Key:
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Active Stealth
Daniel Baldwin stars in this 1999 actioner, as a traumatized fighter pilot ordered on a hi-tech mission to Mexico. Fred Olen Ray directed.
Delilah's
The Adventures of Tintin 3D
Whenever Steven Spielberg works in his self-conscious blockbuster mode—as in the Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park movies--his action sequences are staged with such precision that
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City North 14
Albert Nobbs
Glenn Close finally succeeds in mounting a screen version of the cross-dressing play she starred in on Broadway in 1982, about a meek, impoverished woman
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark's Century Centre and River East 21
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
The singing rodents fall off a cruise ship and wash up on a seemingly deserted island. Mike Mitchell directed.
Chatham 14, City North 14, Ford City, Lawndale 10 and Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings
The Artist
French director Michel Hazanavicius takes a break from his OSS 117 spy spoofs to pay loving tribute to the silent cinema, re-creating its luminous black-and-white
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Crown Village 18, Davis, Lake, Landmark's Century Centre, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON and Wilmette
Beauty and the Beast
Despite some excessive narrative streamlining, this 1991 release was Disney's best animated feature in years, full of charm and humor. It seems to have benefited
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Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings
Beauty and the Beast 3D
Despite some excessive narrative streamlining, this 1991 release was Disney's best animated feature in years, full of charm and humor. It seems to have benefited
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600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
Big Miracle
This above-average children's drama from Universal manages to hit all the right notes as an inspirational story while providing a savvy, even cynical account of
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Directed by Goran Hugo Olsson, this Swedish documentary draws on a treasure trove of film footage brought back from the United States by TV reporters
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Chatham 14
Blood Money
Rowland Brown directed only three movies, but if this 1933 crime melodrama is any indication, he had a masterful sense of story and a surprisingly
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Northwestern University Block Museum of Art
By the People: The Election of Barack Obama
Amy Rice and Alicia Sams directed this 2009 HBO documentary about Obama's first presidential campaign.
Madison Street Theatre
Call Northside 777
Chicago newspaperman James Stewart investigates a murder in this 1948 feature. Director Henry Hathaway specialized in these true-life dramas in the late 40s and early
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Northbrook Public Library
Carnage
After a school bully assaults a classmate, the victim's parents (Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly) invite the aggressor's parents (Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz) over for
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Landmark's Century Centre
Casablanca
Part of what makes this wartime Hollywood drama (1942) about love and political commitment so fondly remembered is its evocation of a time when the
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Northwestern University Block Museum of Art
Chronicle
Three teenage boys in a Seattle suburb gain the powers of telekinesis and super strength after encountering a mysterious alien life force, but instead of
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600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lawndale 10, New 400, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
Shorts curated by Cinema Culture
The local indie-film club presents shorts by up-and-coming artists, including Amir George, Andy Cahill, and Nelson Carvajal.
Cole's
The City Dark
Ian Cheney's 2011 documentary considers the starless urban sky and the ill effects of artificial light on people and animals.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Contraband
This no-frills heist thriller isn’t completely devoid of merit: director Baltasar Kormákur (best known for the Icelandic comedy 101 Reykjavik) brings a keen eye to
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600 N. Michigan, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
Coriolanus
Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus is seldom staged, yet its story of a professional warrior who proves unfit for democratic society seems as pertinent as ever. Ralph
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Landmark's Century Centre
A Dangerous Method
John Kerr's nonfiction book A Most Dangerous Method details the scintillating but ultimately fractious professional friendship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, as well as
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River East 21
The Descendants
Alexander Payne has won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay (Sideways), but you'd never guess that from this clumsily written drama: characters keep explaining things
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Crown Village 18, Davis, Landmark's Century Centre, New 400, River East 21 and Showplace ICON
The Devil Inside
Almost competent but not quite watchable, this cheapie horror item blatantly steals from The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project then cheapens its models by
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Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14 and Ford City
Films by Bill Douglas
These medium-length films constitute the first two parts of director Bill Douglas's autobiographical trilogy about growing up in a Scottish mining town. They represent the
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Gene Siskel Film Center and Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
German documentary maker Gereon Wetzel chronicles a year in the life of El Bulli, the legendary modernist-cuisine restaurant in Spain that served its final 30-course
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Gene Siskel Film Center
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
With feel-good icons Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks on board, you know this 9/11 drama will travel a safe emotional arc: loss, grief, confrontation, healing,
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600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Lake, River East 21, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
Footloose
In this remake of the 1984 teenpic, a brooding city kid (Kenny Wormald) moves to a conservative village where dancing's been outlawed. The movie
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the Vic
Four Nights of a Dreamer
An adaptation of Dostoyevsky's White Nights, Robert Bresson's 1971 film is an exploration of romantic love rendered in the precise, austere style of his better-known
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Gene Siskel Film Center
Foxes
Adrian Lyne (Flashdance, Fatal Attraction) made his directing debut with this 1980 drama about teenage girls in the San Fernando Valley. With Jodie Foster, Cherie
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Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
David Fincher's adaptation of the international best-seller is a triumph of craftsmanship over material. Though Steven Zallian's screenplay preserves the ugly details and underlying puritanism
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600 N. Michigan, Crown Village 18, Davis, River East 21, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
The Grey
A great leap forward for the talented action director Joe Carnahan, this old-fashioned suspense tale builds on and yet subtly criticizes the slick violence of
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600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, Lawndale 10, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, Webster Place 11 and Wilmette
Group 312 Films
A presentation by the local collective of filmmakers and digital-video artists.
Haywire
Steven Soderbergh has announced that he'll soon retire from directing to become a painter, and this international thriller—his 23rd feature since 1989—registers as the work
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings and Showplace ICON
The House of the Devil
From its freeze-frame credits onward, this indie horror flick by Ti West aspires to the silent, low-boiling dread of 70s drive-in shockers like Black Christmas
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Music Box
Hugo
"The movies are our special place," remarks the title character, and his words go a long way toward explaining how Martin Scorsese came to make
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Showplace ICON
Hugo 3D
"The movies are our special place," remarks the title character, and his words go a long way toward explaining how Martin Scorsese came to make
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Crown Village 18, River East 21, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
In the Heat of the Night
Philly cop Sidney Poitier, stranded in racist Mississippi, teams up with redneck sheriff Rod Steiger to solve a murder. A decent piece of do-good cinema
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Music Box
The Innkeepers
Ti West made his name with The House of the Devil (2009), a 70s-style shocker about a college student hired to mind a spooky old
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Music Box
The Interrupters
Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) and longtime friend Alex Kotlowitz (author of the best seller There Are No Children Here) produced this stirring documentary
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Francis W. Parker School
The Iron Lady
My hopes for this biopic of Margaret Thatcher dimmed when I learned that the director was Phyllida Lloyd, perpetrator of Mamma Mia! But the other
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Davis, Lake, River East 21 and Webster Place 11
Joyful Noise
Everyone onscreen (including Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah, and the lesser-known supporting players) seems to be having a good time in this cheesy musical comedy, even
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Chatham 14, Crown Village 18, Lawndale 10 and Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings
The Kids Are All Right
Plenty of movies strive for topicality, but occasionally something like The Kids Are All Right slaps you in the face with the world you're actually
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Film Row Cinema, Columbia College
The Last Movie
The least that can be said for Dennis Hopper's 1971 drama is that no other studio-released film of the period is quite so formally audacious.
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Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker, 51% Son of a Bitch
Lemmy Kilmister has earned a massive fan base in his 40-odd years as a sartorial icon, fabled consumer of substances, and front man for the
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Delilah's
Life, Above All
Adapted from a novel by Allan Straton, this 2010 feature combines deftly executed melodrama with an eye-opening look at the ills confronting poor rural women
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Chatham 14 and Lawndale 10
Love Free or Die
Macky Alston profiles Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire.
Les Lutins (French shorts)
Four contemporary French short films. In French with subtitles.
Alliance Francaise
A Man Escaped
Based on a French lieutenant's account of his 1942 escape from a gestapo fortress in Lyon, this stately yet uncommonly gripping 1956 feature is my
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Gene Siskel Film Center
The Man From London
After the more complicated story lines of Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies, Hungarian master Bela Tarr boils a Georges Simenon novel down to a few primal
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Gene Siskel Film Center
Man on a Ledge
Asger Leth, best known for the political documentary Ghosts of Cité Soleil (2006), isn't someone I expected to revive the taut, unpretentious crime filmmaking that
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600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, New 400, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
Miracle at St. Anna
With this adaptation of James McBride's novel, Spike Lee aims for an African-American Saving Private Ryan that will recognize the bravery and sacrifice of the
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Pritzker Military Library
Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol: The IMAX Experience
The Mission: Impossible franchise is easy to dismiss as Tom Cruise's zillion-dollar plaything, but he deserves some credit for handing each installment over to a
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Navy Pier IMAX
Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol
The Mission: Impossible franchise is easy to dismiss as Tom Cruise's zillion-dollar plaything, but he deserves some credit for handing each installment over to a
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Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings and Showplace ICON
Mouchette
This 1966 film is probably the most punishing and intense of Robert Bresson's studies of modern martyrdom, a story of a teenage peasant girl whose
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Gene Siskel Film Center
My Piece of the Pie
The once-promising director Cédric Klapisch follows up Russian Dolls (2005) and Paris (2008) with another glossy coffee-table book of a film, presenting familiar content through
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Gene Siskel Film Center
My Week With Marilyn
Adapted from a memoir by Colin Clark, this British feature recounts his brief friendship with Marilyn Monroe in 1957, when he was a lowly assistant
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Landmark's Century Centre
Navajo Joe
A lanky young Burt Reynolds, in his second movie lead, plays a Navajo who rides down from the mountains to help some white townspeople drive
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Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
New Year's Eve
Director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate return to the formula of their rom-com hit Valentine's Day, putting another demographically chosen ensemble of stars through
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the Vic
One for the Money
Katherine Heigl starts up as a bail bondswoman, and her first task is to track down—who else?—an ex. Julie Anne Robinson directs this crime-comedy.
600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, Lawndale 10, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical comics about growing up in postrevolutionary Iran have been condensed by Satrapi and codirector Vincent Paronnaud into a beautiful black-and-white animation (2007)
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Pina
German choreographer Pina Bausch died suddenly in 2009, days before she was to codirect this documentary with longtime friend Wim Wenders. The movie he went
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Century 12 and CineArts 6 and River East 21
Pink Flamingos
This 1972 gross-out comedy by John Waters is now more than a generation old, and his brand of bad taste isn't quite the cottage industry
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Music Box
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Billy Wilder, in an exceedingly mellow mood, portrays Holmes as a tortured man, trapped by his own legend and paying the price for his reputation
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Portage Theater
Red Tails
George Lucas served as executive producer for this effects-heavy action film about the Tuskegee Airmen, and it feels as synthetic and dull as The Phantom
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600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lawndale 10, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings and Showplace ICON
The Royal Tenenbaums
Wes Anderson's 2001 follow-up to Rushmore is a solid piece of entertainment in the same general mode, though disappointing insofar as it moves the earlier
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Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
Senna
Formula One racing champion Ayrton Senna, who died in a 1994 crash, is the subject of this documentary by Asif Kapadia, which is most interesting
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Beverly Arts Center
A Separation
Century 12 and CineArts 6 and Music Box
Shame
The second feature by filmmaker and visual artist Steve McQueen indulges in the same chic, gallery-ready aesthetic as his first, Hunger (2008); but whereas that
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Landmark's Century Centre
The Sitter
A suburban slacker (Jonah Hill, just prior to his dramatic weight loss) agrees to babysit three spoiled kids, then drags them into the city so
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the Vic
Sullivan's Travels
Preston Sturges's remarkable autobiographical fantasy (1941) about a famous comedy director (Joel McCrea) who, after years of turning out things like Ants in Your Pants
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Transistor
Take Shelter
A molar-grinding performance from Michael Shannon anchors this slow but ultimately haunting drama. He plays a modest, plainspoken working man in small-town Ohio who begins
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Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
The Taking of Pelham 123
Superior exercise in urban paranoia (1974); the superb location work of director Joseph Sargent goes a long way toward tempering the artificialities of the plot,
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Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Tomas Alfredson, best known for the Swedish vampire classic Let the Right One In (2008), adapts the John le Carre novel about British intelligence agents
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Landmark's Century Centre and River East 21
Tomboy
Modestly conceived and executed, this intimate French drama centers on a ten-year-old girl (Zoe Heran) who moves to a new town over the summer and
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Music Box
Tony and Janina's American Wedding
Tony and Janina Wasilewski were model immigrants: hardworking, law-abiding, and beaming with freshly minted patriotism for the U.S. Then Janina, who came to Illinois claiming
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Madison Street Theatre
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
John Huston was rarely in better form than he was directing this 1948 study of gold fever and worse obsessions among an unlikely trio of
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Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
The 1992 prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost's famous but short-lived TV series, this deals with the events leading up to the murder of
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Delilah's
Underworld: Awakening
Kate Beckinsale returns for the fourth installment of this franchise, leading a clan of vampires and werewolves in a war against the human race. Måns
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Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Lawndale 10 and New 400
Underworld: Awakening -- An IMAX 3D Experience
Kate Beckinsale returns for the fourth installment of this franchise, leading a clan of vampires and werewolves in a war against the human race. Måns
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Crown Village 18
Underworld: Awakening 3D
Kate Beckinsale returns for the fourth installment of this franchise, leading a clan of vampires and werewolves in a war against the human race. Måns
…
600 N. Michigan, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings and Showplace ICON
Untamed
Though the heroine of Mikio Naruse's 1957 period drama is a rebellious free spirit rather than a passive victim (as was often the case in
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Univ. of Chicago Doc Films
War Horse
Steven Spielberg draws on his three most important influences—John Ford, David Lean, and Walt Disney—for this epic pet movie set during World War I. The
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Patio Theater and River East 21
We Began by Measuring Distance
Short works by female filmmakers with roots in Palestine, including Annemarie Jacir and Basma al-Sharif.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Windfall
A full-throated attack on wind energy, this feature by Laura Israel is one of the most surprising (and depressing) eco docs I've seen in years.
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Facets Cinematheque
The Woman in Black
In this Victorian-era ghost story, Daniel Radcliffe plays a young solicitor haunted by the title spirit while investigating an abandoned rural estate. The film belongs
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Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, Lawndale 10, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON and Webster Place 11