This week the Polish Film Festival in America, the largest of its kind outside Poland, celebrates its 25th annual gathering in Chicago, opening Saturday with Andrzej Wajda’s long-awaited biopic Walesa, Man of Hope. And the LGBT fest returns after a one-year hiatus, rechristened Reeling: The Chicago LGBT International Film Festival; Drew Hunt has four stars for Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake.
We also recommend Dallas Buyers Club, starring Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto; Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, Saturday at Nightingale (check out Jake Fried’s Down Into Nothing on Vimeo); The Motel Life, an adaptation of the Willy Vlautin novel; and The Trials of Muhammad Ali, a new documentary by Bill Siegel (The Weather Underground). The apocalyptic teen romance How I Live Now and the Marvel Comics fantasy Thor: The Dark World? Not so much.
Best bets for repertory: Claire Denis’s Beau Travail (1999) and Nenette and Boni (1996), kicking off a monthlong retrospective on the French filmmaker at Gene Siskel Film Center; David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Friday and Sunday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and even Zeppo in Duck Soup (1933), Saturday and Sunday morning at Music Box; Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Good Men, Good Women (1995), Monday at Doc; Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (1976), Wednesday at Doc; Haile Gerima’s Sankofa, tonight at University of Chicago Logan Center for the Arts; and Ben Stiller’s Zoolander (2001), Friday, Saturday, and Monday at the Logan.
Don’t forget the ambitious Mostra IV: Brazilian Film Series in Chicago, with more shows around town through Thursday, or Natural Life, a documentary about young people serving sentences of life without parole, at Film Center with director Tirtza Even attending.
* This week’s screenings.
