In this week’s issue Ben Sachs reviews The Purge: Anarchy, James DeMonaco’s sequel to his 2013 shocker The Purge. Set in a futuristic United States, it takes place on a national holiday in which scores of people can be shot to death and no one is punished. Or as we call it here in Chicago, “Saturday.”
Also this week, Tal Rosenberg reviews Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, and we have new capsule reviews of And So It Goes, a Rob Reiner comedy for the old folks, starring Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas; Cannibal, a Spanish thriller about a serial killer who never misses a meal; Closed Curtain, the latest from Iranian filmmaker-on-ice Jafar Panahi (Offside, Crimson Gold); Happy Christmas, a Joe Swanberg comedy starring Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, and Lena Dunham; Honeymoon, an ensemble drama about a wedding gone wrong by Czech director Jan Hrebejk (Kawasaki’s Rose, also screening this week at Gene Siskel Film Center); I Dreamt of You So Much That . . . , a trio of shorts from a work-in-progress by Romanian filmmaker Stefan Constantinescu; I Origins, a moody science-fantasy from the up-and-coming Mike Cahill (Another Earth); Lucy, a new thriller from writer-director Luc Besson, starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman; Magic in the Moonlight, this year’s Woody Allen comedy; Mood Indigo, Gallic whimsy from Michel Gondry, starring Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou; and A Most Wanted Man, an adaptation of a John le Carre novel, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Best bets for repertory: John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986), midnight Friday and Saturday at Music Box; Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Saturday and Sunday morning at Music Box; Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin (2004), Friday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Tuesday at Millennium Park with free admission and Thursday at Music Box with Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis of Sound Opinions; and Kim Ki-duk’s Time (2006), Wednesday at Chicago Cultural Center, screening by DVD projection with free admission.
And this Saturday, the long-running talk show Filmspotting celebrates its 500th episode with a live taping at Music Box.
