Northwest Chicago Film Society's Fall Schedule Will Consume Our Autumn
By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 22, 2013 3:15PM
Nothing can stop the Northwest Chicago Film Society. A myopic corporate bank kicking them out of their home for over three decades couldn't do it. Nor could an unscrupulous new landlord pulling the rug out from under them in their new digs. Not even busted air conditioning in the summer slowed them down.
Only weeks after announcing that the NWCFS's move to the Patio Theater would be permanent, they released a doozy of a schedule for their Wednesday night screenings throughout the rest of the year.
This got us thinking: for anyone with a love for that now-seemingly-very-20th-century art form of moving pictures on film, there is nothing quite so beautiful as a well-planned repertory cinema schedule. Like a music geek appreciating a truly well-crafted mix tape, a foodie savoring the perfectly constructed tasting menu, or a millennial relishing the ultimate YouTube compilation of vines that really speaks to the hopes and dreams of a generation, cinefiles get a special thrill from the right lineup of reel-based entertainment. NWCFS programmers are peerless repertory cinema magicians, expertly doling out titles we had forgotten how much we wanted to see again, films we can't believe we didn't know how much we absolutely had to see, and things we just plain find impossible to resist.
The newly-announced schedule includes a bit of everything we could want. There are unimpeachable classics, like the magical Ninotchka and Terrence Malick's almost painfully beautiful Days of Heaven in a new 35mm print. There are supposedly minor works by giants of the medium, like Alfred Hitchock's Sabotage and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. You've got Steve McQueen singing rockabilly in Baby the Rain Must Fall and Kirk Douglas destroying the mythos of the Western in Lonely are the Brave.
Atop our personal list is the rare opportunity to see a truly tantalizing slab of 1970s sci-fi oddness in widescreen, Colossus: The Forbin Project about a supercomputer put in charge of the country's missile defense systems to make sure that no human error (or conscience) gets in the way of thermonuclear deterrence. It's when the computer, named Colossus, starts IMing with its Soviet counterpart, where things get interesting. Stuck on the shelf by the studio until the success of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey apparently made cryptic punctuation okay in movie titles, this thing is just the sort of ridiculous but irresistible yarn that can get us to the bottom of a bag of popcorn before the first reel change.
Check out the complete schedule below.
9/4 ONE HOUR WITH YOU (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)
9/11 DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978, Terrence Malick)
9/18 MASSACRE (1934, Alan Crosland)
9/25 CASQUE D'OR (1952, Jacques Becker)
10/2 SABOTAGE (1936, Alfred Hitchcock)
FRIDAY 10/4 GOLDSTEIN (1964, Philip Kaufman)
10/9 MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN (1941, Dave Fleischer)
10/16 LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962, David Miller)
10/23 THIEVES LIKE US (1974, Robert Altman)
10/30 THE GAMMA PEOPLE (1956, John Gilling), THE BEGINNING OF THE END (1957, Bert I. Gordon)
11/6 M (1951, Joseph Losey)
FRIDAY 11/15 NO TIME FOR LOVE (1943, Mitchell Leisen)
11/20 BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL (1965, Robert Mulligan)
11/27 MILLION DOLLAR LEGS (1932, Edward F. Cline), GIRLS ABOUT TOWN (1931, George Cukor)
12/4 NINOTCHKA (1939, Ernst Lubitsch)
12/11 COLOSSUS - THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970, Joseph Sargent)
12/18 THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (1944, Preston Sturges)
12/28 BLAST OF SILENCE (1961, Allen Baron)
All screenings will be at The Patio Theater, 6008 W Irving Park Road. Tickets are $5