📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Mike Nichols’ CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Wednesday, 6:45pm
It’s hard to think of two people more suited to team up on CARNAL KNOWLEDGE than its director, Mike Nichols, and Jules Feiffer, who wrote the screenplay. Both men were often savage social critics, and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE is a dart aimed squarely at the confusions and conceits of the hairy ape that was the bourgeois American male during the 1950s and ’60s—a species by no means headed for extinction. They ridicule male immaturity and expose the quiet tragedy of the stereotypes about women their protagonists accept and act upon without question within the milieu of upper crust society. The film opens with Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel), best friends and incoming freshmen at Amherst, speaking in voiceover about what they want in a woman. Sandy yearns for understanding and, of course, sex, but it’s not the most important thing. Jonathan wants a woman, preferably with big tits, to go all the way with him while admitting he would lose respect for her. At a mixer, Smith freshman Susan (Candice Bergen) walks past them, drawing their attention. Jonathan “gives” her to Sandy, so sure that if he has first crack at her, he’ll score. Sandy fluffs his first attempt to chat her up and is only saved in his second try when Susan breaks the ice first. They engage in the kind of pseudo-intellectual b.s. college students can’t seem to resist, testing their intellectual muscles around the sensitive topic of emotional honesty. Susan starts seeing Sandy, but balks at his attempts to get sexual. She finally gives him a hand job, a dubious triumph Sandy shares with his best friend. Jonathan instantly jumps at the chance for a piece of ass and calls Susan up. That she goes out with him shows she’s pretty typical in wanting to appear nice but actually break the rules with those seemingly irresistible bad boys of the world. Jonathan takes her virginity outside on the leaf-strewn ground, and their affair is off and running. Despite Jonathan’s pleas and declaration of love, Susan refuses to tell Sandy about him. Instead, the film takes a leap in time, and we learn that Susan and Sandy, now a physician, are married with children, and Jonathan is a businessman whose madonna/whore complex has transformed into thinking that all females are ballbusters. CARNAL KNOWLEDGE put me in mind of an anthropological study by Margaret Mead, say, Coming of Age in Samoa or Male and Female. Many of the shots are static, framing a scene or a face full on, taking advantage of cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno’s lush eye for photographing an exotic subculture with clinical distance, both characteristics he displayed to perfection in Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD (1963). One rather unnerving scene shows Bergen laughing almost uncontrollably as Nicholson and Garfunkel speak out of frame on either side of her, trapped between her physical desires and her intellectual and material needs. Much has been said about Ann-Margret’s touching performance as Bobbie, the woman who finally “conquers” Jonathan. In a cute scene of seduction in which Jonathan tries to guess Bobbie’s age, Feiffer gets at the underlying cruelty—Bobbie is 29, a desperate age for women then seeking respectability in family life. Extending Rotunno’s anthropological eye, when Jonathan and Bobbie have sex for the first time, Nichols directs the camera smoothly through Jonathan’s apartment, going from room to room and up hallways until we are in earshot of the couple’s sex noises and ending with a shadowy shot of them in bed just as they both climax. He goes for the money shot he knows audiences want—Ann-Margret naked—but lets us pretend that, like children, we just happened to stumble in on the primal scene. Nichols suggests that Jonathan may not be so different from Bobbie, with women out of his emotional league using him for sex and then dropping him back at his metaphorical corner. Early in the film, he trains the camera on Jonathan’s dejected face as an oblivious Sandy and Susan bustle and chatter in the margins of the screen. Predictably, Jonathan just ends up being really creepy, inserting a picture of his daughter into the slideshow of his love life, “Ballbusters on Parade.” In some ways, I wanted to feel sympathetic toward Sandy and Jonathan, but Feiffer and Nichols were having none of that. This is a look at the dark soul of masculinity that saves its heart for its women. (1971, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Olivier Assayas’ SUSPENDED TIME (France)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
For so many, the COVID-19 pandemic was a period of great anxiety, stress, and grief. For others, it occasioned a welcome reprieve from daily social pressures and an opportunity to take up other routines and activities. If the protagonist of his latest auto-fictional work is anything to go by, Olivier Assayas belonged to the latter group. His onscreen surrogate, Paul, finds a sense of restoration when he returns to his childhood home in provincial Northern France to spend the lockdown (the house is the real one where Assayas grew up). There, he is reunited with his younger brother Étienne; both men have recently gone through divorces and are accompanied by new girlfriends. As the pandemic marches uncertainly on, the quartet while away their time playing party games, conducting Zoom meetings, and talking a lot about literature and film. Meanwhile, tensions comically spike between neurotic germaphobe Paul and the nonchalant Étienne, particularly over proper COVID-19 prevention measures. SUSPENDED TIME is not interested in conflict, however. Assayas instead crafts a droll pastoral essay that uses the idle time created by the pandemic to muse digressively on relationships, memory, and the value of art, at times showing stills of beloved paintings and books. The film of his it most resembles is SUMMER HOURS (2008), with its emphasis on family heirlooms and sibling squabbles and its gleaming images of bucolic countryside. In an opening narration over static shots of his home and the surrounding property, Assayas remarks that time stands still here, a notion later reinforced by what Paul calls the “miraculous time-out” of pandemic life. Yet SUSPENDED TIME simultaneously gives the lie to this idea as the director describes all the people and things that are no longer there. The film draws its power not so much from its wistful remembrance of the past as from the way it embodies a present moment inevitably becoming part of it. (2024, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Robert Altman’s A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 2pm
While the Kansas City stoner made some of the most tonally bizarre films of the New Hollywood era, Robert Altman also directed some of the coziest storytelling of the early 21st century. Based on the Minnesota Public Radio weekly radio show hosted by Garrison Keillor (who scripted the film and plays a fictionalized version of himself), A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION follows the variety hour in its "final performance" (the real show wasn't killed until years after this was made) at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Minneapolis, which a Texas corporation plans to tear down and turn into a parking lot. In the dressing room, cluttered with tchotchkes and faded photos, we meet Lola (Lindsay Lohan) and her mother and her aunt, the singing team of Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin). Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) is a PI running security for the performance. In the night, a “dangerous woman” (Virginia Madsen) in white lurks around the theatre, announcing herself an angel with the intention of taking someone to heaven. Altman directed PRAIRIE at 81 and in declining health, and insurers wouldn’t back him unless he had someone ready to step in, pending his incapacitation; Paul Thomas Anderson shadowed Altman throughout filming and assisted with creative input. Working with digital cameras, Altman covers rather than frames actors, exploring improvised relationships within limited interior sets, an approach he first developed in his theatrical adaptations and TV work of the 1980s. No matter how big the space he was working in, however, Altman was one the great world builders of American cinema; here, he reminds us that this world is a flimsy, artificial construction that must inevitably end. The movie orbits around the notion of mortality and an anxious acceptance of the rules of life. Keillor’s refusal to stop for a eulogy, his impulse to go on with the show—perhaps rooted in a fear of stopping—sums up Altman’s career. The film, like life itself, is about nothing and everything; it's about remembering and treasuring the past, but recognizing that all things must pass. The dying showman reminds us to have a good time because things won’t last forever. Screening as part of the Robert Altman Centennial series. (2006, 105 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]
Lucio Fulci’s DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING (Italy)
Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
Giallo plot mechanics are inherently convoluted. Their pleasures lie less in recalling the killer’s identity than in drifting through tangles of suspicion, red herrings, and psychological digressions. The genre’s gallery of suspects keeps audiences guessing, though its detours can lead to dead ends. Lucio Fulci’s DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING epitomizes this quality: even after multiple viewings, the killer slips from memory, while the paranoia, superstition, and social fracture linger. Unlike the American slasher cycle of the 1980s, giallo narratives embrace obsessive character studies, stalled investigations, and dreamlike excess. Fulci’s career uniquely prepared him for this blend of pulp and critique. By 1972, he had directed more than 20 films across the genres of comedy, western, crime, and satire. His first giallo, ONE ON TOP OF ANOTHER (1969), predated Dario Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970), a point Fulci touted proudly. Yet while Argento elevated murder set pieces, DUCKLING marked Fulci’s decisive turn toward provocation and taboo. Its shock lies not in gore, but in its violation of innocence. The opening images of boys roaming the countryside, teasing a peeping tom, and lazing under the sun could serve as a slasher preamble. In the American model, such scenes foreshadow a killer targeting the kids, who are now teens. Fulci just kills the kids. Though the murders aren’t shown in lingering detail, the idea is so destabilizing that the film remains disturbing 50 years later. The community’s reaction spirals into madness. Police fumble through contradictory confessions; a mute child seems to harbor elusive knowledge; villagers erupt in scapegoating. A sorcerer molds mud dolls, accused witches are flogged with chains, and Barbara Bouchet’s cosmopolitan outsider scandalizes locals by attempting to seduce a prepubescent boy. The narrative doesn’t solve a mystery, though; it dissects the collapse of institutions when terror grips a provincial society. The film’s critique of Catholic dogma and rural superstition led to its being censored across Europe and long undistributed in the US. The production itself caused scandal. Fulci was arrested on child endangerment charges tied to Bouchet’s seduction scene. The case was dismissed after evidence showed body doubles and separate close-ups protected minors, but Fulci endured interrogation and detention. Just a year earlier, he faced accusations of animal cruelty after the vivisected dogs of A LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN appeared too real; effects master Carlo Rambaldi had to testify in court to confirm the illusion. In DUCKLING, Fulci shows restraint in depicting the child murders, yet he stages one baroque gore spectacle for the killer’s demise including fractured bone, spurting blood, and, thanks to a faulty dummy, even sparks. At once grotesque and absurd, it foreshadows his reign as the “Godfather of Gore.” But spectacle isn’t the final note. The film positions the village as a microcosm of 1970s Italy, where Catholic repression, fear of modernity, and rigid hierarchies fermented violence. Fulci suggests that when a society suppresses sexuality, denies inquiry, and clings to superstition, it breeds not order but hysteria and bloodshed. DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING is less a whodunit than an anatomy of social panic, and it endures as one of Fulci’s most unsettling and essential works. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesdays series. (1972, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE OR NOT TO BE (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
When TO BE OR NOT TO BE was released, it was understandably treated as a dybbuk in clown's clothing—a doubly insensitive vulgarity that mocked the ongoing holocaust in Europe while likewise disgracing the memory of hardscrabble, All-American goddess Carole Lombard. (She had died in a plane crash one month before the film's premiere—on a war-bond tour, in fact, which elevated the movie's poor taste to an aura of unpatriotism.) We can laugh more easily at the jokes these days—the post-GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961) epics have chipped away at the reverence that once encrusted combat movies, making WWII merely the backdrop for dad's go-to action sweet spot—but we shouldn't diminish TO BE OR NOT TO BE either by plucking it out of that moment. As a moral statement for 1942, it's difficult to imagine a more complex and courageous movie, especially coming from a German Jew. (TO BE OR NOT TO BE, its every gag wrapped up in real-time argument and exegesis, is also conceivably the most Jewish movie ever made.) The genius of TO BE OR NOT TO BE is that it views Nazis, for all their terror and malevolence, as pathetic vessels of self-parody—feckless fascists whose Sieg heil shibboleths weakly conceal the intellectual and spiritual void at the center of their project. It's social psychology in the guise of comedy. Two decades before Hannah Arendt, Lubitsch demonstrates the banality of evil, treating the hilarious Concentration Camp Ehrhardt as an emblematic figure—a status-seeking bureaucrat who cannot comprehend his absurd indistinction. Lubitsch conveys this farcicality through repetition of a single joke. Ehrhardt, or Tura as Ehrhardt, respectively amuses himself or gets out of a sticky situation by repeatedly asking, “So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt?” Typically not one to linger on a joke longer than is necessary, Lubitsch conveys a sense of humorous futility through such a comic faux pas. Ultimately, its subject is illegitimacy—artistic, sexual, and political. The treatment of actors and lovers is just as nuanced as its politics, and essentially in parallel. The only object for the individual Nazi is to repudiate any suggestion that he is a subpar black shirt, wherever that may lead. (As Andrew Sarris observed, "For Lubitsch, it was sufficient to say that Hitler had bad manners, and no evil was then inconceivable.") The same logic prevails for Jack Benny’s Joseph Tura and the rest of his theatrical troupe, always asserting personal integrity through maximal performance, textual intent be damned. Screening as part of the Cinema of Resistance series. (1942, 99 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs and K.A. Westphal]
William A. Seiter’s WHY BE GOOD? (US/Silent)
Northbrook Public Library – Wednesday, 2pm and 7pm
If you need a magnum full of sparkling, 1920s joie de vivre, then WHY BE GOOD? Is the film for you. Colleen Moore, my favorite silent film star and a great friend to the Chicago film community, is at her best as appropriately named Pert Kelly, a vivacious flapper whose room is filled with awards from Charleston dance competitions. Pert acts like a liberated woman, going out every night and earning her own money, but she has remained a “good girl” who only throws around the suggestive slang of the day and struts like an amorous peacock to keep from being humiliated for her innocence. She catches the eye of Winthrop Peabody Jr. (Neil Hamilton), the handsome heir to a fortune and the spitting image of the Arrow Collar Man, bringing the title of the film into play to determine their fate. While the outcome is never in doubt—how could ANYONE resist Colleen Moore at her most adorable—the journey to the happy ending of marriage and Winthrop learning the Charleston is a great ride. WHY BE GOOD? provides a wonderful window into life during the Roaring ’20s. The fashions, the march of thousands of young women into the workforce and a kind of liberation their Victorian predecessors could only dream of, the breakdown of class distinctions all make this a fascinating snapshot of a time much mythologized. Yet, the values of the older generation, represented here by Ma and Pa Kelly (the beatific Bodil Rosing and gruff John St. Polis), guide Pert’s choices. That she must prove to Winthrop that she’s a good girl may bristle nowadays, but it is perfectly in keeping with the times. In fact, the sentiment she expresses is quite modern: “Who is it demands the kissing and the spooning—who but you—you men—Nowadays? I suppose you’d like me if I wore long skirts and mittens and sat home knitting socks? Yes you would! You men! You insist on a girl being just what you want—and then you bawl her for being it.” Director William Seiter keeps the action moving and does a stellar job of featuring the dancing and partying of the Lost Generation. The comic roué (Louis Natheaux) is appropriately oily and Winthrop Sr. (Edward Martinel) understanding, but cautious on his son’s behalf. The set of The Boiler Room, a nightclub where Pert and Winthrop get acquainted, gets its Deco look right. The only flaw I saw was at Winthrop’s party, where the women all wore their cloche hats seemingly in anticipation of the direction that they all leave at once. WHY BE GOOD? made me wish the party would have never ended. With live piano accompaniment by David Drazin. (1929, 81 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Alex Russell’s LURKER (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Sometimes a movie feels innately connected to the moment it's released, as if the film’s existence was sparked by an alchemical reaction to the culture around it. This isn’t to say that Alex Russell’s LURKER isn’t walking on well-trod cinematic ground; the horrors of parasocial fans wreaking havoc on their celebrities of choice have been mined in films as varied as THE KING OF COMEDY (1982) and PERFECT BLUE (1997). But LURKER feels particularly tied to our current moment, specifically its relationship to the way social media and surveillance culture have shaped our perception of celebrity. Just this week, the engagement of a billionaire pop star to a professional football player was deemed breaking news on the level of governmental malfeasance and international war crimes, the personal lives of the rich and famous receiving as much journalistic real estate as a fascist uprising. The latter news item likely wouldn’t even cross the mind of Théodore Pellerin’s Matthew; his mind is focused solely on the world around up-and-coming musician Oliver (a dazzling Archie Madekwe), a British pop singer who swallows Matthew into his orbit practically as a lark. Kindness gives way to artistic collaboration and tight-knit friendship, as Matthew exchanges his humdrum life working in retail for the opulence and vacuity of Oliver’s fame, joining an entourage of yes men unwilling to burst the bubble of Oliver’s celebrity. Pellerin—his bulging eyes filling up the screen, his grin indecipherably inviting—commands LURKER, his every move becoming more harrowing and maniacal, his physical performance shifting between a house cat and a mountain lion, forever trying to suss out how he can manipulate those around him to further entrench himself in Oliver’s life. A film like LURKER carries the possibility of countless endings, and it’s to Russell’s credit that he takes things in an ambiguous and nuanced direction, honing in on Oliver’s revelation that maybe part of becoming a pop culture icon is needing fans like himself to sustain his image. (2025, 100 min, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]
Spike Lee's HIGHEST 2 LOWEST (US/Japan)
Gene Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
HIGHEST 2 LOWEST marks Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s fifth collaboration together, beginning with MO’ BETTER BLUES (1990). Washington plays David King, legendary record producer and owner of Stackin’ Hits records; he's sold a portion of his company and looks to retake control by putting everything on the line. His plan is upended when kidnappers apprehend his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) and his friend Kyle, the son of his friend and chauffeur Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright). When the kidnapper releases Trey by mistake, David is faced with the choice to buy back power or risk it all for Kyle’s ransom. The film follows the outline of Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW (1963), but the insecurities of the collaborators saturate the story. For a majority of the runtime, this feels less like a crime thriller and more like a Bergmanesque meditation. Living in his ivory tower of pop culture relics, King lives fully aware his prime has passed. While his home decor fills the frame with images of James Brown, George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jackson, he feels restless. Washington, a surrogate for Lee, tries to keep up in an unrecognizable world after experiencing the greatest success in his field. Some have argued the film is a metaphor for Lee’s pivot towards conservative politics, glorifying ownership of production; but the character’s motivation lies in pursuit of mojo rather than salivating over exploitation. HIGHEST 2 LOWEST feels like two separate genre films colliding head on at 90 miles an hour. The first half presents a day in the life with sprinkled uneasiness by way of New Wave-ish editing style. As father and son enter the gym, the camera trucks along on Steadicam. As family talks to the coach, Lee cuts between parallel shots slightly punched in for coverage, a big no-no according to most accredited film schools yet a choice made by the artistic director of NYU Tisch’s film program. During one of Washington’s greatest monologues, Lee’s editing interrupts the actor to communicate the character’s frustration past the abilities of skilled oration. Lee’s intervals keep us on our toes, shocking us awake in case we were sleeping. An actor’s brilliance comes from his spontaneity; a good actor prepares, but a great actor prepares not knowing what will come out. Every frame of Denzel Washington exudes truth and vulnerability. In interviews, Lee appears quietly apprehensive sitting next to Washington, quietly observing a force of nature. The film pairs his chops with other heavy hitters such as Wendell Pierce and delightfully surprising A$AP Rocky. The final confrontation between rhyming foes deserves a seat next to the coffeeshop scene from HEAT (1995). For a film about an artist ruminating on the past, we witness the best images of the auteur’s career. HIGHEST 2 LOWEST is not OLDBOY (2013). Instead of remaking, this Spike Lee Joint riffs in its own direction, using the classic as a launchpad into the final phase of his career. (2025, 133 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6pm
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]
Stanley Kubrick's SPARTACUS (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 1pm
A communist screenwriter, an iconic film star, and one of the greatest American directors in film history make a movie together in 70mm. It almost sounds like the start of a joke, but it's the truth of Universal's Roman epic, SPARTACUS. This grandiose classic came into existence through many happy accidents. It started with Kirk Douglas not getting cast in another Roman blockbuster BEN-HUR (1959). As producer, Douglas bought the rights to Howard Fast's book and hired Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay. Hiring a writer on the Hollywood blacklist was a controversial choice that was expected to harm the film’s PR; sure enough, it was picketed by anti-communists on its initial release. Douglas fired the original director of this picture a week into shooting; it was at this point that a 30-year-old Stanley Kubrick entered the project. This came to the surprise of the studio, as the actor and director butted heads constantly on the set of their previous collaboration, PATHS OF GLORY (1957). (There’s an interview with the late Kirk Douglas at over 100 years old still calling Kubrick a talented bastard.) On top of all these risks and happenstances, SPARTACUS was one Hollywood’s most expensive projects at the time. Shooting in Technicolor was not cheap at the time, and the filmmakers blew up the budget even more by shooting it all in whopping 70mm. Even as a stand-in director, Kubrick shows some of his talented in-sequences and commands this colossal project with such legendary actors as Douglas and Olivier (very different in performance style) at the top of their game. In the history of cinema, there are many cases where massive production budgets bloat and ruin the story being told. SPARTACUS from its bones is a story that can only be contained and experienced at the largest scale known at the time. We are fortunate to have the ability to recreate this cinematic experience in its original form. Screening as part of the Cinema of Resistance series. (1960, 181 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
Julian Glander’s BOYS GO TO JUPITER (US/Animation)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Will anyone handle the monotonous horrors of our contemporary gig economy culture with such whimsical artistry as Julian Glander? The writer/director/composer/3D animator behind BOYS GO TO JUPITER has crafted a potent and heartwarming treatise on the pitfalls of late-stage capitalism that doubles as a hilariously inventive computer-animated hangout film. Glander’s world, all bright pastels filling up painterly frames, reimagines Christmastime Florida as a grand geometric landscape filled with colorful humans of all shapes and sizes navigating a world absurdly similar to our own. The episodic proceedings follow the grindset mindset-obsessed Billy 5000 (Jack Corbett, in a bit of meta-casting considering his notoriety as the “Planet Money” TikTok guy), as he spends his precious teenage days avoiding his goofy friends and clingy younger brother to deliver food through the familiarly exploitative Grubster app (“Have a Grubby day!” becomes a familiar refrain throughout). There's a larger plot at stake here involving rare species of lemon, baby aliens running rampant, and a vicious capitalist juice scientist (Janeane Garofalo) pushing her research to the brink, but as thematically rich as the material is to dig into, BOYS GO TO JUPITER excels on a gorgeous aura of vibes. Glander’s electronic music (goofy and charming songs littered throughout) mixed with his exquisitely lo-fi animated scenes makes for a perfect hangout vibe to rival that of films like SLACKER (1990) or NOWHERE (1997). Glander fills out the cast with alt-comedy royalty like Julio Torres, Cole Escola, Joe Pera, and Demi Adejuyigbe, fellow artists with singular visions of creating meaningful comedy through aesthetically particular means. That Glander’s world is wide enough to make all of these voices mesh together seamlessly is a testament to how curious and peculiar his work is. It’s not spoiling much to say that Billy 5000 eventually learns that life is worth more than the gigs you stack up and the money you make and that the real joy of life are the connections you make. A lovely and meaningful message from a film featuring singing worms and talking dinosaurs—what could be more 2020s than that? (2024, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
Lynne Ramsay's RATCATCHER (UK/France)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm
Looking back on one’s childhood often feels fragmented, memories connected by gossamer rather than any firm understanding of time as it coheres to form a life. In her feature debut, RATCATCHER, writer-director Lynne Ramsay (the second Scottish woman behind Margaret Tait to make a feature film) looks at a particular point in her young protagonist's development, coinciding with the 1973 garbagemen’s strike during which Glasgow was beset by trash and under siege by rats. What will undoubtedly become a defining moment in James’ (William Eadie) life occurs toward the beginning of the film; he pushes a neighborhood boy into a local canal and runs away as said boy accidentally drowns. From here an existential curtain is drawn—presaged by the film’s opening, wherein the drowned boy has playfully wrapped his head in a lace curtain—beyond which James watches as life goes on around him with firsthand knowledge of its looming conclusion. His family awaits a new residence from the housing council; the tenements where they currently reside are cramped and dingy, but their large family—mom, dad, and three kids—make do. Theirs might be described as a typical family in this sort of situation, not quite outwardly loving but more or less stable, though James’ father drinks too much. James doesn’t have many friends, per se, but he hangs around with a neighbor boy who’s obsessed with animals and a teenage girl, posited as being “loose” and thus another lost young soul forced to confront adult realities all too soon, with whom he explores a tentative attachment. It’s not necessarily a social realist film; while its central "action," an overstatement, to be sure, is similar to that of a kitchen-sink drama, Ramsey approaches the subject matter with a poetic sensibility, like Ken Loach by way of Terrence Malick (whom she’s cited as a filmmaker she admires), yet specifically with an eye for beauty that can be found amidst misfortune. Ramsay began her career as a photographer, and I’m reminded, albeit very loosely, of Agnes Varda’s first film, LA POINTE COURTE, which the French auteur made after starting out as a photographer as well. Both endeavors evince a purity of seeing, unhampered by what came before or what may have been fashionable at the moment. That’s ironic in the case of RATCATCHER, as it represents what many films after it aspired to be, a quiescent coming-of-age story with an aesthetic that extracts from the prosaic a sense of the poetic. Screening as part of the Chicago International Film Festival Presents: The (Usual) Auteur Suspects series (1999, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
John Woo's HARD BOILED (Hong Kong)
Music Box Theatre – Monday, 6:45pm
Somewhere between silly and sublime, the pièce de résistance of John Woo's Hong Kong career turns pulp cheese into pop ballet—fluid, extravagant, and totally enamored with its own sense of cool. Chow Yun-Fat stars as Tequila (a name that only John Woo—or a ten-year-old boy—could love), a clarinet-playing cop who teams up with an undercover loner (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) to take down a triad boss (Anthony Wong), shoot a lot of people, and rescue some adorable babies. Woo's worldview—overwrought, slightly homoerotic, with some entry-level metaphysics and psychology thrown in for good measure—may be reductive, but damn if it doesn't have a certain brutal grace to it; the way he turns the characters into bodies in motion—charging at one another, leaping through space, getting showered with shards of glass—is engrossing and often just plain beautiful. Screening as part of the Hong Kong Cinema Classics series. (1992, 128 min, DCP Digital) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 9:45pm
AFTER HOURS conveys, like nothing else in the director’s body of work, the sheer joy that Martin Scorsese derives from making movies. It’s funny, playful, and invigorating, with a style that positively whooshes you through the action. Working with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (best known at the time for his run of films with Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Scorsese executes breathtaking camera movements indoors and outdoors alike, creating a sense of furious activity that betrays the film’s limited playing space. Most of it takes place in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, where Griffin Dunne’s lonely office drone goes to meet the alluring woman (Patricia Arquette) whom he picked up at a cafe. Searching for easy sex, Paul winds up in a nightmare. His long night consists of one misadventure after another, as he gets bounced around the neighborhood (and into other parts of the borough) like a pinball; the story culminates with Dunne getting mistaken for a wanted criminal and hunted down by an angry mob. As twisty and as witty as Scorsese’s direction, Joseph Minion’s script (originally written for an NYU screenwriting class taught by Dusan Makavejev) operates under a calculated illogic that many have compared to the writing of Franz Kafka. And like a Kafka protagonist, Dunne has the misfortune of living in a universe that just doesn’t like him; his bad luck seems almost cosmic in nature. Adding to his misfortune, almost everyone Dunne meets is some kind of kook, and the colorful supporting cast plays those kooks for all they’re worth. Of special mention are Teri Garr, who plays a flaky artist, and John Heard, who reveals a deep reservoir of angst in his brief turn as a bartender. (1985, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Italy)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm
Sergio Leone is to the "spaghetti western," a popular subgenre of American-set westerns made in Europe in the 60s and 70s, what Jean-Pierre Melville is to the French crime film: Leone, like Melville, made outrageously entertaining movies that reflected a punch-drunk love for American genre fare, the conventions of which he inflated to a near-operatic scale after refracting them through his own unique cultural sensibility. And THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY remains the high point of both Leone's career and the spaghetti western in general. It's the third and most ambitious installment of a trilogy (preceded by 1964's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and 1965's FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, both of which also feature Clint Eastwood in his career-defining "Man with No Name" persona) but this Hollywood co-production works perfectly as a stand-alone feature. The plot concerns the misadventures of the title trio (filled out by Lee Van Cleef as the heavy and Eli Wallach, the true heart of the film, as the Mexican bandit Tuco), all of whom are in search of $200,000 in buried gold coins. That these events unfold against the backdrop of a borderline-Surrealist, European's-eye-view of the American Civil War somehow feels ineffably right: Leone's exuberant visual style combines with Ennio Morricone's legendarily innovative score to lend THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY a singular tone that is at once comical, cartoonish, and, in Dave Kehr's astute phrase, "inexplicably moving." Screening as part of the Scorchers series. (1966, 161 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
David Lean's THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (UK/US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 7:15pm
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is the original Lean blockbuster, if not the quintessential Lean movie. It certainly embodies the themes and structures that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career. The overwhelming Britishness that is always at the heart of a Lean film is excitingly challenged by the presence of two outsider characters: a rugged, cynical American soldier (William Holden, in a superb performance which ranks alongside his turns in SUNSET BOULEVARD and NETWORK) and a rigid, taciturn Japanese commander (Sessue Hayakawa, using silence more eloquently than dialogue). The trifecta helps the film maintain a perfect balance; sprawling yet tightly told, obsessed with character shading as much as with the lush brutality of the jungle locale, beautifully captured by Jack Hildyard in CinemaScope. It's a damn good action picture that's also as existential as RUNAWAY TRAIN. Screening as part of the Scorchers series. (1957, 161 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]
Akira Kurosawa’s RAN (Japan)
Alamo Drafthouse – Wednesday, 11:30am
RAN is a film of exile—conceived in it, consumed by it. After the critical and box office failure of DODES'KA'DEN (which is, in fairness, a candy-colored slog hopelessly attuned to its director's worst instincts), Kurosawa found his already-shaky position in the Japanese film industry collapse completely. Supplanted by younger, more radical directors, he had to turn to Mosfilm to underwrite DERSU UZALA and leaned upon grown-fanboys Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas to sponsor KAGEMUSHA. All the while Kurosawa was quietly planning RAN—borrowing elements from King Lear and the life of sixteenth-century warlord Mori Motonari for the script and painting storyboards for a film that he feared might never be shot. When French producer Serge Silberman came through with financing, RAN became the most expensive film in the history of the Japanese film industry, to the apparent indifference of Kurosawa's countrymen. Most every critic of RAN has noted a parallel between the 75-year-old Kurosawa and the aging warlord Hidetoro, and indeed, both preside over kingdoms teetering on the flaming brink. Legacies can be extinguished in an instant, but respect must be paid. RAN certainly has a homicidal stateliness about it; the film feels exquisitely brooded over, drained of all spontaneity, as if even the grey clouds had no choice in the matter. It plays closer to the operatic insularity of Tarkovsky's THE SACRIFICE than the CGI epics that would follow in its wake. It's definitely the last of its species. (1985, 162 min, 35mm) [K. A. Westphal]
Steven Spielberg’s JAWS: 50th Anniversary (US)
Various Theaters – See Venue websites for showtimes
If PSYCHO forever changed bathroom behavior, then JAWS no doubt gave us pause before diving head first into the ocean; but like the best horror movies, the film's staying power comes not from its superficial subject matter, in this case a mammoth, man-eating shark and the ominous abyss of the deep blue sea, but from the polysemic potential and wealth of latent meanings that these enduring symbols possess. JAWS marks a watershed moment in cinema culture for a variety of reasons, not excluding the way it singlehandedly altered the Hollywood business model by becoming the then highest grossing film of all time. A byproduct of such attention has been the sustained output of scholarly criticism over the years. At the time of its release, JAWS was interpreted as a thinly veiled metaphor for the Watergate scandal (an event that was slightly more conspicuous in the book), but since then a variety of readings have emerged, including socioeconomic and feminist analyses; however, Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson may provide the most intriguing interpretation by connecting the shark to the tradition of scapegoating. Like Moby Dick or Hitchcock's titular birds, the shark functions as a sacrificial animal onto which we project our own social or historical anxieties (e.g., bioterrorism, AIDS, Mitt Romney). It allows us to rationalize evil and then fool ourselves into thinking we've vanquished it. But by turning man-made problems into natural ones we forget that human nature itself is corrupt, exemplified here by Mayor Vaughn who places the entire population of Amity Island in peril by denying the existence of the shark. Jameson's reading is in keeping with the way in which Spielberg rarely displays the shark itself (the result of constant mechanical malfunctions); as opposed to terrifying close-ups, we get point of view shots that create an abstract feeling of fear, thus evoking an applicable horror film trope: the idea is much more frightening than the image. JAWS is a timeless cautionary tale because it appeals to the deep-rooted fears of any generation. And because sharks are scary. (1975, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]
Iain Softley's HACKERS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
Few mid-90s B-movies are as primed for a campy resurgence among ADHD Generation Z-ers as Iain Softley's prescient, cyber-suspense dramedy HACKERS. Equipped with a script full of unsubtle stone-age hacker references, location shooting in downtown Manhattan on the threshold of its heady 'Silicon Alley' period, and a fossilized soundtrack of then-classic downtempo UK electronica 12"s, HACKERS retains an embarrassing if genuine echo of a maturing teen telecommunications subculture. This impression is of course submerged in seemingly improvised plotting, garish technical inaccuracies, preposterous costuming, dialogue composed nearly entirely of non-sequiturs, and Angelina Jolie on rollerblades; but the jubilant (intentional or otherwise) message is of the youthful subordination of a variety of institutional (corporate, educational, juridical) forces, pseudonymously enacted through glorious—and by-now hopelessly outdated—prostheses of silicon, sound, and light. (1995, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]
Martin Scorsese’s CASINO (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 6pm [SOLD OUT]
If Frederick Wiseman made a documentary about the institution that is the casino, it would probably be called, appropriately, CASINO. Martin Scorsese’s CASINO isn’t quite that but is a relatively focused exploration into the Vegas mainstay, where the film largely takes place. Like GOODFELLAS, this was adapted from book by a Nicholas Pileggi by Scorsese and the author; it’s based on the real-life story of prodigious gambler and casino executive Frank Lawrence "Lefty" Rosenthal (called Sam "Ace" Rothstein here and played by Robert De Niro), and mob muscle Nicky Santoro (called Anthony Spilotro and played by Joe Pesci), boyhood friends from Chicago whose involvement with organized crime takes them down distinctly different paths. Sam goes almost straight, assuming the role of a businessman-enforcer who’s just as concerned about the quality of service at the casino as he is about the skim going back home to the bosses, while Nicky is a cold-blooded killer who relishes being a gangster. As their stars rise in their respective fields, they become more at odds with the other, with Nicky’s reputation ultimately harming Ace’s position at the casino. And of course, there’s a woman. Sharon Stone plays Ginger (in real life, Geri McGee), Ace’s long-suffering wife, a hustler at heart who can’t be tied down by a man she doesn’t truly love. If Ace is the grit (conditional to the nuances of the “industry”) of Las Vegas, and Nicky the grime, Ginger is its bright lights—beautiful, dazzling, pervasive, and close to burning out. The casino structure is a character in and of itself; we learn just as much about it, if not more, than anyone else. The film meanders a bit (in no small part due to a loose shooting script, which resulted in a 10-month editing period), but it’s almost documentary-esque in that regard, as it’s concerned as much with process as plot. That’s representative of the dichotomy between Ace and Nicky; they’re two sides of the same coin, being put on the table for the ultimate bet. It doesn’t have quite the same relentlessness as Scorsese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, but there’s a Dante-esque aspect to it, evoked by Saul and Elaine Bass’ hypnotic title design wherein Ace is falling into the flickering hellfire of Sin City. The last of a thematic trilogy starting with MEAN STREETS and arguably reaching a highpoint in GOODFELLAS, the film contains a pathos that adds an entertaining and thought-provoking depth. Please note this screening is sold out. (1995, 179 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Angus MacLachlan’s A LITTLE PRAYER (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
On a quiet, tree-lined street somewhere in North Carolina, the Brass family is awakened by a soulful hymn sung loudly and with regularity by an unknown woman. Tammy (Jane Levy) rouses while her husband, David (Will Pullen), lays in, still dressed in street clothes. Tammy makes lunch for David and her father-in-law, Bill (David Strathairn), to take with them when they leave the house to work together at the family’s sheet metal business. Bill’s wife, Venida (Celia Weston), tells him he should call the cops on the singer, an obviously frequent request that Bill ignores. Soon, inconsiderate Brass daughter Patti (Anna Camp) will move home with her young daughter (Billie Roy) in tow after yet another horrible fight with her husband. The rhythms of this family move like the seasons, with its routines and predictable conflicts, but David’s affair with Bill’s secretary (Dascha Polanco) will widen existing fractures. Director-screenwriter Angus MacLachlan, who announced himself as a major talent with his script for JUNEBUG (2005), continues to plumb the depths of Southern families with this observational film that reveals its secrets gradually and with sometimes too much economy. Strathairn stands at the heart of this film, portraying a traditional, repressed, military veteran who works too hard and connects with his troubled children too little. The lack of real connection seems to be the point of the drama, made more poignant when we learn late in the film in a heart-to-heart between Tammy and Bill that they consider each other kindred spirits. In essence, MacLachlan has given us a subdued, American version of Mikio Naruse’s SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN (1954). While A LITTLE PRAYER doesn’t rise to the heights of that masterpiece, it is a quietly devastating film that seems true to its milieu. (2023, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
​​​​​​​⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Wes Craven’s 1984 film A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (91 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 9:45pm and Monday at 10:15pm.
Bertrand Blier’s 1978 film GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS (108 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday at 3:45pm.
Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1981 film SCHOOL IN THE CROSSHAIRS (89 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
âš« The Davis Theater
Trust Fall, a monthly “blind” movie screening presented in collaboration with the Oscarbate Film Collective, takes place Sunday, 8:30pm, with special guest Will Sloan (author of Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA). More info here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Interiority on Screen, this fall’s weekly lecture series, presents Shorts Program 1 again on Sunday at noon. Works include Anahita Ghazvinizadeh’s WHEN THE KID WAS A KID (2013, 17 min), Alexander Payne’s 14E ARRONDISSEMENT (2006, 6 min), Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’ LOIN DU 16E (2006, 5 min), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s BLUE (2018, 12 min), all presented digitally. More info here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
It’s Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for lineup and showtimes.
Chia-Liang Liu’s 1978 film THE 36th CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN (116 min, 35mm) screens Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Tone Glow
Tone Glow presents "He Never Dies," a showcase of nine films from Kalil Haddad and Luther Price, on Wednesday, 7pm, at Elastic Arts (3429 W. Diversey Ave, #208). More info here.
âš« 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 29, 2025 - September 4, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Rob Christopher, Ray Ebarb, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Michael Glover Smith, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, K.A. Westphal