JUNE 8 - AUGUST 9, 2018

FILM CALENDAR

Chicago’s Year-Round Film Festival

3733 N. Southport Avenue, Chicago www.musicboxtheatre.com 773.871.6607

DAMSEL, starring Robert Pattinson & Mia WasikowskaOpening June 29

AMERICAN ANIMALS

OPENS JUNE 8

CINEPOCALYPSEGENRE FILM FESTIVAL

JUNE 21-28

ROBIN WILLIAMS SERIES

TUESDAYS IN JULY

FREE LOONEY TUNESON 35MMJULY 14 & 15

STEPHEN KING FEST

JULY 27 & 28

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FEATURE FILMSAMERICAN ANIMALSCOLD WATERMOUNTAINDAMSELTHREE IDENTICAL STRANGERSWESTWOOD: PUNK, ICON, ACTIVISTTHE KINGMAQUIA THE CAPTAIN

COMMENTARY

SERIESCLASSIC MATINEES CHICAGO FILM SOCIETYSILENT CINEMAFROM STAGE TO SCREENMIDNIGHTS

SPECIAL EVENTSMUSIC BOX MOVIES AT GALLAGHER WAY CINEPOCALYPSEJUNUNTUESDAYS WITH ROBIN WILLIAMSLOONEY TUNES ON 35MMSUMMER ON SOUTHPORTSTEPHEN KING FILM FESTIVAL48 HOUR FILM FESTIVAL

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Brian Andreotti, Director of Programming

Ryan Oestreich, General Manager

Buck LePard, Senior Operations Manager

Stephanie Berlin, Public Relations Manager

Claire Alden, Group Sales and Membership Manager

Julian Antos, Technical Director and Assistant Programmer

Kyle Westphal, Programming Associate

Rebecca Lyon, Assistant Technical Director

VOLUME 36 ISSUE 150Copyright 2018 Southport Music Box Corp.

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Cover Image from the film DAMSEL, opening June 29 at Music Box Theatre.

See page 8 for more information.

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Features and Special Events 5

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MUSIC BOX THEATRE MOVIES AT GALLAGHER WAY

MAY 16 - SEPTEMBER 19

Every Other Wednesday, May 16 - September 19 at 7:30pm

Gather your friends and family and come enjoy Gallagher Way’s free summer movie series brought to you by Chicago’s premier venue for independent and classic films, the Music Box Theatre.

Running every other Wednesday through September, join us as we screen classic films including GREASE, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, HOME ALONE, TWISTER and more. All screenings take place at Gallagher Way, located at 3637 N Clark Street, Chicago. Visit GallagherWay.com for more information and events.

There is no cost for Music Box Theatre Movies at the Gallagher Way, join us for free.

SPECIALEVENT

FEATURES AND SPECIAL EVENTS

AMERICAN ANIMALS

OPENS JUNE 8 FEATUREFILM

DIRECTED BY: Bart LaytonSTARRING: Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Ann Dowd 116 mins, DCP

The unbelievable but entirely true story of four young men who attempt to execute one of the most audacious art heists in U.S. history. When Spencer and Warren, two friends from the middle-class suburbs of Kentucky, leave for college, the realities of adult life begin to dawn on them. Determined to live lives that are out of the ordinary, they plan the brazen theft of some of the world’s most valuable books from the special collections room of the college library. Enlisting two more friends, accounting major Eric and fitness fanatic Chas, and taking their cues from heist movies, the gang meticulously plots the theft. Unfolding from multiple perspectives, and innovatively incorporating the real-life figures at the heart of the story, writer-director Bart Layton (THE IMPOSTER) takes the heist movie into bold new territory.

“A riveting college-boy crime caper that tiggers along on pure movie-movie adrenalin, before U-turning into a sober-ing reflection on young male privilege and entitlement.”

–Variety

READ RAY PRIDE’S COMMENTARY ON PAGE 16

6 Features and Special Events 7Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

COLD WATER

FEATUREFILM

OPENS JUNE 8

New 4K

Restoration

DIRECTED BY: Olivier AssayasSTARRING: Cyprien Fouquet, Virginie Ledoyen1994, 92 mins, DCP, In French with English subtitles

An acclaimed early work by Olivier Assayas that has long remained unavailable, the deeply felt coming-of-age drama COLD WATER at long last makes its way to U.S. theaters. Drawing from his own youthful experiences, Assayas revisits the outskirts of Paris in the early 1970s, telling the story of teenage lovers Gilles and Christine, whose open rebellion against family and society threatens to tear them apart, as Christine is sent to an institution by her parents and Gilles faces an uncertain future after running into trouble at school. With a rock soundtrack that vividly evokes the period, and provides the backdrop for one of the most memorable party sequences ever committed to film, COLD WATER is a heartbreaking immersion into the emotional tumult of adolescence.

FEATURES AND SPECIAL EVENTS

OPENS JUNE 15 FEATUREFILM

MOUNTAIN

DIRECTED BY: Jennifer Peedom74 mins, DCP

Only three centuries ago, setting out to climb a mountain would have been considered close to lunacy. Mountains were places of peril, not beauty, an upper world to be shunned, not sought out. Why do mountains now hold us spellbound, drawing us into their dominion, often at the cost of our lives? From Tibet to Australia, Alaska to Norway armed with drones, Go-Pros and helicopters, director Jennifer Peedom has fashioned an astonishing symphony of mountaineers, ice climbers, free soloists, heliskiers, snowboarders, wingsuiters and parachuting mountain bikers. Willem Dafoe provides a narration sampled from British mountaineer Robert Macfarlane’s acclaimed memoir Mountains of the Mind, and a classical score from the Australian Chamber Orchestra accompanies this majestic cinematic experience.

“ ««««. A sublime rush of adrenaline and orchestral beauty.”

–The Guardian

“A ravishing feat of vertiginous filmmaking.”

–The Hollywood Reporter

READ PAT MCGAVIN’S COMMENTARY ON PAGE 18

8 Features and Special Events 9Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

This July, the Music Box celebrates the work of the incomparable Robin Williams, with weekly screenings of films starring the Oscar-winning actor and comedian.

Included in the series: The animated Disney classic ALADDIN; a 25th Anniversary presentation of the family blockbuster MRS. DOUBTFIRE; Terry Gilliam’s magical New York fantasy THE FISHER KING; Bobcat Goldthwait’s pitch-black comedy WORLD’S GREATEST DAD; and the action-adventure based on the beloved children’s book JUMANJI.

DAMSEL

FEATUREFILM

DIRECTED BY: David Zellner and Nathan ZellnerSTARRING: Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner113 mins, DCP

Samuel Alabaster (Robert Pattinson), an affluent pioneer, ventures across the American Frontier to marry the love of his life, Penelope (Mia Wasikowska). As Samuel traverses the Wild West with a drunkard named Parson Henry (David Zellner) and a miniature horse called Butterscotch, their once-simple journey grows treacherous, blurring the lines between hero, villain and damsel.

A loving reinvention of the western genre from the Zellner brothers (KUMIKO THE TREASURE HUNTER), DAMSEL showcases their trademark unpredictability, off-kilter sense of humor, and unique brand of humanism.

OPENS JUNE 29

“Delightful…Mia Wasikowska can do no wrong.”

–New York Magazine

“Beautiful and unpredictable.”

–The Guardian

JUNUN

Thursday, July 5 at 9:30pmDIRECTED BY: Paul Thomas AndersonSTARRING: Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, The Rajasthan Express(2015, 54 mins, DCP)

Spring 2015, the Maharaja of Jodhpur, India hosts Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, Nigel Godrich, Paul Thomas Anderson and a dozen Indian musicians. The team assembles a makeshift studio at the Maharaja’s Fort, and over the following three weeks create the joyous collaboration that becomes the music and film of JUNUN (madness of love). Junun is a cross-cultural, cross religious meeting point between the mystical Islam of Sufi, Qawwali, and Rajasthani Gypsy musicians interwoven with devotional poetries in Urdu, Hebrew, and Hindi. Composed by Shye Ben Tzur, an Israeli musician and poet who lived for 15 years in India, the music was crafted and shaped by the influences of Jonny Greenwood and Nigel Godrich, and captured on film by Paul Thomas Anderson. The results deliver the close camaraderie of artistic collaboration and a sonic, visual and sensory experience that will intrigue and capture your imagination.

JULY 5 SPECIALEVENT

FEATURES AND SPECIAL EVENTS

July 3

ALADDIN(Ron Clements and John Musker, 1992, 90 mins, DCP)

July 17

THE FISHER KING(Terry Gilliam, 1991, 137 mins, DCP)

July 31

JUMANJI(Joe Johnston, 1995, 104 mins, DCP)

July 10

MRS. DOUBTFIRE(Chris Columbus, 1993, 125 mins, DCP)

July 24

WORLD’S GREATEST DAD(Bobcat Goldthwait, 2009, 97 mins, 35mm)

TUESDAYS WITH ROBINSPECIAL

EVENT

Every Tuesday in July at 7pm

25th

Anniversary!

Preceded by Radiohead’s DAYDREAMING on 35MM

10 Features and Special Events 11Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

JULY 14 & 15

LOONEY TUNES ON 35MM!

To coincide with the annual Summer on Southport street festival, we’re presenting a series of Warner Bros. cartoons on 35mm. Join Bugs, Daffy, Wile E. Coyote and the rest of the gang as we screen some classic cartoons guaranteed to bring out the kid in you.

Over 3 hours of cartoons that we’re showing FOR FREE, starting at 10am on Saturday & Sunday. Take a break from the outdoor activities to catch classic Looney Tunes on the famous Music Box big screen. Come and go as you please!

SPECIALEVENT

A

SUMMER ON

SOUTHPORT

SPECIAL!

OPENS JULY 6 FEATUREFILM

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERSDIRECTED BY: Tim Wardle96 mins, DCP

Tim Wardle’s acclaimed documentary THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS is the most amazing, incredible, remarkable true story ever told. Three strangers are reunited by astonishing coincidence after being born identical triplets, separated at birth, and adopted by three different families. Their jaw-dropping, feel-good story instantly becomes a global sensation complete with fame and celebrity, however, the fairy-tale reunion sets in motion a series of events that unearth an unimaginable secret—a secret with radical repercussions for us all.

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS is an exuberant celebration of family that transforms into a thriller with colossal implications and proof that life is truly stranger than fiction.

“A documentary that plays like a nerve-jangling thriller.”

–The Wrap

Winner - Special Jury Award - Sundance Film Festival

SUMMER ON SOUTHPORTIn the Music Box Lounge & Garden

July 14 & 15

Visit the Music Box Lounge & Garden during the Southport Arts Festival! Beat the summer heat with complimentary Beer, Wine & Spirits tastings, our famous Build-Your-Own Bloody Mary Bar, Frozen Cocktails, Food Trucks, Live Music and much more. Come celebrate the Arts and enjoy the beautiful weather in the Music Box Garden!

JULY 14 & 15 SPECIALEVENT

FEATURES AND SPECIAL EVENTS

WESTWOOD: PUNK, ICON, ACTIVIST

OPENS JULY 13 FEATUREFILM

DIRECTED BY: Lorna Tucker80 mins, DCP

Dame Vivienne Westwood is Punk Rock’s Grande Dame. One time agent provocateur, the doyenne of British fashion, an eco-conscious activist and one of the most influential originators in recent history. The film explores her uphill struggle to success, looking closely at her artistry, her activism and her cultural significance. Blending iconic archive and newly shot observational footage, this era defining, intimate origins story is told in Vivienne’s own words, and through touching interviews with her inner circle of family, friends and collaborators. WESTWOOD: PUNK, ICON, ACTIVIST encompasses the remarkable story of one of the true icons of our time, as she fights to maintain her brand’s integrity, her principles—and her legacy.

“As sharp-lined as one of Westwood’s showiest

catwalk gowns” –Variety

“4 Stars...An access-all-areas look at Britain’s foremost fashion designer.”

–Total Film

READ STEVE PROKOPY’S COMMENTARY ON PAGE 20

Commentary 1312 Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

THE KING

OPENS JULY 20 FEATUREFILM

“The most insightful and com-prehensive profile of the icon

ever been captured on camera” –Indiewire

“Hugely moving and enor-mously bombastic in a way that is pure Elvis.”

–The Wrap

DIRECTED BY: Eugene Jarecki109 mins, DCP

Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, two-time Sundance Grand Jury winner Eugene Jarecki’s new film takes the King’s 1963 Rolls-Royce on a musical road trip across America. From Memphis to New York, Las Vegas, and beyond, the journey traces the rise and fall of Elvis as a metaphor for the country he left behind. In this groundbreaking film, Jarecki paints a visionary portrait of the state of the American Dream and a penetrating look at how the hell we got here. A diverse cast of Americans, both famous and non, join the journey, including Alec Baldwin, Rosanne Cash, Chuck D, Emmylou Harris, Ethan Hawke, Van Jones, Mike Myers, and Dan Rather, among many others.

Opening

Weekend -

Director In

Person!

FEATURES AND SPECIAL EVENTS

MAQUIA: WHEN THE PROMISED FLOWER BLOOMS

OPENS JULY 27 FEATUREFILM

DIRECTED BY: Mari OkadaSTARRING: Manaka Iwami, Miyu Irino, Ai Kayano115 mins, DCP, In Japanese with English subtitles

Though only 15, Maquia knows she will live for centuries without aging past adolescence. She belongs to the Iorph, a clan of ageless beings just like her. Maquia’s elders warn her not to fall in love with anyone outside their realm, lest she wish to encounter true loneliness in the end. But fate pushes Maquia out into the mortal world one night, when an invading territory separates her from the clan. There she discovers an orphaned baby, Erial, and takes him in as her own child. From this point, Maquia will suffer extreme heartbreak in the name of motherhood, as she watches Erial grow and seeks to reconnect with her lost Iorph friends, all torn apart by the cruel world of Mesate.

14 Features and Special Events 15Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

FEATURES AND SPECIAL EVENTS

THE CAPTAIN

FEATUREFILM

DIRECTED BY: Robert SchwentkeSTARRING: Max Hubacher, Milan Peschel, Bernd Hölscher118 mins, DCP, In German with English subtitles

Based on a disturbing true story, THE CAPTAIN follows Willi Herold, a German army deserter who stumbles across an abandoned Nazi captain’s uniform during the last, desperate weeks of the Third Reich. Newly emboldened by the allure of a suit that he stole only to stay warm, Willi discovers that many Germans will follow the leader, whosoever that happens to be. A parade of fresh atrocities follow in the self-declared captain’s wake, and serve as a profound reminder of the consequences of social conformity and untrammeled political power.

A historical docudrama, a tar-black comedy, and a sociological treatise, THE CAPTAIN presents fascism as a pathetic pyramid scheme, a system to be gamed by the most unscrupulous and hollow-souled.

OPENS AUGUST 3

“Relentless…Arresting… Darkly evocative.”

–The Hollywood Reporter

“Fully understands the psychology of the

German soldiers and offers unflinching, timeless truth.”

–RogerEbert.com

Opening Weekend - Director In Person!

BUY YOUR COPY TODAY AT THE MUSIC BOX THEATRE

doppelgangerreleasing.com@doppelgangerreleasing

16 Commentary 17Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

COMMENTARY

Successive generations of filmmakers get farther and farther from classic genres and the stuff of familiar stories, refracting them through their own experience of life and art, and that is one of the most thrilling things about feature-length filmmaking a century on. Wisecracking post-Tarantino ironic meta-fiction for a decade past RESERVOIR DOGS was a decadent phase, and now movies like Bart Layton’s exemplary heist canvas, AMERICAN ANIMALS, bloom from that wreckage. He takes the most grandiloquent visual devices of cinematic masters/monsters like Tarantino, Michael Mann, Oliver Stone and Tony Scott and just gets on with it in a tonally insolent thriller copping its primary facts from a 2003 true crime.

Layton’s first picture, THE IMPOSTER (2012), demonstrated his interest in blurring lines of fact and fiction, and fact succumbed to the gorgeous patterning of visual style and ironic a-has. Some may think Layton has only gone deeper down a rabbithole of style atop substance, but what a glorious, richly suggestive rabbithole it is. AMERICAN ANIMALS is a sleek monster all its own, but the quickest shorthand would be an effective hybrid of THIN BLUE LINE and both versions of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123.

“This is not based on a true story,” the opening credits of AMERICAN ANIMALS read, briefly, before “not based on” disappears from view. What is “truth” in the mind that conceives of vastly preposterous schemes and the heart that holds success is not only possible, but also certain?

Two male friends from the average suburbs of Lexington, Kentucky, headed to college, want more of their lives. Spencer wants to be an artist but doesn’t think he’s suffered; Warren’s upbringing led him to believe he is destined for unspecified greatness. The suffocating dissatis-faction of these Nietzsche-reader-style ne’er-do-wells leads them to an unlikely and wildly ambitious heist of rare books from the local Transylvania University special collection. Among

CAREENING TOWARD DISASTERHead Down the Rabbithole of AMERICAN ANIMALS By Ray Pride

them: John James Audubon’s singular “Birds of America.” As a born-and-bred Kentuckian, that batty plan and those indelible illustrations are as enthralling as the recreation of a modern crime of the Commonwealth. (Plus, a first edition of “Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin on the side.)

As the plan spirals upward and outward, Layton has many more tricks than the post-teens weaned on heist movies: he introduces real-life figures into the onrushing tale to narrate the progress (and fates) of their onscreen avatars. What do these men know a decade-and-a-half later that their callow fictional kidlings do not? The dynamics are there; the screws tighten. The acts are audacious and immoral, and as things speed up, a careen toward disaster seems fated. Their mad cluelessness suggests the weird and damming all-American confidence that anyone can do any job if they’ve ever seen it portrayed, anywhere.

Layton’s darkly enveloping visual palette is marzipan-meets-Mars-light, with colors upon colors and hue upon chroma in aromatic profusion. Time schemes and the musical score shift with showy bravura, objective representations of the subjective delusions of this mild bunch. The brilliance burns to the touch. These boys’ gaudy crime fantasia was born from the very mass of mass media that Layton repurposes to his own substantial narrative ends.

Ray Pride is film critic of Newcity, editor of MovieCityNews.com and a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine. He is also a photographer: his book of words and images of Chicago “Ghost Signs” is forthcoming.

AMERICAN ANIMALS OPENS JUNE 8. SEE PAGE 5 FOR DETAILS.

JUNE 22 - 28

164 N State • siskelfilmcenter.org

GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

BOOM FOR REALTHE LATETEENAGE YEARS OF

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

LIQUID SKYJUNE 29 - JULY 5

NEW 4K DIGITAL RESTORATION

18 Commentary 19Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

COMMENTARY

Few things in cinema are as exciting as the breakout emergence of a spectacular talent. From the moment it premiered at the Cannes Film festival in 1994, COLD WATER was an instant classic, a lyrically bracing and emotionally tense work about doomed young lovers on the outskirts of Paris in 1972.

The movie is the fifth feature of the French writer and director Olivier Assayas. Despite generat-ing tremendous reviews at festivals in Toronto and New York, the movie suffered a fractured and random history in English-speaking markets. The complications of securing the music rights to songs performed by Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen scuttled any American distribu-tion deal.

Two years later, Assayas made the stylistically audacious IRMA VEP, revealing a stylistic fluency and acuity that proved his breakout. Even as his career soared, there was always a lingering disap-pointment the director’s most significant early work was effectively rendered invisible. Janus Films and Criterion (which has done extraordinary work in making Assayas’s diverse, adventurous body of work widely available) have deftly navigated the music-rights issues and present this extraordinary work under the best possible conditions with a pristine and hauntingly beautiful 4K restoration.

The story pivots on the relationship of the two criminally beautiful sixteen-year old outlaw lovers, the feral and magnetic Christine (Virginie Ledoyen) and the romantic, amoral Gilles (Cyprien

FRESH AND MONUMENTALFollow Doomed Lovers in the Classic COLD WATERBy Patrick Z. McGavin

Fouquet). Impulsive and fanciful, Christine has constructed a harsh, tough surface to conceal the dreariness of her working class roots and the attendant difficulties of her broken home life.

Gilles also is the product of divorced parents though he has access to greater material comfort and an intellectual art-history father (played by the great French-Hungarian actor László Szabó, a crucial player in the early French New Wave). He is more sheltered, admitting he has his books, records and papers but he lacks experiences.

The two become separated when Christine is detained by store security during a shoplifting spree. The movie meditates on themes of freedom and confinement. Assayas has always excelled at orchestrating movement and he wields the camera expressively.

He is great at tethering the camera to the interior emotional states of his actors. After her father commits Christine to an institution, the camera floats and whirls outside in revealing the open-ness of the countryside in brutal contrast to the restriction of her new institutional environment.

Avid for adventure, Gilles seems to be making a transition from delinquency to outright anarchy after he acquires some explosives. He seems trapped by extremes, the solidity of his home and the energy and excitement of the forbidden. Smart though unformed, Gilles is seeking his own identity. The reaching for that yields one of the film’s best scenes of Gilles wandering at night through the woods as he recites American poet Allen Ginsberg’s difficult, dense text, “Wichita Vortex Sutra.”

The movie’s extraordinary centerpiece is set off by the rendezvous of the central couple at an abandoned chateau in the countryside. The bacchanal, at once thrilling and tense, is enthralling to take in at the mass of bodies arrayed off one another, getting high, dancing, making out, the alert and probing camera capturing mood and atmosphere with a tactile immediacy.

The music is so adroitly interwoven and suggestive, the liberation of Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” the freedom of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” Dylan’s haunting “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and Cohen’s bracing “Avalanche,” punctuated by the abrasive sound of the needle skip-ping along the tracks.

The imagery and sounds coalesce and carry a sense of wonder, surprise and unease. Photo-graphed by Denis Lenoir, the movie has a speed and clarity. A deeply accomplished actress who made films during the same time with Benoit Jacquot, Claude Chabrol and Taiwanese master Edward Yang, Virginie Ledoyen is sensational. She holds the different pieces together. She is heartbreaking, showing off a self-destructive energy disclosing a tender and volatile vulnerability. In his first film part, Fouquet allows his lack of technical training to his advantage, underscoring his own uncertainty.

All films age differently as some works achieve greater subtlety and artistic range and others suffer by changing standards or tougher inspection under a close glare. COLD WATER feels as fresh and monumental as the time of that first public screening at Cannes 24 years ago. Olivier Assayas has made more challenging and ambitious films. He has never made a film, like COLD WATER, that leaves you shaken and unmoored.

Patrick Z. McGavin is a Chicago writer and film critic. His reviews, interviews and festival dispatches have appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Reader and RogerEbert.com. He is also a contributing critic to Magill’s Cinema Annual.

COLD WATER OPENS JUNE 8. SEE PAGE 6 FOR DETAILS.

20 Commentary 21Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

FEATURES AND SPECIAL EVENTSCOMMENTARY

CONTROLLED GROUPThe Captivating Story of THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS By Steve Prokopy

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS OPENS JULY 6. SEE PAGE 10 FOR DETAILS.

For a brief time in 1980, the three most talked about people in New York City and the country were Bobby Shafran, Eddy Galland, and David Kellman. They were all 19-year-old, nice, Jewish boys who grew up near each other but never met until, on Shafran’s first day of community college, he was mistaken for Galland by everyone he met. It didn’t take long for one of Galland’s friends to connect the two, verifying the only possible truth: that they were twin brothers, separated as infants. Since both knew they’d been adopted, this didn’t seem that out of the realm of possibilities. Before long, local papers were running stories about the long-lost siblings, along with photos of the pair, which caught the attention of Kellman, also adopted, also 19, and also bearing a striking resemblance to the recently reunited brothers. And just like that, the twins became triplets, and the media coverage exploded.

The handsome lads were built for talk shows. They would show up dressed identically, answer certain questions in unison, discuss the uncanny number of common traits and interests they had, and do just about anything that seemed amusing just because having three lookalikes doing it together made it funnier. They went to Studio 54 as a group, and even cameoed in the film DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN alongside a young Madonna. It took some time for anyone to ask the question: “Why were these brothers separated?” and more importantly, “How did they end up being raised by such vastly different parents, whose only common trait was that they were all Jewish?” Now, director Tim Wardle tells the entire, stranger-than-fiction tale of the triplets—one in which the reunion is only the beginning of something far more unnerving and unethical.

Winner of a Special Jury Prize for Storytelling (Documentary) at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS hits theaters at a time when interest in serialized, true-crime podcasts and series is seemingly at an all-time high. But rather than expand this complex and layered mystery across several hours, director Wardle opts to boil every moment down to its most shocking elements while never pulling back on the humanity of the three men caught in the middle of this captivating story. The filmmaker takes his time pulling back micro-layers of secrets, revealing just enough to keep audiences on a hook, thinking things couldn’t get any more devious, when in fact they can.

One especially heartbreaking sequence involves the brothers as young men seeking out and find-ing their mother, who it turns out was underage, desperate and not entirely mentally stable when

she had them. She arranged to hand her children over to an elite Jewish adoption agency, Louise Wise Services, which specialized in matching babies born to Jewish mothers with Jewish families, which is exactly what happened to the subjects of this documentary. Using archival footage and re-creations, Wardle does an impressive job capturing the period and the frenzy that surrounded the times, but he also adds a layer of the sinister when discussing the adoption agency, and for good reason, including a wonderful moment when the adoptive parents confront the agency in their search for information and end up learning more than they’d bargained.

Although some critics have openly discussed the film’s biggest and most explosive turns and reveals, it’s almost criminal to have those moments spoiled since audiences all along the festival circuit have reacted audibly to every new detail. The real hero of THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS is journalist Lawrence Wright, who never gave up investigating Louise Wise Services, and serves as the conduit for a great number of the movie’s most dramatic moments. By the conclusion, the birth mother’s mental health comes back to haunt them, mysterious figures in their lives growing up suddenly make sense (to them and their parents), and a deeper understanding of how thor-oughly our search for knowledge can corrupt our morality becomes all too clear.

Some of the most interesting interviews come courtesy of the adoptive parents, not just for the information they provide, but also because their demeanor and self-admitted parenting styles were so radically different—a fact that comes into play as the true nature of this story opens up. It’s difficult to watch THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS and not feel for these kids who were denied growing up with their siblings, who they are clearly so close to in later years. But as more recent interviews reveal, even the tightest knit of families can be divided and hurt each other. At one particularly difficult moment, the brothers realize that even though they look the same, they barely know each other.

In all likelihood, the movie will enrage you, but it’s the type of emotional response that’s difficult to aim in a specific direction, making it all the more frustrating as a morality tale. The film ends with discussions of legal battles and documents that won’t be available for review until long af-ter these men are dead, which sounds anticlimactic, when in fact, almost nothing about this work is. THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS is an early frontrunner for the best documentary of 2018.

Steve Prokopy is the Chief Film Critic for the Chicago-based arts outlet Third Coast Review (www.ThirdCoastReview.com), where he contributes film reviews and filmmaker and actor interviews. For 20 years, he was the Chicago Editor for Ain’t It Cool News, writing under the name “Capone.”

22 Music Box Theatre June-August 2018 Matinees 23

CONTINUING SERIES

CLASSIC MATINEES

MICHAEL CURTIZ: A RETROSPECTIVEJune 9 - August 5

Although he is best known for the immortal CASABLANCA, Michael Curtiz directed over 150 films in a career that spanned half a century. He turned out between two-to-seven features every year from 1926 to 1952, making film noirs, swashbucklers, melodramas, comedies, westerns, horror films, musicals, and patriotic paeans to his adopted country. NOIR CITY maestro Alan K. Rode will be joining the Music Box on June 9 & 10 to screen double features of several Curtiz landmarks and discuss his new book, MICHAEL CURTIZ: A LIFE IN FILM, with additional Curtiz matinees throughout the summer.

THE MAD GENIUS(Michael Curtiz, 1931, 81 mins, 35mm)One of Curtiz’s finest and most neglected pre-Code films, THE MAD GENIUS is an elaborately daft vision of the director’s European roots. John Barrymore stars as frustrated puppeteer Vladimir Ivan Tsarakov, who vows to turn a boy he derides as “a disjointed bag of bones” into a first-rate dancer. A psycho-logical horror film that finds room for extended ballet sequences, THE MAD GENIUS was the BLACK SWAN of its day.

THE BREAKING POINT(Michael Curtiz, 1950, 97 mins, 35mm)An adaptation of the same Ernest Hemingway story that served as the basis for TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, THE BREAKING POINT casts John Garfield as a beleaguered fishing boat captain forced into unchartered moral waters in this exemplary working-class noir.

New 35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by Warner Bros. in association with The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

VIRGINIA CITY(Michael Curtiz, 1940, 121 mins, 35mm)Chiefly known as the movie that preposterously cast Humphrey Bogart as a Mexican bandito with a pencil mustache, VIRGINIA CITY remains one of Curtiz’s most entertaining Westerns, with terrific stunt work and sultry Painted Desert vistas. In the waning days of the Civil War, Union officer Errol Flynn learns of a con-spiracy to prop up the Confederacy by diverting a gold shipment to Jefferson Davis himself. Can he trust showgirl Miriam Hopkins to smash the Rebs?

35mm preservation from the Library of Congress

DOCTOR X(Michael Curtiz, 1932, 76 mins, 35mm)The great granddaddy of body horror movies, DOCTOR X is a genre mash-up that may as well have been grafted together on the operating table with a healthy dollop of synthetic flesh. Simultaneously a gruesome moonlight murder mystery and a saucy pre-Code newspaper comedy, DOCTOR X was photographed in the two-strip Technicolor process, which renders the morgue visits, the grisly medical experiments, and Fay Wray in an eerily unreal color palette. Presented as part of CINEPOCALYPSE.

MILDRED PIERCE(Michael Curtiz, 1945, 111 mins, 35mm)Joan Crawford provides the last word in motherly sacrifice in this perverse noir melodrama of spoiled teenagers, loutish husbands, and chain restaurants. Later re-made as a Todd Haynes mini-series with Kate Winslet, the Curtiz original is a concentrated powerhouse with an excellent grasp of the minute gradations of Southern California social hierarchy.

CASABLANCA(Michael Curtiz, 1942, 102 mins, 35mm)

There is no greater tribute to Curtiz’s narrative mastery than CASABLANCA, his roving camera deftly catching a dozen memorable and quotable performances (Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson, et al.) in Rick’s Cafe Americain. A World War II propaganda film that remains a beloved touchstone as time goes by, this Best Picture Academy Award winner represents golden age Hollywood filmmaking at its height.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD(Michael Curtiz & William Keighley, 1938, 102 mins, 35mm)Errol Flynn brings the New Deal to the dispossessed of Sherwood Forest in this all-time classic swashbuckler. The beautifully-paced action sequences and elaborate costume design are rendered in eye-popping three-strip Technicolor, with first-rate symphonic support from Erich Korngold.

Saturday, June 9 at 11:30am

Sunday, June 10 at 2:00pm

Sunday, June 17 at 11:30am

Saturday, June 23 at 11:30am

Saturday, June 30 & Sunday, July 1 at 11:30am

Sunday, June 10 at 11:30am

Saturday, June 9 at 1:30pm

SATURDAYS & SUNDAYS AT 11:30am

24 Music Box Theatre June-August 2018 Matinees 25

CONTINUING SERIES

THE SEA HAWK(Michael Curtiz, 1940, 109 mins, 35mm)High-seas privateers plunder across the screen in this fleet pirate saga with a timely interventionist message. Queen Elizabeth is counseled to appease Spain and ignore its growing Armada, but Captain Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) knows better and recognizes a military threat when he sees one. Building upon the spectacle of their earlier CAPTAIN BLOOD, Curtiz and Flynn achieve the zenith of the seafaring genre.

THE KENNEL MURDER CASE(Michael Curtiz, 1933, 73 mins, 35mm)Widely regarded as the best screen adaptation of S.S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance mystery novels,THE KENNEL MURDER CASE cast William Powell as the suave detective a year before he soft-shoed his way into the not dissimilar Nick Charles role in THE THIN MAN. A B-movie plot tricked out with A+ technique and impressive forward momen-tum, THE KENNEL MURDER CASE secured Curtiz’s repu-tation as a studio craftsman who could enliven any script.

NOAH’S ARK(Michael Curtiz, 1928, 100 mins, 35mm)Curtiz’s answer to Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 telling of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, NOAH’S ARK mixes its Old Testament para-ble with a modern tale of civilizational catastrophe with a World War I backdrop. The cast has dual roles, including Noah Beery as Noah’s nemesis King Nephiliu and lecherous Russian spymaster Nickoloff. Shot as a silent film but released with Vitaphone music and effects track and several dialogue sequences, NOAH’S ARK confirmed Curtiz’s command of spectacle.

35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

FLAMINGO ROAD(Michael Curtiz, 1949, 94 mins, 35mm)Joan Crawford re-teams with Curtiz for this downmarket MILDRED PIERCE, which asks whether a carnival dancer can rise to the posh confines of Flamingo Road. Crawford must beat a gauntlet of corrupt sheriffs, scheming politicos, and bordello whispers in this landmark of soap opera camp.

Saturday, July 7 & Sunday, July 8 at 11:30am

Sunday, July 22 at 11:30am

Sunday, July 29 at 11:30am

Saturday, August 4 & Saturday, August 5 at 11:30am

Music Box MemberBecoming a member at the Music Box is a great way to support the quality programming at the independently owned and operated historic movie theatre, lounge and garden. This includes our holiday classics, talk backs, film festivals, visits from directors, producers, and actors, as well as our regular midnight, matinee,

and feature presentations.

register online at musicboxtheatre.com or visit our box office!

• Discounted tickets

• Members-only screenings

• Advanced purchase for special screenings

• Restaurant discounts

• Deals on Music Box Films DVD’s

• Bottomless popcorn

• Discounted house wines

j o i n t o d ay

Silent Cinema 2726 Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

CONTINUING SERIES

RIO BRAVO(Howard Hawks, 1959, 141 mins, 35mm)Monday, June 18 at 7pm

A Western about relationships, honor, purple light in the canyon, and the inexhaustibly fine line between “good” and “good enough,” RIO BRAVO is just about perfect. John Wayne stars as John T. Chance, a small town sheriff who must keep the peace with a task force that embarrasses his conservative sense of professionalism: drunken deputy Dean Martin, guitar-slinging kid Ricky Nelson, game-legged oldster Walter Brennan, fiercely independent Angie Dickinson, and loquacious Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez. An ambling, seemingly shapeless movie that thinks nothing of stopping the action for a song or two, RIO BRAVO boasts a screenplay that is a genuine model of economy and an endless fount of arid wisdom.

Screening in an original IB Technicolor print!

URGH! A MUSIC WAR(Derek Burbidge, 1981, 96 mins, 35mm)Monday, July 16 at 7pm

Unabashed propaganda for the new wave of rock ’n’ roll on the rise at the head of the Reagan era, URGH! A MUSIC WAR captured some of the most exciting musical acts of its era live in prime form. URGH! provided each of its 24 bands the space of a single song to leave an indelible impression before moving along. URGH! has endured as a vital time capsule of its musical moment, presented in hi-fi with relatively little corporate intervention. So please join us as we present Devo, Echo & the Bunnymen, X, 999, Klaus Nomi, Au Pairs, Oingo Boingo, UB40, The Cramps, Gary Numan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, XTC, and many more in the musical event of 1981.

Co-presented with CHIRP 107.1 FM

THE CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY PRESENTSThe Chicago Film Society hosts monthly presentations featuring classic films, underseen rarities, cult movies, short subjects, trailer reels and more, all on glorious celluloid. For more information, visit www.chicagofilmsociety.org.

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28 Stage to Screen 29Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

CONTINUING SERIES

MACBETHPRESENTED BY NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE

Directed by: Rufus NorrisTuesday, August 7 at 7pm

Shakespeare’s most intense and terrifying trage-dy, directed by Rufus Norris (THE THREEPENNY OPERA, LONDON ROAD), will see Rory Kinnear (YOUNG MARX, SKYFALL) and Anne-Marie Duff (OIL, SUFFRAGETTE) return to the National The-atre to play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

The ruined aftermath of a bloody civil war. Ruthlessly fighting to survive, the Macbeths are pro-pelled toward the crown by forces of elemental darkness.

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIMEENCORE PRESENTATIONPRESENTED BY NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE

Directed by: Marianne ElliotWednesday, July 25 at 7pm

Captured live from the National Theatre in London, this critically acclaimed production directed by Marianne Elliot (ANGELS IN

AMERICA, WAR HORSE), has astonished audiences around the world and has received seven Olivier and five Tony Awards®.

Christopher, fifteen years old, stands beside Mrs. Shears’ dead dog. It has been speared with a garden fork, it is seven minutes after midnight and Christopher is under suspicion. He records each fact in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington. He has an extraordinary brain, exceptional at math while ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched and he distrusts strangers. But his detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that upturns his world.

“A phenomenal combination of storytelling and spectacle” – The Times

“Dazzlingly inventive” – Evening Standard

The Music Box proudly presents the greatest in filmed theatrical productions from around the world!

FROM STAGE TO SCREENSILENT CINEMAClassic silent films the way they were meant to be seen! Featuring a live musical score on the famous Music Box organ by Dennis Scott, Music Box House Organist. Co-presented by Chicago Film Society.

FEEL MY PULSE(Gregory La Cava, 1928, 63 mins, 35mm)Saturday, June 16 at 11:30am

Bebe Daniels began her acting career at the age of seven; by fourteen, she was a frequent co-star of Harold Lloyd and by the end of the silent era, Daniels had become a star and accomplished co-medienne in her own right. This rollick-ing comedy offers Daniels a wonderful showcase for knockabout antics and sub-tler character work. Hypochondriac heir-ess Daniels heads to an island sanitarium where everything is not as it seems. The

doctor (William Powell) is really a bootlegger in disguise and all the attendants, save for undercover reporter Richard Arlen, are lieutenants in his rum-running army. You’ll never look at surgical equip-ment the same way again.

Preservation Print courtesy of the Library of Congress

THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS(Jean Grémillon, 1929, 73 mins, 35mm, In French with English subtitles)Saturday, July 21 at 11:30am

Initially trained as a documentary filmmaker before dabbling in the avant-garde, Jean Grémillon transitioned to narrative features at the very end of the silent era. His second, THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS, was shot in a studio, but retains the flavor of Grémillon’s native Brittany. A father tends a remote lighthouse with his son, who longs to be reunited with his fiancée. Unbeknownst to the father, the son was recently bitten by a rabid dog and

finds himself slowly going insane and turning violent. Adapted by Jacques Feyder from a one-act play, THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS is notable for its expressionistic distortions and masterful editing, continually finding new ways to represent abnormal psychological realms.

Print courtesy of National Film Archive of Japan

30 Midnights 31Music Box Theatre June-August 2018

CONTINUING SERIES

LOWLIFE(Ryan Prows, 2017, 96 mins, DCP)

Cinepocalypse Jury Award-Winning Film Returns: What happens when you throw together a fallen Mexican wrestler with serious rage issues, a just-out-of-prison ex-con with a regrettable face tattoo, and a recovering junkie motel owner in search of a kidney? That’s the premise of the berserk, blood-spattered, and wickedly entertaining feature debut from Ryan Prows.

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS(Michael Patrick Jann, 1999, 97 mins, 35mm)

This endlessly-quotable black comedy follows Minnesotan teenage beauty queens vying for the title of American Teen Princess—and the killer intent on taking out the competition! Bringing together a jaw-droppingly talented cast including Kirstie Alley, Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, Allison Janney, Brittany Murphy, Denise Richards, and the film debut of Amy Adams, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS is a modern camp classic that proves if looks can kill, laughter is twice as deadly.

SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSS SONG(Melvin Van Peebles, 1971, 97 mins, DCP)

Director/writer/producer/editor/composer Melvin Van Peebles stars as a black orphan raised in a brothel and groomed to be a sex show performer. Set up by his boss and two corrupt cops for a murder he didn’t commit, Sweetback

escapes custody and is thrust into an increasingly hallucinogenic world of violence and bigotry where no one can be trusted, and the possibility of death lurks at every corner. Featuring a rousing score from a nascent Earth, Wind, & Fire, as well as surrealist visuals from stalwart genre cinematographer Robert Maxwell (THE CANDY SNATCHERS), Van Peebles creates an unforgettable study of perseverance in the face of racism.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (George Miller, 2015, 120 mins, 35mm)

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS (Michael Patrick Jann, 1999, 97 mins, 35mm)

SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSS SONG (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971, 97 mins, DCP)

MIDNIGHTSLOWLIFE (Ryan Prows, 2017, 96 mins, DCP)

THE ROOM (Tommy Wiseau, 2003, 99 mins, 35mm)

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Jim Sharman, 1975, 100 mins, 35mm)

SPRING BREAKERS (Harmony Korine, 2012, 94 mins, 35mm)

June 8 & 9

June 15

& July 20

June 16 & July 21

June 29 & 30

July 6 & 7

July 13 & 14

August 3 & 4

FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS AT MIDNIGHT

New 4K Restoration!