Our new issue includes a long review of Watchmen by Noah Berlatsky (you might recall his review last fall of the James Bond adventure Quantum of Solace). “Superpowers create more problems than they solve, and we’d probably be better off without them,” writes Noah. “That’s at least one lesson of the 80s comic book Watchmen—especially if we understand that writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons were thinking about geopolitical superpowers as much as masked guys in tights.”
Andrea Gronvall has a Critic’s Choice box for Jan Troell’s new Swedish feature Everlasting Moments, which opens today at Landmark and Renaissance Place. We’re also covering the European Union Film Festival at Gene Siskel Film Center, which has good new stuff by Shane Meadows (director of This Is England) and Anne Fontaine (director of How I Killed My Father).
This week the Wilmette theater picks up Kevin Rafferty’s fascinating documentary Harvard Defeats Yale 29-29, which opened in Chicago last month at Gene Siskel Film Center. At Columbia College Ludington Building, Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Sene Absa, currently a visiting artist at Columbia, will introduce two of his features, Madame Brouette (Tue 3/17, 6 PM) and Tableau Ferraille (Thu 3/19, 6 PM).
This week’s repertory pick is Jacques Tourneur’s beautiful Technicolor western Canyon Passage (1946), screening at Film Center in an A-rated 35-millimeter print. The first show is tonight at 6:15 PM, and it repeats Wednesday, March 18, 6 PM, this second show with a lecture by Jonathan Rosenbaum.