1 Detour (Siskel, opens December 7) Edgar G. Ulmer’s elegant, stripped-bare masterpiece about fate’s way with cinema’s truest loser, the bleakest of noirs, circulated for decades in subpar prints and video renditions. This 4K restoration from original elements is a thrilling punch from the past, as startling a present-tense artifact as Orson Welles’ latest picture, “The Other Side Of The Wind.” Essential viewing.
2 Wings of Desire (Siskel, opens December 28) Wenders saw angels. Essential viewing.
3 Andrei Rublev (Siskel, opens December 28) When the boy, terrified of certain, sudden death, hears the first peal of the bell he has crafted: but one of dozens of shattering instances in Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece. Essential viewing.
4 The Thirty-Fifty Annual Music Box Christmas Sing-A-Long With “White Christmas” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” Just this once won’t hurt you.
5 The Mule (Opens December 14) Impatient Mr. Eastwood completes another last-minute awards-contending drama: how many more times will the eighty-eight-year-old actor-director leap into the year-end fray?
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.
