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.
Film Top 5: September 2019 Monte Hellman's road movie masterpiece; a vast survey of the work of Iran's Abbas Kiarostami; an awards push for "Joker"; "Noir City Chicago"; and a portrait of Trump's wicked mentor, Roy Cohn.
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.
