In this week’s issue I give two stars to one of the best-reviewed movies of 2013, Spike Jonze’s Her. We’ve also got recommended reviews of: Gloria, a comedy from Chile about a middle-aged woman determined to go out kicking; Vic + Flo Saw a Bear, a Quebecois drama by Denis Côté about a woman paroled from prison who’s led astray by her young lesbian lover; and Celluloid Therapy: The Diary Films of Anne Charlotte Robertson, which collects some of the Super-8 reels on which the Massachusetts filmmaker chronicled her troubled life.
New films reviewed this week: Hank: 5 Years From the Brink, a documentary profile of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson; If You Build It, a documentary about high schoolers learning to use design and architectural innovations to help their distressed North Carolina community; Kiss Like Big Dogs, a series of vignettes about a young man’s romantic misadventures; The Lego Movie, a children’s animation based on the old construction toys; The Monuments Men, George Clooney’s new drama about the men who tried to rescue European art treasures from the Nazis; 7 Boxes, a crackerjack thriller set in a huge outdoor market in Paraguay; Snow on the Pines, an Iranian drama about a marriage coming apart; That Awkward Moment, a rom-com with Zac Ephron and Imogen Poots; and 24 Exposures, the latest from Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg.
Best bets for repertory: Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999), next Thursday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994), Friday and Sunday at Doc; Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones (1932), Friday at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art; Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou (1997), next Thursday at Doc; Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil (1949), Saturday afternoon at Block; Jacques Demy’s Lola (1961) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) at Gene Siskel Film Center; Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Wednesday at Northbrook Public Library; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), midnight Friday and Saturday at Music Box; and Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927), noon Saturday at Music Box, with live organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott.
