1 Wanda (Siskel, October 5-6, 8) A digital restoration to Barbara Loden’s only film: the rich, raw story of a Rust Belt wife on the road, turned adventurer and crook. Essential viewing.
2 Bisbee ‘17 (Music Box, opens Friday, October 5) Robert Greene’s experiments with documentary form fascinate, and “Bisbee ‘17” is his most radical, combining collaborative documentary, music and reenactments as townspeople explore the town’s 1917 deportation of hundreds and hundreds of striking immigrant miners.
3 Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable (Siskel, opens Friday, October 26) Curator John Szarkowski called Garry Winogrand “the central photographer of his generation,” and Sasha Waters Freyer’s documentary captures the vitality of this unstoppable street photographer; narrated by Winogrand (via archival audio) atop examples of his provocative photos and the witnesses from the art world, along with a selection of ex-wives.
4 Halloween (Opens Friday, October 19) The dark-hearted duo of David Gordon Green and Danny McBride turn to a reinvention of John Carpenter’s classic.
5 Chicago International Film Festival (River East, October 10-21) High-profile attractions for the fifty-fourth fest include Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War”; Mike Leigh’s “Peterloo”; Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters”; Steve McQueen’s “Widows”; Joel Edgerton’s “Boy Erased” and Christian Petzold’s “Transit.”
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.
Film Top 5: October 2020 Chicago International, "Chicago 7" and "Candyman"'s Chicago; plus "WW1984" braces for social distancing and Kenneth Branagh again tunes up the tonsorial folderol as Hercule Poirot.
Talking Screens, October 15-21, 2021: The Best of the Chicago International Film Fest The fifty-seventh Chicago International Film Festival runs through Sunday, October 24. And, Michael Caplan's "Algren" has its Chicago theatrical run beginning this week via Music Box virtual cinema. Several movies open Friday, including David Gordon Green's "Halloween Kills," Ridley Scott's "The Last Duel," Mia Hansen-Løve's "Bergman Island" and Todd Haynes' "Velvet Underground."
