1 Dawson City: Frozen Time (Siskel, September 16, 19-20) The latest, great film by Bill Morrison (“Decasia”) washes over the brain like cool, cool history: an intricate singularity, a historical palimpsest and of course, a visual hallucination that is a cinematic gold rush that I could gush about for pages but prefer to point emphatically in its direction.
2 Killer Of Sheep (Siskel, September 9, 13) Charles Burnett’s brilliant Los Angeles 1978 neorealist classic returns in a restored edition. Bountiful in sound and image and understated performance, it’s an American masterpiece that’s absolutely necessary to know.
3 Columbus (Music Box, opens Friday, September 8) Video essayist Kogonada’s first feature is an elegant telling of a love affair set within the expanses of the southeastern Indiana town with the bounty of modernist architectural commissions.
4 Desert Hearts (Siskel, September 3, 7) Donna Deitch’s rapturous 1959-set lesbian romance, released in 1986, returns in a Janus Films-Criterion 4K restoration.
5 Holy Smoke (Chicago Film Society, Northeastern Illinois University, September 20) Jane Campion’s overlooked 1999 love tempest between Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel, shown on the CFS’ very own 35mm print.
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.
Film Top 5: September 2023 At press time, the studios had not yet made counter-offers to the demands of striking actors and writers; the fall movie season and beyond is more unpredictable than any time since the pandemic began.
