1 Northwest Chicago Film Society (Music Box; NEIU) Three knockout attractions this month: at the Music Box on July 9, Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” on 70mm with magnetic sound; Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s 1964 newsreel-like imagining of life in Britain if Hitler had invaded after Dunkirk, “It Happened Here,” July 12 at NEIU; and July 19 at NEIU, Claudia Weill’s 1978 “Girlfriends” with Melanie Mayron as a modern woman imposing herself onto the patterns of Manhattan. chicagofilmsociety.org.
2 A Ghost Story (July 14) David Lowery’s pause between “Pete’s Dragon” and “Old Man And The Gun,” a micro-budget meditation on time and loss includes Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara and a ghost that is under a white bedsheet.
3 The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (Music Box, July 7) One of Errol Morris’ simplest, yet most profound features is a visit with his Cambridge friend and neighbor, pioneering Polaroid portraitist Elsa Dorfman. Bittersweet and melancholy.
4 Valerian And The City of A Thousand Planets (July 21) For the future of his EuropaCorp production company and for himself as a big, bold filmmaker, aging Gallic wunderkind Luc Besson goes the full Besson for the first time since “The Fifth Element.”
5 70mm Film Fest (Music Box, June 30-July 13) Nine features lead up to the 70mm presentation of Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” including a newly struck 70mm DTS print of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” commissioned by the Music Box. Other films include “West Side Story,” “Top Gun,” “Spartacus,” “Interstellar,” Disney’s animated “Sleeping Beauty” and “Kong: Skull Island.”
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.
