1
Distant Voices, Still Lives
(Siskel, January)
A 4K digital restoration of Terence Davies’ heartwrenching masterpiece of family portraiture and the human voice held high. Essential viewing.
2
Cold War
(Music Box, opens January 18)
Swooping rhapsodies of gleaming, elusive memories of a lifelong romance between mismatched lovers in Stalinist Poland and other seemingly more conducive lands in Pawel Pawlikowski’s masterpiece.
3
The Owl’s Legacy
(Siskel, Sundays and Mondays, January 6-28)
(L’Heritage de la Chouette) The apparition of Chris Marker’s dazzling, weighty thirteen-part television series considering the relationship between ancient Greeks and Western society.
4
Capernaum
(Music Box, opens Friday, January 4)
Nadine Labaki’s post-neorealist adventure featuring a raft of terrific first-time actors, following a clever twelve-year-old boy who flees his parents, and to assert his rights, takes them to court for the crime of giving him life.
5
Glass
(Opens Friday, January 18)
M. Night Shyamalan mingles the Blumhouse cheap-and-dirty model with his past imagination, combining characters and storylines from “Split” and “Unbreakable.”
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published in 2023.
Previews on Twitter (twitter.com/chighostsigns) as well as photography on Instagram: instagram.com/raypride.
Twitter: twitter.com/RayPride