1 Elle (Opens Friday, November 18) Paul Verhoeven’s return to the big screen is an assured black comedy of power in the modern world: shocking and thrilling and oh so funny. Plus, Isabelle Huppert at the height of her monstrous power to delight.
2 Manchester By The Sea (Opens Friday, November 25) After the protracted post-production and off-screen legal drama of the ragged but mighty “Margaret,” Kenneth Lonergan returns with a wrenchingly emotional family drama.
3 Daughters of the Dust (Siskel, opens Friday, November 25) Julie Dash’s long-unseen landmark 1991 drama of Gullah life on the South Carolina coast returns in a digital restoration.
4 Raising Bertie (Siskel, opens Friday, November 18) A few years in the life of three boys in a rural North Carolina town: Margaret Byrne’s documentary is bright and piercing.
5 The Love Witch (Siskel, opens Friday November 25) Anna Biller’s blissfully strange appropriation of the trappings of sexploitation, horror and high art is a rubicund marvel. Shown in 35mm.
Film Top 5: April 2020 Traversing the landscapes of high studio filmmaking; Lisboa; Kyiv; in the footsteps of adventurer Bruce Chatwin and in the mind of a troubled young nurse.
Film Top 5: March 2020 Eleven films on 70; forty-seven films from twenty-seven EU nations; and three singularities from Romania, the bayou and Chicago, Illinois.
Film Top 5: September 2020 Charlie Kaufman thinks, once more, as always, of ending it all; whimsitician Miranda July returns; Chicago Latino Film Festival goes virtual; Gerard Butler may or may not save the planet from a comet; and "Tenet" promises to time-invert over Labor Day in non-pandemic hotspot localities.
