There are Chicagoans in the 2018 Chicago International Film Festival!

by Kathleen Sachs on October 10, 2018 at 6:00AM

major focus of the film is Chicago, where skaters dance to DJs spinning James Brown edits," writes critic Kevin Ritchie in NOW Magazine. Buddy Love, who owns Rich City Skate, one of the country's few black-owned rinks, is also featured. Fri 10/12, 6:15 PM, and Sat 10/13, 1:30 PM

Warped for life by Fanny and Alexander

by Dmitry Samarov on September 14, 2018 at 6:00AM

I didn't recall much of the plot of Fanny and Alexander when I rewatched it recently but a sense-memory of seeing something I shouldn't have seen, or was maybe too young to see, has followed me around ever since my trip to the Nickelodeon 35 years ago. I only remember one scene.

Crashing the boys’ club: independent women directors in the 60s and 70s

by Patrick Friel on August 7, 2018 at 6:00AM

The explosion of American independent filmmaking in the 1960s and '70s was largely an all-male affair (surprise), but a few talented women also got their hand in during this vital and changing period. The Chicago Film Society is showing one such effort, Juleen Compton's 1966 rarity The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean, which has been recently rediscovered and restored, on Wednesday, August 15.

This Week on Filmstruck: Jacques Demy

by Patrick Friel on February 16, 2018 at 8:00AM

Lola Jacques Demy's first and in some ways best feature (1961), shot in exquisite black-and-white 'Scope by Raoul Coutard, is among the most neglected major works of the French New Wave. Abandoned by her sailor lover, a cabaret dancer (Anouk Aimee) brings up their son while awaiting his return and ultimately has to choose among three men.

Todd Haynes’s first film for kids may also be his saddest movie yet

by Ben Sachs on November 1, 2017 at 11:39AM

Rose ends up meeting her idol, though her encounter is disappointing. Ben, on the other hand, doesn't meet his father, but he makes a friend at the natural history museum and finds a sense of familial connection by the end of the film.

Lewis Klahr’s Sixty Six is a masterful journey through inner space and the American past

by Ben Sachs on May 12, 2017 at 1:09PM

when my best friend was away on vacation with his family, and I was kind of lonely. My mother, for some reason, over those five days, treated me with this very explicit kind of love.

Terrence Malick loves us—he just has a peculiar way of showing it

by Ben Sachs on March 29, 2017 at 8:00AM

was. I went on seeing him.

The Guerrilla Truck Show returns after a brief hiatus

by Danielle A. Scruggs on June 15, 2016 at 4:00PM

If you're looking for something weird, Gyorgy Palfi's film Free Fall shouldn't disappoint

by Ben Sachs on October 10, 2014 at 12:30PM

As usual several of the more interesting-sounding titles at this year's Chicago International Film Festival weren't made available for preview, and so, I can't say for certain that Gyorgy Palfi's Free Fall—screening at the festival today at 6:15 PM and tomorrowSunday at 2:45 PM, with Palfi in attendance for both shows—is any good. But based on my experience of the first two features by this Hungarian writer-director, I can say with some confidence that his latest should be eye-catching at the very least.

Another year, another crop of good-looking disappointments at the Chicago International Film Festival

by Ben Sachs on October 9, 2014 at 2:38PM

The other day, I wrote about the thrill of watching filmmakers fail spectacularly—a post inspired by the recent revival of Nagisa Oshima's Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, as well as the half-dozen unspectacular failures I've previewed for this year's Chicago International Film Festival. Thinking about Oshima made me feel so good that I refrained from writing about the latter category, which would have reminded me of the disappointment I'd been trying to shake for the past couple weeks.