Animals

Filmmaker Collin Schiffli's Animals centers on two young Chicago heroin addicts—Jude (screenwriter David Dastmalchian) and Barbara (Kim Shaw)—who both hail from white, privileged, college-educated backgrounds, and live out of a rattletrap automobile that is customarily parked by the Lincoln Park Zoo. Adoringly devoted to each other as much as they are to the needle, the lovers run numerous scams in order to continue their habit during an us-against-the-world junkie idyll that cannot possibly last, as the pair lose their health and their principle supplier. Unlike Darren Aronofsky's similarly-themed Requiem for a Dream, this film does not overtly judge the addicts or their seemingly conscious lifestyle choice of a downward spiral together—and that somehow makes the impact all the more severe and powerful. Highly recommended. (C. Cassady)