Issue 125: Chicago Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

"I think this is a thing that will not change in whatever I’m lucky enough to make in the future: a constant prioritizing of the pleasure principle. In some ways, it’s why I’m not the primary audience for contemporary American independent film. There’s a sort of gritty American naturalism that lacks an engagement with desire. I lament the moving away from sensual pleasures in cinema."

Art depicting the main characters from FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF.

A Fruitful Life

Arjun Byju·

Issue 125: Chicago

There’s a genuine sadness hiding in the escapades and exuberance of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, an awareness that this, like everything else, will all come to an end.

Nicolas Cage as Dave Spritz stands in an illuminated elevator, luggage in hand. The Chicago skyline is visible in the background.

Cold Front

Peter Raffel·

Issue 125: Chicago

This is the Chicago that The Weather Man knows: a city trapped between coasts, haunted by its reputation, growing all the more faceless as it edges its way through the new millennium.

Jack Black and John Cusack in High Fidelity artwork

Baby Got Going: Longing and Leaving in High Fidelity

Erin Langner·

Issue 125: Chicago

“What came first, the music or the misery?” Watching High Fidelity now, twenty-odd years later, the question shifted: which came first, my own vision for my future self or the film's vision?

While You Were Sleeping As a Balm for Homesickness

Hope Rehak·

Issue 125: Chicago

While You Were Sleeping (1995) is a great romantic comedy, but it's also a love letter to Chicago in the winter.

John Dillinger Keeps Dying At Chicago’s Biograph Theater

Bryan Miller·

Issue 125: Chicago

Whether or not he haunts the theater at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago is up for debate, but what’s certain is that John Dillinger has haunted 90 years of American cinema.

Really Ordinary Women

Kellie Herson·

Issue 125: Chicago

The work of the Jane Collective—a group of women who brought together people who needed abortions and people who were willing to provide them—went far beyond helping people get a medical procedure they needed; it was also an effort to realize a more empathetic, transparent, and thoughtful vision for reproductive healthcare.

A Kind of Lazy Sweetness

Sarah Welch-Larson·

Issue 125: Chicago

Stephen Cone’s Princess Cyd captures what it’s like to be young and trying on identities in the summer in Chicago, to learn to love a place that would rather love you back wordlessly than talk openly about it.