wolves aren’t necessarily heroic; much like the Indigenous population, they, too, had been effectively wiped out and now must sustain themselves accordingly. Albert Finney stars as a troubled NYPD captain who’s brought back into the fold after a wealthy developer, his wife, and their bodyguard are brutally slain, and non-human hairs are found on these and other victims killed in the same curious way. There’s also a big brother-esque security firm that surveilled the developer and investigates terroristic threats toward wealthy and high-profile customers. A criminal psychologist (Diane Verona) is brought in to assist Finney’s Dewey Wilson, as well as a coroner (Gregory Hines) and zoologist (Tom Noonan), the latter two of whom add color to the grim proceedings. In addition to society’s castaways, the wolves also kill anyone who cut them off from their feeding grounds, such as the developer, who was in the process of razing a bevy of abandoned tenements, and those close to discovering the secret Wadleigh’s initial cut was four hours long, and there was a streamlined cut almost two-and-a-half hours long; also Wadleigh was replaced at the very end of shooting by director John Hancock, all factors that may have contributed to the film being uneven. But the ferocity of Wadleigh’s direction and the performances elevate what may seem like visceral horror to the level of political thriller, which had been Wadleigh’s intent. Make no mistake, however, it’s still horrific; the film is as gory as it is phrenic, with limbs and appendages getting severed to the connections being made between the folkloric figures and the plight of the Indigenous population, who, like the wolfen, were displaced by modern society. It’s through a group of Indigenous construction workers that Wadleigh learns of the wolfen, which, as Roger Ebert surmised in his positive review of the film, suggest the “possibility that Indians and wolves can exchange souls.” (It’s possible I’m missing something, but I’m still unsure if the Indigenous characters are the ones shapeshifting into the wolfen or if they’re a discrete but still similar population.) Unique for the time and used again, more famously, in PREDATOR several years later is the use of thermal-vision from the wolfen’s point of view. In his ecstatic review, Jonathan Rosenbaum notes the film’s “stunning uses of visual and aural subjectivity,” writing that “WOLFEN exudes some of the most gorgeous Day-Glo colors this side of solarizing—many of them lushly reverberating tones on the multilayered soundtrack.” Best known for the 1970 documentary WOODSTOCK, this is Wadleigh’s first and only narrative feature; if the former explores a counter culture, this extends to a true underground, an imperfect landscape marred by the atrocities of the past. (1981, 115 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Luis Buñuel's ÉL (Mexico)

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

Much less well known than the other classics of his Mexican period due to its spotty availability over the years, ÉL (sometimes known as THIS STRANGE PASSION) nevertheless functions as a Rosetta stone of his favorite themes: Catholicism, crazy love, women's feet—all three of which he manages to combine in the very first scene. Rodney Welsh describes it: "During Holy Week, Don Francisco Galvan de Montemayor (Arturo de Cordova) is taking part in a Catholic foot-washing ceremony when he very suddenly falls in love—with a pair of feet. The middle-aged Don Francisco is a wealthy businessman, a devout Catholic, and, we come to find out, still a virgin. The problem isn't that he can't find anyone; he's handsome, vigorous, confident and a sharp dresser. The problem is that no one has ever been good enough. He's a romantic purist. These beautiful feet, then, present a challenge. He's a believer not just in love at first sight, but at first and last sight; having held out for a lifetime for the woman of his dreams, he is committed to possessing her for eternity." It doesn't turn out well. Always one for understatement, Buñuel once wryly wrote, "The hero of ÉL interests me as a beetle, or a disease-carrying fly does. I've always found insects exciting." Screening as part of the Buñuel in Mexico series. (1953, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]

Léos Carax’s THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE (France)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE is one of the culminating works of the 20th century, channeling numerous great films and filmmakers of the previous several decades while advancing a romantic, almost innocent vision that harkens back to the some of the very first movies. It begins like a blunt report on the homeless population of Paris (as though to honor the cinema’s roots in documentary realism) before it erupts into a full-blown spectacle about the titular characters, a former circus performer who can’t stop drinking (Denis Lavant, the leading man in four of Carax’s six features to date) and a painter who’s losing her sight (Juliette Binoche, who had been Carax’s girlfriend for several years when this was made). The writer-director famously rebuilt Paris’ Pont Neuf and its surrounding blocks on a lake outside Montpelier so he could shoot as much as he wanted, which made THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE one of the most expensive French productions of all time. Yet this is no populist spectacle in the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille and James Cameron, but rather something very personal, even delicate writ large. Jonathan Rosenbaum has likened it to Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927) and Tati’s PLAYTIME (1967) in how it treats the modern city as a playground, while Adrian Martin invoked everything from Abel Gance’s NAPOLEON (1927) to Francis Ford Coppola’s ONE FROM THE HEART (1982) in his writing on LOVERS. Carax’s film does operate in such grand gestures as to invite, and often merit, comparison to any of these cinematic zeppelins. What distinguishes it from most of these touchstones is the feeling of wild uncertainty it engenders; the surprising shifts in tone and the unpredictable camera setups suggest a film not entirely in control of itself, as if the movie were taking cues from the reckless abandon of its main characters. (1991, 126 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs

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Ingmar Bergman's HOUR OF THE WOLF (Sweden)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am

Perhaps Ingmar Bergman’s trippiest film, HOUR OF THE WOLF explores the internal torments and mental breakdown of artist Johan (Max Von Sydow) and the effects it has on the relationship with his pregnant wife, Alma (Liv Ullmann in her second film with Bergman) while they're on vacation on an isolated island. The story is recounted by Alma (who stares directly into the camera and addresses the viewers) in the present and in flashbacks through excerpts of Johan’s diaries. It is a film operating in two distinct modes: one grounded in reality and the other in surrealism. Bergman slowly dips the film’s toes into madness by creating a sense of isolation and creeping paranoia through the use of only diegetic sound, static camera movement, and patient editing. At one point Alma exclaims, “I hope we get so old we think each other’s thoughts,” which at first feels endearing, but begins to take on a more sinister inflection as the film’s tone shifts. As she seeks to better understand her husband through his diaries, she instead finds a man she understands less and less; his internalized paranoia escalates, becoming more pronounced after they attend a perverted RULES OF THE GAME-esque dinner party. The film’s more unhinged second half completely flips the script with its frantic, dizzying camera movements, discordant sounds, and horrifying imagery. Are these images real or just paranoid delusions of Johan’s subconscious? As with Johan himself, HOUR OF THE WOLF is a film teetering on the edge of madness. Screening as part of Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series. (1968, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (US)

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

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." Screening as part of the Celluloid Is Out: Queer Freedom and Subculture of the 1970s series. (1974, 89 min, 35mm) [Darnell Witt]

Nadia Fall’s BRIDES (UK)

FACETS – Sunday, 5pm

It’s revealed within the opening minutes of BRIDES that the main characters—a pair of chatty teenage best friends named Fedoza and Muna—are en route from England to Syria, where they aspire to become the brides of ISIS soldiers. Yet what follows isn’t a dour drama about religious fundamentalism, but rather a bittersweet, LAST DETAIL-style road movie about how these girls enjoy a few days of freedom before they willfully give it up. As Fedoza and Muna navigate their way to and then across Turkey, they prove themselves to be bright, resourceful young women capable of overcoming whatever curveballs life throws at them. Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar are charming in the lead roles; they have a believable chemistry as friends. As the movie proceeds, however, it becomes clear that their funny rapport serves to protect them from how miserable they are without each other. Flashbacks to the girls’ life in England are relentlessly bleak, showing how Fedoza (who’s from Somalia) and Muna (who’s Pakistani) face constant Islamophobic bullying at school and abusive environments at home. Given how bad things are, their plan to marry into ISIS seems to them like a reasonable way out, though their naivety becomes heartbreaking over the course of the film. That’s because Suhayla El-Bushra’s script succeeds in humanizing these characters as much as the lead performances do, emphasizing moments of levity amidst what is essentially a very sad story. (2025, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Mario Bava’s A BAY OF BLOOD (Italy)

The Davis Theater – Wednesday, 8pm

The question isn’t “who” gets killed in A BAY OF BLOOD, Mario Bava’s seminal giallo film, but how; each successive murder takes on new levels of gleeful horror, as throats are slit, heads are chopped off, and bodies are stabbed with spears mid-coitus. Yes, there is a convoluted plot involving disputed property rights and illegitimate children and new characters being introduced practically every minute, but the visceral thrills of Bava’s film overtake any and all narrative headaches encountered along the way. Stelvio Cipriani’s percussive score lulls us under the spell of the film rather quickly, cuing us into the rhythms of Bava’s mode of storytelling, his camera scanning across large empty spaces waiting to be overtaken with bloody murder. Alongside its genuine entertainment value, A BAY OF BLOOD acts as something of a Rosetta Stone for the next few decades of horror filmmaking; the camera’s leering POV shots call to mind the watchful eye of John Carpenter’s invasive lens in HALLOWEEN (1978), whereas a few notable instances of the camera rushing through a scene at top speed seem like a clear genesis for the roaming speedy camera of Sam Raimi in his "Evil Dead” films. The wanton violence of BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) might as well be bloody dominoes waiting to be struck by Bava’s work, his proto-slasher predicting a half century’s worth of stab-happy dominance in the American pop cultural sphere. Death waits around the corner for most everyone in A BAY OF BLOOD, and perhaps Bava sees this—alongside the bleakly hilarious ending—as a means of expressing how cruel and banal the concept of death really is, something anodyne that comes for us all. Either that, or he just likes seeing a teenager get a billhook to the face; you decide. (1971, 85 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Kaye]

Hong Sang-soo's BY THE STREAM (South Korea)

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

With his 32nd feature, Hong Sang-soo blends tender sentimentality with lighthearted romance. Serving as writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer on this low-resolution video production, the 64-year-old filmmaker weaves a story of glances, pauses, drunken dinners, and phases of the moon. The film opens with the director of a play at a women’s university getting fired for having affairs with three students. Another professor, Jeonim (Kim Min-hee), approaches her actor uncle, Sieon (Kwon Hae-hyo), to fill in for the now-absent director. She teaches textiles (we see her at her loom during one ludicrous scene), so the uncle will watch over a theatre project in which seven young women students perform a five-minute sketch. Excited to relive his theatre days, Sieon becomes ingratiated into campus life. As usual, Hong will let the camera rest in one set up through entire scenes, accenting the drama with the occasional slow zoom or pan. The characters may often spend time in cafés and restaurants bursting with drunken energy, but they always conclude to default emotionally regulated states. As in many Hong films, there’s always an air of self-parody. The story feels autobiographical in its depiction of director-actor relationships (famously Hong and Kim Min-hee tried to hide their affair), but this motif never makes it to the forefront of the picture. With both leads delivering agile performance, we find two people in search of themselves, highlighting a grander meditation on loneliness, creativity, and connection. As is often the case with the director’s work, Hong’s style manages to answer no questions while leaving the viewer charmed. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2024, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

Jean Rollin’s THE IRON ROSE (France)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

While it may not contain any vampires, haunted asylums, or floating coffins, THE IRON ROSE still might be the ultimate Jean Rollin film. It’s an unwavering meditation on the director’s favorite theme—the link between eroticism and death—unbound by any familiar supernatural concerns that would permit viewers to write it off as fantasy. Set, like most of Rollin’s films, along the craggy (and decidedly unromantic) coast of northern France, the movie begins almost like a documentary, using handheld camerawork to present a traditional rural wedding. Here, two of the guests (Hugues Quester and Françoise Pascal) hit it off and leave the festivities to go on a date. They walk around an eerily depopulated town, gradually making their way to the cemetery on the outskirts. The remaining hour of THE IRON ROSE takes place in this graveyard, as the new couple wander the grounds, make love in a tomb, then find themselves lost and unable to leave for the rest of the night. The film is a masterpiece of editing, as Rollin and cutter Michel Patient obfuscate the geography of the cemetery and render it an impossible maze. You soon feel trapped along with the characters; though there isn’t any direct threat hanging over them, the presence of death is so overbearing that it renders the film unsettling all the same. The matter-of-fact quality of Rollin’s direction heightens the feeling that we’re watching a bad dream. There’s no explanation for the events; everything proceeds according to its own internal logic, especially when the main characters lose their minds after they’ve spent too much time in the cemetery. This is essentially a feature-length poem, building not to the resolution of events, but to the accumulation of personal motifs and symbols. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1973, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Tom Savini’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (Director’s Cut) (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 10pm

It was nearly a cinematic perfect storm. George A. Romero writes an updated screenplay for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, picks Tom Savini to direct under his tutelage, and the project finds funding from Canon Films co-founder Menahem Golan. This confluence of factors alone should have meant they were destined for a box office gold rush. That didn’t happen. The collaboration between Romero, revisiting his own mythos, and Savini, his trusted effects artist, promised the definitive modernization of the 1968 original. Yet it arrived at precisely the wrong cultural moment. The remake was dismissed as redundant due to the continued reverberation of social commentary originating from 1968. It would take nearly two decades and Zack Snyder’s 2004 DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, for audiences to realize that Savini’s version had already perfected the remake form. Romero’s new screenplay provides the philosophical scaffolding that Savini’s direction builds upon with unexpected restraint. Known for his grisly wizardry in DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) and DAY OF THE DEAD (1985), Savini instead crafts a film that values atmosphere and tension over splatter. The gore is still present: rotting faces, bone-white eyes, and ghouls rendered with the tactile realism of Savini’s latex genius, but it’s subordinated to theme. The real horror is ideological: human stubbornness, male arrogance, and the will to power even as the world ends. The Savini and Romero production was constructed to be a situation similar to Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg’s working relationship during POLTERGEIST (1982). However, after a last-minute call from Dario Argento, Romero dove directly into his half of TWO EVIL EYES (1990) and had to leave Savini. The effects maestro rose to the task as he tightened the film’s pacing and delivered a stylized and polished zombie tribute. In Romero’s own words, the remake screenplay became an act of “correction.” This recontextualization is embodied by Patricia Tallman’s formidable Barbara. Judith O’Dea’s Barbra, rendered catatonic by profound shock, was a realist depiction that nonetheless earned backlash. The 1990 version jettisons this passivity for a radical journey from victimhood to agency. Tallman’s character sheds her restrictive feminine costuming for masculine trousers, symbolically rejecting the protective male gaze and emerging as a decisive leader. She becomes the film’s moral center and its emerging author, rewriting the apocalypse from within. Tony Todd’s Ben is magnetic and intelligent, a pragmatic anchor undone by circumstance, while Tom Towles’ Harry Cooper embodies the festering authoritarian impulse that Romero’s universe always exposes. Their conflict, once racially charged in 1968, now reflects the futility of masculine control when cooperation is needed most. By narrowing the Overton window between Ben and Cooper, the film illuminates how both men’s inflexibility seals their fate and leaves Barbara, the only adaptive consciousness, to survive. The ending fits exquisitely within this paradigm shift by transforming tragedy into a form of moral reclamation. It is Barbara who gets to deliver the devastating line, “I found another one for the fire.” Her gaze upon the zombie-hunting militia, filled with laughing men desecrating corpses, culminates in the film’s haunting epitaph, “They’re us. We’re them.” This apocalypse is not punishment but reflection. That Savini’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD failed commercially is one of cinema’s cruel ironies: a film that corrected its predecessor’s blind spots was condemned for modernizing social critique. It arrived twenty years too soon, before a financial crisis that made remakes seem like the only option for a fast cash-in and thus resulting in a wave of re-imagined horror. Today, its ridicule of masculine bravado, its feminist clarity, and moral ambiguity feel at home as the film is also a product of a decade struggling with itself. Savini’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is an essential, high-functioning evolutionary link in the horror genre, a film that took a masterpiece and made it, against all odds, structurally better. Screening as part of the Killer Cuts series. (1990, 88min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Roger Watkins’ THE LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 11:30pm

THE LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET may be the angriest and most corrosive film to emerge from the 1970s underground. In a decade when avant-garde experimentation, pornography, and political cynicism collided in regional cinema, LAST HOUSE stands as a nihilistic reflection of its time. Shot around 1972 by Roger Watkins and a handful of SUNY Oneonta students for less than $3,000—some say as little as $800—it is a horror film that despises both its characters and anyone watching them. For decades, it circulated as a mutilated 78-minute print, its three-hour version lost, its credits replaced by pseudonyms, and its creator anonymous. The secrecy inspired rumors that it was an authentic snuff film. When Watkins finally stepped forward in 2000, the myth unraveled: this was not a murder captured on film, but a furious, self-lacerating allegory about authorship, image-making, and cruelty. The minimal plot centers on Terry Hawkins—played by Watkins himself—an ex-con embittered by a culture that commodifies everything, even transgression. He assembles a small crew to shoot “the ultimate movie,” a snuff film aimed at the sleazy porn producers who once exploited him. The boundary between performance and reality collapses as the violence within the film becomes indistinguishable from the artifice meant to contain it. Real slaughterhouse footage, a woman in blackface whipped for a crowd’s amusement, and ritualized murders staged as performance art merge into a hypnotic display of depravity. LAST HOUSE plays like a dare, not an invitation to enjoy horror but a challenge to endure it. Watkins shoots in harsh light and claustrophobic close-ups, blurring cinéma vérité and nightmare. The final act unfolds as a single stretch of cruelty within a film, as if the camera itself has become possessed and insists on documenting the death of empathy as a creative process. Watkins’ aesthetic is inseparable from his personal demons. Addicted to methamphetamine during production, he infused the film with speed logic: jittery edits, static dread, and bursts of manic energy. His influences include Godard’s self-reflexivity, Fellini’s theatricality, and the moral collapse of the Manson era which all collide to create something raw and impossible to dismiss. The result devours exploitation cinema by exposing its appetite for shock as a loop of corruption. The missing footage, mistimed dubbing, and grime baked into the 16mm print aren’t defects but part of the message. Every imperfection feels deliberate, a record of creative violence against the film itself. Before HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986) or MAN BITES DOG (1992), Watkins recognized the danger in trying to make violence real. For all its ugliness, the film is strangely mesmerizing. Its droning torture scenes form a trance, an anti-cinema of pure hostility. Watkins’ wild-eyed face becomes a symbol of artistic self-destruction. When he snarls, “I’m directing this fucking movie!” it’s both defiance and confession that he’s no longer in control. When LAST HOUSE resurfaced on DVD in 2002, it wasn’t a curiosity but a time capsule of rage. It stands beside THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1973) and ANGST (1983) as one of horror’s most sustained acts of aggression. A film about making violent films, watching them, and the sickness that binds both. The final shot glares back at us, the reel still turning. This isn’t horror to enjoy. It’s horror to survive. Screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series. Arrive early for GAUDYWEEN in the Lounge starting at 8pm with a spooky vinyl DJ set by Gaudy God. (1977, 78 mins, DCP) [Shaun Huhn]

Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (UK)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 3:45pm

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH was renamed STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN for its American release because Hollywood distributors feared that people wouldn’t want to see a movie with “death” in the title. And while “Stairway to Heaven” accurately reflects the film’s sense of romantic fantasy, the original name speaks to its morbidity, which is no less critical to the film’s overall power. When Jonathan Rosenbaum introduced the film several years ago, he pointed out how common it was in Great Britain for people to have lost loved ones during World War II (whether through combat or German bombings), and he proposed that the movie responded to this national trauma by confronting the inevitability of death. One might add that it attempts to resolve that trauma by offering a reassuring portrait of the afterlife. Indeed, Powell and Pressburger’s depiction of the Other World is one of the cinema’s great imaginings, an awesome vision of humankind made one with the cosmos; when experienced on a big screen, it allows one to grasp a sense of the infinite. The Archers famously shot the heaven-set sequences in three-strip Technicolor but didn’t use color dye when processing the film, resulting in a fittingly otherworldly look that the movie’s IMDB trivia page aptly describes as pearlescent; the filmmakers reserved the color dye for the earthbound sequences, which render our world so ravishing as to make you thankful to be alive. The central love story has this effect too—as the British title suggests, the film makes romantic love seem all-important, a reason for living. At the same time, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH never feels like a work of breast-beating; the Archers’ quirky sense of humor keeps the more spectacular elements in check. The Other World’s elaborate bureaucracy is as brilliant a creation as the Other World itself, and the film’s very premise of a slip-up in Heaven has the effect of making the universe seem more human than it’s typically presented by Modern Science. Every scene contains some detail to reaffirm your faith in life’s wonderful peculiarity, whether it’s Roger Livesey supporting performance as a kooky doctor, the use of freeze frames during the ping pong game, or the Archers’ witty depiction of Anglo-American relations. (1946, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Jia Zhang-ke's CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (China)

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

Jia Zhang-ke reflects on the last two and a half decades of Chinese history through the filter of his own work—the title seems to be referring to the tides of time itself. CAUGHT BY THE TIDES was assembled from mostly unseen footage that Jia shot for three of his earlier films: UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002), STILL LIFE (2006), and ASH IS PUREST WHITE (2018). Using this material, Jia constructs a story about a woman (Zhao Tao, naturally) who spends much of the 21st century in search of her missing lover. Her journey takes her across the country and permits her to bear witness to various changes that modern China has experienced. The film hinges on her visit to the region that would become the Three Gorges Dam in the mid-2000s. As Jia showed in STILL LIFE, the area was completely demolished and the denizens were forcibly relocated to make way for the project; the filmmaker clearly sees the event as a telling moment in China’s history insofar as it marked the triumph of “progress” over concern for the citizenry. In this regard, Zhao’s quest represents an attempt to locate humanity amidst state concerns that threaten to overwhelm it entirely; she also suggests a tenacity that Jia seems to be saying is necessary to survive in this ever-shifting landscape. In one of the film’s most memorable shots, Zhao contends with a man determined to keep her on a parked bus, pushing her down every time she attempts to leave. The pattern repeats several times until the man finally lets her go, signaling a reprieve in Zhao’s torment and a rare occasion where the proverbial tide breaks for a determined swimmer. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2024, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Charles Burnett's KILLER OF SHEEP (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 4:45pm

Critic J. Hoberman proposed two types of film debuts that can perhaps unfairly overshadow a director’s entire career: First, debuts that are radically new and arrive seemingly fully-formed—think CITIZEN KANE and BREATHLESS—and second, works that have an innocence and rawness born of circumstances that can never be replicated, for which he cites Satyajit Ray’s PATHER PANCHALI, Jack Smith’s FLAMING CREATURES, and Charles Burnett’s 1978 masterpiece KILLER OF SHEEP. In Burnett’s case those lightning-in-a-bottle circumstances involved a shoestring budget and weekend-only shooting with mostly non-professional actors over the course of several years beginning in 1972, all in service of what was to be the young director’s MFA thesis at UCLA. Because Burnett initially had academic, not theatrical, aspirations for the work he never secured the rights to the 22 classic R&B, jazz, and soul songs on the soundtrack. For this reason the film never saw a wide release until 2007. The film takes place in post-riot Watts, Los Angeles and involves the day-to-day lives of families in the neighborhood. The main protagonist is Stan, an amiable slaughterhouse worker who toils mightily to support his wife and two children while maintaining his integrity. The rhyming of Stan’s lot in life—a powerless man conveyed from scene to scene by an overwhelming sense of inevitability—with his own methodical killing and processing at the slaughterhouse transcends the political. The depiction of black family life solely for the purposes of overt polemic is the type of cliché Burnett fought throughout his career. Ultimately, the film is too warm to be scathing. Instead, much like Stan, KILLER OF SHEEP feels innocent and unassuming. It’s a sincere statement by a young director that earns its comparisons to the classics of Italian neorealism. And like those classics, Burnett’s sense of realism is universal: The characters’ victories and defeats are all small—a stroke of the knee and a smirk, a flat tire, a scraped elbow—but feel earth shattering in the moment. We sense out of narrative habit redemption is coming in the end, but when art imitates life and it doesn’t we accept it like fate. Dinah Washington’s “The Bitter Earth,” which is played multiple times to increasingly devastating effect, perfectly encapsulates KILLER OF SHEEP. At once beautiful, fatalistic, despairing, in the end it leaves us only with hope: “I’m sure someone may answer my call, and this bitter earth may not be so bitter after all.” (1978, 81 min, DCP Digital) [James Stroble]

Martin Scorsese's CASINO (US)

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

If Frederick Wiseman made a documentary about the institution that is the casino, it would probably be called, appropriately, CASINO. Martin Scorsese’s CASINO isn’t quite that but is a relatively focused exploration into the Vegas mainstay, where the film largely takes place. Like GOODFELLAS, this was adapted from book by a Nicholas Pileggi by Scorsese and the author; it’s based on the real-life story of prodigious gambler and casino executive Frank Lawrence "Lefty" Rosenthal (called Sam "Ace" Rothstein here and played by Robert De Niro), and mob muscle Nicky Santoro (called Anthony Spilotro and played by Joe Pesci), boyhood friends from Chicago whose involvement with organized crime takes them down distinctly different paths. Sam goes almost straight, assuming the role of a businessman-enforcer who’s just as concerned about the quality of service at the casino as he is about the skim going back home to the bosses, while Nicky is a cold-blooded killer who relishes being a gangster. As their stars rise in their respective fields, they become more at odds with the other, with Nicky’s reputation ultimately harming Ace’s position at the casino. And of course, there’s a woman. Sharon Stone plays Ginger (in real life, Geri McGee), Ace’s long-suffering wife, a hustler at heart who can’t be tied down by a man she doesn’t truly love. If Ace is the grit (conditional to the nuances of the “industry”) of Las Vegas, and Nicky the grime, Ginger is its bright lights—beautiful, dazzling, pervasive, and close to burning out. The casino structure is a character in and of itself; we learn just as much about it, if not more, than anyone else. The film meanders a bit (in no small part due to a loose shooting script, which resulted in a 10-month editing period), but it’s almost documentary-esque in that regard, as it’s concerned as much with process as plot. That’s representative of the dichotomy between Ace and Nicky; they’re two sides of the same coin, being put on the table for the ultimate bet. It doesn’t have quite the same relentlessness as Scorsese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, but there’s a Dante-esque aspect to it, evoked by Saul and Elaine Bass’ hypnotic title design wherein Ace is falling into the flickering hellfire of Sin City. The last of a thematic trilogy starting with MEAN STREETS and arguably reaching a highpoint in GOODFELLAS, the film contains a pathos that adds an entertaining and thought-provoking depth. Screening as part of the Board Picks series. (1995, 179 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Mathieu Kassovitz’s LA HAINE (France)

Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 4:15pm

“Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good… so far so good… How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land.” Hubert’s (Hubert Koundé) opening monologue in Mathieu Kassovitz’s LA HAINE sets a strong tone for what will unfold over the next twenty-four hours for three French teenagers in the wake of a destructive riot in the suburbs of Paris that left one of their compatriots severely injured and hospitalized. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), and Hubert each have varying sentiments about the police, ranging from utter disdain to pacifistic restraint, but are all united against the officers’ abuse of power that has frequently lead to authoritarian violence against the youths of the neighborhood. Kassovitz made the bold choice of shooting the film in black and white to stress the disparity between the citizens and the police, good and bad, and the morally gray areas that pervade the film. This color palette not only adds a crispness to the parts of the image shot in focus but creates a looming sense of foreboding to the people left in the out of focus areas, recalling a sort of fog of war like the clouds of tear gas shown during the film’s opening montage sequence of real riots that occurred in France during the 1980’s and 1990’s. One of the most fascinating aspects to this film is the internal struggle each of the three principal characters face about who they really are and what they hope to be perceived as. “The World Is Yours” and an image of planet Earth are seen plastered on several billboards the characters travel past. This motif not only recalls Howard Hawks’ SCARFACE but also emboldens the trio’s more compulsive, and often volatile urges. The film’s use of violence and, sometimes more importantly, the threat of violence creates a sense of a powder keg ready to explode in any given scene. Again, the “so far so good” line comes to mind in these instances. Will this be the scene they finally “land” or will they continue to “fall”? LA HAINE broaches the familiar notion of youth in revolt but finds deep complexities within the characters’ internal dilemmas and their longing to bring about a change in the world, whether it is altruistic or narcissistic. (1995, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE (US/UK)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 9:30pm

LIFEFORCE is one of the absolutely nuttiest film experiences, complete with an iron guard of kitsch that may be difficult to pierce, but that is in line with the complex themes and vision distinct to Tobe Hooper. Hooper’s films are unique; they awkwardly refuse an identifiable moral position, they suggest a long past before dooming the reality of the present, and they hold out no hope of a peaceful, non-destructive catharsis for the viewer at the end. That isn’t to say he creates bleak or deliberately open-ended films; rather, films whose finales don’t provide tidy resolutions. LIFEFORCE starts with the discovery of an enormous spaceship floating within the debris of Haley’s comet. Inside the ship, are glass coffins containing the bodies of three space-vampires, which are brought back to Earth, setting off a series of personal and global crises. Hooper has said that the film is “about relationships. It’s about the relationship between men and women and how that can turn, how there can be a dominance in a relationship that can flip flop back and forth […] men dealing with the feminine mystique or the feminine terror […] the feminine inside themselves.” Hooper, tasked by Canon, the low-budget genre-specializing production company, with adapting a book called The Space Vampires, was able to craft a deeply personal, hallucinatory, and often comedic allegorical observance about male sexuality. The widescreen space Hooper employs is breathtaking, and he uses colors and shadows effectively in his particular brand of scuzzed up satire masquerading as horror. Ultimately, he made something way outside of the mainstream, something that was so out of step for the time. LIFEFORCE is certainly kitschy and comedic, with Hooper himself confirming the odd intended mixture of tones. Post-POLTERGEIST, Hooper leaned in more on his blackly comedic and exaggerated sensibilities, allowing them to become more prominent, culminating in films like THE MANGLER and the extremely under-seen THE TOOLBOX MURDERS. While Hooper’s films were never as explicitly political as his fellow contemporary horror film master George Romero, LIFEFORCE captures the dawn of a new America, that of the 80s, one of rampant excess and hedonism. LIFEFORCE pairs well with his late-80s film SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, both films of considerable camp, they also contain unexpected emotional weight, with Hooper dearly embracing the idea of the doomed couple, forced to grapple with the imperfections and dangers of their love; l’amour fou for the midnight crowd. (1985, 116 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]

Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

A motif of flooded landscapes recurs in Thomas Pynchon’s novels about the midcentury American counterculture. In Vineland (1990), radical filmmaker turned counterinsurgent Frenesi Gates confesses a recurring vision of disappeared beaches she calls the Dream of the Gentle Flood, set to a siren song promising the return of “whatever has been taken… whatever has been lost….” Pynchon renders this uncommonly emotional scene with a blue-green melancholy, a generational lament for stolen futures and failed alternatives employing the same haunted imagery that Inherent Vice (2009) conjures in one of P.I. Doc Sportello’s aborted reveries, analogizing the broken promise of the hippie decade to the excavation of a mythical underwater continent: “some undrowned Lemuria, risen and redeemed, where the American fate, mercifully, failed to transpire…” Said American fate is the subject of Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, a loose Vineland adaptation that strips one of the book’s central plots—a government spook returns to hunt an ex-radical’s teenage daughter, living in hiding with her burnout papa sixteen years after the destruction of their revolutionary cell—out of the Reagan ‘80s and plants it in an apocalyptic present tense recent-past-near-future so up-to-the-minute it could have wrapped production this week. (Anderson isn’t a prophet, he’s just paying attention.) In the Californian hamlet of Baktan Cross, forcibly retired explosives expert Bob “Ghetto Pat” Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to keep daughter Willa (newcomer Chase Infiniti) alive by sending her to self-defense classes with Sensei Sergio (Benicio Del Toro) and policing her use of technology, but can’t protect her from the arrival of a federal dragnet led by Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), whose past entanglement with Willa’s mother Perfidia (Teyana Taylor)—and possible fathering of a mixed-race daughter—threatens his initiation into the inner sanctum of a white supremacist cabal. So the thugs surge into town, an old ally (Regina Hall) spirits Willa away, and Bob teams with Sergio to rendezvous with what remains of his network before Steven can smoke them out. Anderson’s treatment of this scenario—angry, funny, frantic—distills the experience of our 21st-century late-capitalist crack-up at a moment when the potential for organized mass resistance has slowed to an ebb tide. The diluvial theme in Pynchon resonates with Hunter S. Thompson’s oft-mythologized monologue in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which describes California at the end of the 1960s as “that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” The Fitzgeraldian, Lost Generation lilt of Thompson’s prose typifies the rueful sentiment of much post-’60s literature (including Pynchon’s), and Anderson’s reliably knotty, suggestive character work here locates failures aplenty in Bob’s scattered movement: chiefly, the equation of Bob and Steven as parallel father figures with mutual responsibility for the shrunken future offered to Willa, and whose fetishization-slash-idolatry of Perfidia shares Anderson’s roving authorial eye. Bob has another parallel in Sergio, whose work speeding a hidden community of undocumented migrants to safety serves as a quiet contrast to the revolutionaries fixated upon code words and armed resistance. Sergio knows when to lie low and when to run for the high ground, as do the skateboarders they meet whose blissed-out ride for freedom amidst a militarized crackdown sums up this movie’s command of motion and message in a single feather-light shot. If Anderson ultimately wills some optimism into his vision of a shaky generational truce, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER also acknowledges that an ungentle flood is here, and the tides are climbing high. The American fate may not be to recover what was lost but to move with the rising waters—as in the final chase that sees Willa hurtling through an undulating desert road, mastering its crests and troughs, surfin’ U.S.A. (2025, 161 min, 70mm) [Brendan Boyle]

Bill Forsyth's HOUSEKEEPING (US)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

Before Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel were halfheartedly manic-pixie-dream-girling it up for the likes of Zach Braff and the Fox network, Christine Lahti was brilliantly being the real deal in Scottish director Bill Forsyth's 1987 film HOUSEKEEPING. Based on the modern classic by Marilynne Robinson, it's about two young girls in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho whose aunt comes to live with them after their grandmother--who'd been taking care of them since their mother committed suicide years earlier--passes away. Lahti's Aunt Sylvie drifts into the sisters' lives just as they begin to drift apart; the younger one yearns for normalcy while the oldest is a dreamer of sorts who doesn't fit in with her peers. Sylvie recognizes a kindred spirit in the latter niece, and Forsyth (and perhaps Robinson--I haven't yet read the novel) uses the parallel between both generations of sisters to consider the world in terms of a binary outlook. The darkness of this implication lingers over an otherwise ethereal film in which Sylvie and her niece's eccentricities are complemented by a variety of gorgeously haunting landscapes that rival Terrence Malick's in their sublimeness. Forsyth's first American production, HOUSEKEEPING advances an aesthetic in his work that was seemingly influenced by the exquisite beauty of his home country. There's also a Jarmuschian lyricism in his depiction of nature; it shares its wisdom with Sylvie and her niece but never relinquishes its supreme power over them. This further emphasizes that they aren't merely quirky but instead genuinely alienated outsiders who experience the world in a different way. It's also a small but noteworthy fact that Sylvie is estranged from her husband, ostensibly at her own discretion. She's beholden to no man--or woman, for that matter, unlike her younger niece who has fallen prey to the opinion of others. Many of Forsyth's films are similarly charismatic, though none that I've seen are as bewitching as this one, likely owing to the originality of the source material. (Forsyth himself has said as much.) Screening as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series. (1987, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Frank Oz's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (US)

The Davis Theater – Monday, 7pm

Originating from a 1960 film directed by Roger Corman, Frank Oz's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is in turn based on Howard Ashman’s off-Broadway musical. It’s one of the rare films based on a stage show that holds on to its theatrical roots while successfully engaging with the cinematic format; Oz keeps the settings simple but uses striking camera angles and edits to make it distinctly filmic. Set in New York in the early 60s, the film is narrated by a doo-wop girl group acting as a Greek chorus. From moment one, the music is incredibly catchy and lyrically sharp; LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS maintains a gentleness without diminishing the underlying dark humor. The story follows timid flower shop employee Seymour (Rick Moranis), who’s desperately in love with his co-worker Audrey (Ellen Greene, reprising her role from the original stage show). Seymour’s fortunes change when he acquires an unusual plant with a taste for human blood—and Audrey’s abusive dentist boyfriend (Steve Martin) makes for a choice first victim. Despite the stellar main cast and delightful cameos (including Christopher Guest, John Candy, and a memorable Bill Murray as the sadistic dentist's masochistic patient), Greene shines brighter than anyone. Her performance of “Somewhere That’s Green” is equal parts devastating and hilarious; the song epitomizes the film's send-up of '80s obsession with mid-century American culture without minimizing the heartbreaking stories and sincere desires of its main characters. Ashman—who also wrote the script—would go on to pen some of the most iconic Disney songs along with composer Alan Menken; THE LITTLE MERMAID’s “Part of Your World,” is a clear descendant of “Somewhere That’s Green.” Screening as part of the Big Screen Classics series. (1986, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Neo Sora’s HAPPYEND (Japan)

Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 8pm and Wednesday, 8:30pm

Nestled within this examination of a near-future Japan living under the omnipotent threat of an earthquake and increasing surveillance is a touchingly familiar high school drama. In Neo Sora’s captivating fictional debut HAPPYEND, senior students are subject to a newly installed surveillance system at their high school that records and reports their every move. Under rising national tensions and the impending earthquake, two buddies, Yuta (Hyato Kurihara), a Japanese citizen, and Ko (Yukito Hidaka), a Korean immigrant born in Japan, respond in different ways, causing friction between them. The minimalist aesthetic approach, sharp framing, considered blocking, and wide shots allows room for the budding angst to breathe and move without suffocating the viewer with overripe observation as the teens roam the city and navigate their industrial high school. A strikingly lilting piano score by Lia Quyang Rusli and occasional accompaniment by the unmistakably distinct—and shirtless—DJ, Yousuke Yukimatsu, add an evocative and representative equilibrium between the two diverging friends. Although urgent, the film never feels cynical, instead opting for a deeply humanist approach. Impeccably balanced between political commentary and tender teen malaise, HAPPYEND is not only a compelling consideration of a likely imminent reality due to the climate crisis; it a testament to the moralistic youthful spirit, and an inspiration that the fight for autonomy and free-will in a quickly changing world is necessary. (2024, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Olivia Hunter Willke]

Satoshi Kon’s PERFECT BLUE (Remastered) (Japan/Animation)

Alamo Drafthouse – See Venue website for showtimes

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, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Bates]

Alex Russell's LURKER (US)

FACETS – Saturday, 3pm and Sunday, 1pm & 3pm

Sometimes a movie feels innately connected to the moment it's released, as if the film’s existence was sparked by an alchemical reaction to the culture around it. This isn’t to say that Alex Russell’s LURKER isn’t walking on well-trod cinematic ground; the horrors of parasocial fans wreaking havoc on their celebrities of choice have been mined in films as varied as THE KING OF COMEDY (1982) and PERFECT BLUE (1997). But LURKER feels particularly tied to our current moment, specifically its relationship to the way social media and surveillance culture have shaped our perception of celebrity. Just this week, the engagement of a billionaire pop star to a professional football player was deemed breaking news on the level of governmental malfeasance and international war crimes, the personal lives of the rich and famous receiving as much journalistic real estate as a fascist uprising. The latter news item likely wouldn’t even cross the mind of Théodore Pellerin’s Matthew; his mind is focused solely on the world around up-and-coming musician Oliver (a dazzling Archie Madekwe), a British pop singer who swallows Matthew into his orbit practically as a lark. Kindness gives way to artistic collaboration and tight-knit friendship, as Matthew exchanges his humdrum life working in retail for the opulence and vacuity of Oliver’s fame, joining an entourage of yes men unwilling to burst the bubble of Oliver’s celebrity. Pellerin—his bulging eyes filling up the screen, his grin indecipherably inviting—commands LURKER, his every move becoming more harrowing and maniacal, his physical performance shifting between a house cat and a mountain lion, forever trying to suss out how he can manipulate those around him to further entrench himself in Oliver’s life. A film like LURKER carries the possibility of countless endings, and it’s to Russell’s credit that he takes things in an ambiguous and nuanced direction, honing in on Oliver’s revelation that maybe part of becoming a pop culture icon is needing fans like himself to sustain his image. (2025, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Andrew Fleming’s 1996 film THE CRAFT (101 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 12:30pm and Tuesday at 12pm.

Preston Sturges’ 1941 film SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS (91 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 12pm.

Brad Sykes’ 2024 film DREAMS OF THE DEAD (82 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago
Sylvain Chomet’s 2003 animated film THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (78 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 6:30pm. More info here.

⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
The Mid-Autumn Chinese Film Festival takes place through Sunday at the Chicago Cultural Center and AMC NEWCITY 14. Admission is free, but advanced RSVP is required. More info here. 

⚫ Chicago International Film Festival
The 61st edition of Chicago’s annual international cinema showcase begins at the Music Box Theatre on Wednesday night, with screenings of Kevin Shaw’s 2025 documentary ONE GOLDEN SUMMER (81 min, DCP Digital) at 6:30pm and Tatsuya Yoshihara’s 2025 animated film CHAINSAW MAN – THE MOVIE: REZE ARC (105 min, DCP Digital) at 10pm. The festival continues Thursday with multiple screenings at the AMC NEWCITY 14. Check out Cine-File next week for our coverage of select festival titles. More info here.

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

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Sean Baker’s 2015 film TANGERINE (87 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 9pm, as part of the Conversations in Cars: Road Trips and Relationships series.

António Campos’ 1961 short film A ALMADRABA ATUNEIRA (26 min, DCP Digital) and his 1971 film VILARINHO DAS FURNAS (77 min, DCP Digital) screen Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Sounds of Shaking Earth: Landscapes of Portuguese Cinema series.

Stephen Norrington’s 1998 film BLADE (121 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the Ethical Vampire: The Moral Dilemma of Vampirism series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS
Matthew John Lawrence’s 2020 film UNCLE PECKERHEAD (97 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 8:30pm, preceded by a DJ set by Bianca Xuniese at 7:30pm.

Michael Angelo Covino’s 2025 film SPLITSVILLE (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 5pm and 7pm.

Showcase of Screams: A Night to Dismember, a night full of frights with Which Witch Productions and Opalite Films, takes place Wednesday at 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Full Spectrum Features
The tenth anniversary party for Full Spectrum Features takes place Saturday, 7pm, at Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.). More info here.

⚫ Leather Archives & Museum
Fruta Putería and alterotics curated a selection of six queer and trans erotic films screening on Sunday, 8pm, with a mixer beforehand starting at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ Mental Filmness
The Mental Filmness film festival takes place Friday and Saturday with filmmakers scheduled to attend. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Ben Leonberg’s 2025 film GOOD BOY (72 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! presents Jeffrey Delman’s 1986 film DEADTIME STORIES (93 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at 11:45pm, and Kazuhiko Yamaguchi’s 1975 film WOLF GUY (86 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 11:45pm.

Also screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series are Gary Sherman’s 2006 film 39: A FILM BY CARROLL McKANE (90 min, DCP Digital) on Sunday at 6:15pm; Charles Pinion’s 1988 film TWISTED ISSUES (87 min, DCP Digital) on Monday at 9:15pm; Robbie Banfitch’s 2025 film TINSMAN ROAD (119 min, DCP Digital) on Tuesday at 9:15pm; and Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1993 film ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (94 min, 35mm) on Thursday at 9:45pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ The Seminary Co-op
Tom Gunning will discuss his new book Attractions of the Moving Image: Essays on History, Theory, and the Avant-Garde on Friday at 4pm. He will be joined in conversation by Daniel Morgan. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. More info here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
A new 4K digital restoration of Nobuhiro Yamashita’s 2005 film LINDA LINDA LINDA (114 min) begins screening this week.

October Mystery Movie Monday takes place Monday at 6pm.

Interiority on Screen: Shorts Program 2 screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series.

Conversations at the Edge presents Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy, and Ben Babbitt: KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO on Thursday, 6pm, followed by a conversation with the artists and an audience Q&A. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
oliverio rodriguez and Victoria Stob's 2018 short film LYNDALE (24 min) and Sandi DuBowski's 1993 short film TOMBOYCHIK (15 min) stream for free on VDB-TV.  Programmed by Cine-File contributor Elise Schierbeek. More info here.

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

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Brendan Boyle, Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Joshua Minsoo Kim, Doug McLaren, James Stroble, Olivia Hunter Willke, Darnell Witt