This week the Music Box Theatre is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a number of celebratory screenings and events. (Tonight you can check out a double feature of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida and Terence Davies’s The Deep Blue Sea, two features released by Music Box Films.) These festivities serve as reminders of the Music Box’s key position in Chicago’s filmgoing community. The last old-school movie house still in regular operation in our city, the theater evokes a sense of excitement for experiencing cinema regardless of what’s onscreen. At this point I’ve seen more movies at the Music Box than I can remember, but I’m always happy to go there, whether it’s for a silent film, a repertory title from a generation ago, or a new art-house feature. I hope the place lasts at least another 90 years.
Cinema Paradiso Giuseppe Tornatore directed this simplistic, nostalgic 1989 Italian film about a small-town movie theater in Sicily as experienced by a little boy (Salvatore Cascio) who hangs out with the projectionist (Philippe Noiret) and collects footage cut out of movies by the local censor. Eventually the boy takes over as projectionist and grows up to become a filmmaker (Jacques Perrin). Originally a two-part, three-hour film, this treacle has been reduced by almost a third, though it still seems to run on forever—a bit like life but less interesting. The film is rife with outrageous continuity errors and unexplained anomalies, but people who want to have a good cry probably won’t mind—there’s more than enough bathos to drown in, or to win an Oscar for. With Marco Leonardi and Agnese Nano. —Jonathan Rosenbaum
