Five ways forward to “virtual” moviegoing at your fingertips.
1 The Music Box Local art-houses continue stellar bookings via distributor partnerships, including Raul Ruiz’s original six-hour miniseries “Mysteries of Lisbon” in June, but the extras on Southport are Friday and Saturday night “Music Box To-Go” offerings, with samplings from concessions and the Lounge, including “The Room”-themed “The Tommy,” with miniatures of Malört, jumbo popcorn, a six-pack of PBR and a selection of plastic spoons.
2 The Gene Siskel Film Center Dubbed “Film Center From Your Sofa,” the Siskel continues weekly attractions, including June showings of one of Hong Sang-soo’s latest worldly miniatures, “Yourself and Yours,” and Josephine Decker’s Elisabeth Moss–starring Shirley Jackson biography, “Shirley.”
3 Facets Facet’s overlapping bookings include more lovingly unearthed offerings than its customary two-per-week.
4 MoMA Film “The Greatest Films You’ve Never Seen.” Maybe the best composite listing of streaming services, large and small, far and wide.
5 NFB (The National Film Board of Canada) A repository of the eighty-one-year inventory of the Canadian institution, particularly strong on animation, short work and documentary. Available as a free streaming app.
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: 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: 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.
