Chicago Film Lover Meetup

ON THE SEA is a smoldering, deeply intimate drama from Helen Walsh, set along the wild, unforgiving coast of North Wales—where the pull of the tide mirrors the pull of desire. The next Chicago premiere from the QUEER EXPRESSION FILM FESTIVAL, the film has been praised as “atmospheric and emotionally resonant” by the BFI London Film Festival.

Jack has built his life on routine, labor, and silence, working the mussel beds with a quiet resilience shaped by tradition and expectation. But when Daniel, a younger drifter with nothing to lose, arrives and meets Jack’s guarded world with disarming honesty, an undeniable tension begins to surface—charged, dangerous, and impossible to ignore. Critics have called the film “visually striking… a powerful sense of isolation and connection” (Eye for Film), capturing both the stark beauty of the landscape and the emotional distance between the men.
YOU CAN BUY YOUR TICKET HERE:
https://openspacearts.org/in-person-films?zlinkid=0a74a094-d223-46ab-9779-680e8c3306df

WE’LL MEET IN THE LOBBY AT 6.45pm. I’LL BE WEARING A WHITE BASEBALL HAT. AFTER THE SHOW, WE’LL DISCUSS THE FILM IN FACETS’ LOUNGE (WITH A DRINK IF WE FEEL LIKE).

I love this movie and I’m excited for you to join me!

Buy tickets here: April 28 at 9pm
https://musicboxtheatre.com/calendar/april/2026?view=grid

“Based on the unbelievable true story of the 1962 escape of three men from the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island, Chicago-born director Don Siegel’s fifth and final collaboration with Clint Eastwood — both in peak form, despite a behind the scenes battle over the rights to the film ending their friendship — is a gorgeous, spare and exhilarating nail-biter with all the fat trimmed. Shot on location (the prison closed in 1963), the film is absorbed completely in the process of escape, shutting the audience so firmly behind the cold stone walls, that every chip into them with a homemade knife feels like a breath of freedom. Co-starring Patrick McGoohan at his most chilling as the prison warden, Paul Benjamin as a stoic inmate serving two life sentences, with cameos by a young Fred Ward and Danny Glover (in his film debut), and metallic score by Jerry Fielding that could have been composed by the prison itself.”

We will meet in the Music Box lounge at 8:10pm.

We’ll meet in the lobby (before and after the show). I’ll wear a green baseball ⚾️ cap. Afterwards, we can chat nearby about the film! 🎞️

Students can buy a discount ticket. 🎟️

Director: Carl Deal, Tia Lessin
Run Time: 98 min.
Release Year: 2025

Presented by Doc10 // Post-show Q&A with Amy Goodman (Zoom), Democracy Now co-host Juan González, director Tia Lessin, Moderated by Daniel Ash (President, The Field Foundation)

Undeterred by armed soldiers, smooth-talking politicians, and riot police, journalist Amy Goodman has reported some of the most consequential stories of our time. From the frontlines of global conflicts to the organized chaos of her daily news show Democracy Now!

Join us for another Cult Classic 80's film - ROAD HOUSE!

We will meet BEFORE the movie at 715 pm for dinner at D'Agostino's Pizza and Pub - Wrigleyville.
Restaurant website:
https://dagsdelivers.com/wrigleyville/

Movie time is 9pm at Music Box Theater, a few blocks from the restaurant.
You can purchase tickets for the film here:
https://musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-events/road-house-1989

Tickets may go quickly, since this is a beloved 80s flick, so buy yours ahead of time, don't delay.

Please don't do a no-show. If you can't come, kindly remove your name from the list at least 48 hours prior to the film so we can know how many people to expect. Thank you for your consideration!!

Movie Description:

"Once every century or so arises a work that offers a broad cross-section of humanity an all-encompassing text from which an entire worldview can be derived—one that allows a dizzying multiplicity of consumers to project themselves into its framework, and its teachings onto their lives. Works such as Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad-Gita, the Bible, and Dianetics have all spawned sturdy religious movements, and, 37 years after its release, the cult of ROAD HOUSE seems similarly destined to endure over the coming millennia.

On one level it's a formulaic "hero's journey," recognizable as a mid-budget martial arts affair. Swayze's mononymous Dalton, accepting a gig to clean up a road house in Jasper, Missouri, instead encounters the fight of his life, defending the town's long-suffering innocents against a reign of terror imposed by oligarchic madman Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzarra).

There are, of course, interludes: incendiary romance with a "sexy but smart" (she wears glasses!) ER doctor played by Kelly Lynch, and contentious bromantic dalliances with Dalton's lapsed mentor/sensei (Sam Elliott, never better).

Throughout the movie, there's a kind of secret sauce uplifting the raw material, a sense of wonder that patiently and reliably turns casual viewers into zealots. Cult movies are often described as "quotable" or "so bad it's good," and ROAD HOUSE both exemplifies and transcends these clichés. The ROAD HOUSE convert is left pleasantly empty-headed, uttering phrases like "you just have to see it" . . . and although that's not a very fresh thought, it's possibly the only eternal truth about this film."– Gabriel Wallace