1 A Brighter Summer Day (Siskel, May 20-21) The late Edward Yang’s four-hour 1991 masterpiece, a coming-of-age film, a love story, and a true-crime tale, is astonishing and a wondrous gift in so many ways and especially on a large screen in this digital restoration.
2 The Lobster (Opens May 20) An allegory without a single straight answer: Yorgos Lanthimos’ fourth precise, absurdist comedy (following “Dogtooth” and “Alps”), and his first in English, is the answer to the question: Is one of the worst bad-date movies ever made also one of the great ones? Oh yeah. If you can see below the surfaces and talk about relationships…
3 Viktoria (Facets, opens May 13) A girl is a woman is a country in the bold thunderclap of Bulgarian filmmaker Maya Vitkova’s magical mixed-genre debut feature.
4 Love & Friendship (Opens May 20) Bitter connivance brightly played in Whit Stillman’s appropriation of Jane Austen’s first, unfinished, epistolary novel.
5 Chicagoland Shorts #2 (Facets, opens May 14) New work by Daniel Davison, Lonnie Edwards, Aren Zolninger, Jim Vendiola, Brian Zahm, Eunhye Hong Kim, Shiri Burson, Monica Thomas, Mina Fitzpatrick and Jennifer Reeder.
Film Top 5: November 2018 Vigo's body of work is small, but one of the most essential in all of cinema.
Film Top 5: July 2019 The best feature film of 2017 marks its 35mm debut; "Hedwig" and "Escape from New York" are digitally restored; Ari Aster follows up "Hereditary" with a sunshiney horror; and Quentin Tarantino numbers his ninth, count 'em, ninth feature.
