This year’s edition of the Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival kicks off Friday with Freedom Summer, a strong documentary about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s summer 1964 campaign to register black voters in Mississippi. Check out our coverage of the festival, with six new reviews. Also this week, we recommend The Case Against 8, about the legal battle to have California’s ban on same-sex marriage struck down; Mother Joan of the Angels, a 1960 Polish shocker about a Catholic nun possessed by demons; Night Moves, the latest from writer-director Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy), with Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard as eco-terrorists plotting to blow up a hydroelectric dam; and The Signal, a paranoid sci-fi mystery about three young people who, chasing after a mysterious hacker, come in contact with an alien life force.
Newly reviewed this week: Citizen Koch, a documentary about the nefarious Koch brothers, directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessen (Trouble the Water); The Fault in Our Stars, a heartwarming tale of cancer kids in love; The Grand Seduction, an English-language remake of the French-Canadian comedy Seducing Doctor Lewis (2003); Night Train, Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1959 ensemble drama set on a cross-country train; Obvious Child, a romantic comedy starring stand-up comedian Jenny Slate; Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon, a documentary about a veteran Hollywood talent manager that marks the directing debut of comedian Mike Myers; and 22 Jump Street, with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum reprising their roles as mismatched cops.
Best bets for repertory: Victor Fleming’s Gone With the Wind (1939), next Thursday at the Pickwick in Park Ridge; Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite (2004), midnight Friday and Saturday at Music Box; Gene Saks’s The Odd Couple (1968), next Thursday at the Logan; Rare Baseball Films: The Newsreels, with footage of Joe DiMaggio, Christy Mathewson, Willie Mays, and Hack Wilson, Friday at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art; and 16mm Animation Showcase, with shorts by George Griffin, Kathy Laughlin, and Sally Cruikshank.
