May: Summer Is Back, Baby!
Monthly Roundup Post
Welcome to my newsletter! Every month you’ll receive this update featuring all of my writing, and my favorite film and television watches.
The birds are tweeting; the sky is clear; the sun is hot—it’s summer in Chicago! In May, I did a couple of festivals: Chicago Critics Film Festival—where I moderated a Q&A with Brother director Clement Virgo—and my first Cannes Film Festival. I am presently back in Chicago, and already gearing up to travel to another festival (more on that in the coming days). But for now… here’s the work I did last month which includes a few film reviews from Cannes, a couple of items for The New York Times, and a couple interviews that I’m quite proud of!!
Last month I watched 68 films, many of them in the lead-up to Chicago Critics Film Festival and during Cannes. It was an embarrassment of riches, some, like Asteroid City and The Zone of Interest, I’m presently writing about for possible think pieces. In the meantime, here are my ten favorite watches from May.
An Impossible Love - In the runup to her film Homecoming premiering at Cannes, I watched Catherine Corsini’s film about a beautiful middle-class woman falling for a terrible aristocratic man who only seems to get worse as the film progresses. You know how it’ll end, but you can’t look away from the messy drama on display.
The Big Lebowski - I haven’t watched this Coen brothers classic in ages; so I decided to fire it up on my plane back from Cannes. It’s just as brilliant as the last time I saw it.
Clueless - Playing in 35mm at the Music Box Theater, this was another revisit of a perfectly written comedy, shown in the resplendent confines of a Chicago jewel.
Golden Eighties - The Music Box played this in DCP on a double-bill with Clueless, and I didn’t know I needed Chantal Akerman to direct a feminist, mall-set 80s musical until then.
I Saw The Face of the Devil - A short out of Cannes from Polish writer/director Julia Kowalski, this religious horror film, with a 1970s patina, reinvents the exorcist subgenere with a smart queer twist.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash - Whoopi Goldberg really was in her bag after The Color Purple. She is having the time of her life in Penny Marshall’s comedic spy flick.
The Nature of Love - Monia Chokri’s dark rom-com bears shades of Lina Wertmüller’s work as an academic leaves her husband for a muscular handyman only to discover that maybe the class divisions between them might be too much to overcome.
Occupied City - I haven’t had the chance to write about Steve McQueen’s newest, a 4.5 hour documentary detailing the forgotten artifacts and locations still within Amsterdam that detail the Nazi’s genocidal campaign against the city’s Jewish population. It’s a tremendous recovering of history that I look forward to people sitting with in its quiet contemplation.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song - On my last night in Paris, France, I rewatched this masterpiece at the Forum des images amongst many elderly Parisian ladies who were immediately surpised at the display of sex, sex, sex. Just as Melvin van Peebles intended.
Theater Camp - I am shocked, shocked that I quite enjoyed this meta-comedy about theater kids. It’s light on story, but big on heart. And decidedly hilarious.
