📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Maurice Tourneur’s ALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE (US/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am
For being one of the earliest entries in the gangster film genre, Maurice Tourneur’s ALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE is more visually stylish than one might necessarily expect. It’s not as if the material was demanding this sort of treatment; adapted from Paul Armstrong’s hit 1909 play of the same name, the story of an expert safe cracker-turned-good Samaritan is, in a narrative sense, a rather straightforward affair, tracking the rise and fall of the titular Valentine’s journey through—and subsequent escape from—a life of crime. Leave it then to Tourneur, a French film director with a theatrical performance background, to take this stage work and adapt it seamlessly to the world of mostly dialogue-free visual storytelling (the number of intertitles used throughout is surprisingly low for what could be a rather plot-dense narrative). In his bag of tricks expanding the visual language of the text, from birds-eye-view shots to flashbacks isolated in irises, Tourneur’s use of shadows, especially, is noteworthy and sumptuous, using gates and windows to highlight silhouettes of characters in ways that provide style and aesthetic experimentation without belying the grounded nature of the film’s reality (in regards to verisimilitude, one of the more notable aspects of production was the film shooting on location in Sing Sing Prison for the scenes following Valentine’s incarceration). In lesser hands, ALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE might just have been another run-of-the-mill melodrama of the day, a dutiful genre picture hindered by cliched story beats and flat staging. Not so under the skillful eye of Tourneur, as masterful at injecting cinematic flair into his work as Jimmy Valentine is at cracking safes. Preceded by D.W. Griffith's 1912 short film THE NARROW ROAD (17 min, 35mm). (1915, 50 min, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]
Robert Altman Centennial
Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes
Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (US)
Saturday, 2pm
A crucial film in Robert Altman's filmography, if not necessarily one of the best, this is significant for being Altman's first major commercial success, thereby paving the way for one of the most fascinating—and downright unpredictable—careers of any Hollywood director. The movie marks Altman's first experiment with overlapping dialogue: some scenes have as many as four conversations going on at once. As in subsequent Altman features, the organized cacophony was achieved through an atmosphere of much improvisation. By some accounts, less than one-quarter of the dialogue that made it into the final cut had been scripted. (Ironically, the movie still won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.) The movie's success has less to do with its technical innovation, however, than with Altman's anti-authoritarian views, which struck a deep chord with the anti-war movement of the time. Though M*A*S*H was set during the Korean War, Altman removed almost all references to Korea during editing so that the setting might be mistaken for Vietnam. The jivey and often sick humor—which, in hindsight, screams late-’60s counterculture—only makes things blurrier. (1970, 116 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Robert Altman’s BREWSTER McCLOUD (US)
Wednesday, 6pm
Let's pretend you're Robert Altman. After the boffo box office of M*A*S*H and its multiple Oscar nominations, what do you do next? Well, because you're a contrarian stoner, you make a deliberately off-putting fable about a peculiar young man (Bud Cort) whose dream is to take flight inside the Houston Astrodome using a giant pair of mechanical wings. And you fill the cast with members of your budding stock company (Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, Robert Duvall, Rene Auberjonois, Bert Remsen) rather than any big Hollywood stars. And, because you're an avowed iconoclast, after you meet a striking local woman at a party (Shelley Duvall) you give her the female lead, even though she's not a professional actress. (Also, you cast Margaret Hamilton; but then, because you consider her a pain in the neck on the set, during editing you excise most of her closeups.) You kick off the film with a marching band rendition of the national anthem (complete with a "Title song by Francis Scott Key" credit), interweave a murder investigation storyline that's one long shaggy dog joke, throw in an enigmatic guardian angel, and regularly interrupt the "action" with ornithology lectures. The end result? A film that still mystifies absolutely everyone more than 50 years later, regardless of their cannabis intake. If only the Siskel included Altman's 1965 short film POT AU FEU on the program, which is a sort of a Rosetta stone. (1970, 105 min, 35mm) [Rob Christopher]
Jerry Schatzberg's SCARECROW (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am
SCARECROW shared the Palme d’Or at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and received accolades across Europe, though that success didn’t carry over to its home country. A box-office flop in the US, the movie remained out of circulation for decades, and its director, fashion photographer-turned-filmmaker Jerry Schatzberg, never developed much of an auteurist following here. But from a contemporary vantage point, SCARECROW looks like one of the stronger American films of its era, a poignant drama about social outcasts that’s almost as affecting as that other major New Hollywood road movie, Bob Rafelson’s FIVE EASY PIECES (1970). Gene Hackman, in one of his best performances, plays Max, a hot-headed ex-con who spends his life hitchhiking across the United States because he can’t stay comfortably in any place for long. At the start of the film, Max takes up with Francis (Al Pacino), another emotionally unstable drifter who recently got out of the Navy. Francis, whom Max rechristens Lion, is as sweet and vulnerable as Max is brusque and shut-off; the two quickly develop a Martin-and-Lewis-style give-and-take. The two decide they’re going to open a car wash together in Pittsburgh, but they have to make their way across the country first; what ensues is a low-key odyssey over American backroads that exhibits the sort of hard-won feel for the national landscape one finds throughout the New Hollywood canon—not just in PIECES, but also Altman’s THIEVES LIKE US (1974), Ashby’s BOUND FOR GLORY (1976), and Scorsese’s ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974). Further, the film’s likening of geographical drift to emotional driftlessness anticipates Wim Wenders’ 1975 masterpiece KINGS OF THE ROAD. The overall vibe of SCARECROW, in fact, feels vaguely European; Schatzberg’s unobtrusive long takes, which give the performers plenty of room to shine, and his understated yet observant mise-en-scene suggests a post-war update on French poetic realism. Meanwhile Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography, at once sunny and gritty, conveys the flavor of assorted eastern European new waves. The photography is reason enough to see this on celluloid, though the towering characterizations surely benefit from a big screen as well. Introduction by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Screening as part of the Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair series. (1973, 112 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Summer Camp
Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes
John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (US)
Friday, 8pm
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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Paul Verhoeven's SHOWGIRLS (US)
Saturday, 8:30pm
Beautiful as money, Nomi Malone hitches a ride to Las Vegas in this film's opening moments, vividly asserting, switchblade at the ready, that she's going to be a dancer. Already she's a commodity, a body circulating through a network of temporary owners for a price, though this won't be fully clear until her past is revealed near the end of the narrative. Vegas proves exactly her equal, a hometown for people rejecting their origins, a city that Verhoeven shows to thrive precisely on the dissemination of dashed dreams and rude awakenings. Any sense of what a “real” Vegas might look like, how an actual dancer's career trajectory might be completed, is jettisoned in favor of a variegated torrent of imagery drenched in kitsch, in expertly ham-handed appeals to emotional response, in intricate and deadening formal maneuvers. But SHOWGIRLS isn't interested in characters, in narrative, but in glamour, in work, and in the tremendous effort that sexual entertainment takes to produce. 'You like her? ... I'll buy her for you,' the film's substitute Svengali says of Nomi, watching her gyroscopic breasts and buttocks slide around a stripper pole. This is of the falsest of films, constructed out of a series of intersecting surfaces utterly evacuated of substance. Its performers blandly dissemble wide, desperately erotic smiles, force their bodies into simulations of arousal, sweat through humiliating routines of grunt-and-thrust choreography, paint and festoon themselves with lacquer-thick make-up and acres of rhinestones. Verhoeven has always been a master of the physical object, at understanding human relationships as systems of conflicting and merging material engagements, but there has elsewhere always been the underlying hope that reason could see its way clear to an unmediated, somehow genuine connection between real people, could abolish, could transcend the mere appearances of things and give us access to ourselves as whole. Robocop finding, recuperating his family. Doug Quaid claiming interplanetary heroism. Nick Curran catching the killer. SHOWGIRLS will have none of this. It is the ne plus ultra and culmination of Verhoeven's cinema, a film that allows us no escape, that finds beneath every skin and layer nothing other than yet more sequins, glitter, ejaculate, and grime. No film takes American mass culture more seriously, or skewers it more dispassionately. (1995, 132 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kian Bergstrom]
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Frank Perry's MOMMIE DEAREST (US)
Sunday, 4pm
Among the general public, the rest of Frank Perry's oeuvre pales mightily in comparison to MOMMIE DEAREST, his notorious adaptation of Christina Crawford's memoir. The film's portrait of Joan Crawford, thanks to a no-holds-barred performance/recreation by Faye Dunaway, decades of cable TV repeats and hearsay drag queen re-enactment, has cemented MOMMIE DEAREST's status as a true cult classic. But experiencing it solely as an over-the-top melodrama sells the movie short. Viewed differently, it's actually a vivid and disturbing examination of child abuse, the perils of being a movie star and of being the child of a star. And Perry uses the same cool, clean style as in DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE (1970). His objective camera, usually at some distance from the action, makes Joan's outbursts of aggression and violence that much more unsettling. This apparent neutrality confounds any easy emotional release on the part of the audience, most notably during the infamous “wire hanger” sequence. It's no wonder that the movie has long been experienced as camp; without using humor as a shield, the events onscreen would be much too disturbing to take at face value. Here is a film that cries out for a re-evaluation. But that will have to wait. (1981, 128 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]
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Douglas Sirk's WRITTEN ON THE WIND (US)
Monday, 6:15pm
On their bright, Technicolor surfaces, the films of Douglas Sirk can appear as so many reiterations of the well-worn genre of the classical Hollywood melodrama. Lush domestic interiors, weeping women, maudlin mothers, betrayal, and heartbreak all make their obligatory appearances; all are familiar markers of a predictable narrative structure that will inevitably deliver the triumph of heterosexual union and affirm the solidity of the patriarchal family. This, however, is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg, with vicious currents stirring underwater. WRITTEN ON THE WIND, undoubtedly one of Sirk's strongest films, demonstrates precisely why the director underwent significant critical reevaluation in the 1970s, leaving behind a reputation of glitz and fluff to become the darling of cinephiles, feminists, and Fassbinder alike. Working within and against the conventions of genre, Sirk's over-the-top excess forces the recognition of fissures and cracks that lurk within the dominant ideology the film superficially endorses. The glossiness and artificiality of Sirk's surfaces gives way to a complex meditation on the contradictions of gender, class, and sexuality. Dave Kehr sees the film as "a screaming Brechtian essay on the shared impotence of American family and business life... that draws attention to the artificiality of the film medium, in turn commenting on the hollowness of middle-class American life." The film stands as an excellent introduction to Sirk for those unfamiliar, but repeat viewings do not disappoint: as Pedro AlmodĂłvar said, "I have seen WRITTEN ON THE WIND a thousand times, and I cannot wait to see it again.'' (1956, 99 min, DCP Digital) [Erika Balsom]
Richard Oswald’s DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS (Germany/Silent) and Mauritz Stiller’s THE WINGS (Sweden/Silent)
FACETS – Wednesday, 6pm
For Pride Month, Facets is presenting a double-bill of early European films dealing with homosexuality under the theme “Love and Suffering.” They might also have labeled it “queer history,” because the program is so edifying about legal issues of the time and approaches to bringing sexual identity out of the closet for whole societies. Richard Oswald was a German director who worked on a series of “enlightenment” films with a well-known physician and sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld, who, as early as 1897, challenged the 1871 statute (Paragraph 175) that criminalized homosexuality in Germany. Each of these films had an illustrated lecture on the sexual behaviors that had society’s knickers in a bunch. DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS (1919, 50 min, Unconfirmed Format) was actually no different from the other enlightenment films in this regard, with the good doctor Hirschfeld portraying himself and offering a truly enlightening discussion of homosexuality matched with images that both feed into the pseudoscience of physiognomy rampant during the period and interesting portrayals of hermaphrodites and trans people. The story that prompted all this lecturing involves the love a concert violinist, Paul Hörner (Conrad Veidt), feels for a young musician, Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz), he takes under his wing, and presumably into his bed. Out one day on a stroll in the park, the pair is spotted by a shady character (Reinhold Schünzel) who apparently hangs out in gay-friendly establishments looking for someone to pick up and blackmail and who has done just that to Paul before. To protect Kurt, Paul pays the hush money, but, of course, the demands never end, throwing Paul into despair. A subplot involving Kurt’s sister, who falls in love with Paul, gives Oswald a chance to introduce Hirschfeld into the film to educate her. The restoration of DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS is still highly fragmented, with explanatory intertitles and still photos filling in huge gaps in the plot and making one mourn the loss of so many performances. However, the one that counts, Conrad Veidt’s, is more than satisfying. Paul’s nuanced pain, measured anxiety, joy in love, and impatient lust are perfectly communicated, even if Oswald’s penchant for iris shots threaten to swallow Veidt’s performance whole. Schulz is a worthy foil for Veidt—eager, enthusiastic, and sympathetic. The sad conclusion, though done with a still photograph in the version I saw, still hit hard. Less direct but perhaps more ingenious is Mauritz Stiller’s THE WINGS (1916, 69 min, Unconfirmed Format), a fairly covert gay melodrama based on gay Danish writer Herman Bang’s 1902 novel Mikaël. Stiller uses a framing device in which he is trying to find inspiration for his next film. Seeing a sculpture of Zeus in the form of an eagle alongside his young, male lover Ganymede, he is reminded of the story of Icarus and sets out to find an actor to play that role. Somewhere along the line, the story morphs into the feature film, beginning with a search by artist Claude Zoret (Egil Eide) to find a model for a statue of Icarus. He encounters Mikael (Lars Hanson), a handsome, young painter in an Edenic setting and declares him to be the perfect model and, eventually, the perfect son. Mikael falls for an older woman (Lili Beck)—a classic vamp of the period—and abandons Zoret, with tragic results, at which point we return to Stiller wrapping his film. The framing story is told largely with still photographs, which slightly confuses the presentation, but the actors in the main story relate to each other beautifully. Zoret’s heartbreak, like the final frame in DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS, is devastating. The new restoration looks superb and shows Stiller’s facility with his actors and camera. It’s great to have this early work by a true master back in such fine shape. [Marilyn Ferdinand]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Stephan Elliot’s THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (Australia)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm
In 1979, the foulmouthed drag queen Cindy Pastel made her debut at Sydney’s Patches talent show, performing “A Love Like Yours” as both Sonny and Cher. She would become an Australian icon. A decade later, writer-director Stephan Elliott paused production on his debut feature FRAUDS (1993) to wait on Phil Collins’ schedule. In that ten-day lull, he wrote THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT. One character, Tick/Mitzi (played by Hugo Weaving), was inspired by Pastel—both are drag performers, formerly married to women, and fathers. Felicia (Guy Pearce) and Bernadette (Terence Stamp) were based on Sydney drag legends Strykermyer (Mark Fitzhugh) and Lady Bump (Stuart Garske). Elliott originally hoped to cast the real queens, but '90s studios demanded “bankable” heterosexual actors. It was a common compromise: queer stories were allowed—but only through the safer lens of straight stars and dulled edges. Bigger budgets meant more visibility, but less authenticity. Meanwhile, the New Queer Cinema movement raged on in indie and underground spaces. Directors like Jennie Livingston (PARIS IS BURNING), Gregg Araki (TOTALLY FUCKED UP), and Todd Haynes (POISON) explored queerness with a rawness Hollywood resisted. Even RuPaul broke into the mainstream with “Supermodel (You Better Work),” but queer characters in studio films were still framed as metaphor, menace, or martyr. For every GO FISH (1994) or BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER (1999), there was a BASIC INSTINCT (1992) waiting to stab back progress. Beeban Kidron’s TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING! JULIE NEWMAR (1995) began filming while PRISCILLA was in post. When Elliott saw the logline—three drag queens on a desert road trip—he panicked. But where TO WONG FOO kept its queens in drag at all times, rendering queerness as costume, PRISCILLA revealed the people beneath the makeup. Felicia and Mitzi are shown as both men and queens, while Bernadette—a trans woman played with weary elegance by Stamp—is given depth and dignity. Stamp didn’t see dailies and was stunned by his weathered look at the premiere. But that appearance—haunted, regal—helped shape Bernadette’s grace. The story is simple: Tick accepts a gig at a casino run by his estranged wife and recruits Bernadette and Felicia to join. They board a 1976 Hino Freighter bus, named Priscilla, and journey across the Outback, facing hatred and tenderness in equal measure. They endure homophobic taunts, graffiti slurs, and violence. Yet grace persists: an impromptu “I Will Survive” at a remote campsite; Bob the mechanic’s quiet love for Bernadette; and Tick’s son Benjamin, who welcomes his father’s queerness without hesitation. The child’s innocence becomes Elliott’s vision of a future beyond prejudice. Brian J. Breheny, in his first outing as cinematographer, transformed limitation into visual poetry—hiding crew in closets on the bus, framing queens against the infinite beige of the Simpson Desert. An emerald dress on red dust, a lavender couch stranded in sand, Felicia’s operatic lip-sync atop the bus in an aluminum gown—all are now fixtures in cinema’s shimmering memory. PRISCILLA doesn’t just traverse the Outback—it sashays across it, sequined and defiant. It’s a road movie painted in glitter and grit, where pain and glamour clash under the burning sun. Like all great drag, it tells the truth through illusion, daring to shine where the world expects shadows. Screening as part of the Rated Q monthly film series with preshow drinks and DJ in the Music Box Lounge and dragshow performance in the main theater. (1994, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
Stephen Susco’s UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
An underrated horror, UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB is also one of the finest examples of the screenlife subgenre, where the entire events of the film take place on a computer screen. In his only feature to date, director Stephen Susco captures not just the horror, but the mundanity of living so much of your life through the internet. A group of friends gather on Skype for a game night. Matias (Colin Woodell), however, is distracted, both by an argument with his girlfriend Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras) and by the fact that he stole the laptop he’s on from a local café. He’s been desperate to find a better system with which to work on his project—an app which translates speech to ASL. Amaya is deaf, and their relationship has been suffering due to communication; as she points out, Matias is obsessed with having her be able to understand him, but not as focused on learning how to understand her. It’s a thoughtful throughline which grounds a film entirely based on technological communication. Jumping between Amaya and his group of friends (Rebecca Rittenhouse, Betty Gabriel, Andrew Lees, and Connor Del Rio), Matias gets weird messages from someone claiming to be the owner of the laptop. He discovers hidden files (including snuff films), a gateway to access the dark web, and that the laptop’s owner has been watching his—and his friends’—every move. Matias’ theft ultimately turns game night deadly for all involved. Though the film was released in 2018, it’s impossible not to think about the effect of the pandemic on our relationship to virtual hangouts, our social lives almost entirely played out on screens. Even so, DARK WEB balances its time capsule look with themes of surveillance which are perhaps even more prevalent today. It’s easy to think of the screenlife aspect as a gimmick, but what makes DARK WEB scary is that this technology and the dangers out in cyberspace are very real. It grounds the audience in such familiarity before revealing just how horrifying things can become. Watching the film on my laptop for review, I had moments where I went on autopilot to interact with the iOS screen that didn’t look too far off from my own, right under the browser. A descendant of found footage, screenlife doesn’t seem to have the same fervor behind it, a shame when you watch something like DARK WEB and realize how much potential there is in this straightforward, yet effective, shift in format. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (2018, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Pedro AlmodĂłvar's ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Spain)
Davis Theater – Monday, 7pm
In a review of Pedro Almodóvar’s PARALLEL MOTHERS, New York Times critic A.O. Scott refers to the Spanish writer-director as being perhaps the “most prodigious world builder” among living filmmakers, employing a phrase that’s typically used to describe sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero narratives. Nevertheless, it’s true that Almodóvar has created a world entirely his own, where characters—whose identities are fluid, changeable at a moment’s notice, and whose appearances run the gamut from the highest of high fashion to the lowest of whatever low life has subjected them to—live in large, meticulously decorated apartments and encounter problems that even soap operas wouldn’t dare broach. Almodóvar’s ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER involves a degree of overlap sporadically present in his films, suggesting an inter-awareness among the seemingly disparate endeavors. In his earlier film, THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995), there figures a nurse called Manuela, who appears in a training video for doctors on how to communicate with family members of potential organ donors; in ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, Almodóvar regular Cecilia Roth stars as Manuela, an organ procurement coordinator who must decide whether or not to have her son’s organs donated after he dies in a car accident. The two Manuelas are not the same exact character, but it’s emblematic of the potential for the characters and locations in Almodóvar’s films to exist in the same raffish universe. For its part, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is an encapsulation of all that’s particularly wondrous about the Spanish master’s kaleidoscopic sphere, one that also earned him his first Oscar. After her son dies, Cecilia leaves Madrid for Barcelona in hopes of finding her son’s father, now a transgender woman called Lola; there she reunites with an old friend, another transgender woman named Agrado (Antonia San Juan), and makes new friends with a young nun named Rosa (Penélope Cruz) and the actress Huma (Marisa Paredes), who had been performing as Stella in the production of A Streetcar Named Desire that Cecilia and her son had gone to see the night of his death. That play and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s ALL ABOUT EVE factor heavily into the film: the former because it marks Cecilia’s life at two crucial junctures and the latter because, in addition to being a film that Cecilia and her son had watched together, the plot of this movie at times recalls that of the other. Like many of Almodóvar’s films, this is a long, magnificently rambling love letter to the things and people he loves most: cinema, theater, actresses, women, and above all, his own mother. (An epigraph at the end declares exactly this.) In Cecilia’s decision to take Rosa and eventually Rosa’s son under her wing, the film emanates the rapture of selfless love that, like other facets of Almodóvar’s pellucid auteurism, permeates the ostentation of his bittersweet melodramas. Screening as part of the Big Screen Classics series. (1998, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Kevin Smith’s DOGMA (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – See Venue website for showtimes
Kevin Smith's fourth film stands as one of the most audacious pieces of mainstream Hollywood auteur filmmaking of the 20th century. His career began on a rollercoaster. He had two wildly successful films—CLERKS (1994) and CHASING AMY (1997)—with a giant bomb in between, MALLRATS (1995). By this point the critics have mostly agreed that he had a good deal of talent, if unfocused and not fully realized, and he already had a diehard cult of fans. With this kind of cache and zeitgeist, he was finally able to get his dream film made, DOGMA. A surprisingly devout and practicing Catholic, Smith had always wanted to make a film about God through a very Catholic lens. An admittedly audacious project, he cashed in every chip he possibly could and got a rogue's gallery of actors on board: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Alan Rickman, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, George Carlin, Janeane Garafolo, and Linda Fiorentino. The high concept fantasy comedy involves two fallen angels (Affleck and Damon) who have found a loophole to get back into heaven via a demon. An abortion counselor in suburban Chicago, who unbeknownst to herself is the last descendant of Christ, is visited by an angel and sent on a mission to stop the fallen angels. Along the way she teams up with Smith's stoner avatar Silent Bob and his obnoxious hetero life mate Jay, also Rufus, the Black 13th apostle written out of the Bible due to racism, and the physical embodiment of serendipity, who is now a stripper. You can easily understand why this film was heavily protested by Christians. It's clear that everyone thought Smith, with his offensive stoner comedy past, would be gleefully reveling in being as offensively blasphemous as possible. But, oddly enough, it stands tall alongside Scorsese's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988) as a deeply considered exploration and questioning of both faith and religion by someone who actually goes to church. A lot. Still, it is surprising to see the man who coined the nonsense phrase "snootchie bootchies" waxing almost rabbinically about the theologically legalistic intricacies of plenary indulgences. Yes, it's a bit of armchair/stoner theology going on here, with Smith taking from Judaism, Islam, early post-schism Catholicism, and what seems to be the religious fiction of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens, but holding a man who has a literal giant shit demon in his film to a high theological threshold would also be disingenuous. It feels as the irreverence here comes from Smith's being steeped in the uniquely American version of Catholicism with its slight patina of cultural Protestantism. There's a little bit of Martin Luther in all Americans in our inability to fully believe in anything unquestioningly and our penchant to turn dissatisfaction into public spectacle. With this in mind, it's hard not to see DOGMA as a genuine exercise of a Catholic's faith in art. Just one equally filled with theological pontifications and dated gay jokes. It's exactly how you'd imagine a Catholic Gen X slacker from New Jersey would wrestle with God. By far the most commercially successful, and notorious, of the films Smith made in his View Askewniverse (the cinematic universe in which 9 of his film take place), it's now being re-released in theaters because after a long dark period in which the film was owned by Harvey Weinstein. Since the 2008 BluRay went out of print, DOGMA has been commercially unavailable in any manner until now, when Iconic Events bought the rights and are putting it back in theaters for an ersatz 25th anniversary celebration. Hopefully it'll hit streaming soon too because I'm definitely interested to see the current cultural response to this toilet humor testament to the Catholic divine. (1999, 128 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Andrew DeYoung’s FRIENDSHIP (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
There are moments where you almost feel bad for Craig Waterman, the chaotically average protagonist of Andrew DeYoung’s FRIENDSHIP, as he plods through life, struggling to maintain any kind of stable relationship, be it platonic, professional, or romantic. The problem, however, is that Craig is played by Tim Robinson, one of contemporary comedy’s premier lunatics, a man known for yelling, growling, and stink-facing his way through any and all social interactions to the point of sheer absurdity. Robinson’s comedic voice has solidified over the past decade, primarily through his Netflix sketch-comedy series I Think You Should Leave, but FRIENDSHIP represents something sharper and sadder, a prime leading-man vehicle for Robinson that wholly succeeds by keeping one foot firmly planted in crushing reality and the other maniacally flailing for its life. Stemming from the similar strains of comedic DNA that birthed last year’s RAP WORLD (2024)—along with sharing some of the same cast members—DeYoung’s debut feature is a potent examination of toxic masculine culture’s erosion of traditional male friendship dynamics, a system of aggression and dominance that leaves men like Craig with nowhere to turn but inward, toward chaos and anxiety and constant, unending fear. Craig’s seemingly voluntary isolation is put to the test when he meets his new neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd, making a triumphant return to theatrical comedy after years in the Marvel superhero desert), an effortlessly cool and collected weatherman who takes Craig under his nurturing wing of friendship by way of adventures like exploring the underground sewer system and foraging for mushrooms. Naturally, things go the way of FATAL ATTRACTION (1987) as Austin realizes that, to put it simply, Craig’s just not that great of a hang. The repercussions of this friend break-up prove fatal, as Craig’s feelings of inadequacy infect every facet of his pathetically mundane existence, most notably his relationship with his oft-neglected wife, Tami (a brilliantly committed Kate Mara, in what might otherwise be a thankless role). Whenever the overall structure of FRIENDSHIP threatens to become nothing more than loosely collected sketches, each scene evolves into a deeper dive into Craig, a character brought to life by Robinson’s gripping traits as a performer, his physical and emotional instincts birthing new expressions of comedic id and ego with every passing moment that oscillate between hilarious and nightmarish (of particular note, a mid-film sequence centered around a drug trip unlocks newfound vistas of comedic potential I never thought possible). It would be unfair to reveal the specifics of FRIENDSHIP’s final scenes, but DeYoung and co. let this tale of unrequited brotherhood lead to its logical conclusion, where loose ends tie up in the most rip-roaring fashion possible, and Craig—for better or worse—learns what it means to be a friend. (2025, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
Ryan Coogler’s SINNERS (US)
In wide release – See Venue websites for showtimes
Popular hit SINNERS, still going strong after five weeks of wide release in movie theaters across the country and around the world, has already earned back its $90 million cost five times over and has garnered a tankerful of positive ink, including 10 reviews, articles, and podcasts from the United States’ so-called paper of record. So, what is a film like this doing on Cine-File? While our mission is to champion what I like to call “offroad movies,” SINNERS, I believe, needs our attention. Ryan Coogler, one of the most gifted director-screenwriters working today, has garnered popular acclaim by offering original stories that are wildly entertaining while providing the kind of food for thought that cinephiles used to chew on with every new release. That in itself makes the film an outlier in this age of mostly vacuous retreads and superhero movies. The filmmaker also has come under attack for negotiating a supposedly “extinction-level event” for Hollywood studios by securing final cut, a percentage of box office, and ownership of his film after 25 years. There is nothing unprecedented about this deal, that is, if you’re white. The racist hysteria aimed at Coogler, however, emphasizes the more serious point behind SINNERS—the need for Black Americans to have agency over their own lives and intellectual property. This need is the motivation that propels Coogler’s story. Twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), World War I veterans and Chicago bootleggers, return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932 after finding that the North was little more than Jim Crow with tall buildings. They make a deal to buy an empty mill to set up their own juke joint, recruit their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) to play guitar and sing, sign up a local musician legend Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) with the promise of all the food and drink he wants, pluck a large cotton picker (Omar Miller) out of the field to act as bouncer, and line up food and a venue sign from a Chinese couple (Li Jun Li and Yao). With everything set in place, the brothers prepare to open their venture the same night. Little do they know that a trio of white vampires, drawn to Sammie’s music, will show up at their club to “assimilate” them. Coogler takes his time settling us into life in the Mississippi Delta, slowing us down to the pace of life in a hot, rural environment. His return of the prodigal sons shows off the pride they feel and inspire in others, as well as the ruthlessness they learned as war veterans and Capone associates. The no-fuss deals Smoke strikes with his juke joint employees are as efficient and amusing as the touching reunion of Stack with his wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), and grave of their infant son, which Annie sets with a bottle of milk almost daily. His elements of magic realism move beyond vampire manifestations to include a dance floor peopled with Black musicians from every place and era, from Africa to the Bronx, in a celebration of Black creativity and joy that the juke joint revelers easily tap into. The failure of the vampires to gain permission to enter the juke joint thus separates them from that which they hoped to appropriate. SINNERS is teeming with the joy of Black life even in its sorrow and the obstacles faced by its characters in just trying to live their lives with purpose and dignity. The always interesting Jordan differentiates his dual roles beautifully. Caton is a skilled musician and surprisingly affecting actor who has a huge future ahead of him. A final, personal delight for me was seeing Buddy Guy play the elderly Sammie in his own club, named for the woman he got busy with at the juke joint, as he contemplates that fateful night. Having the rare movie that is an authentic cultural expression wrapped in an ever-satisfying horror and revenge fantasy is something to celebrate and encourage. (2025, 137 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
âš« Alamo Drafthouse
Takashi Miike’s 2016 film TERRA FORMARS (108 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info here.
⚫ Alliance Française (Julius Lewis Auditorium, 54 W. Chicago Ave.)
In celebration of Mois de la fierté (Pride Month) and in partnership with the Quebec Government Office of Chicago, Sophie Dupuis’ 2023 film SOLO (103 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, presented by Jean-François Hould, Québec’s Delegate in Chicago, and followed by a soirée dansante in the courtyard, featuring complimentary Quebec beer and disco pop by DJ Frankie French. Free admission for members and students. More info here.
âš« Bedsheet Cinema (1737 N. Sawyer Ave.)
The Beatles’ 1967 film MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR (52 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at dusk. Free admission. More info here.
âš« Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
The Documentary Media MFA Showcase 2025: Origins/Departures takes place on Wednesday and Thursday at 7pm. More info here.
âš« Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
âš« Church of the Three Crosses (333 W. Wisconsin St.)
On Saturday, 8:30pm, Bruce McClure will be performing a new piece entitled "Two Projectors & A Barrel Full of Monkeys," utilizing two 16mm projectors, bi-packed film loops, and an array of guitar effects pedals. Opening up the evening is Cameron Worden with his 35mm slide projector performance "UNTIME (Techno)" in collaboration with Omnia Sol. More info here.
âš« Cinema/Chicago
Digging Deeper Into Movies with Nick Davis, for which this edition’s theme is THE WEDDING BANQUET and Asian American Romance, takes place Saturday, June 7, from 11am to 12:30pm at the Alliance Française de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn St.). While the discussion does not include film screenings, attendees are encouraged to view both versions of THE WEDDING BANQUET, as well as Andrew Ahn’s FIRE ISLAND and Alice Wu’s SAVING FACE prior to the event. Free admission for members and students.
Ping Chu’s 2024 film SILENT SPARKS (79 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Free admission, though standby only at this time.
Celine Song’s 2024 film MATERIALISTS (116 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6:30pm, at AMC Newcity 14, followed by Billy Wilder’s THE APARTMENT (125 min, DCP Digital). Both are free to attend for Cinema/Chicago members.
Fabio Mollo’s 2023 film BORN FOR YOU (113 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.). More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« FACETS
Paco de Onis’ 2024 documentary BORDERLAND: THE LINE WITHIN (110 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 10:45am. Meet the Amnesty Local Group starting at 10am, and stay after the screening for a discussion and Know Your Rights training.
Babak Payami’s 2022 documentary 752 IS NOT A NUMBER (98 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 4pm, followed by a Q&A with Hamed Esmaeilion.
Mauritz Stiller’s 1916 film THE WINGS (69 min, Digital Projection) and Richard Oswald’s 1919 film DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS (50 min, Digital Projection) screen Wednesday, 6pm, with a talk by Hugo Ljungbäck.
Anime Club presents Lost+Found: Memories, a double feature that blurs the line between high-concept science fiction and forgotten emotional oddities, on Thursday starting at 7pm. Free and exclusive to Film Club Members. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Ali Ray’s 2025 documentary DAWN OF IMPRESSIONISM: PARIS 1874 (90 min, DCP Digital) and Roberto Minervini’s 2024 film THE DAMNED (89 min, DCP Digital) begin screening this week, while Jonathan Millet’s 2024 film GHOST TRAIL (106 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.
The June Mystery Movie takes place Monday at 6pm.
Celine Song’s 2024 film MATERIALISTS (116 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 8:15pm, in advance of its official run beginning next Friday. More info on all screenings here.
âš« MCA Chicago
Nathaniel Kahn’s 2018 documentary THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING (105 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 10:30am and 2:30pm. More info here.
âš« 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) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Agustà Villaronga’s 1986 film IN A GLASS CAGE (112 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 11:15pm, as part of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair.
Jack C. Newell’s 2024 film MONUMENTS (95 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 2pm and Wednesday at 7pm. Both screenings followed by a Q&A with Newell and members of the filmmaking team.
Strange and Found takes place Sunday at 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« 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 6, 2025 - June 12, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Erika Balsom, Kian Bergstrom, Rob Christopher, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Raphael Jose Martinez, Darnell Witt