Shirley Henderson

CHICAGO – Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff” is certainly not a film for everyone. It features long, drawn-out scenes that are not only free of dialogue but basically just feature sorrowful people walking to the rhythm of the wagon wheel and the tune of the blowing wind. For the right viewers, these passages will frustrate but if you give yourself over to this remarkable film, they will build tension inside of you in a unique, discomfiting way.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Very few films have ever conveyed an impending sense of doom as successfully as Kelly Reichardt’s stunningly accomplished “Meek’s Cutoff,” a journey into the past that has resonance for any era. Which way do you go when you’ve lost the map? Who do you trust when you can’t see beyond the horizon? How does man simply keep moving forward when it’s so unclear where we’re going?

CHICAGO – Leave it to The Criterion Collection to not just perfectly remaster one of the most acclaimed films of the ’90s but to take its ancestor, the film version of the play in which the modern classic centers around, and give it a similarly remarkable treatment. Fans of Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy” will adore the new Criterion edition, available now on DVD and Blu-ray, but they should also pick up “The Mikado” to see the inspirational musical in its entirety.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Todd Solondz’s 1998 masterpiece, “Happiness,” is the darkest American comedy ever made. It’s so brutal and uncompromising that it calls into question the very definition of comedy. When one character explains to her sister that she isn’t laughing at her, but with her, the sister responds, “But I’m not laughing.” Solondz isn’t laughing either.

CHICAGO – With his unique and sometimes divisive career, writer/director Todd Solondz is something of a controversial figure in the world of independent cinema. Some people love him, others hate him, and very few fall in the middle. His new film, “Life During Wartime,” is unlikely to change his polarizing reputation.