1 Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn (Opens Friday, November 19) The Romanian cinema: so it’s come to this! No other national cinema combines comedy and drama in such an understated and fulfilling way.
2 Licorice Pizza (Opens Friday, November 26) Paul Thomas Anderson with another Southern California coming-of-age phantasmagoria??? Let’s get down to the record store and see if they’ve got it yet!
3 C’mon, C’mon (Opens Friday, November 19) Mike Mills goes black-and-white with a road trip with an uncle (Joaquin Phoenix) and nephew (Woody Norman). There’s supposed to be some “This American Life”-style noodling, but it’s sure to be all Mills, after addressing his father in “Beginners,” his mother in “20th Century Women,” turning, symbolically, to the common oddity of fatherhood.
4 House of Gucci (Opens Wednesday, November 24) Sir Ridley, at the age of eighty-four, takes the loupe to the dangerous extremities of another murderous alien lifeform: the sociopathic very rich.
5 Chicago Critics Film Festival (Music Box, November 12-14) Early look-sees at some of the most highly awaited attractions of the season: among them, Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”; Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter” and Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket.”
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: February 2021 Frances McDormand hits the road and the road hits back; Fred Hampton lights up the screen; a Korean family makes an Arkansas home; a regal if rocked Michelle Pfeiffer; and a pandemic-shot black-and-white relationship fizzle chamber drama.
