1 Shy People (Chicago Film Society, Music Box) Andrei Konchalovsky’s rarely seen 1987 gem, a masterful, unabashed melodrama set in a haunted swamp, with Jill Clayburgh, Barbara Hershey and Martha Plimpton. 35mm. March 30
2 The Twenty-Third Annual European Union Film Festival (Siskel) A tasty selection of forty-seven films from twenty-seven European Union member nations and, for one last time, self-exiled Great Britain. March 6-April 12
3 The Whistlers (Music Box) The great Romanian deadpan artist Corneliu Porumboiu turns his hand to an international comic caper to captivating result. Opens March 27
4 Saint Frances (Music Box) Chicago indie film makes good: SXSW standout from local talent makes good and wreaks tears as “issues” are heightened in human relief. Opens March 20
5 The 70mm Film Festival (Music Box) Get ‘em while they’re big: “Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood,” “West Side Story,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Big Trail,” “Last Action Hero,” “Roma,” “Lifeforce,” “The Untouchables,” “Khartoum,” “Interstellar,” “Tron” and “Hello, Dolly!” March 5-19
Film Top 5: April 2020 Traversing the landscapes of high studio filmmaking; Lisboa; Kyiv; in the footsteps of adventurer Bruce Chatwin and in the mind of a troubled young nurse.
Film Top 5: February 2020 Siskel marks its thirtieth year of films from Iran; blasts from the past from Otto Preminger, Brian De Palma, Anthony Mann and Rudy Ray Moore.
Top 5 Film: January 2020 Chaplin, Kael, Cage, Lubitsch, Altman, Scorsese, Bertolucci, Reichardt, to banish the winter blues.
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.
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.
