More than 120 features screen at the 31st edition of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, which continues this week at multiple venues around the city and suburbs and concludes on Thursday, April 23, with Chus Gutierrez’s musical comedy Ciudad Delirio at River East 21. Following are selected films screening in the festival’s second week; here are reviews of films screened during week one. —J.R. Jones
The Incident Like Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint and certain episodes of The Twilight Zone, this Mexican SF parable (2014) has two concurrent story lines. One involves a pair of criminal brothers and a crooked cop trapped inside a never-ending stairwell, the other follows a dysfunctional family stuck on an everlasting highway, and the stories gradually converge in a Lovecraftian turn of cosmic trickery. The structure is clever, and some ambitious visual touches—including a single-take handheld shot of the endless stairway and an oft-repeated image of a hamster spinning idly on a wheel—impart a sense of existential dread. But as with most failed sci-fi, this lacks an emotional entryway; Isaac Ezban, directing his own script, treats his characters like gadgetry, cogs in a soulless, mechanized narrative. In Spanish with subtitles. —Drew Hunt 100 min. Ezban attends the screening. Sat 4/18, 7 PM, and Mon 4/20, 6:30 PM.
Continues through Thu 4/23 River East 21 322 E. Illinois 312-431-1330chicagolatinofilmfestival.org $12
