by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

The Chicago Critics Film Festival is currently underway, with multiple films scheduled each day through Thursday, May 9. There are plenty of intriguing films still to come, so check out the lineup. I wanted to share some short takes on what I have seen so far!

Sing Sing (dir. Greg Kwedar)

While Sing Sing may give the initial impression that it only covers well-trod ground, the execution of this drama about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing made it soar beyond my expectations. Stories about incarcerated individuals often rely on certain tropes, while Sing Sing actively underplays or pushes back on them. Movies like Cool Hand Luke and Birdman of Alcatraz are about resilience and stoicism in the face of a system designed to dehumanize its occupants. Sing Sing is about how men break within the system but build each other back up through a sense of community. The incredible cast–led by Colman Domingo and Paul Raci but featuring many alumni of the real  Rehabilitation Through the Arts program–bring so much emotion and humanity to their roles that the vulnerability within feels earned. The film feels textured by its emotional connection to reality but not dominated by real life facts. As one of the characters puts it, they are spending their time incarcerated learning to be human again so they can do better when they are released. While all of this comes through the creation of a play as part of the RTA program, Sing Sing refuses to fall back on cliche plotting. They don’t need to prove that the program should exist, or face funding cuts, or anything that feels overly manufactured. 

Another remarkable aspect of Sing Sing is its relationship to violence. There is very little on screen violence in the film, which feels like a deliberate choice to trust audiences to understand that U.S. prisons are brutal places dominated by physical harm and torture. We don’t need to see more men beaten down by guards or their bodies brutalized because we already understand the reality. Sing Sing is much more focused on the emotional prison–the way parole is dangled in front of inmates, the forced compliance, the lack of safety–which makes the characters talking about physical violence and how it made them feel that much more impactful. These men are struggling at all times on an existential level, and Sing Sing allows the characters space enough to follow their own journeys. 

Sing Sing will be released in July by A24.

Cuckoo (dir. Tilman Singer)

Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is moving to the Alps against her will, because her father and stepmother are designing a new resort for their wealthy friend Mr. König (Dan Stevens). While there, her young half-sister begins to experience seizures, and Gretchen witnesses strange occurrences and sick guests. The more she learns about where her family is staying, the more questions she has. What she discovers changes the way she sees her family and her place within it. 

I was extremely impressed by Tilman Singer’s feature debut, Luz back in 2019 and have been eagerly waiting for his followup. Cuckoo takes the metaphor brood parasite (as explained by Blofeld in Spectre and seen in last year’s Saltburn) in a different direction. While there is a mention of parasitic family dynamics, there is a much bigger focus on cultivation and preservation. Of course Mr. König believes what he is doing is noble, but the way he is intervening also highly suggests tampering with the natural world. There are lots of Cronenberg parallels here, especially when it comes to much of the body horror suggested by the brood parasite analogy. While Cuckoo does have some terrifying moments, they eventually give way to a general sense of “what the fuck”-ness, delightfully expressed by Gretchen. Schafer is an excellent pseudo-Final Girl, nailing the mix of terror and relentless survival instinct that defines that archetype. Dan Stevens once again perfectly weaponizes his charisma, playing every single interaction as a mix of warm and utterly terrifying. There are some interesting meta angles to Cuckoo, and they unfurl as the shock-filled section gives way for the climax, making for a fun and energizing theater experience.

Cuckoo will be released August 9 by Neon.

Me (dir. Don Hertzfeldt)

The latest short from animation auteur Don Hertzfelt, Me continues his journey with existential science fiction, this time focusing on the mere aspect of existence in late stage capitalism. Featuring no real dialogue, Hertzfelt’s blob people bypass verbal communication and access our emotions directly from visual representation. At first, Me feels like a simple metaphor for a dad going through a midlife crisis, ignoring his family for the sake of some new hobby. But from there it evolves and shifts and expands its scope into a commentary on daily life. Me shows us how the internet promised us better ways to connect with each other, but actually makes us more isolated. Meanwhile, the vast resources needed to run it are sapping the planet of resources, and we more readily ignore the suffering all around us in favor of staring into the backlit void. But being a Hertzfelt film, this is all told with a wry sense of humor, deep pathos, and excellent musical pairings. 

Find Me showtimes through Don Hertzfelt’s website here.

I Saw the TV Glow (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)

The space between ourselves and our screens is a liminal one. Television, for most of its history, has been the most intimate version, as we invite shows into our lives day after day, week after week. We form deep connections between ourselves and what is on our screens, but that connection only goes one way. The characters within it cannot love us back. They aren’t designed to, no matter how real they feel to us. But it doesn’t make our feelings any less real either. 

Adolescence is isolating for many, but even more so for those who don’t fit into conventional boxes or pre-identified cliques. Television shows can be a source of community, but it can also replace healthy relationships. For toxic white men, this one-sided relationship is how you get to a place like The King of Comedy, where the unbridled confidence of a man who has never worked for anything embraces his screen-fueled delusions to the point where he does real harm to other people. For others, that kind of one-sided space can be a source of comfort, and a refuge from a world that doesn’t seem to have a place for them. This is especially true for queer people growing up in small towns, where the feeling of isolation is accompanied by gawking or ignorance. 

Jane Schoenbrun deconstructs the relationship between us and our favorite media, using it as a lens to explore gender and sexual identities in adolescence. The film is extremely effective in creating the feeling that something is wrong but not being sure if the wrongness  is in yourself or the world you are forced to live in. While the film embraces some of the visual language of horror movies, I Saw the TV Glow sits within the existential horror of being alive in a confusing and uncaring world rather than stabbings and jump scares. The film is anchored by an incredible performance from Justice Smith, who carries much of the film using mostly disaffected facial expressions and placid body language. As Owen, an adolescent growing up a boy in a small town–a boy who has a pink sleeping bag and loves a show “for girls”–Smith captures the feeling of dissociation. He moves through life languidly, shaped by his experiences, but you also get the sense that he feels like he is hiding in plain sight. Like he has a secret that he himself does not even fully understand, let alone have the courage to say out loud. 

Like any kind of filmmaking that comes from a perspective that is not my own, I value queer cinema especially for its relatability. I am straight, white, and cis, but I did have a lonely and isolating adolescence, and my past made I Saw the TV Glow highly relatable in many ways. But there are also a lot of aspects that did not map to my experiences. Owen may or may not ever figure out why the world feels wrong, but watching his experiences helps me relate my own to his and then expands my perspective even more. 

Schoenbrun’s approach to metanarratives also aligns with the queer media criticism and discussion. With more mainstream work, queer fans and critics often find a way into works conventionally considered to be straight by looking for subtext. Shipping of straight-presenting characters in queer relationships–like Batman and Robin or Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock–is just one example. For Owen and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), their shared TV obsession, The Pink Opaque (the title of which is another example of the film’s trans narrative hiding in plain sight) offers an escape from mundanity, but it feels intentional that the characters within the show have powers that allow them to see the truth behind reality. We live in a metatextual age, and queer readings of conventional narratives transform the art we interact with into something new.I Saw the TV Glow understands that transformative nature and applies it throughout. This is a movie I can’t wait to revisit over and over.

I Saw the TV Glow is currently playing in New York and Los Angeles, with a wide release starting May 17. A24.