Film Top 5: September 2019

1
Two-Lane Blacktop
(Gene Siskel Film Center)
They only made them this way once. Monte Hellman’s all-American existential road movie as existential wisp: landscape as destiny, from an epically terse script by Rudy Wurlitzer, with James Taylor, Dennis Wilson and Warren Oates in a cross-country race from New Mexico to Washington, D.C. In 35mm Techniscope.
September 20 & 22

2
The Films of Abbas Kiarostami
(Gene Siskel Film Center)
As the late Iranian master’s Koker Trilogy arrives in a Criterion Blu-ray edition, the first true wide release of the films in the United States, the Siskel surveys the larger landscape, showcasing twenty-two features and eleven shorts.
September 6-October 30

3
Joker
(Music Box Theatre)
A 70mm-exclusive two-week run of Todd Phillips’ Joaquin Phoenix-starring “Joker” is among Warner Bros. awards-season sprints for the origin story from the director of “The Hangover,” as well as a premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey calls “Joker” a “cinematic achievement on a high level” with “some real dark tones… grounded in this career-best career performance by Joaquin Phoenix.”
Opens October 4

4
The Eleventh Annual Noir City Chicago: Film Noir in the 1950s
(Music Box Theatre)
Nine double features, mostly in 35mm, including the brass and bravura of “In a Lonely Place,” “Pickup on South Street,” “Kiss Me Deadly,” “Killer’s Kiss,” “Nightfall” and “Touch of Evil.”
September 6-12

5
Where’s My Roy Cohn?
Many names are bruited as the masters of what our political world has become, but the one malicious, malefic monstrous man who must never be forgotten is thug attorney Roy Cohn, whose career began as sideman to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and extended to mentoring real estate heir Donald J. Trump in his decades-established ways. A necessary portrait of a bad man.
Opens September 27