Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis are only a few of the new features screening at River East 21 over the next two weeks as part of the 49th Chicago International Film Festival. Check out our coverage of the fest, including 22 new reviews and profiles of James Gray, Dario Argento, John McNaughton, and Tsai Ming-liang. And check back next week for more new reviews of festival titles.
There’s plenty else going on this week: Saturday noon brings the 2013 installment of the Massacre, the popular 24-hour horror marathon, at the swell Patio Theater. And we’ve got new reviews of: A.C.O.D., a romantic comedy about adult children of divorce, starring Adam Scott, Jane Lynch, and Catherine O’Hara; Captain Phillips, with Tom Hanks as the real-life captain of the Maersk Alabama, taken by Somali pirates in April 2009; Ghost Anthology: A History of Argentine Experimental Film, which surveys the last 40 years of the country’s avant-garde; The Summit, a documentary about mountain climbers overtaken by tragedy; We Are What We Are, a U.S. remake of the 2010 Mexican feature about a family of cannibals; and When Comedy Went to School, which revisits the heyday of the Catskills as a mecca for comedians.
Best bets for repertory: Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988), Friday, Saturday, and Monday at the Logan; Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Saturday and Tuesday at Gene Siskel Film Center; Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932), Sunday and Monday at Film Center; Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Dust in the Wind (1987), Monday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Buster Keaton’s The General (1927), noon Saturday at Music Box with live organ accompaniment; D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, screening in a digital restoration on Wednesday at Film Center; Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep (1996), Thursday at Doc; Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday, Saturday, and Monday at the Logan; Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998), Friday night and Sunday afternoon at Doc; and Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), midnight Friday and Saturday at Music Box.
Last but not least, author John Malman (John Ford: Poet in the Desert) and others discuss three Ford classics as part of a weekend John Ford Film Festival.
