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.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
