1 The Truffle Hunters (Opens Friday, March 5) Like an aromatic painting: the umami of the pursuit of the most rare of flavors.
2 The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Hulu, streaming February 26) Andra Day is stellar in Lee Daniels’ restrained telling of the travails of the great singer.
3 The Father (Opens Friday, March 12) Anthony Hopkins, losing it like no other acting elder, refuses caretakers to the dismay of family, including daughter Olivia Colman.
4 Compensation (Siskel, February 28-March 3) Zeinabu irene Davis’ 1999 feature charts the romances of two Black couples at the end of the twentieth century, each comprised of a deaf woman and a hearing man; Davis’ innovative visual approaches “embrace the endless aesthetic possibilities of cinema itself.”
5 Godzilla vs. Kong (March 31, theaters and 31 days on HBO Max) Adam Wingard goes big and bigger on screens large and small, smaller in legendary matchup with a pleasingly giddy trailer.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Talking Screens: A Week In Chicago Film, March 12-18, 2021 OPENERS How condensed do you want your Almodóvar? In thirty taut minutes, the Spanish writer-director burrows inside Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play, “The Human Voice,” with Tilda Swinton as his physical and psychological blade. Studio-confined during pandemic days, it’s brightly, boldly interior in every way. Music Box Theatre; shown with Almodóvar’s 1988 breakthrough, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”…
Talking Screens: A Week in Chicago Film, February 26-March 4, 2021 OPENERS “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” which director Lee Daniels describes as the first movie he’s directed sober, is an intent, starry showcase for Grammy Award-nominated Andra Day. There are fewer of the gloriously inexplicable touches and much less of the giddy bursts of vulgarity of earlier work like “Precious” and the “Paperboy” (or even “Empire”), although there are…
