Think of the movie business as your fat uncle after Thanksgiving dinner: full of turkey, stuffing, gravy, and Canadian Club—all he wants to do is lie down under the piano for a while and sleep it off. So here we are the weekend after Thanksgiving with exactly two new studio releases: The Pyramid, a horror flick that didn’t screen for the press, and Wild, an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, starring Reese Witherspoon and directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club). But never fear: Gene Siskel Film Center kicks off a monthlong engagement of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, an extravagant animation from Studio Ghibli founder Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbors the Yamadas), and Facets Cinematheque presents Bad Hair, a Venezuelan drama about a little boy who alarms his mother by behaving more and more like a little girl.
Best bets for repertory: Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934), Friday at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art; Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1969), Saturday at Film Center; and Mike Judge’s Idiocracy (2006), Friday and Tuesday at Film Center, with a lecture by Jonathan Rosenbaum at the second screening.
That’s it for this week, folks. Hey, we’re sorry, OK? Go read a book.