Tobias Lindholm, director of the critically lauded Danish drama A Hijacking, returns with A War, which opens at Landmark’s Century Centre on Friday and competes for an Oscar for best foreign film on Sunday. Our long review is here. We’ve also got capsule reviews of: Eddie the Eagle, an inspirational sports drama about the unlikely Olympian Eddie Edwards; The Last Man on the Moon, a documentary profile of NASA astronaut Eugene Cernan; Magical Girl, a Spanish noir about a man who’ll do anything to obtain an expensive dress for his terminally ill daughter; Triple 9, an underworld thriller from the director of The Proposition; and The Vanished Elephant, a metafictional romp about a crime novelist pulled into a real-life mystery.
Best bets for repertory: Carl Reiner’s All of Me (1984), Wednesday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006), Friday and Sunday at Doc; Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), Saturday and Tuesday at Gene Siskel Film Center, with a lecture by Pamela Robertson Wojcik at the Tuesday screening; Maurice Pialat’s A Nos Amours (1983), Saturday and Thursday at Film Center; and Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Monday at Doc.
Turkish filmmaker Kutlug Ataman appears at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art on Friday to introduce his recent drama Kuzu; admission is free. And two noteworthy festivals kick off next week: Chicago Irish Film Festival runs Thursday through Sunday, March 3 through 6, at the Logan, and the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival runs Wednesday through Sunday, March 2 through 6. Check out next week’s issue for our Onion City roundup.
