Get set for the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, whose 14th edition opens tonight with the Oscar entry Eyes of a Thief at Gene Siskel Film Center. We’ve also got week two of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, and if you check the week-one roundup you can find other films that are repeating this week. Over on the B Side, we’ve got a big roundup of the Chicago Internatonal Movies & Music Festival, with 15 new reviews.
Check out our new reviews of: Canal Zone, a 1977 study of the American community surrounding the Panama Canal; Clouds of Sils Maria, the latest from French director Olivier Assayas (Carlos, Summer Hours); Ex Machina, a sci-fi thriller from 28 Days Later . . . screenwriter Alex Garland, starring Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson; The Longest Ride, an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks romance by George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food); True Story, starring Jonah Hill as a disgraced reporter and James Franco as the murder defendant who agrees to share his story; and Unfriended, a horror flick in the form of a Skype session.
Best bets for repertory: John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club (1985), introduced by Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis of Sound Opinions, Wednesday at Music Box; Stephen Hopkins’s The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), Sunday at Music Box with an intro by Alaka Wali of the Field Museum; Frank Tashlin’s The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956), Sunday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962), Friday through Sunday at Doc; Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page (2005), on TV monitors at Delilah’s on Sunday; and Orson Welles’s The Trial (1962), Wednesday at Doc.
Plenty of great events this week: Nick Kroll taking your questions at a screening of his new comedy Adult Beginners, Thursday at Music Box; experimental films by Roger Beebe at Constellation, Andy Warhol at Chicago Filmmakers, and various artists recycling found footage at Nightingale; Dan Savage’s Hump! Film Festival of amateur porn, Friday and Saturday at Music Box; Poetry on Public Television: The 1960s, Thursday at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art; the annual Sci-Fi Spectacular, noon Saturday at the Patio; and the annual Sound of Silent Film Festival, Sunday at Music Box.
