📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Yasujiro Ozu’s A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS (Japan/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am
Yasujiro Ozu will forever be the cinema’s greatest poet of everyday resignation. Time and again, his characters face grave disappointment, only to shrug (or, just as often, drink) it off, accepting, say, the dissolution of the nuclear family or the realization that the people one idolizes are in fact deeply flawed as natural parts of living. In spite of this depressing ongoing theme, Ozu’s films are more often than not quietly joyous events, filled with good cheer toward the characters and their daily lives. A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS was one of the director’s favorites of his own movies (he even remade it in 1959), maybe because, as a fellow traveler in the world of show business, he could relate closely to the subjects. The protagonist, Kihachi, is the director of a traveling theater company that’s been playing to small towns all over Japan for decades. Now late into middle age, he’s grown into his itinerant lifestyle, long used to living on little money and having few emotional ties outside his troupe. When the movie begins, Kihachi and company arrive in yet another town, where it’s soon revealed that a local barmaid, Otsune, is an old flame of his. The former couple reunites in a moving scene that showcases Ozu’s genius for conveying years of experience through subtle detail. As the two talk, we learn that Kihachi is the father of the barmaid’s son, who’s now 20 and still thinking that his father died when he was a baby. One gradually recognizes Kihachi’s regret for not having raised his own child as well as his rich affection for Otsune; however, the surface tone remains casual, almost jolly. This complex, sweet-and-sour effect is characteristic of Ozu, and it has a lot to do with his unique directorial approach. Writing for the Criterion Collection, Donald Richie breaks down why the film is essential to his career: “When he was making [A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS], Ozu was in the process of forming his mature style—the famous invariable camera position, just up off the tatami, its refusal to chase after the actors (the dolly) or even turn its head (the pan); the well-known lack of punctuation; no fades or dissolves, just the straight cut; the invariable mosaic construction of the story; the refusal of plot in any melodramatic sense; whole sections of the story omitted in ellipses—all of these attributes creating a world in which every image counts, all details contribute, and whole sections of continuity can be elided. Every image can be made to vibrate with an integrity which has always had but which we have, through habit, lost the ability to see.” A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS generates no little suspense from whether Otsune’s son will find out the truth about his parentage, and the screenplay throws in a bit of sexual intrigue for good measure. Regardless, the film seems more content to just look at the world through the mature style that Richie describes, finding beauty in people (specifically hardworking and under-appreciated artists) and moments of repose. Live musical accompaniment by the MIYUMI Project Japanese Experimental Ensemble. (1934, 86 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Nellie Kluz’s THE DELLS (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday and Thursday, 6:15pm
When I was a kid I went on a trip to Washington, DC, with my mom, and at the little boutique hotel we were staying at noticed that much of the staff were Irish. My mom explained that they likely came over for the summer to work, a prospect that seemed more enticing at the time than I eventually came to realize it actually was. Now it’s not at all exciting but more so ironic that much of America’s summertime culture—a microcosm of American culture in general—thrives on cheap immigrant labor to provide services to many people who openly resent these kinds of workers for their mere existence. Nellie Kluz’s documentary THE DELLS follows young foreign students who come over as J-1 visa holders (described as an exchange visitor program by US Citizenship and Immigration Services “authorized for those who intend to participate in an approved program for the purpose of teaching, instructing or lecturing, studying, observing, conducting research, consulting, demonstrating special skills, receiving training, or to receive graduate medical education or training”) from countries like Turkey, Romania, Jamaica, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic, to work in the Wisconsin Dells. The Dells embody both the allure and illusion of America, the overabundance of fun but fleeting experiences that give way to the cold reality of a culture driven entirely by transaction. Knowing Kluz to be an admirer of the inimitable Chinese documentarian Wang Bing, I found THE DELLS to be an inspired evocation of his recent YOUTH trilogy. Like Wang, Kluz has a distinct sensibility when it comes to organizing the prosaic moments of real life—especially the lives of exploited workers who are meant to go largely unseen and unconsidered—into something more poignant. As in Wang’s films, there are no central “characters,” but rather a smattering of faces and personalities, and Kluz oscillates between them with little fanfare. The most consistent participant is a cab driver, Jason, who shuttles the young people between their jobs and their living places—as well as to and from Wal-Mart (the late-capitalist landscape of superstores and fast food franchises like Taco Bell and Domino’s, set amidst the tourist destination’s array of corny attractions, being perhaps the other most consistent presence), engaging them in conversation that reveals much about them and him. The seasonal workers contend with such issues as low pay and unstable housing while still managing to enjoy themselves at outdoor parties, community centers and even the tourist attractions where many of them are employed. Like Wang’s films, THE DELLS advances a point of view that’s inherently political but embraces nuance at every opportunity, conveying something almost antithetical, an innate misguided tenacity that, for better or worse, is perhaps the real American dream. Kluz in attendance at both screenings. (2024, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Five by Fellini
Music Box Theatre – See below for showtimes
Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Italy)
See Venue website for showtimes
Life imitates art and art imitates life in Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece, a thinly disguised autobiographical study of an Italian filmmaker, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni, naturally), fighting director's block while making a science-fiction epic. 8 1/2 proved to be exactly the right movie for its cultural moment, as cinematic new waves were cropping up all over the world and the auteurist notion that a film could be (and indeed should be) seen as the personal expression of a single individual was filtering down from critics to the general moviegoing public. Of course, an intuitive director like Fellini wasn't consciously trying to capture the zeitgeist but merely throwing his own confusion about life, love, and art up on the screen (the film's original title, THE BEAUTIFUL CONFUSION, would have been apt). Fellini also had no way of knowing that the innovative way he showed the collision of his protagonist's fantasies, dreams, and childhood memories—most of which pertain to Guido’s struggles with religion and/or the women in his life—would exert such a massive influence on future filmmakers. Everyone from Woody Allen (STARDUST MEMORIES) to Bob Fosse (ALL THAT JAZZ) to Paul Mazursky (ALEX IN WONDERLAND and THE PICKLE) unofficially remade it (while, ironically, the official remake, the Hollywood musical NINE, proved to be an impersonal work-for-hire for director Rob Marshall). As Dave Kehr perceptively noted, "There's something about the concept (stuck for an idea for his new movie, a director takes a long, hard look at his own life) that appeals irresistibly to the ego of the professional filmmaker. For directors frustrated by the eternal obscurity of life behind the camera, the 8 1/2 formula gives them a way to step forward and grab the spotlight they've trained so long on others." Fellini may never again have ascended to the level of greatness he displayed here, even though he repeatedly mined similar subject matter, but 8 1/2 remains a dizzying career high. (1963, 138 min, New 35mm Print) [Michael Glover Smith]
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Federico Fellini's LA STRADA (Italy)
Friday, 4pm and Sunday, 11:30am
Featuring one of the most expressively iconic performances in cinema history, LA STRADA is a visually lyrical character study. Federico Fellini’s approach to the film straddles the neorealism style of post-World War II Italian cinema and his later, more surrealist works like LA DOLCE VITA (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963). LA STRADA tells the story of Gelsomina (the remarkable Giulietta Masina), a childlike young woman who’s purchased from her mother by the cruel Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), a traveling strongman performer. He trains her to entertain crowds as a clown and play music as he performs his act. Despite Gelsomina’s eagerness to learn and to please, Zampanò is an abusive caretaker. The film follows their travels on the road, as they eventually join up with a circus that includes high-wire performer, Il Matto (Richard Baseheart), who relentlessly teases Zampanò. The two men’s rivalry leads to tragedy for the sensitive Gelsomina. LA STRADA combines a sense of fantasy—with the circus setting and musical performances—with the harsh reality that Gelsomina is forced to navigate. It is heartbreaking to watch her enthusiasm waver as she faces the challenges of life on the road with Zampanò. The cinematography is affecting throughout, concentrating on emotional beats rather than story, and supporting the outstanding performances; THE GODFATHER composer Nino Rota adds to this with his moving score. LA STRADA, however, most fully belongs to Giulietta Masina whose face, both in and out of clown makeup, is incredibly expressive, bringing poignancy to every scene. She is extraordinary to watch, and it is near-impossible not to be moved by her performance. (1954, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Federico Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA (Italy)
Saturday, 5:15pm
If 8 1/2 is Federico Fellini's Sistine Chapel, then surely LA DOLCE VITA is his Statue of David. Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) is a paparazzo living in Rome whose life plays out over the course of seven episodes—each featuring a daytime and nighttime portion. Marcello is in a constant tug of war between the humility of literature (his own writings included) and the egocentric pull of the limelight and cults of personality. His fidelity waivers, as he expresses his love to his fiancé Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) in one scene only to cheat on her with an heiress or a painter in the next. Fellini's take on post-fascist Italy is marked by the juxtaposition of high society versus traditional family values. The economy is in full upswing and money abounds as lavish parties are shown and the sightly architecture of the city is displayed. Each episode presents Marcello with a challenge to his personal beliefs and ends with him regressing towards his selfish tendencies or elevating towards the pragmatic. Does anyone truly change or do they ultimately end up how some predetermined fate tells them to be? Marcello ultimately succumbs to life in the spotlight and resolves to be a publicist, discarding his old dream of being a writer. The allure of vanity leaves him a bachelor in old age. His character rises and falls repeatedly as if he were in so many Shakespearean or Greek tragedies. Domestic violence and misogyny are in his life's blood with only the faintest glimmer of romanticism and empathy to be seen. Fellini's film is a masterpiece that beckons to be seen and immersed in. It breathes with vitality and effervescence. Some people never learn from their mistakes, and Marcello is no exception. (1960, 175 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]
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Federico Fellini’s CITY OF WOMEN (Italy)
Sunday, 5pm, and Monday, 3pm
Seventeen years after the seminal 8 1/2, Fellini reunited with that film’s leading man, Marcello Mastroianni, to further plumb the depths of the Italian male psyche. For this outing, things are perhaps less emotional and more theoretical, but just as fantastical as before. Mastroianni—still as dashing and effortlessly charming almost two decades on—inhabits the role of Snàporaz, a character drawn in broader strokes than Guido Anselmi, but still just as fixated on, and tormented by, his relationships with the women of his life. After a disastrous attempt at a sexual encounter on a passenger train through the countryside, Snàporaz winds up in the Grand Hotel MiraMare, where a conference of women holds grand discussions on women’s rights, freedoms, and desires, all a seeming nightmare for the hedonistic louse Mastroianni inhabits here. Our lecherous protagonist bounds from scenario to scenario, navigating grand halls and caverns, encountering women on roller skates, riding motor bikes, giving academic lectures, and dancing their hearts away. Most breathtaking is Fellini’s grand finale, a carnivalesque parallel to 8 1/2’s big final showstopper, here Snàporaz descending an epic red-and-gold slide that reintroduces him to the women who have influenced his life before entering a grand arena to truly face off against the feminine sex. Here in his later career, Fellini delves into emotional abstraction coupled with grandiose thematic spectacle. His characters here are more archetypical above all else (Anna Prucnal as Snàporaz’s wife is perhaps the only character that rises above caricature), but there’s still the effort to construct a larger canvas of the ever-expanding complexities of women, here appearing as intellectual, sexual, introspective, humorous, quizzical, wise, and rapturous. For all that’s lost in the details, Fellini paints extravagantly and magisterially. Both screenings free for Music Box Members. (1980, 139 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
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Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD (Italy)
Monday, 9pm
In the opening scene of AMARCORD, a man’s immature public behavior during a celebration in the piazza is excused by his sister, as she casually remarks, “He’s just a kid.” The townspeople of Borgo San Giuliano featured throughout continually display crude and juvenile antics, stepping into the farcical. It's Federico Fellini’s most personal film, and in AMARCORD he explores the absurdity of his youth, thematically connecting an adolescent lack of maturity and moral responsibility to Fascist Italy in the 1930s. It’s not that the film is void of nostalgia entirely; it’s felt in the use of bright pops of color and in Nino Rota’s memorable score. The political, however, is never relegated to the background, and the mostly rambunctious film grounds in moments of definitive resistance and quiet reflection; Fellini satirizes his characters acting out in ridiculous ways and honors moments of moral defiance. The film's mix of absurd humor, unbridled sexual desire, and a dark sense of historical reality is impressively held. Impressive, too, is the way Fellini structures sequences, with such depth and detail. While the film generally follows one family in the seaside town over the course of a year, the ingenuity of AMARCORD is in its flowing set pieces filled with intensely emotive people, the graceful camera movement acknowledging that the goings-on of the town, from individual erotic fantasies—the film’s most iconic moments—to the larger political climate, are all deeply connected. (1973, 123 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
Robert Altman Centennial
Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes
Robert Altman's CALIFORNIA SPLIT (US)
Saturday, 2pm
CALIFORNIA SPLIT is ostensibly a movie about two guys getting loaded on booze and gambling, moving from bender to bender, racetrack to casino. However, over the course of the film CALIFORNIA SPLIT reveals itself to be a tale of personal sadness coupled with the longing to be accepted and liked by another human, any human who will welcome them as they are. Altman's trademark cross-dialogue denseness, captured using multiple boom mics, achieves beautifully dizzying heights, as massive blocks of dialogue are rendered barely discernible. But whatever is made ambiguous by this audio jumble is given full clarity when the characters’ veneers drop off, leaving nothing but their emotional center. In one of the movie's most remarkable scenes two prostitutes, played by Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles, sit in a bed together after one of them has had their sexual advances rebuffed by leading man George Segal. Her friend consoles her by stroking her hair and promising that she has a great client for her to entertain instead, softly promising another, better man who will treat her kindly. The dialogue is delivered very matter-of-factly, with not a lot of conviction behind it, but it foregrounds a dream of companionship, if even for a few hours, which is the soul of this underrated film. The aforementioned scene is a wonderful representation of the film as a whole, which on paper seems like just another buddy-heist comedy. Altman, being a wonderful subverter of genre stereotypes, delivers less of a kooky comedy of errors, and more of a Cassavetes-influenced genre hybrid, very similar to another of its miraculous ilk, Elaine May's flat-out masterful MIKEY & NICKY. (1974, 108 min, 35mm) [John Dickson]
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Robert Altman's NASHVILLE (US)
Wednesday, 6pm
It remains debatable as to whether NASHVILLE is Robert Altman’s crowning work (one could make as strong a case for MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, THE LONG GOODBYE, or CALIFORNIA SPLIT), yet in no other film, save for perhaps SHORT CUTS, did the director achieve so many of his ambitions in one go. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about NASHVILLE may be how it threatens to collapse on itself at any moment but somehow doesn’t—Altman’s direction of this two-hour, 40-minute opus is comparable to a captain steering an ocean liner around a range of icebergs without even rattling the passengers. The film famously juggles two dozen principal characters and about half as many different storylines, but no less remarkable is the way Altman succeeds with multiple formal experiments that could have easily come off as gimmicky or distracting. Several of these experiments have to do with sound. Building upon the multi-track audio of CALIFORNIA SPLIT, Altman shot much of NASHVILLE with up to 16 separate microphones, seldom letting the actors know who would be recorded directly and mixing the wealth of sonic material in post-production. Roger Ebert once wrote that the beauty of Altman’s films often lies in basking in the music of a room, and by that token, NASHVILLE is a veritable symphony of jargon, offhand remarks, noise, and actual songs. Most of the songs, in fact, were written by the actors who sing them, and another one of Altman’s fascinating experiments was to insist that not all them be good. To reflect the range of quality one finds in Nashville’s music scene, Altman included great songs (like Keith Carradine’s Oscar-winning “I’m Easy” and the classic-style country numbers sung by Ronee Blakeley, arguably the best singer in the cast), hokey songs (like the self-aggrandizing tunes of Henry Gibson’s Haven Hamilton), and even terrible songs (like the ones performed by Gwen Welles’ heartbreakingly naive Sueleen Gay). Similarly, NASHVILLE alternates between a number of tones, ranging from poignant to sardonic to bitter to menacing. Altman creates the impression that he’s discovering the movie as it goes along, which is fitting, given how it was shot. Screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury created characters and situations for the film, but per Altman’s instruction, wrote very little dialogue; that was left to the actors, whom Altman directed to improvise as much as possible. As Altman put it, “We would stage events and then film the events,” resulting in a fiction film that has the look and feel of a documentary. In one way, NASHVILLE is a documentary about post-60s political disillusion in America—one significant through line comes in the form of campaign speeches by an erstwhile third-party presidential candidate named Hal Philip Walker, who roams the city in a tour bus, blasting calls for political upheaval. The movie ends at a Walker campaign rally that goes catastrophically wrong, then regains ground through the giant sing-along of another Carradine-penned number that would seem to contradict the spirit of liberty that’s run through the epic poem that preceded it. For even a few minutes after the credits end, the song’s haunting refrain repeats: “You may say that I ain’t free, but it don’t worry me.” (1975, 160 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Alex Ross Perry’s VIDEOHEAVEN (US/Documentary)
Davis Theater – Sunday, 6pm
Now that the video rental store has been relegated to the dustbin of history and we’re nearly two decades past it having any kind of commercial or cultural relevance, its history and place in society can begin to be reasonably assessed beyond facile nostalgia. Filmmaker (and, more importantly, former video store clerk) Alex Ross Perry has created a documentary synthesizing his ideas surrounding the value and purpose of the video store not only as a physical space and commercial endeavor, but as a concept. Inspired by the book Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Storeby Daniel Herbert (a professor at the University of Michigan whose research included the phenomena of the video store/tanning salon combo in the American South, and who serves as a producer of the project), VIDEOHEAVEN is essentially an academic-lite video lecture on the cosmology of the video store in (primarily American) culture, narrated by Maya Hawke. Not dissimilar in style to Alexandre O. Phillippe’s LYNCH/OZ (2022), this combines the increasingly familiar YouTuber video essay style with the more traditional philosophical essayist documentary style of folks like Adam Curtis. Compiling a more-than-impressive amount of film and TV clips, VIDEOHEAVEN is easily the most definitive single collection of footage of video stores appearing on screen. Making use of a runtime just shy of three hours (the Adam Curtis comparison further stands), Alex Ross Perry does his due diligence across multiple chapters to make sure that we see how the video store forever changed not only how audiences consume films, but how they influenced film itself. The material realities of the VHS business, the spaces video stores occupied as physical locations, the social third space they created, the experience and effects of the public consumption of pornography in a non-adults-only setting, and even the cultural and philosophical implications and refractions that were created by the way the video store itself was represented in film and TV are all finely parsed and dissected. A throughline of the film, which is probably its most interesting point, is how unique it is that the video store became such a cultural institution only to completely disappear. That is there is almost no trace of what the video store was left in larger society, how there is no contemporary correlative, and how the video store is now an inherently historic concept, despite a few still existing. I currently have five movies, rented from two different video stores, sitting on a table in my living room. So to have VIDEOHEAVEN suggest that every time I rent a title I’m not just picking up a movie to watch, but that I’m participating in a kind of hauntological act steeped in nostalgia and the imagined past created by the hundreds of times I’ve watched video stores appear on screen, legitimately freaks me out. But this makes sense, because I do feel like I'm time traveling, or at least taking a step out of time and place, every time I go to rent a movie—and not just due to nostalgia. It's kind of comforting to have a film try to explain why this is, and that it's not just my weird brain acting up again. VIDEOHEAVEN is a must see for anyone who is genuinely interested in the incredibly short time when film consumption was mostly a physical act, and how the way we watch film changes the world around us in very real ways invisible except through the lens of history. If you're looking for nothing more than a hotshot of video store nostalgia, this film will absolutely feel like a homework assignment; VIDEOHEAVEN has more in common with Marshall McLuhan's Laws of the Media and its tetrad of media effects than it does Vh1's I Love the '80s. But those who do enjoy some philosophy with their pop-culture history will be incredibly well served, and VIDEOHEAVEN manages to deliver equally to those who remember going to the video store and those who have only ever seen it depicted on their screens. RIP to all the video stores I haunted as a clerk in the past: Blowout Video, Blockbuster Video, Nationwide Video, Dogear Music and Movies. And long live the ones that I have worked at/still work at that are still holding on here in Chicago: Analog/TerrorVision Video and Facets Film Forum, may you continue to haunt our living, and increasingly digital, world. With a pre-recorded intro from writer-director Alex Ross Perry, followed by a post-show discussion with film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky. (2025, 172 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Agnès Varda's DAGUERRÉOTYPES (France/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 9am
The over four decades’ worth of documentary films made by Agnès Varda have winsomely defining characteristics. You recognize them instantly in their singular expression: the generous, inquisitive regard for people ordinary and overlooked; the fascination with the personal and social dimensions of art, particularly photography; the effortless, egalitarian interweaving of autobiography with the stories of her subjects; and always, Varda’s voice from behind the camera, if not her full whimsical person in front of it, pitched toward insatiable curiosity and endless perceptual renewal. DAGUERRÉOTYPES, Varda’s first feature-length documentary, sets the tone for her later work. In it, the filmmaker surveys the shopkeepers on a block of Paris’ rue Daguerre, in the 14th arrondissement where she spent much of her life. The block, chosen both for its proximity to Varda’s home and for its quaintly ossified nature (plus the apropos name), was in 1976 something of a relic with its unchanging boutiques run by elder tradespeople, a vestige of community-focused labor and commerce fading in an age of modern capitalism. Varda freezes these people—bakers, tailors, perfumers, butchers—in their already frozen little milieu, using her camera, as she often did, as an archivist’s tool of preservation. In a fashion recalling both neorealist and early Soviet cinematic emphases on the working class, she lingers on their various store routines, valorizing their work through the duration she affords it. She also gives them plenty of time to speak. We hear about their pasts, their relationships, and their dreams, their lives fleshed out in frame-filling close-ups that foster an intimate identification. The format of this multi-portraiture is simple, direct, and unassuming in its celebration of the quotidian, which is why Varda’s introduction of a magician, whose performance for a local crowd is intercut with the shopkeepers’ routines, stands out as somewhat ostentatious. The idea—that the shopkeepers carry out a kind of everyday magic—is wittily communicated through juxtapositions that match, say, the magician’s fire-eating with the baker’s brick oven, but the point becomes belabored. While DAGUERRÉOTYPES may not ultimately be as robust and sophisticated as Varda’s subsequent documentaries, it still contains all her customary charm and empathetic observation, indexed by the street in the shops and through the faces she makes immortal. Screening as part of the Rise & Shine series. (1976, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Don Coscarelli x 2
Music Box Theatre – See below for showtimes
Don Coscarelli’s THE BEASTMASTER (US)
Wednesday, 7:30pm
THE BEASTMASTER arrived on the heels of a sword-and-sorcery boom, forged in the fires of ‘70s paperbacks, STAR WARS mania, and the musclebound mythos of pop pulp. Don Coscarelli’s entry in the genre isn’t just brawn and broadsword; it’s Macbeth with muscles, Shakespeare filtered through sand, steel, and ferrets. Merging a bodybuilder medieval festival aesthetic with an earnest empathy for animals, Coscarelli crafted something both primal and peculiar. Released in 1982, alongside CONAN THE BARBARIAN, THE BEASTMASTER was overshadowed at first by John Milius’ grim, operatic epic. Both followed the success of 1981’s CLASH OF THE TITANS, DRAGONSLAYER, and EXCALIBUR, but while CONAN conquered the box office, THE BEASTMASTER conquered cable. Thanks to endless reruns on HBO and TBS—the stations were lovingly dubbed “Hey, Beastmaster’s On” and “The Beastmaster Station”—it found its audience in living rooms, becoming cult royalty. It begins with a prophecy. A trio of leather-clad witches, channeling the Bard via B-movie bravado, foretell that high priest Maax (Rip Torn, unhinged and magnificent) will die by King Zed’s unborn son. Like Macbeth, Maax doesn’t wait, he acts. The child is magically transferred from his mother’s womb to a cow, carved out, branded, and nearly sacrificed before being saved and raised in exile as Dar. Marc Singer plays Dar like a Disney prince with a penchant for revenge; he’s chiseled and in mystical communion with animals. His companions are an eagle, a black panther (a dyed tiger), and two conniving ferrets. The fellowship may be odd, but it’s precisely this menagerie that sets the film apart. Coscarelli and co-writer Paul Pepperman sidestep brute force, opting instead for cooperation, cunning, and instinct to challenge Maax’s dark magic. Directing the animals to fight evil magic was its own odyssey: a rogue bear attacked its handler, the lazy eagle had to be dropped from a hot air balloon, and 25 untrainable ferrets were endlessly bribed with treats. Like much cult cinema, THE BEASTMASTER is stitched together from production chaos and sheer will. Despite its modest budget, the film builds a world that feels strangely complete. Bone-masked berserkers, surreal desert vistas, and practical effects lend the film a raw texture. Coscarelli’s vision is a fever dream, something akin to a Renaissance Faire on mushrooms. Though the original camera negative was lost to time, the film’s spirit endures. Its fog-drenched sets, sacrificial altars, and stitched-together costumes evoke a handmade grandeur. THE BEASTMASTER is a contradiction: mythic yet goofy, low-rent yet sincere, chaotic yet coherent. Its Shakespearean bones are intact with fatal prophecy, usurped thrones, and corrupted power that lend it surprising weight, even as it frolics with semi-nude swordplay and animal sidekicks. It never quite achieves high fantasy or high tragedy, but it reaches for both and in that reach, it finds its heart. It may not be the crown jewel of the genre, but it is its scrappy, battle-worn mascot. It is a cinematic orphan raised by cable TV, remembered through VHS haze, ferret antics, and a dream of beasts and men fighting side by side in a world the gods forgot, but the fans never did. (1982, 118 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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Don Coscarelli's PHANTASM (US)
Thursday, 7pm
As brutal and disturbing a zombie film as can be found. Angus Scrimm's Tall Man, a demonic undertaker, zombie-maker, and slave-master of a hellish alternative world or dimension, is a crucial figure in modern horror iconography, an image of evil that manages impossibly to be both wholly alien and banally quotidian. Told through the eyes of Mike, an impressionable and recently-bereaved teenager, PHANTASM is a complicated, compelling, and deeply affecting meditation on the phase of our lives in which we suddenly come to understand and, perhaps, accept the inevitability of our own deaths, a mediation that features body-snatching, ethereal balls of knives, and robed killer midgets. Each moment seems slightly off-key, like the lurching rhythms of a broken calliope or a reflection cast in an antique mirror: every lens choice, every movement in the frame, every pattern of edits is built to unease and discomfit us. Truly the stuff of nightmares, Coscarelli's film is unforgettable. (1979, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Kian Bergstrom]
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Coscarelli and producer/co-writer Paul Pepperman in attendance for post-film Q&As.
Jess Franco's BLOODY MOON (Spain)
Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
Beyond prolific exploitation director Jess Franco’s BLOODY MOON relies on recognizable tropes that it simultaneously distorts, making for an arrestingly peculiar take on the slasher genre. After being institutionalized for murdering a young woman, disfigured Miguel (Alexander Waechter) returns five years later to his sister, Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff), who now runs a language boarding school on the Spanish coast. Their incestuous relationship and their need to hide it further complicates his position there. The return of Miguel also marks the sudden return of the killings; the murderer seems predominantly focused on late arrival Angela (Olivia Pascal). It’s familiar—there are killer POV shots, threatening anonymous phone calls, teens at summer camp vibes—but BLOODY MOON also feels completely alien. While horror is certainly filled with interesting sound stingers, Franco’s warping noises are as strange and varied as they are startling. Combined with the intense '80s score and Europop music, it’s a wild soundscape. Franco’s color palette, too, is striking, a dreamy mix of pastels and bold neons, all fitting into the European coastal setting. The costumes, including a curious parade of oversized sweaters, add to the bizarreness of the characters and performances. The closeups of inexplicable reactions—Angela’s friend Inga (Jasmin Losensky) has the most memorable of these—and the staging often feels unhinged. The sense of voyeurism common to the genre is also presented so peculiarly; new or little examined characters seem to appear out of nowhere as witnesses to the violence. It all somehow comes together, however, as a memorable example of the horror subgenre. This is certainly in large part to Franco’s camera, which skillfully maneuvers through, piecing together all the eccentricity, creating arrestingly gorgeous visuals along the way. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1981, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Mike Nichols' THE BIRDCAGE (US)
Davis Theater – Monday, 7pm
THE BIRDCAGE, a 1996 American remake of the French film LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978), itself an adaptation of a play, was the first film collaboration by classic comedy duo Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Almost 30 years later, it ages incredibly well as an artifact of how successfully they collaborated with each other and a talented cast in the film to produce the first big American studio film featuring openly LGBTQ lead characters and, more significantly, a heartwarming comedy instead of a tragic drama. May wrote the screenplay and took full advantage of the opportunity to leverage the plot to skewer gender norms, fragile masculinity, heteronormative "family values," and politically expedient anti-LGBTQ sentiment that was common at the time and is, unfortunately, currently dominating the political landscape in the form of drag bans, bathroom bills, and other anti-gay and anti-trans legislation. Nichols and May also took full advantage of their talented cast and history with improv to collaborate together on the screenplay, conducting weeks of rehearsals and inviting the cast, especially Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, to improvise their lines. Williams and Lane play Armand and Albert, a gay couple who have spent two decades running a successful cabaret club in flamboyant South Beach, Florida, and raising a son, Val, played by Dan Futterman. Val surprises his parents with the news that he has become engaged to Barbara (Calista Flockhart), the daughter of a conservative senator (Gene Hackman) and his demure wife (Dianne Wiest). Concerned that Barbara's parents will not consent to the marriage if they meet Val's "alternative" family in all their glory, Val begs Armand to play it straight, keep Albert out of the house, nix the variety of fertility statues peppering the apartment, and rein in Agador (Frank Azaria), their Guatemalan housekeeper who dreams of gracing the stage at Armand's cabaret. Chaos ensues when Albert learns of the scheme and the team improvises desperately to appear heterosexual before the senator and his wife. This incredibly well-oiled farce plays perfectly from start to finish, a testament to Nichols and May and their talent for nurturing spontaneity while adhering to a quickly-paced plot. In contrast to the intense energy of the farcical scenes between the Goldmans (ahem, the "D" is silent) and the Keeleys, quiet moments of intimacy and candor between Williams and Lane as the loving lead couple are moments to truly savor in the film, a rare glimpse at a healthy gay relationship at a time when LGBTQ characters were solely used as comic foils, tragic plot devices, or cautionary tales. Screening as part of the Big Screen Classics series. (1996, 119m, Digital Projection) [Alex Ensign]
Spoiler Alert
Gene Siskel Film Center – See showtimes below
Henri-Georges Clouzot's DIABOLIQUE (France)
Sunday, 2pm
A once-shocking, influential thriller now more suited to killing a cold, rainy afternoon, DIABOLIQUE (LES DIABOLIQUES)—based on a 1952 Boileau-Narcejac novel—is somewhat equally popular with deeper-digging aficionados of Hitchcock (whom director Clouzot beat out for the screenplay rights) as well as feminist film theorists, who mined the (wholly subtextual) lesbian relationship between the two suburban boarding-school teachers (Simone Signoret and Clouzot's wife, Véra) who conspire to murder the headmaster with whom they are both involved (Paul Meurisse). It's worth observing how Clouzot's comparatively breezy genre-interpolation (from suspense, to supernatural horror, to twist-ending policier) was transformed by Hitchcock into films that could instead only be decrypted in psychoanalytic terms (e.g., THE BIRDS). Intriguingly bookended in Clouzot's filmography by the nail-biting classic WAGES OF FEAR (1953) and the hallucinatory/meditative MYSTERY OF PICASSO (1956), DIABOLIQUE is also notable for its third-act arrival of the retired police inspector Fichet (Charles Vanel), disheveled and disingenuous, whom Cine-Filers of a certain age will recognize as the template for Peter Falk's Lieutenant Columbo. (1955, 114 min, 35mm) [Michael Castelle]
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Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (US)
Monday, 6pm
So much ink has been spilled over PSYCHO that it might have been best if nothing had been written about it at all. More than any other Hitchcock film it deserves a fresh pair of eyes (perhaps the kind we'd find in a kid with hands that barely reach the ticket window and then cling to the armrest as he loses the main character less than half way in, as a lucky few recount). Even if the infamous shower scene has lost its surprise and shock value (but watch it closely anyway), there's still a great deal to enjoy: a black and white pallet fine-tuned down to Vera Miles' bra; Hitchcock's bizarre infatuation with the Oedipus Complex; Bernard Herrmann's superb score. From the outside it's a film we've become accustomed to, but in a dark theater it becomes hauntingly unfamiliar again. (1960, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Julian Antos]
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Also screening as part of the Spoiler Alert series is Pedro Almodóvar’s 2011 film THE SKIN I LIVE IN (120 min, DCP Digital) on Tuesday at 6pm.
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Eon-hee Lee’s 2024 film LOVE IN THE BIG CITY (118 min, Digital Projection) screens at the Chicago Cultural Center at 6:30pm.
A members-only screening of Petra Costa’s 2024 documentary film APOCALYPSE IN THE TROPICS (110 min, Digital Projection) takes place Tuesday, 7pm, at AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N. Clybourn Ave.)
Emmanuel Mouret’s 2020 film LOVE AFFAIR(S) (122 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum. Both screenings are free to attend with registration. More info here.
⚫ Comfort Film (at Comfort Station)
Comfort Film presents Professor O's Producing Festival Best of Shorts!, with short films by Cine-File contributors Michael Glover Smith and Rob Christopher, on Wednesday at 8pm, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
David Miller’s 1962 film LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (107 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 4pm, as part of the Neo-Westerns of the ’50s and ’60s series.
Craig Brewer's 2005 film HUSTLE & FLOW (116 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the Needle Drop: A Hip-Hop Film Sample series. More info here.
⚫ FACETS
The Chicago premiere of AI M. Hemphill’s 2025 film THE RED FRAME (104 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 11:30am.
Before FACETS Anime Club Presents officially opens to the public, members and series pass holders are invited to a secret double feature of deep-cut ’80s anime relics on Thursday starting at 7pm. Between films, stay for a classic all-American pizza party. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Dag Johan Haugerud’s 2024 film SEX (118 min, DCP Digital), Albert Serra’s 2024 film AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE (125 min, DCP Digital), and a new 4K digital restoration of Masayuki Suô’s 1996 film SHALL WE DANCE? (136 min, DCP Digital) begin screening and Celine Song’s 2025 film MATERIALISTS (113 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for lineup and showtimes.
Wes Anderson’s 2025 film THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (101 min, DCP Digital) continues screening. See Venue website for showtimes.
Tone Glow presents Antoinetta Angelidi’s 1995 film THE HOURS: A SQUARE FILM (85 min, DCP Digital) on Monday at 7pm.
Presented by Slamdance Unstoppable: On the Road, Robert Arnove and Susanne Schwibs’ 2023 documentary THUNDER ROLLS: THE STORY OF BLIND BASEBALL (100 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 7pm, with a post-film Q&A with the Thunder Rolls Team. Both the feature and short film will be presented with open captions. Descriptive narration devices available in limited quantities. This is a T-Coil Hearing Loop accessible screening.
Fawzia Mirza’s 2025 film THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS (96 min, DCP Digital) screens on Tuesday at 9:15pm; Wednesday at 7pm; and Thursday at 4:15pm.
Steve Antin’s 2010 film BURLESQUE (119 min, 35mm) screens Thursday at 9:45pm. Presented by Rated Q and Ramona Slick - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema with preshow drinks and DJ in Music Box Lounge at 9pm and dragshow performance in the Main Theater at 9:45pm with film screening to follow. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
Selections from the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive, in conjunction with the announcement of the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive Collection, streams free on VDB TV. More info here.
CINE-LIST: June 27, 2025 - July 3, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Julian Antos, Kian Bergstrom, Michael Castelle, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Glover Smith