Son of Saul opens at Music Box, plus more new reviews and notable screenings

notable screenings

László Nemes’s acclaimed Holocaust drama Son of Saul opens Friday at Music Box, and longtime Reader contributor Jonathan Rosenbaum weighs in with a four-star review. We’ve also got new reviews of: Anesthesia, an indie ensemble drama featuring Kristen Stewart, Sam Waterston, Gretchen Mol, Michael K. Williams, and Tim Blake Nelson (who also directed); The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, a documentary about the annual footrace that leads through Tennessee’s treacherous Frozen Head State Park; Cemetery of Splendor and Mekong Hotel, the two most recent films by Thai filmmaker (and SAIC graduate) Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who will attend the Monday screening of Cemetery; The 5th Wave, a sci-fi adventure about invading aliens that stars Chloe Grace Moretz; and The Finest Hours, a Disney drama about the daring U.S. Coast Guard rescue of a commercial tanker that split in two during a storm off the Massachusetts coast in 1952.

Best bets for repertory: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (2015), Saturday and Sunday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Ronit Bezalel’s 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green (2015), Friday through Sunday at Gene Siskel Film Center; Carl Reiner’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), Wednesday at Doc; Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), Friday and Sunday at Doc; Fred Zinnemann’s Julia (1977), Thursday at Doc; Charles Chaplin’s The Kid (1921), Tuesday at Film Center with a lecture by Pamela Robertson Wojcik of Notre Dame University; John Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Wednesday at Northbrook Public Library; Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s On the Town (1949), Monday at Doc; Seijun Suzuki’s Pistol Opera (2001), Saturday at Film Center; and Steve James’s Stevie (2002), Friday at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art, with James attending.

Don’t miss these special events; As Above So Below, a program of award-winning local shorts from last year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival, Friday at Co-Prosperity Sphere; Paul Sharits, a documentary on the experimental filmmaker, Thursday at Block; and Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918), Friday at Filament Theatre, presented by the Silent Film Society of Chicago.