After Hours Film Society
Tivoli Theatre, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove, 630-534-4528, afterhoursfilmsociety.com
*”We Are the Best” (Sweden; Lukas Moodysson, 2013) Three girls in 1980s Sweden form a rock band. 7:30 p.m. Monday
BACinema
Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St., 773-445-3838, beverlyartcenter.org
“The Hundred-Foot Journey” ¿ (India/U.S.; Lasse Hallstrom, 2014) Helen Mirren plays the snooty but reformable Madame Mallory, whose Michelin-starred existence is threatened by the arrival of the Kadam clan of India. The Kadam restaurant, Maison Mumbai, proves an improbably instantaneous success, which means war! But Mallory’s conspicuously single sous-chef, Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon, who is tres bon), likes that genius cook Hassan (Manish Dayal) across the way. Love must conquer all, so “The Hundred-Foot Journey” goes where it must go — where the audience wants it to. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
—Michael Phillips
Doc Films
University of Chicago, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St., 773-702-8575, docfilms.uchicago.edu
“King of the Hill” ¿¿¿¿ (U.S.; Steven Soderbergh, 1993) A magnificent piece of episodic filmmaking that builds a mosaic of lives truly at risk in the Depression. At its center, this is a child’s story, the reminiscence of A.E.Hotchner of growing up poor in a St. Louis hotel room with his younger brother, ill mother and stern father. Young Aaron Kurlander (a 12-year-old Jesse Bradford) will end up on his own as his brother is sent to relatives to save on living expenses, his mother is confined to a clinic for tuberculosis, and his dad hits the road as a door-to-door watch salesman. 7 p.m. Monday
—Tribune
“Clue” ¿¿1/2 (U.S.; Jonathan Lynn, 1985) Based on the board game, six guests must solve a murder mystery. 7 p.m. Tuesday
—Tribune
“Red Beard” ¿¿¿¿ (Japan; Akira Kurosawa, 1965) Americans prefer Kurosawa’s samurai and action films, but the Japanese always doled out their critical prizes to his problem dramas — like “Ikiru,” “Drunken Angel” or this film about a charity ward, a gruff doctor and his acolyte. It’s intense, slow, memorable; in a landscape that is an icon of modernism, artificiality and the swallowed-up past. 6, 9:30 p.m. Wednesday
—Tribune
Eisenhower Public Library District
4613 N. Oketo Ave., Harwood Heights, 708-867-7828, eisenhowerlibrary.org
“They Live by Night” ¿¿¿¿ (U.S.; Nicholas Ray, 1949) Starring Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell as Bowie and Keechie, members of a small-time bank robbery gang, produced by John Houseman and based on Edward Anderson’s powerful ’30s novel “Thieves Like Us,” “They Live by Night” is a low-budget, black-and-white crime classic: a rural film noir of violent outlaws and tragic destiny, of flight and pursuit across flat Midwestern roads and endless farmland. Yet it’s permeated with a sweetness and vulnerability unusual for any crime movie. At its center are the naive lovers Bowie and Keechie, almost childlike in their beauty, gravity and grace, their basic innocence constantly thrown into relief by an evil gallery of fellow fugitives who include Howard Da Silva as brutal Chickamaw and Jaye C. Flippen as wily, fatherly Henry “T-Dub” Mansfield. 1p.m. Thursday
—Tribune
The Music Box Theatre
3733 N. Southport Ave., 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com
“Sing-along Sound of Music” ¿¿¿1/2 (U.S.; Robert Wise, 1965) This movie has almost everything: music, romance, kids, spectacular scenery, religion, sentiment, comedy high and low, and, at the end, intrigue and adventure, as the Von Trapps try to escape Austria. It was the awesome mountain scenery that made the movie so much more intense than the hit stage version (with Mary Martin as Maria). It was Julie Andrews who helped draw the crowds; she was incredibly popular, winning her “Poppins” Oscar after Jack Warner nixed her for the 1964 movie of “My Fair Lady,” replacing her as Eliza Doolittle with the non-singing Audrey Hepburn. But, among all its elements, it’s the score that most keeps “Sound of Music” alive. The main songs, denounced as simplistic by some, are all still standards. In a way, it’s not surprising that the movie eventually inspired a sing-along (first, at the London Gay & Lesbian Film Festival), because people have continued to sing these songs for decades. And, when the helicopter camera swoops down on Julie Andrews on her verdant green mountaintop and we cut to her close-up as she bursts into “The Sound of Music,” it’s still a thrilling moment, one that tends to disarm all cynicism. 4, 8:30 p.m. Friday; 11:30 a.m., 4, 8:30 p.m. Saturday; 11:30 a.m., 4 p.m. Sunday; 11:30 a.m. Dec. 6; 11:30 a.m. Dec. 7.
—Tribune
“Planes, Trains and Automobiles” ¿¿¿1/2 (U.S.; John Hughes, 1987) Steve Martin and John Candy star as two very different businessmen trying to make their way from New York to Chicago, only to be diverted to Wichita, Kan., from where they have a series of adventures that bring them closer together and drive them further apart. Martin plays an uptight marketing executive; Candy is a loosey-goosey traveling salesman of shower curtain rings. Martin finds him insufferable but is forced to rely on him and ends up learning a thing or two about being more easygoing. It’s Candy’s first really good character and performance on screen. Martin is funny as usual. Midnight Friday, Saturday
—Tribune
*indicates a film not reviewed by the Chicago Tribune, but of interest.
