1 Silence (Opens Friday, January 6) Martin Scorsese’s dream project of more than twenty-eight years is a sustained, fierce parable of faith against hope.
2 Jackie (Opens Friday, December 16) The role Natalie Portman was born to embody, swaddled in a brilliant skin of a score by Mica Levi.
3 La La Land (Opens Friday, December 16) Singing, dancing, dreaming, scheming, loving, losing, holding dear: Damien Chazelle’s third feature is a dreamy yet melancholy pastiche of musicals past and to come.
4 Things To Come (Opens Friday, December 16) Isabelle Huppert, less the harsh diamond of “Elle,” still one of the greatest living actors in Mia Hansen-Løve’s intent portrait of a philosophy teacher set adrift in middle age.
5 20th Century Women (Opens Friday, January 6) Mike Mills (“Beginners”) fictionalizes the family of women of his life with the expected bright notes and music cues; sterling performances by Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
