Chicago Film Lover Exchange

This is a film I won't miss, because it's a rare glimpse into the daily life of the soldiers whose challenges all-too-often go unnoticed. For years, Miles Lagoze, who enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of 18, served in Afghanistan as a Combat Camera, shooting footage and editing videos for Marine Corps recruiting purposes. In this devastating film, Lagoze assembles his own footage and that of his fellow combat cameramen into a never-before-seen look at the daily life of Marines from the ultimate insider's point of view. More than a mere compilation of violence, this riveting documentary creatively repurposes the original footage to reveal the intensity and paradoxes of war in an age of ubiquitous cameras, whereby soldiers can now record themselves with helmet-cams and cellphones. Please read this thought-provoking review in "NewCity": https://newcityfilm.com/2019/03/11/eyes-of-a-soldier-a-review-of-combat-obscura/ This is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkaTGGwwvSI IT'S A SHORT FILM. WE'LL GO TO THE MIDDLE-EASTERN CHEAP AND GOOD RESTAURANT ACROSS THE STREET AFTER THE SHOW AS USUAL. No need to buy your ticket on line. You can buy it at the theater. MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW.

Let's watch Jordan Peele's follow up to the fantastic 'Get Out'. His latest film, 'Us', promises to be another thought provoking addition to the horror genre. Set in the present day along the iconic Northern California coastline, Us stars Oscar® winner Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson, a woman returning to her beachside childhood home with her husband, Gabe (Black Panther’s Winston Duke), and their two children for an idyllic summer getaway. Haunted by an unexplainable and unresolved trauma from her past and compounded by a string of eerie coincidences, Adelaide feels her paranoia elevate to high-alert as she grows increasingly certain that something bad is going to befall her family. After spending a tense beach day with their friends, Adelaide and her family return to their vacation home to discover the silhouettes of four figures standing in their driveway. Us pits an ordinary American family against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves. This is the opening weekend so I highly recommend getting tickets in advance: https://www.amctheatres.com/movies/us-2019-53983 We'll go out for food, drinks and discussion after the movie.

In March the Gene Siskel Film Center celebrates the annual European Film Festival. Let's watch together the critically acclaimed Polish film "Another Day of Life" (91% approval on RottenTomatoes). Animation dovetails powerfully with live-action footage in this personal chronicle of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski’s 1975 Angolan civil war experiences. With the stark emphasis of a graphic novel, the story plunges into increasingly surreal moral complexity with the depiction of the aftermath of a massacre, alternating actual film footage and the recollections of Kapuscinski (Kerry Shale) and fellow journalist Artur (Daniel Flynn). In English, Portuguese, Polish, and Spanish with English subtitles. Check out the beautiful trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7ASutCFetE You can buy your ticket on line or at the theater. AS USUAL, WE'LL GO FOR DINNER/DISCUSSION AFTER THE SHOW. More details to follow.

Winner of the Tribeca Film Festival, "The Island of Hungry Ghosts" reveals an island idyll's traumatic secret.For "The Guardian," this is a "fierce, valuable, compassionate film." On an isolated island in the Indian Ocean, land crabs migrate in their millions from the jungle to the sea. The same jungle hides a high-security Australian detention centre where thousands of asylum seekers have been locked away indefinitely. Their only connection to the outside world is trauma counsellor Poh Lin Lee. This film tells a powerful and moving story from inside Australia’s Guantánamo: Christmas Island, the country’s offshore territory near Java, where asylum seekers and boat people are warehoused in grim conditions that the authorities are in no hurry to conceal – because of the deterrent factor, an important part of the government’s anti-migrant crackdown since 2013. The title comes from the practice of the island’s Malay Chinese community, who pay homage to the souls of their forebears: indentured laborers brought over a century ago in comparably cruel circumstances. PLEASE CHECK OUT THE TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI5zgie8PwE AS USUAL, WE'LL GO TO THE CHEAP AND EXCELLENT MIDDLE-EASTERN RESTAURANT ACROSS THE STREET AFTER THE MOVIE FOR DINNER AND DISCUSSION.