:: FRIDAY, AUGUST 1 - THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Aleksandr Dovzhenko's EARTH (Ukraine)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 7pm

EARTH makes a viewer feel exalted with its elemental, ecstatic beauty. A celebration of collective peasant life in a Ukrainian village by writer-director Aleksandr Dovzhenko, the simple tale contains a few key events. A grandfather dies, leaning back against a pile of apples—a lyrical, beautifully accepting passage, based upon Dovzhenko's memories of his own grandfather's death. A landlord shoots a peasant leader, and the dead man's wife nakedly thrashes about in grief. However, the film's true subject is the centuries-old relationship between farmers and the land. Life and death are twined to the cycles and rhythms of indifferent nature: dawn is for plowing wheat and baking bread, dusk is for sublimely loving portraits of couples in twilight. It's a hymn to the jubilant human face, a hallelujah to the life force, embodied in a man dancing a jig down a lonely country road. (Even the winnowing machines seem to dance.) Suffused with lived experience, EARTH is about Dovzhenko's own memories, his own people. "There's a solidity and fullness to each one of them filling the screen that annihilates narrative and ideology alike, leaving only poetry," wrote Jonathan Rosenbaum, and that's precisely what got the artist into trouble. Full of surprising editing and camera angles, EARTH was a modernist film financed by the state, and it pissed off Soviet officials who thought they were funding propaganda, not poetry. Dovzhenko's father was drubbed out of his collective farm; the attacks, Dovzhenko said, at first made him want to die. Yet this mesmerizing, hopeful vision by one of cinema's original bards still holds out models for the future—for cinema, which may yet fulfill its promise as the ideal medium for, in James Agee's words, "realism raised to the level of high poetry," and perhaps even for successful social organization.
Preceded by John Grierson’s 1934 short film GRANTON TRAWLER (11 min, 16mm). Live musical accompaniment by Whine Cave (Kent Lambert & Sam Wagster). (1930, 84 min, 35mm) [Scott Pfeiffer]

Tsui Hark’s TIME AND TIDE (Hong Kong/China)

Chicago Film Society at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

TIME AND TIDE opens with a send-up of mid-‘90s Wong Kar-wai films for no apparent reason other than to show that cowriter-producer-director Tsui Hark is in a playful mood—but, then again, when isn’t he? Tsui has been nobly fighting against logic and the laws of physics for nearly half a century; his work frequently suggests live-action Looney Tunes. Those animations were rife, of course, with movie parodies, so the Wong spoof (like the mocking allusion to Tsui’s one-time collaborator John Woo that occurs later in the picture) fits just right in the overall design. The plot of TIME AND TIDE is pretty nutty too. A young bartender drunkenly sleeps with a customer one night, only to discover the next day she’s a cop and a lesbian. When he finds out he’s gotten her pregnant, he switches jobs and becomes a bodyguard with the goal of making more money to give to their child. In little time, our hero befriends a former mercenary who’s about to become a father himself, and both men find themselves running from the mercenary’s former associates from South America. These details can be difficult to follow, as Tsui reportedly cut about an hour from the film before release to make it move faster, but who goes to a Tsui Hark film to follow the plot? Once the action gets underway, TIME AND TIDE is a kinetic wonder, with a propulsive sense of movement that keeps you engaged even if you can’t make sense of what’s happening. The set pieces here are some of Tsui’s best, including a nearly 20-minute sequence in an apartment complex that serves as a showcase for the filmmaker’s visual imagination. The shootout takes place both inside and outside the apartment buildings, with characters swinging from balconies and diving between different stories. Tsui’s gun fights lack the pathos of John Woo’s, the elegance of Johnnie To’s, or the pulverizing brutality of Ringo Lam’s; their chief goal is to entertain and astonish, encouraging viewers to delight in the unreality of cinema along with the director. Preceded by a 5-minute Tsui-in-Hollywood trailer reel (35mm). (2000, 113 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Robert Altman Centennial

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

Robert Altman's COME BACK TO THE 5 & DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN (US)
Saturday, 2pm
A forgotten mid-period gem from Robert Altman's nearly fifty-year career, COME BACK TO THE 5 & DIME receives a well-deserved restoration and revival. Adapted from Ed Graczyk's play—which Altman directed on Broadway to poor reviews—COME BACK is a curious hybrid of film, theater, and television that takes the best Altman offers to each. Set entirely in a Woolworth's that's near the filming location of George Stevens' GIANT, a nearly all-female James Dean fan club reunites 20 years after the actor's death. After the sole male member of the fan club returns as a woman, the story coalesces around soap opera secrets and their hammy revelations, befores and afters, literal mirrors and their reflected transformations. Altman's "roaming camera" of orchestrated pans and zooms makes the claustrophobic space open and lively, and the flashbacks to 1955 are shown through the general store's theatrical two-way mirrors. Genuine and artful performances (Pauline Kael wrote of the actresses: "They bring conviction to their looneytunes characters") builds meaning and helps draw out the cause and effect of Graczyk's text through Altman's craft. The two are meant for each other: both peddle in pop culture iconography, religio-hyperbole, and insular, provincial groups of deeply flawed people. However, where Graczyk turns to nostalgia and melodrama, Altman elicits a complex mix of sentimentality and cynicism. (1982, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]
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Robert Altman's THE PLAYER (US)
Wednesday, 6pm
Robert Altman, having successfully brought QUINTET, HEALTH, and O.C. AND STIGGS to the big screen, was perhaps overly familiar with the very special interaction ritual known as the Hollywood Pitch, whose unformalized rules permeate nearly every other scene in THE PLAYER. The prevalence of these consistently awkward interrogations (pragmatically asking: why should your movie exist?) become inevitably redirected to the material on screen, and part of the elegance of THE PLAYER is how it cues into and channels this spectatorial recursiveness. For while there has been many a movie about making a movie, this is the only one firmly lodged inside some scumbag studio VP's (Tim Robbins) head: with nary a camera crew in sight but many, many celebrity faces milling about and making awkward, backstabbing small talk in the background. Thomas Newman's oneiric score of extended dissolve cues, in particular, successfully transforms the narrative into a psychological study, like the fever dream an exec might have on his deathbed, after a career's worth of speed-reading by-the-numbers screenplays penned by anxious, balding dudes in their late 20s. Perpetually ironic and thoroughly unsubtle mise-en-scène provides a steady flow of chuckles, but the film's other theoretical subject—the Hollywood Ending—manages to refer not just (as Hollywood Endings do) to the century past of Hollywood Endings but to the entire structure of the film itself. This is Altman's ANSIKTET—morally ambiguous, self-reflexive in the extreme, questioning the very social foundations of the endeavor of film production—but somehow it can keep the audience grinning as they leave the theater. The cast is primarily a Who's Who ass-kissing orgy, but Richard E. Grant (WITHNAIL AND I) and Cynthia Stevenson are exceptional as a director and young executive who respectively attempt, unsuccessfully, to keep it real in the land of the hyperreal. (1992, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]

Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (US)

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

One wouldn’t guess that Maurice Chevalier wasn’t happy when making this film. One wouldn’t suppose Chevalier could be unhappy ever. But his mother had died some months prior and, as a result, he claimed he was merely going through the motions on the set of Ernst Lubitsch’s precode musical THE SMILING LIEUTENANT, his second collaboration with the German auteur. Sad as it is, one doesn’t notice. As the titular Austrian lieutenant, Chevalier is his ever-ebullient self, preternaturally charming to a degree not often replicated. Based on the Oscar Strauss operetta A Waltz Dream, and adapted by frequent Lubitsch collaborators Ernest Vajda and Sam Raphaelson, this centers on Chevalier’s Lieutenant Nikolaus "Niki" von Preyn, a loveable rake who toward the beginning of the film humorously crosses paths with Franzi (Claudette Colbert), the lead violin player of an all-female-orchestra called the Viennese Swallows. (This is about as lewd as Lubitsch gets and it's still quite elegant.) Smitten with one another, the pair soon find their courtship threatened when, during a parade welcoming the king of a neighboring kingdom and his daughter, Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins), a smile and wink meant for Franzi is interpreted by Princess Anna as being done in jest toward her. To evade punishment, Niki pretends to have been beguiled by Princess Anna; the ruse goes too far when Anna falls in love with him, after which, to Niki’s disgruntlement, they must marry. The so-called “elegant” Lubitsch Superjoke, as once defined by Billy Wilder as the joke on top of the joke, here ends up being that, to quote the latter (spoiler alert), “the wrong girl gets the man.” Learning of their continued affair once she and Niki have married, Anna confronts Franzi, and the two eventually forge a bond that ends with Franzi teaching Anna how to be more modern and thus more attractive to Niki. Colbert simply oozes sex appeal; it’s unfortunate that the narrative ultimately punishes Franzi for having taken her relationship with Niki to the next level (at the beginning we see her turn down a playful invitation to have breakfast the following morning, saying first tea, then supper, then, maybe, breakfast, after which it cuts to the lovers, eating their early morning meal) so fast even if in service of an ultimate, humorous irony, as their chemistry is delicious and enduring. Hopkins is great as the sheltered princess—she and Chevalier don’t have chemistry, per se, but rather an appropriately frustrating comedic vigor to their encounters. Both Colbert and Hopkins wanted to be shot from their right side, their “good” side, a tension that Lubitsch exploited for the benefit of their on-screen rivalry. It apparently had no impact on their desire to work with him, as both women would do so again. (Hopkins would do so three times to Colbert’s two, perhaps in part because Lubitsch famously favored blondes.) The musical aspect feels secondary, which may have accounted for the film being wildly successful despite musicals having temporarily gone out of vogue when it was made. But much like Chevalier, Lubitsch didn’t always just make it work, he made it look easy. Screening as part of the Pre-Code Musicals on Film series. (1931, 93 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

John Waters’ CECIL B. DEMENTED (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 11pm

Following PECKER (1998), CECIL B. DEMENTED continues John Waters' skewering of mainstream pop culture. Instead of looking at the hypocrisy of the fine arts world, this time Waters goes more meta and criticizes the modern film industry. His commentary here is, understandably, more biting than in the sweet PECKER, but CECIL is still grounded in playfulness and a sincere love for underground cinema. Hollywood star Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) is promoting a film in Baltimore when she’s publicly kidnapped by a group of terrorist filmmakers led by director Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff). His outlaw cinema crew is known as the Sprocket Holes (and played by, among others, Michael Shannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and standout Alicia Witt), each one bearing a significant director’s name tattooed on their body. They’ve all taken a vow of celibacy until their film gets made, and many of CECIL’s best one-liners come from this motley, sexually frustrated, cinema-loving crew. While Dorff and Griffith take center stage, it’s the Sprockets who are the most fun and hilarious part of the film. Taking Honey to their secret lair in an abandoned movie theater, they force her to perform in their film, which primarily consists of getting reactions from unwitting bystanders as they shoot guerrilla scenes on location. As they rail against mainstream cinema, Honey slowly begins to get on board with their cinematic manifesto. The film’s references are firmly placed in 2000—the crew infiltrates a set filming a FORREST GUMP sequel, for example—but it still feels like a relevant critique, especially as current nostalgic trends see a revival of the films from that era. This is a time capsule and lasting commentary on mainstream movie culture and the necessary radicalism of underground cinema. As the Sprockets rage throughout the film, Demented forever! (2000, 87 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Éric Rohmer’s PAULINE AT THE BEACH (France)

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

In 1966, Serge Daney wrote that the chief quality of Éric Rohmer’s early films was “patience… As if the world were nothing but an immense repertoire of lessons of things we’ve never really fully explored.” By the time of his Comedies and Proverbs cycle, Rohmer was best known for his films about attractive youth entrapped in romantic quandaries, particularly in his signature series, the Six Moral Tales, but never beholden to a genre formula. Where the Moral Tales had each followed a simple narrative line, in which a man attached to one woman would stray toward another but finally return to where he began, the Comedies and Proverbs films instead took a single idea each as their point of departure. PAULINE AT THE BEACH opens with the epigraph "Qui trop parole, il se mesfait", a line attributed to the Arthurian poet Chrétien de Troyes that translates as "A wagging tongue bites itself.” This film has a proverb but no moral, for this opening line could be attributed to its title character (Amanda Langlet), a teenager vacationing at the beaches of Manche with her statuesque blonde cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle). Herself undergoing a divorce and eager to reclaim her freedom, Marion quickly winds up in a love triangle between a heartsick ex, Pierre (Pascal Greggory), and the more sophisticated but manipulative Henri (Féodor Atkine). Very little happens in the course of the plot, which consists mainly of the lead up to and fallout from a single moment of betrayal. When the local boy (Simon de la Brosse) who takes an interest in Pauline gets roped into one of Henri’s deceptions, the film’s dialectic between age and wisdom comes alive, framed by repeat cinematographer Néstor Almendros as a series of deceptively plain blockings and power relations. Patience is Pauline’s chief quality; she watches and waits out the adults around her while their moral justifications and self-flattery reveal themselves as only just. As gorgeous to look at as any of Rohmer and Almendros’ color films, PAULINE AT THE BEACH acts less as a pressurized romantic battlefield than as a lens through which ideals are transformed into experience. Having positioned her from the beginning as a figure of naive yet firm resolve, Rohmer’s philosophical exercise is to question exactly what has happened to his heroine in this period of suspended time: whether her loss of innocence is the beginning of maturity or simply the formation of cynicism. Screening as part of the Éric Rohmer: Four Summer Films series. (1983, 94 min, 35mm) [Brendan Boyle]

Akira Kurosawa: Something Like a Retrospective

Music Box Theatre – See showtimes below

Akira Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD (Japan)
Friday, 4:15pm and Wednesday, 9:30pm
Ambitious in its classicality, Akira Kurosawa’s take on one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays is more of a transposition than it is an adaptation; he approaches the material’s inherent universality as a foundation from which to build his own broad themes, which stem from distinctly Japanese beliefs and traditions. He even abandons Shakespeare’s language, further removing the ideas from their Western origins. In THRONE OF BLOOD, Toshiro Mifune is Washizu, a samurai general whose future is revealed to him by a spirit in the woods as he returns victorious from battle. After that prophecy becomes a reality, his ambitious wife (Isuzu Yamada in a haunting performance that informs the film’s overall tone) pressures him to escalate his brutality in order to fully realize the perilous omen. Of course, a plot summary of Macbeth is unnecessary even when it’s rendered Japanese, but context becomes all the more significant as one mentally subs out the traditional (at least in the Western sense) settings and character dynamics with elements of Noh theater that beautifully complement the thematic flatness of Kurosawa’s interpretation. He juxtaposes the ascetic aspects of this highly stylized art form—examples of which include staid movement and masks depicting fixed facial expressions—with decidedly natural landscapes; shot on the side of Mount Fuji and permeated with a thick, seemingly impenetrable fog, the film is in this way reminiscent of Japanese ink painting, and this further imbues it with an otherworldly ambience. All of this, the characters, their setting, and the cultural influences on these things, as well as the famed “death by a thousand arrows” ending, lends itself to Kurosawa’s rather pessimistic outlook. This is perhaps best represented by a scene near the beginning of the film in which Washizu and Miki—the film’s Banquo—wander in and out of fog as they look for Spider’s Web Castle amidst an impassable forest. The scene is a few minutes long, and its repetitiveness effectively undoes whatever hope one may feel, whether it’s for the Macbeth figure himself or towards the play’s ultimately conservative frame of reference. “In Kurosawa’s film and worldview, the cycle of human violence never ends,” writes Stephen Prince in his essay for the film’s Criterion release. “Thus the film’s many circular motifs describe the real tragedy at the heart of the history that THRONE OF BLOOD dramatizes. Why do people kill one another so often and through so many ages? Kurosawa had no answer to this question. But he showed us here, through the film’s chorus, its circularity, and its Buddhist aesthetics, that there may not be an answer within this world.” (1957, 105 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI (Japan)
Saturday, 1:45pm and Thursday, 7pm
How many artists have created not only canonical works, but works whose style, structure, or theme is imitated for decades, and maybe eventually even centuries, thereafter? And how many of those artists can claim not just one but several masterpieces whose basic elements have been the schema for newer works, many of which garner the same commendation? Akira Kurosawa is indeed one of them; his work is concurrently modern and classic, deriving from personal, cultural, and artistic influences that span decades and oceans. His 1954 epic SEVEN SAMURAI is perhaps the best and most popular example of this, both within his oeuvre and the whole of Japanese cinema. At almost three and half hours long, it’s the outstretched tale of a village in sixteenth-century Japan that hires seven hungry, masterless samurai (otherwise known as ronin) to defend them against bandits. Like many canonical works, its story is relatively elementary, and it’s since been remade outright (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN in both 1960 and 2016) and less obviously so (a theory about the film’s influence on Disney’s A BUG’S LIFE went viral a few years back). It’s also fiercely entertaining in a way that might remind viewers just how hard it is to achieve that nebulous goal—to amuse as well as to awe. It may be for this reason that it’s referred to as being Kurosawa’s most “Americanized” film, though it could likewise be considered his gift to the West. Includes an intermission. (1954, 207 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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Akira Kurosawa's YOJIMBO (Japan)
Saturday, 6:30pm and Monday, 9:15pm
Akira Kurosawa’s loose and darkly funny adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest is a visually expressive marvel, with the director taking full advantage of the lateral possibilities of the widescreen frame. One scans the screen for details as if watching a tennis match—the garish visuals pop up on one side of the screen, then the other, then the other. (It’s hard to imagine Kurosawa having more fun on a picture than he did with this one.) Directed to behave like a mangy dog, Toshiro Mifune stars as Sanjuro, a wandering samurai who arrives in a small town and takes up work as a bodyguard (yojimbo) for two warring gangs. He cynically pits one group against the other, killing several baddies himself and allowing the gangs to take care of the rest. “Kurosawa converts the impending melodrama to comedy by abandoning his [usual] quest for fully human characters,” wrote Alexander Sesonske for the Criterion Collection in 2006. “Sanjuro is a Supersamurai, a whirlwind in combat; the village gangs are so grotesquely wicked, they become ludicrous and enlist neither our sympathy nor our belief. By the film’s end most are dead, but we feel no regret at the slaughter, nor cringe at its execution. The exaggerated evil of the gangs leaves them no other appropriate fate, and theirs is achieved with such style and cinematic verve that we are exhilarated by the spectacle and not at all dismayed by its content.” (1961, 110 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
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Akira Kurosawa's IKIRU (Japan)
Sunday, 1:30pm and Tuesday, 3:45pm
Opening with an X-ray of the doomed protagonist Watanabe, the film's very modern satire of postwar Japan's urban bureaucracy quickly becomes overwhelmed with as coherent an exegesis of the French existentialism then in vogue as has ever been committed to film. Takashi Shimura's performance as Watanabe exemplifies the Sartrean protagonist: His character's stomach cancer (or, shall we say, nausea) brings him face-to-face with the possibility of nothingness, and correspondingly grants him his freedom, consciousness, and sense of responsibility. IKIRU's masterstroke is the severing of this narrative at the midpoint of the film, beyond which the tale is told by Watanabe's drunk, bickering, eulogizing co-workers; and it is here that Kurosawa does Sartre one better, suggesting that death is not the end of a man's possibilities, but that those possibilities can continue to refract and extend themselves in the social actions and interactions of others. Roger Ebert has said that IKIRU is "one of the few movies that might actually be able to inspire someone to lead their life a little differently"; we can conclude that IKIRU screenings themselves provide a practical demonstration of Kurosawa's theory. (1952, 143 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Castelle]
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Akira Kurosawa’s DRUNKEN ANGEL (Japan)
Sunday, 4:30pm
DRUNKEN ANGEL marked the first collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, one of the great director-actor duos in cinema history, and what an auspicious beginning it was. Kurosawa had intended for Mifune’s character to play only a small role in the film, but the director was so taken with Mifune’s acting that he gave him more screen time until he was in it almost as much as Takashi Shimura, the original lead. As a result, the film hangs on a balance between two storylines, that of Shimura’s doctor Sanada and that of Mifune’s gangster Matsunaga; this narrative construction mirrors the way these characters’ lives become intertwined. Sanada and Matsunaga meet in the opening scene, when the latter comes to the office of the former to have a bullet removed from his hand. In tending to Matsunaga’s wound, the doctor recognizes that he also has tuberculosis and demands that he allow himself to be treated for the disease. Sanada is an alcoholic, but he’s also a principled physician who provides service to some of Tokyo’s most disadvantaged denizens. Matsunaga, on the other hand, is a violent, rough-and-tumble criminal who’s capable of recognizing the need to change his ways. The friendship that develops between these two men brings out the good in both of them, suggesting that even flawed individuals can effect positive change. DRUNKEN ANGEL was made just a few years after WWII ended, and Kurosawa fought the censorship board established by the Allied occupying forces to maintain the film’s pessimistic depiction of postwar society. The movie all but begins with a shot of unlicensed sex workers standing on a nighttime street corner (presumably to pick up American GIs), and a recurring image is of a pond of stagnant, disease-spreading water that exists just outside of Sanada’s office. Kurosawa adds to the ominous vibe with an expressionist aesthetic reminiscent of contemporaneous American film noir; the brisk pacing is evocative of Hollywood filmmaking as well. Still, the moral complexity and concern for Japanese society are highly characteristic of this master filmmaker, making this unmistakable for the work of anyone else. (1948, 98 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Akira Kurosawa's RASHÔMON (Japan)
Sunday, 9:15pm and Monday, 7pm
Ever since it won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, RASHÔMON has been many a westerner’s gateway to Japanese cinema. It’s also routinely taught in film schools and high school literatureclasses (I remember having to write a paper comparing it with the two Ryûnosuke Akutagawa stories it’s based on in freshman English), and even the title entered the popular lexicon as shorthand for a narrative with multiple narrators. Yet RASHÔMON remains electrifying in spite of its ubiquity—Akira Kurosawa’s mastery over such filmmaking fundamentals as composition, blocking, performance, and editing ensures that every shot draws the viewer directly into some aspect of the characters’ emotional experience. (If you want to know why Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola have always revered Kurosawa, look no further than RASHÔMON.) For a movie about the elusive nature of truth, it’s awfully easy to engage with; Kurosawa’s direction is so effective in moving the narrative forward that you rarely stop to think about how it works. Nonetheless, the film’s puzzle-like structure, with its conflicting flashbacks that nonetheless build upon one another, is worth scrutinizing once you get past the surface-level brilliance. Kurosawa cited silent cinema as the primary influence on RASHÔMON, and this principally comes through in the rich atmosphere. Who can forget the rain pouring down on the muddy ruins of the temple gate at the film’s opening, or the clearing of the rain at the end? Another thing that often gets overlooked about the film is that it has only three locations—the vividness of each setting, combined with the multitude of perspectives, makes the story feel more expansive than it actually is. At the same time, the film’s themes are epic, and its conclusions about human nature are profound. Donald Richie has argued that RASHÔMON achieves a heroic finale when Kurosawa makes a case for the importance of human goodness in a world marked by randomness and evil. As to whether the conclusion marks an organic coda to the story or a sentimental cop-out on Kurosawa’s part, we’ll be debating that for generations to come. (1950, 88 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
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Akira Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW (Japan)
Tuesday, 9:15pm and Wednesday, 6:30pm
Akira Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW is a film about the haves and the have nots, the rich and the working class, and the moralities that lie between those distinctions. Kingo Gondo (Toshirô Mifune) is an executive at National Shoes and lives a luxurious life in a nice home on top of a hill that overlooks the city with his wife, son, and servants. In the midst of making a power play that would see him gain majority control of the company’s stock, a kidnapping occurs that leaves him on the hook to pay a ransom of 30 million Yen. The trouble is that money was earmarked to pay for the stock and he’s borrowed against his entire livelihood to obtain it. HIGH AND LOW is told primarily through two vantage points, Gondo’s and the police detectives in charge of tracking down the kidnappers. Kurosawa pointedly displays the distinctions between the two parties’ social class. Gondo is rarely seen leaving his air-conditioned mansion and is clad in fine suits. He lives his life in absolutes and with his own best interests always coming first. Meanwhile the detectives are seen in their sweat-soaked shirts cramped into tiny rooms trying to solve the case for him and to garner him public sympathy. The film provides excellent commentary on the effects of capitalism in postwar Japan, but beyond that, HIGH AND LOW is just a thrilling game of cat and mouse. The plot devices that Kurosawa employs to ramp up the tension are quite clever; one scene that takes place aboard a train is a masterpiece of editing and shot composition. A movie about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, HIGH AND LOW’s message about social inequality continues to resonate. (1963, 143 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kyle Cubr]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Don’t Fence Me In: A Clint Eastwood Series

The Davis Theater – See showtimes below

Don Siegel's DIRTY HARRY (US)
Sunday, 7pm
Don Siegel began his filmmaking career as an editor in the 1930s, contributing to notable projects like CASABLANCA (1942) before transitioning to directing. His first two short films won Academy Awards, establishing his reputation and paving the way for a prolific career. Throughout the 1950s, Siegel became renowned as a master of B movies, crafting tightly paced narratives laced with intelligent subtext. His 1956 sci-fi classic INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS deftly allegorized Cold War-era fears of communism under the guise of alien infiltration. Siegel’s creative partnership with Clint Eastwood began with COOGAN’S BLUFF (1968), a blueprint for the hyper-masculine cop archetype that would later define Inspector Harry Callahan in DIRTY HARRY. This collaboration flourished WITH TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA (1970) and THE BEGUILED (1971) before culminating in their most iconic effort, DIRTY HARRY. Examining Siegel's earlier works is crucial to understanding the film. Upon its release, critics were polarized. Many celebrated its vigilante cop as a voice of justice in a failing system, while Pauline Kael decried its right-wing fantasies and simplistic societal critiques, highlighting the action genre’s latent flirtation with fascism. Modern audiences might view the film as a prescient critique of police overreach, framing Harry as an "All Cops Are Bad" archetype. Set in San Francisco, DIRTY HARRY opens with a sniper, Scorpio, killing a rooftop swimmer, underscored by Lalo Schifrin's quintessential cop-thriller score. Scorpio taunts the police with ransom demands, while Callahan has been working the case. Callahan’s disdain for bureaucracy and his relentless pursuit of justice quickly establish him as an antihero. A standout early sequence cements Harry’s reputation: mid-hotdog at a diner, he spots an idling car outside a bank. Sensing a robbery, he preps for action, ultimately thwarting the criminals in a dramatic shootout that includes his iconic line: “Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?” While thrilling, the sequence exemplifies the recklessness of the “loose cannon cop,” a trope that continues to define action films. DIRTY HARRY also serves as a cultural catharsis for a city reeling from the Zodiac Killer's terror. Siegel parallels Scorpio with Zodiac, caricaturing him as a sniveling, misogynistic, and ineffectual villain which must have infuriated the actual Zodiac. Andrew Robinson’s portrayal includes subtle nods to emasculation, underscored by Scorpio’s flustered remark upon seeing Harry’s gun: “My, that’s a big one.” The film’s narrative escalates as Harry’s pursuit of Scorpio clashes with legal constraints. Scorpio’s sobbing invocation of his rights, coupled with the inadmissibility of evidence due to Harry’s lack of a warrant, underscores the system’s failures. Unrestrained, Scorpio abducts a school bus, forcing Harry to abandon protocol entirely to save the children. In Harry’s own words, “Now you know why they call me Dirty Harry, they give me every dirty job that comes along.” Critics accused DIRTY HARRY of glorifying police brutality and endorsing vigilante justice, while others argued it condemned an ineffectual judicial system. Siegel himself described Callahan as a borderline vigilante whose disillusionment with bureaucracy fuels his extralegal actions. Eastwood, in contrast, saw Harry as a man bound to his badge despite his disdain for the system. Siegel’s signature fast pacing, nuanced social commentary, and gritty aesthetic made DIRTY HARRY a cultural touchstone of its era. More than a cop thriller, it’s a lens through which societal anxieties and the complexities of justice are refracted. Revisiting it today, the film remains a compelling artifact, equal parts provocative and entertaining, proving that in cinema—and law enforcement—nothing is ever black and white. . (1971, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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Clint Eastwood’s THE GAUNTLET (US)
Wednesday, 7pm
Writing about SUDDEN IMPACT in 1983, Dave Kehr posited that Clint Eastwood was New Hollywood’s answer to Buster Keaton insofar as he was a director-performer whose oeuvre as a filmmaker grew out of his restraint and under-reaction as an actor. To extend this analogy a bit further, THE GAUNTLET would be Eastwood’s THE NAVIGATOR, an action-comedy that bases its humor on the star’s stoicism amidst ridiculously outsized set pieces. Eastwood plays Phoenix cop Ben Shockley, a comic inversion of his Dirty Harry character. Shockley may be a lone wolf on the force, but that’s because he’s perpetually drunk and disorganized and nobody wants to work with him. Early on in THE GAUNTLET, Shockley gets assigned to transport a witness in a murder trial from Las Vegas back to Phoenix, unaware he’s been set up to get killed. The witness, a sex worker named Gus Mally (Sondra Locke), is poised to testify against a powerful mob boss, and not only does every gangster in the Southwest have orders to shoot her (and whoever she’s with) on her sight, so does every police officer in the region! And so, everywhere Shockley and Mally go, they’re assailed upon by dozens, if not hundreds, of gunmen. Along the way, she surprises him with her determination and intelligence, while he in turn surprises her with his chivalry (this development anticipates a trend in Eastwood’s later period of characters having their prejudices upended). They also fall in love. This was the second of six features that Eastwood and Locke made together while they were a couple in real life, and their easy chemistry goes a long way in setting the film’s effervescent tone. At times, THE GAUNTLET feels like a violent spin on an Astaire and Rogers musical, with shootouts taking the place of song and dance numbers. Eastwood’s work behind the camera adds further to the heightened movie-movie reality. The film teems with camera movements that Kehr once described as “near-Ophülsian,” while the action sequences display the sort of grandeur you’d expect from someone who made his name working for Sergio Leone. Of all of Eastwood’s directorial efforts, THE GAUNTLET may be the most purely entertaining. (1977, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CLOUD (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Genre master Kiyoshi Kurosawa (PULSE, CURE) revisits familiar territory with a modern twist in his latest film, an anti-capitalist techno-horror that criticizes the rising gig economy with a combination of dark humor and violence. Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is trying to make some quick money reselling items online at markup. Some success leads him to quit his factory job and he, his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), and a loyal assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), relocate to a remote mountain home to continue business. But his new life is interrupted by strange visitors; many of Yoshii’s items were fakes or faulty, and his buyers are not happy. His handle, "Ratel," is being called out on online message boards as untrustworthy and a ragtag gang of disgruntled customers are rallying to enact vengeance for being duped in person. The seemingly impersonal internet transaction is suddenly taken very personally. It’s a slow build with a few uncanny moments to start, but CLOUD becomes more intriguing as its themes come into focus. It is a film about the gamification of internet-based commerce, and how that plays out in real life. Repeating shots of Yoshii staring blankly at his computer screen as he waits for his posted items to sell are the most unnerving and effective moments; he appears hypnotized, suggesting both the allure and emptiness of his endeavors. While Kurosawa’s cinematography is steely blue and gray, reflecting the coldness of the internet, Yoshii’s stare implies the online space is also always being internalized by the user, with real-world consequences. (2024, 123 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Jafar Panahi's CRIMSON GOLD (Iran)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Abbas Kiarostami receives screenplay credit on Jafar Panahi’s fourth feature, CRIMSON GOLD, and one of the many compelling things about the film is how it plays like an inversion of Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY. That film told the story of one man’s efforts to find someone to bury him after he commits suicide; the hero’s quest, which confirms his connection to other people, is ultimately life-affirming in spite of its morbid nature. CRIMSON GOLD opens with a botched robbery that ends with the hero’s suicide, then flashes back to show the days leading up to that event; it’s a despairing journey that builds upon Panahi’s depiction of modern-day Tehran as an unforgiving hellhole that he introduced in THE CIRCLE. As in TASTE OF CHERRY, the hero’s progress is marked by three encounters, though here, the hero doesn’t initiate them. Hossain is a pizza delivery man, and the people he meets on his deliveries tend to regard him from the start as a social inferior. (Compare this with the gratitude with which the strangers regard Mr. Badii when he offers them rides in his SUV.) Each encounter reminds Hossain of his powerlessness within Iranian society, though, ironically, each one hinges on a moment of camaraderie. In the first, Hossain recognizes his customer as a military buddy from the Iran-Iraq War; the old acquaintance, embarrassed to see Hossain reduced to delivering pizzas, leaves Hossain with kind words and a handsome tip. The delivery man is unable to complete his second delivery, as the apartment building he’s supposed to enter has been surrounded by a police tactical unit, which waits in ambush for people leaving a party with illegal drinking and dancing on the second floor. The officer in charge of the unit berates Hossain for trying to enter the building, but forbids him from leaving the scene, since he could find a phone somewhere and warn the partygoers about their impending arrest. Hossain has a poignant conversation with a teenage soldier before deciding to share his undelivered pizzas with policemen lying in wait. The third key encounter of CRIMSON GOLD takes place in the high-rise condo of a rich man whose apartment has just been vacated by two female guests. Feeling spurned and lonely, the rich man invites Hossain in for dinner. He’s much nicer to Hossain than the wealthy jewelry store owner who’d condescended to him in an earlier scene; still, the apparent randomness of the rich man’s kindness—which Hossain clearly recognizes—speaks to the great, and likely insurmountable, social divide between him and Hossain. Like Kiarostami’s decision to place the hero’s death at the start of the movie, the scene in the high-rise makes Hossain’s act of desperation seem inevitable. Heightening the film’s morbid air is the ghostlike lead performance by Hossain Emadeddin, an actual pizza delivery man and an actual paranoid schizophrenic. Emaddedin’s deadpan under-reaction to practically everything is almost comical, yet it also reflects the inability of isolated, working-poor individuals to impact the system that degrades them. Screening as part of the Chicago International Film Festival Presents: The (Usual) Auteur Suspects series. (2003, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Elia Kazan’s A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

If I had to guess which playwright’s work has garnered my most repeat viewings, I’m pretty sure it would be Tennessee Williams. I’ve seen most of his major plays on stage more than once, but the one to which I return again and again is A Streetcar Named Desire. It’s no wonder. It’s his best and most famous play, so it gets revived regularly. More importantly, getting lost in the poetry and epic battle between humanity’s benevolent and bestial natures is as enthralling as it is cataclysmic. When Streetcar opened on Broadway in 1947, it was a sensation that ran at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre for two years. Such success was bound to attract the attention of Hollywood, but worries at 20th Century Fox about the Production Code eviscerating its raw sexual content saw it bounce over to Warner Bros., where the original Broadway cast and director were hired to reprise their work, save for the substitution of the better-known Vivien Leigh, who played Blanche DuBois in London, for Jessica Tandy. Leigh’s interpretation, molded by her director and husband, Laurence Olivier, reportedly clashed with the American actors and director, but eventually, the ensemble found their footing as they told the story of a fragile, half-crazed Southern belle whose end of the line is in a rundown New Orleans two-flat bordered by walls ironically called Elysian Fields where her sister and brother-in-law live. Aside from an establishing shot in which Blanche emerges like a phantom from a cloud of steam at the train station and a few brief scenes, Kazan eschews opening the play up. Two sound stages demarcate the dimensions of Blanche’s prison, and his probing camera pushes us into a world where Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) and his wife Stella (Kim Hunter) loom large, and Blanche is systematically diminished. It’s intriguing to watch Leigh inhabit Blanche. As a woman who lived under an actual, if ceremonial, monarchy, Leigh’s aristocratic bearing and attachment to Belle Reve, the plantation lost to creditors, feels almost an allegory for the British loss of this colony to the vulgar, brash Americans who find their apotheosis in Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando). Stanley subscribes to populist politician Huey Long’s notion of “every man a king,” and he’s proud of dragging his wife Stella down to his primordial level. I always cringe a little when I see Stella leap into his arms, his clothes covered with axle grease from working on his car, the tug of his animal magnetism overwhelming Blanche’s just-voiced plea that Stella not hang back with the apes. This particular scene encapsulates all that is great about STREETCAR and the actors who play it. Hunter, lounging in bed after a night of passion with Stanley, is drunk with physical satisfaction tempered only by her love for Blanche. Leigh’s defense of the world in which she and Stella grew up shows Blanche at her most rational, clearly articulating her values and appealing to Blanche’s sense of self. Stanley, overhearing the conversation from the street, only has to ring his usual bell (“Hey, Stella!”) and stand looking boyish and sexy to banish her doubts. The shit-eating grin Brando gives Leigh will emerge again when Stanley decides to break her will as he did Stella’s with sex, but this time, a violent sexual assault. Leigh conveys the hysteria of Blanche, exhausted by her endless spinning of fantasies to protect her from the world. I was struck by how thin she looks in the final scene, a ghostly remnant of the past. Brando made his career with this feral, utterly irresistible portrayal of an amoral man. Despite Stella’s subordination, Hunter deftly communicates her striving for self-determination (“You take it for granted that I am in something that I want to get out of.”) within a social structure that gives her little wiggle room. Karl Malden’s Mitch, the safe harbor where Blanche hopes to find some rest, seems as guileless as Blanche is calculating. But Mitch, trapped by a sick mother he hates, is a striver in his own right who wants to be just like Stanley and rise above his station if only by being with Blanche. Everyone uses everyone in this desperate look at one version of the American Dream filtered through the lens of Tennessee Williams’ tortured transmutation of his own horrible past in this steamy, claustrophobic masterpiece. Screening as part of the Scorchers series. (1951, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Lawrence Kasdan’s BODY HEAT (US)

Davis Theater – Monday, 7pm

In BODY HEAT, everything sweats. Not just bodies, tumblers filled with cool iced tea perspire, glass fogs, reflections seem slicker. The film itself looks so hazy, it's as if condensation had gathered on the camera lens during production. Inspired by DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), BODY HEAT takes place during a Florida heatwave. Shyster lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) and Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner), wife of a wealthy businessman (Richard Crenna), cross paths on a boardwalk one evening. They immediately strike up an affair and soon hatch a wicked scheme to do harm to the husband and run away with his money; but as the plan unfolds, double-crosses abound. BODY HEAT remains a quintessential erotic film. Kathleen Turner’s confident film debut, the chemistry that drips between her and Hurt pools into one of the sexiest on-screen pairings since the invention of film. The camera roves over their bodies pressed against one another, it evokes heightened sensation—the type of lust, attraction, and sexual alchemy that makes one feel they might lose their mind in the throes of passion. You know, the type of sex that makes you feel crazy, the type of woman you would risk it all for... Its structure is that of a dream that slowly shifts into a nightmare it's too late to wake up from. BODY HEAT is about the things our bodies do in the wake of extremes: sweat, embrace, come, and sometimes, even kill. Screening as part of the Scorchers series. (1981, 113 min, 35mm) [Olivia Hunter Willke]

David Cronenberg's RABID (Canada)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

One of the highest grossing independent Canadian films of all time, RABID shot underground Toronto filmmaker David Cronenberg into the stratosphere of career possibilities. It played an essential role in garnering Cronenberg attention and credit with audiences and studios. His previous film, SHIVERS (1975), faced controversy to the extent that the director was evicted from his apartment and had great difficulty funding future projects, as his work was dismissed as too violent and overly sexual. Despite the challenges, SHIVERS was a box office hit, and its record was equaled, if not broken, by its successor. When it came time to finance RABID, the Canadian Film Development Corporation quietly funded the entire project. Cronenberg recounts wanting to submit the film to Cannes but knowing that hundreds of films just like it got submitted and were either rejected or never gained any enthusiasm from international audiences. To avoid this fate, the production knew they needed to attach a big name to the picture. Executive producer Ivan Reitman heard rumors that Marilyn Chambers, one of the biggest porn icons of the 1970s, wanted to act in "legitimate films," to which Cronenberg replied, "I’m glad someone would consider my films legitimate." Having not seen any of her work, the director agreed to audition Chambers and was moved by her work ethic. Willing to act for a lower fee, she got the role (her only non-adult film). With RABID, it feels like there is someone behind the camera saying, "I don’t have a lot at my disposal but I’m going to be bold and tell the best story I know how to right now." The then-33-year-old director would pause in the middle of shooting to tell his producers his own script didn’t make any sense: "A woman with a stinger in her armpit? It feels ridiculous to say out loud." To counter, RABID was made at a larger scale than his previous work. Not only did he take over the streets of Montreal to photograph military vehicles, but he took his time to light his actors as beautifully as he pleased. From the opening push-in for Chambers’ closeup on the motorcycle until the end, where garbage men are throwing bodies in trucks, it’s his first film to display a new flare of cinematic sensibility. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1977, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

Éric Rohmer’s LA COLLECTIONNEUSE (France)

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

The first feature-length film of Eric Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales” was also the director’s first work in color, and boy does he ever take advantage of it. Working with master cinematographer Nestor Almendros, Rohmer creates an intoxicating portrait of a world in bloom. The imagery is simple—grass, stones, water, and sand are recurring visual motifs—yet vividly rendered; many of the shots achieve a transcendent beauty. In classical fashion, form mirrors content, with characters musing and acting on their notions of the beautiful. (As always Rohmer creates the impression that he would have been very much at home in the late 18th century.) Adrien (Patrick Bauchau) is a 30-ish art collector who gets left alone when his fashion model girlfriend leaves for London for six weeks one summer. He decides to idle away the time at the country manor of a distant acquaintance; joining him are another dandyish friend, Daniel (Daniel Pommereulle), and Haydée (Haydée Politoff), a gaminish woman about ten years their junior. Haydée likes to sleep around, and Adrien, who has little else to do, amuses himself by wondering whether she’ll sleep with him. Adrien also narrates LA COLLECTIONNEUSE, and the film is subtly modernist how it draws attention to the subjective viewpoint behind the images. Consider a conversation between Adrien and Haydée on a beach; as the latter talks, Rohmer cuts to a flattering shot of the young woman’s bare legs—clearly a reflection of what Adrien is thinking about. Subjectivity informs the images in subtler ways, as when Adrien’s self-aggrandizing narration undercuts the natural beauty that’s all around him. And then there’s the dialogue, which Rohmer wrote in collaboration with the three leads. Few filmmakers make conversation seem as erotic as Rohmer did; the discussions of beauty are delivered so sensuously and suggestively that they intimate physical pleasure better than almost any rendering of lovemaking in cinema. Screening as part of the Éric Rohmer: Four Summer Films series. (1967, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Rusty Cundieff’s TALES FROM THE HOOD (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 9:30pm

In horror anthologies stretching back to DEAD OF NIGHT (1945), the success of the film often hinges on the host. In TALES FROM THE HOOD, Rusty Cundieff rises to the occasion. Clarence Williams III plays Mr. Simms, an eccentric mortician who lures a trio of drug dealers into his funeral home with promises of "the good shit." Instead, they are given a tour of four harrowing stories, each revealed through a coffin and each designed to expose a facet of American horror through a distinctly Black lens. The framing device pays homage to TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972), and as each casket opens, the men unknowingly approach their own demise. What Cundieff and co-writer Darin Scott deliver is a masterfully structured quartet of morality tales: corrupt cops, child abuse, racist politicians, and the cyclical violence of gang culture. "Rogue Cop Revelation" is a visceral tale of guilt and vengeance, where a Black officer’s failure to stop his white colleagues from murdering a civil rights activist results in supernatural justice. "Boys Do Get Bruised," drawn from Cundieff’s childhood friend, shows a boy weaponizing his drawings to fight back against domestic abuse. David Alan Grier’s performance as the monster is a highlight. In "KKK Comeuppance," a racist politician is punished by dolls possessed by the souls of murdered slaves. It's a mix of TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975) and EC Comics irony. The final tale, "Hard-Core Convert," explores the failure of the American prison system, utilizing A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) brand of rehabilitation that doesn’t phase a convict who vows he cannot change. In Rosalind Cash’s final theatrical film role, she plays Dr. Cushing (an homage to Peter Cushing), a mad scientist hellbent on using visual stimuli along with sensory deprivation to curb violent impulses or make an army of white supremacists. Williams’ Mr. Simms sets the tone with his unhinged charisma, culminating in a reveal that places the entire film in a purgatorial hellscape. The campy aesthetic with killer dolls, a Satanic tongue inspired by Jafar's transformation into a snake in ALADDIN (1992), matte paintings, and flawless practical effects by Screaming Mad George all culminate into an intentional levity that coexists with the gravity of the themes. TALES FROM THE HOOD was relevant enough to garner two sequels with Cundieff directing and an interchangeable master of ceremonies. With Williams retiring from acting, both Keith David and Tony Todd took on caretaker duties for the subsequent films. Anthony B. Richmond, known for his cinematography in CANDYMAN (1992) and DON’T LOOK NOW (1973), elevates this omnibus beyond its budget or its camp elements. TALES FROM THE HOOD is not just timely, it’s timeless. Released in 1995 and shaped by Rodney King, Jesse Helms, and gang violence, its relevance persists in the era of Black Lives Matter, Trumpism, and continuing displays of ACAB. Its brilliance lies in its tonal balance: horror and humor, outrage and absurdity. Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott crafted a socially conscious portmanteau film that cuts deep—and still manages to entertain. The scariest thing about TALES FROM THE HOOD? We’re still living in it. (1995, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Darren Thorton’s A DATE FOR MAD MARY (Ireland)

Cinema/Chicago at the Chicago History Museum – Wednesday, 6:30pm [Free Admission]

Cinema is awash in movements and styles, from Cinema Novo and film noir to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Over the years, I feel like I’ve stumbled upon another distinct cinematic style that hasn’t made a dent in the scholarly discourse—the Irish way with interpersonal relationships. THE COMMITMENTS (1991), BROOKLYN (2015), THE QUIET GIRL (2022), THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN (2023), even an overtly political film like HUNGER (2008) all rely on deeply felt human interactions to tell their stories. One film in this unnamed movement is A DATE FOR MAD MARY, a gently humorous look at one young woman’s discovery of herself. The film opens with 23-year-old Mary McArdle (Seána Kerslake) being released after six months in jail and waiting impatiently for her mother (Denise McCormack) to pick her up. She calls her best friend Charlene (Charleigh Bailey) to go clubbing with her that night, but Char is busy planning her wedding. Mary goes alone and picks a fight, prompting security to turn her away, a regular occurrence for her. In the morning, Char reminds Mary of the tasks she has to do as maid of honor, guarding against Mary’s irresponsible tendencies. During one of those tasks, Mary meets Jess (Tara Lee), a videographer and musician. She coerces Jess into canceling a band gig to film Char’s wedding, and an attraction sparks. As Mary half-consciously pursues Jess, the true shape of her closest relationships come into focus. The title of the film refers to Mary’s attempts to get a +1 to take to Char’s wedding, a pursuit that provides most of the comedy in the film The heart of it, however, is Mary’s belated coming of age. Seána Kerslake has charisma to burn, burnishing her sullen, combative Mary with a luminosity that’s more than skin deep. Even as she insults and disparages most of the people she meets, her voiceover narration of the speech she wants to give about Char at the wedding shows her deep, abiding affection for and attachment to the person who made her feel she belonged. But Mary is stuck in adolescence—a self-centered child who doesn’t realize she actually has an effect on those around her. She can’t see that Char has decided to move on and doesn’t understand why Char is avoiding her. Charleigh Bailey plays Char as a shrew who is actively mean to Mary, but it is not until the end of the film that we realize that Char hasn’t really grown up either, but perhaps is escaping her own personal reckoning by burying herself in a conventional life, one in which she can sneer at people like Mary without being condemned for it. Tara Lee’s understated, natural performance marks Jess as the most self-actualized character in the film and a worthy foil for Kerslake’s Mary. The film’s somewhat episodic structure leaves a few holes in the narrative, but allows Thornton to shorthand important plot points, such as Mary coming face to face with the woman whose face she slashed and who sent her to jail. Taken together, A DATE FOR MAD MARY forms an affecting portrait of a universal human experience. Please note that tickets for this event are standby only. (2016, 82 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 8:15pm

Spike Lee's long and prolific career has been maddeningly uneven but he is also, in the words of his idol Billy Wilder, a "good, lively filmmaker." Lee's best and liveliest film is probably his third feature, 1989's DO THE RIGHT THING, which shows racial tensions coming to a boil on the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Lee himself stars as Mookie, a black deliveryman working for a white-owned pizzeria in a predominantly black community. A series of minor conflicts between members of the large ensemble cast (including Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, and John Turturro) escalates into a full-blown race riot in the film's incendiary and unforgettable climax. While the movie is extremely political, it is also, fortunately, no didactic civics lesson: Lee is able to inspire debate about hot-button issues without pushing an agenda or providing any easy answers. This admirable complexity is perhaps best exemplified by two seemingly incompatible closing-credits quotes—by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X—about the ineffectiveness and occasional necessity of violence, respectively. It is also much to Lee's credit that, as provocative and disturbing as the film at times may be, it is also full of great humor and warmth, qualities perfectly brought out by the ebullient cast and the exuberant color cinematography of Ernest Dickerson. Screening as part of the Scorchers series. (1989, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Amy Heckerling’s CLUELESS (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – See Venue website for showtimes

There’s magic to be found in CLUELESS’ ability to transcend eras. It’s arguably not just the best cinematic version of Emma but among the greatest of any Jane Austen adaptation. Set and released in 1995, it’s also a perfect time capsule of mid-'90s American pop culture; in fact, the film’s fashions and slang have since become stand-in icons for the decade as a whole. Amy Heckerling (FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH) sets her Emma in Beverly Hills, and reflected the niche upper-class culture she saw there, which continues to influence American pop culture at large. With '90s fashion trending, CLUELESS is still present, though I’d argue its looming influence never waned, even when that decade fell out of favor. It’s one of the most '90s films ever made, but it never felt dated. Heckerling's sharp script keeps the film as fresh as ever, with smart one-liners that are funny as well as completely character driven; it’s an endlessly quotable film—“Ugh, as if!”—but it never feels excessive. Ambitious high school match-maker Cher (a dazzling Alicia Silverstone) is so positive in her goal to set up everyone around her, that she fails to recognize not only their needs but also her own desires. Her sweetness and willingness to help others make her easily lovable, though the film does take her journey to self-reflection seriously, not letting her off the hook for her mistakes. Silverstone's spectacular center performance is supported by a great overall cast, including Brittany Murphy as Cher’s latest makeover project, Paul Rudd as her disaffected college-aged stepbrother, and Dan Hedaya as her overprotective but loving father. A teen movie, too, CLUELESS features the traditional tropes: a party scene, classroom shenanigans, and multiple fashion and makeover montages. Cher’s outfits are unrivaled in terms of memorable film wardrobes, particularly because Heckerling makes fashion a key plot point, emphasizing its importance to the characters themselves. In addition to its iconic fashions, CLUELESS boasts a killer '90s soundtrack—including Beastie Boys and Counting Crows. It balances everything it does with such precision, and the result is one of the great effortlessly enjoyable films that will continue to delight viewers new and old. (1995, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

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

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Kei Ishikawa’s 2022 film A MAN (121 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center. Please note that tickets are standby only.

A members’ screening of Amy Berg’s 2025 documentary IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY (98 min, DCP Digital) takes place Tuesday, 7pm, at the AMC NEWCITY 14. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Leo McCarey’s 1932 film THE KID FROM SPAIN (96 min, 16mm) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the Pre-Code Musicals on Film series. More info here.

⚫ FACETS
Sweet Void Cinema presents Afterglow, a curated selection of short films that offer a snapshot of what local filmmakers have been working on, on Friday starting at 7pm, followed by a Q&A.

The Third Space Film Fest takes place Saturday starting at 1pm. Free admission. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Victor Kossakovsky’s 2024 documentary ARCHITECTON (98 min, DCP Digital) and Mstyslav Chernov’s 2025 documentary 2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA (106 min, DCP Digital) begin screening. See Venue website for showtimes. More info on all screenings here. 

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

Ari Aster’s 2025 film EDDINGTON (148 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.

The 2025 edition of CatVideoFest (73 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am and Tuesday at 7pm. 10% of all ticket proceeds will be donated to Red Door Animal Shelter.

Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 film MORTAL KOMBAT (101 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at 11:15pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.)
“The Act of Recording is an Act of Love: The South Side Home Movie Project” exhibition is on display in the Gallery through Sunday, August 24.

A.V. Rockwell’s 2023 film A THOUSAND AND ONE (116 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 1pm, as part of the Mothering on Screen: Film + Discussion series. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
“Dog Days: Superimposing the Canine,” programmed by Cine-File contributor Elise Schierbeek and with films by Jesse McLean, Ken Kobland, and Matthew Lax, streams free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: August 1, 2025 - August 7, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Kyle Cubr, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith, Brian Welesko, Olivia Hunter Willke