Reviews, profiles and news about movies in Chicago
Chicago’s film festival institutions are hardly autumnal: The Chicago International Film Festival turns fifty-nine; Chicago Underground is thirty this year; and Reeling? Forty-one. Tuck into 130 years of tasty institutional memory this fall.
Bryan Wendorf, artistic director of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, has just turned sixty and has been looking back, but also forward as the scrappy effort, the oldest underground festival in the world, turns thirty, pivots to its own nonprofit status, and makes a move from its ten-year home at Logan Square’s Logan Theatre to the newly refurbished 107-year-old Harper Theater in Hyde Park.
This week: “Theater Camp” at Facets; “Road House,” “Computer Chess,” “Spartacus,” “Paths Of Glory” and “Heathers” at Drafthouse; Chicago Film Society presents “Body and Soul”; “Werckmeister Harmonies” and a ten-film “Contra/Banned” series at Siskel; “That Boy,” “Witness For The Prosecution,” “Rotting In The Sun” and “Fremont” at Music Box. Plus Chicago Underground starts on Wednesday.
At press time, the studios had not yet made counter-offers to the demands of striking actors and writers; the fall movie season and beyond is more unpredictable than any time since the pandemic began.
This week: “Between Two Worlds” at Landmark Century; “The Wicker Man: The Final Cut” and “Full Metal Jacket” at Drafthouse; ten-film “Contra/Banned” series at Siskel; “Fresh Films: A Celebration of Fifty Years Of Hip Hop” series, plus “Sabrina,” “Perfect Blue,” “The Room,” “Oppenheimer,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,” “Josie and The Pussycats,” “The Age Of Innocence,” “Perpetrator” and “Sorcerer” at Music Box.
A maker of hard-to categorize films, William Friedkin forged a career in his own way, fueled by arrogance, boastfulness, bravado, confidence, self-assurance and moral questioning, a Chicago working-class autodidact who grew up poor in Uptown.
High school is but a scream. Veteran Chicago filmmaker Jennifer Reeder’s fourth feature, fearless pop-art freakout “Perpetrator,” is a seriously bloody and bloody serious coming-of-age dream-drama-comedy.
This week: National Cinema Day on Sunday, plus “Living End” at Facets; “Wet Hot American Summer” at Drafthouse; “Passages” and “The Eternal Memory” at Siskel; “Perpetrator” and “Noir City Chicago” at Music Box; and news on some of the fall’s upcoming series and festivals.
This week: “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” at Landmark; “Where The Wild Things Are” at Drafthouse; Nightingale Projects’ “The Root and the Harvest,” “The Adults” and “The Unknown Country” at Siskel; “Titanic” at Chicago Film Society; “Oldboy” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” at Music Box.
This week: “With This Light” at Wayfarer in Highland Park; “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” at Doc Films; “Valley Girl” at Drafthouse; “Missing” and “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” at Siskel; “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Passages” at Music Box.
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