CRUCIAL VIEWING
Vincente Minnelli’s THE PIRATE (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 5pm and Thursday, 6pm
Vincente Minnelli’s 1948 musical THE PIRATE represents the Hollywood studio system at its giddy, most imaginative best. Minnelli and producer Arthur Freed were at the height of their creative powers when they made the film; in the years leading up to it, they created two of the boldest musicals in the Hollywood canon, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944) and YOLANDA AND THE THIEF (1945). These films, like THE PIRATE, use color and decor in such expressive ways that they may be appreciated on formal grounds alone—Minnelli, despite his mastery as a storyteller, merits comparison with important avant-gardists like Kenneth Anger. THE PIRATE is also a testament to the life-changing power of art. Gene Kelly plays a traveling musical-theater performer whose company docks on a small Caribbean island; he falls in love with Judy Garland’s character, Manuela, who has been pledged by her aunt to marry the island’s boorish mayor. Manuela fantasies about being taken away by the famous pirate Mack the Black, and Kelly, in an effort to seduce her, pretends to be him. Kelly’s make-believe leads to genuine changes in the characters’ lives, which are expressed in wonderful song-and-dance numbers that rank among the best MGM created. (Cole Porter wrote the songs, and Kelly directed the athletic, frequently breathtaking choreography.) THE PIRATE’s production went way over budget, and it lost the studio over two million dollars; at the time of its release, it was regarded as a flop. Yet the movie has aged remarkably well, not only because of its brilliant filmmaking, but also because of its enduring message of art bettering life, a very personal theme for Minnelli, one of the cinema’s greatest aesthetes. (1948, 102 min, 35mm) BS
Jennifer Reeder’s KNIVES AND SKIN (New American)
Music Box Theatre – Friday-Sunday and Tuesday-Thursday, 7:15pm
Mixtapes, according to David Byrne, were a “musical mirror,” in which “the sadness, anger or frustration you might be feeling at a given time could be encapsulated in the song selection. You made mixtapes that corresponded to emotional states, and they’d be available to pop into the deck when each feeling needed reinforcing or soothing.” Stalwart Chicago independent filmmaker Jennifer Reeder’s third feature KNIVES AND SKIN is structured as a mixtape, one devised to encapsulate the traumas that women in patriarchal American society are forced to endure. In the film, a mixtape figures as a crucial prop exchanged between a father and daughter, perhaps a symbol of the emotional baggage each generation inherits from the last. The songs on that cassette (a clutch of beloved 80s new-wave hits, from the Go-Gos to New Order) appear throughout the film as beautifully arranged choral incantations; structurally, the film also plays more like a jukebox than an LP. KNIVES AND SKIN is a series of vignettes of life in a dreary (yet garishly hued) Midwestern suburb, a compilation as slow to cohere as the wounds it depicts—sexual violence, melancholy, infidelity, loss, inadequacy—are to heal. The various narrative strands all radiate from a central act of violence (a horny jock leaves his majorette date to die by the lakeside after she spurns his advances) and play out like warped reveries on familiar teen dramas. The mixtape analogy similarly extends to Reeder’s handling of genre: rather than simply borrowing from its easy-to-spot references (Twin Peaks and RIVER’S EDGE, yes, but also Argento, John Waters, the Kuchars), KNIVES AND SKIN sings them gloriously out of key, saturating tired standards with genuine affect and crossfading skillfully between them. Reeder’s certainly playing some of her own hits as well here, extensively borrowing images, dialogue, and concepts from her recent short films like A MILLION MILES AWAY (2014) and BLOOD BELOW THE SKIN (2015). Some of those ideas felt fresher before, but returning to them makes KNIVES AND SKIN a reinforcement of Reeder’s own voice rather than a playlist of influences. Beyond her trademarks—a strong penchant for non sequitur, a gift for mise-en-scene that somehow makes over-decorated spaces feel lived-in, a resolute and often joyful focus on adolescent femme empowerment across a spectrum of identities—what distinguishes Reeder’s cinema for me is its psychological atmosphere of diffused emotion. Reeder shares David Lynch’s apprehension that male sexual violence lies at the root of most social dysfunction, but in David Lynch’s universe, suffering is concentrated in certain individuals, just as wealth and power is in others. KNIVES AND SKIN conspicuously eschews the kind of class-based conflicts that structure most teen melodramas from Twin Peaks to Veronica Mars to Riverdale; likewise, the film seeks to distribute suffering horizontally, with one person’s heartache melting imperceptibly into another’s. If the deliberately stilted performance style and masterful use of dissolves have an almost anesthetic quality, that’s surely intentional: KNIVES AND SKIN ultimately isn’t seeking to reinforce trauma, but to soothe it. David Byrne suggests that a mixtape can be “your friend, your psychiatrist, and your solace;” when Reeder’s wounded community starts to convalesce, it suggests that a film can do the same. (2019, 112 min, DCP Digital) MM
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Select cast and crew in person at the Friday screening; Director Jennifer Reeder in person at the Tuesday screening; check the Music Box website for additional Q&As to be added.
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Also, if you missed it, check our blog for an interview with Jennifer Reeder that we posted last week.
Edo Bertoglio's DOWNTOWN 81 (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
Famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, homeless at the time of the film's production, plays an artist evicted from his apartment, wandering the streets of New York City in search of a buyer for his artwork. The starving artist searches for a meal and along the way he meets some interesting people. This elliptical narrative takes an otherwise banal plot and uses it as framework for the documentation of the New York art scene in 1980, a thriving culture hidden underground where only the hippest critics could find it. The people Basquiat meets range from up-and-coming painters and graffiti artists, to musicians in the No Wave scene, to a fairy princess Debbie Harry. Production woes saw this time-capsule go uncompleted until 1999, by which time it was able to spearhead the wave of critical reappraisal for the post-punk art world. Featuring performances and music by King Creole and the Coconuts, James White and the Blacks, DNA, and Basquiat's own band Gray. (1981/2000, 75 min, new 35mm print) DM
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Agnès Varda’s VARDA BY AGNÈS (New French Documentary)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday-Sunday, 11:15am and Monday-Thursday, 2pm
I was 25 when I met Agnès Varda in 2015. In town for a brief residency at the University of Chicago, she came to the Music Box for a screening of CLEO FROM 5 TO 7. I was told we’d need to create a privatized area for her to relax before the screening. The moment she arrived with two nervous students in tow as handlers, I quickly learned to expect the unexpected. After introducing herself, she stated there was no need for a green room because she wanted to be among the people and meet the young folks of Chicago. The final film by the legendary French New Wave director, VARDA BY AGNÈS, is a glorious celebration of the rebellious spirit and exuberant personality I met then. The documentary, focused on her contributions to cinema and the art world as a whole, is part a personal highlight reel of her illustrious body of work and part a self-reflection on life. VARDA finds Varda alternating between musings on her career and speaking with intimacy directly into the camera, as if the viewer were sitting face-to-face with her in reverent conversation, like an old friend. The film overflows with Varda’s sense of whimsy and zest for life and showcases her incredible aptitude as a filmmaker. With an oeuvre that stretches nearly seven decades, there is perhaps no one better to encapsulate her vast achievements than the women herself. (2019, 115 min, DCP Digital) KC
Alan J. Pakula’s ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (American Revival)
Filmfront (1740 W. 18th St.) - Saturday, 6pm (Free Admission)
Although it may be coming to an end with the threatened collapse of the newspaper industry, the newspaper movie has had a long run in motion pictures, chronicling both the cynicism that characterized the early years of yellow journalism in CHICAGO (1927) as well as Fourth Estate crusading, both helpful (DEADLINE, U.S.A., 1952) and harmful (TRY AND GET ME!, aka THE SOUND OF FURY, 1950). The inherent drama of headline news provides filmmakers with a constant supply of riveting material that offers audiences more bang for their buck for being at least partially true. Arguably the most acclaimed and influential newspaper movie is Alan J. Pakula’s ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, based on the best-selling book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, then reporters for the Washington Post, whose investigative reporting on the 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., revealed a vast dirty-tricks conspiracy that eventually ended the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman avoid histrionics, but amp up the tension of the film, borrowing from Antonioni’s urban alienation and George Romero’s paranoia to paint a portrait of ultimate power as both dangerous and deeply stupid. There are numerous shots of Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) driving past the White House, the endpoint of their inquiry, though they didn’t know it from the start. Cinematographer Gordon Willis favors high overhead shots to emphasize the informational maze through which the heroes must travel. One famous shot shows the pair in the mandala that is the Library of Congress, rifling through stacks of library slips. Willis also likes long shots of the wide-open city room, as though to emphasize the egalitarian and transparent nature of news reporting. Pakula uses a sort of Shakespearean construction of deep drama alternating with comic moments to keep the audience on a roller coaster of tension and release, an effective strategy for a story whose momentous outcome was known years before. Foremost is the character of Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), now known to be W. Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI at the time of the break-in. The archetype of the oracle is an ancient one, and Willis’ shadowy underlair—a parking garage where he met with Woodward—suggests a plot born from Hell, pulling the film out of the everyday and marking it with mythic dimensions. Of particular note is the movie’s Oscar-winning sound design, which emphasizes a strong, muscular, determined group of professionals plying their trade with machines whose metal keys punch ink onto paper. It’s a distinctive and percussive sound, and emphasizes why I find so annoying the anemic, plastic clicking of the computer keyboards that have taken over from the typewriters and teletype machines in life—and especially in the movies. Coins ring into pay phones, telephone dials spin and click, stereo knobs click on and off—there are a whole range of sounds that are nearly lost to us today that make a more direct connection between the characters and their actions. Hoffman and Redford are iconic in these roles. Scrappy, energetic Hoffman channels just a bit of his Ratso Rizzo sleaze from MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969), marrying it to ambition and the good sense to let Woodward take the high ground when needed. Redford has us on his side all the way, his blond good looks and low-pressure style encouraging people to volunteer information they initially refuse to divulge. A vast supporting cast keeps the film moving in a dizzying, but never incoherent way. (1976, 138 min, Digital Projection) MF
Isao Takahata's THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA (Contemporary Japanese Animation)
Century 12 Evanston/CineArts 6 (Evanston) - Monday, 7pm
THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA undoubtedly speaks for itself, its beauty so ethereal that it's almost as otherworldly as its title character, but its delicate line drawings and impressionistic backgrounds are brought to life even more when informed by the tacit dedication that went into every stroke. KAGUYA is based on a 10th-century Japanese folktale called "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," which is said to be Japan's first novel. It's also interesting in that it's a work of proto-science fiction, elements of which were made more conspicuous in Kon Ichikawa's 1987 adaptation, PRINCESS FROM THE MOON. Studio Ghibli is no stranger to the blurred lines of magical realism or the outright fantasticality that's inherent within the science fiction genre. KAGUYA exists somewhere between these extremes, though its aesthetic is singular to Takahata's vision. A 2014 documentary on the film, ISAO TAKAHATA AND HIS TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA, details the eight-year process, from the film's producers having to convince Takahata to make another movie after the disruption caused by his 1999 film MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS, to a delay in production caused in part by Takahata's perfectionist tendencies. The film lives up to the intensity of its production history; it's virtually indescribable, a visual tour de force of the highest order. The film's score, composed by Joe Hisaishi, cements the impact. (2013, 137 min, DCP Digital; English-dubbed version) KS
WHITE/WONDERFUL Double Feature
Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 6pm
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Michael Curtiz's WHITE CHRISTMAS (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9pm
Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (American Revival)
Like Steven Spielberg today, Frank Capra was associated more with reassuring, patriotic sentiment than with actually making movies; but just beneath the Americana, his films contain a near-schizophrenic mix of idealism and resentment. In this quality, as well as his tendency to drag charismatic heroes through grueling tests of faith, it wouldn't be a stretch to compare Capra with Lars von Trier. There's plenty to merit the comparison in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE alone: The film is a two-hour tour of an honest man's failure and bottled-up resentment, softened only intermittently by scenes of domestic contentment. Even before the nightmarish Pottersville episode (shot in foreboding shadows more reminiscent of film noir than Americana), Bedford Falls is shown as vulnerable to the plagues of recession, family dysfunction, and alcoholism. All of these weigh heavy on the soul of George Bailey, a small-town Everyman given tragic complexity by James Stewart, who considered the performance his best. Drawing on the unacknowledged rage within ordinary people he would later exploit for Alfred Hitchcock, Stewart renders Bailey as complicated as Capra himself—a child and ultimate victim of the American Dream. Ironically, it's because the film's despair feels so authentic that its iconic ending feels as cathartic as it does: After being saved from his suicide attempt (which frames the entire film, it should be noted), Stewart is returned to the simple pleasures of family and friends, made to seem a warm oasis in a great metaphysical void. (1946, 130 min, DCP Digital) BS
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Michael Curtiz's WHITE CHRISTMAS (American Revival)
Critics agree that Mark Sandrich's HOLIDAY INN (1942), the first musical comedy to feature Bing Crosby, an inn, and Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," is a better film than this partial remake. Yet it turns out that it's revivals of this Technicolor, VistaVision version that people look forward to this time of year. WHITE CHRISTMAS incorporates the history of its own title song, which, while it would go on to become perhaps history's largest-seller, actually seemed a flop at first. Music historians Dave Marsh and Steve Propes note, "What saved 'White Christmas' were requests made by GIs to Armed Forces Radio around the world. Soldiers away from home, many of them in the South Pacific or North Africa, uncertain of whether they'd ever again see family and friends, let alone a snowfall, responded passionately to Berlin's understated evocation of the mythic romance of Christmas Past." This history is folded into the opening scene: it's Christmas Eve, 1944, somewhere on a World War II battlefield, and Crosby sings the song to fellow troops amidst some very fake rubble, as bombs explode in the background. The movie's got Crosby and Danny Kaye as music-and-lyrics team Wallace and Davis, and Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney as sister act the Haynes. They're a treat to watch even just sitting around a railroad passenger car singing "Snow," bound for Pine Tree, Vermont, where the inn turns out to be run by ex-General Waverly (Dean Jagger). When people gather for a screening of this movie, I doubt they worry that it may not rank with Michael Curtiz's best work (CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, MILDRED PIERCE). They come to mark the change of years together. If there's a season for nestling in the warmth of nostalgia, it's this one. Plus, there's the camp appeal of Crosby and Kaye doing "Sisters." (1954, 120 min, DCP Digital) SP
ELF/LOVE Double Feature
Jon Favreau's ELF (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 4:45 and 9:45pm
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Richard Curtis' LOVE ACTUALLY (British Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm
Jon Favreau's ELF (American Revival)
The determining factors of what make a Christmas movie a classic are ambiguous at best. Santa is obviously a common denominator in these films, while the elves usually take a supporting role to his lead. But in Jon Favreau's ELF, one of Santa's not-so-little helpers becomes the main defender against holiday cynicism. Considered a 'new' Christmas classic, it's hard to resist the earnestness of Will Ferrell's Buddy as he travels to New York City from the North Pole, where he was adopted as an elf after crawling into Santa's sack of presents in an orphanage. This might sound like an actual nightmare for most reasonable moviegoers, but Ferrell and friends pull it off. The gags are enjoyable, and the plot is equal parts cynical and hopeful, a perfect mix for those hardened by Capra and made too idealistic by LOVE ACTUALLY. Buddy attempts to find his birth father after discovering that he, at 6'3", was not born an elf, and the holiday cheer is somewhat minimized by the surprisingly dark undertones of that plot point. In an attempt to utilize "old techniques," Favreau used forced-perspective rather than CGI to make Ferrell appear larger than his little elf friends, and several scenes feature the two-frame stop-motion animation familiar from those old-school, made-for-TV holiday character movies. Only time will tell if ELF can pass the test and hold its ranks amongst the veritable classics, but for the time being it suffices as an enjoyable holiday romp. And if a person such as Buddy, who was both unwanted and even bamboozled as a child, can find happiness in the holidays, then maybe there is hope for us all. (2003, 97 min, DCP Digital) KS
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Richard Curtis' LOVE ACTUALLY (British Revival)
Of the world of modern romantic comedies, so shaped by Richard Curtis' pen (BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY, NOTTING HILL, FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL), I once knew naught. This, despite my great affection for the rom-coms of the 30s and 40s. It took a connoisseur like my wife to clue me in. Upon first viewing LOVE ACTUALLY, Curtis' maiden attempt at wielding the camera, I was scandalized. "Curtis, you have no shame!" I cried. It took repeated administerings over several holiday seasons. Slowly, my amazement grew to fascination, and pretty soon I was clamoring for it as soon as December rolled around. Today, I believe it to be one of the age's great entertainments, a milestone in the canon of UK-US Christmas pop culture. It dawned on me that it was Curtis' utter lack of shame that constituted his greatness. He is completely sincere; he cannot be embarrassed. He achieves moments of real dramatic and psychological verisimilitude, then happily chucks them in favor of fantasy. I began to see the film as a modern, cheerily explicit, sexy equivalent of my cherished P.G. Wodehouse novels. Like Wodehouse, Curtis breezily choreographs a complex farandole of plot and subplot, stacking and spinning ten storylines at once. Even after umpteen viewings, one spots new connections, marvels at Curtis' conducting of the relationships and destinies of a bevy of Londoners, embodied by pleasing players like Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightly, Laura Linney and Bill Nighy. LOVE ACTUALLY is a film that even the vinegary David Thomson, in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, calls "a triumph." It will restore your faith in humanity. It's very funny, and it gets you in the mood. My wife reckons that the transcendent detail is the way the "enigmatic" Carl (Rodrigo Santoro) plays with Linney's hair as they dance. In response, I can only muse happily over how much I still have to learn. (2003, 135 min, DCP Digital) SP
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Chicago Film Society and Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.) present Jazz and the L.A. Rebellion (approx. 88 min total, 16mm) on Saturday at 7pm. The program includes Charles Burnett's 1995 film WHEN IT RAINS, Julie Dash's 1975 film FOUR WOMEN and her 1982 film ILLUSIONS, and Ben Caldwell's 1979 film I & I: AN AFRICAN ALLEGORY.
The MCA Chicago presents Still Beginning, a program of short videos commissioned by Visual AIDS, on Friday at 7pm. Included are works by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters and Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow. Followed by a conversation with artists Carl George and Derrick Woods-Morrow along with artist Patric McCoy, one of the subjects of Woods-Morrow’s video, moderated by independent curator and Northwestern PhD candidate Risa Puleo. Free admission.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) screens Aris Iliopulos’ 1998 film I WOKE UP EARLY THE DAY I DIED (90 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission.
The Beverly Arts Center screens local filmmaker Joe Swanberg’s 2014 film HAPPY CHRISTMAS (82 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 7:30pm, with Swanberg in person.
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Pickwick Theatre, 5 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge) screens Mark Sandrich's 1942 film HOLIDAY INN (100 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Errol Morris' 2018 documentary AMERICAN DHARMA (95 min, DCP Digital) begins a two-week run; Robert Eggers’ 2019 film THE LIGHTHOUSE (109 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; Amp Wong and Ji Zhao's 2019 animated Chinese film WHITE SNAKE (99 min, DCP Digital) continues a two-week run; and Victor Fleming’s 1939 film THE WIZARD OF OZ (102 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 3pm and Tuesday at 6pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Robert Eggers’ 2019 film THE LIGHTHOUSE (109 min, DCP Digital) continues; and Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film MARRIAGE STORY (136 min, 35mm) is daily at 1:45pm only.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Tom Quinn's 2019 film COLEWELL (79 min, Video Projection), with actor Kevin J. O'Conner in person at the 7pm Friday, and 5 and 7pm Saturday screenings; and Steven Luke's 2019 film THE GREAT WAR (108 min, Video Projection) for week-long runs.
The Chicago Cultural Center screens Richard Knight Jr. and Peter Neville's 2012 film SCROOGE & MARLEY (91 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 6pm. Free admission.
Culture Canon hosts a screening of Sam Jones’ 2002 music documentary I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART: A FILM ABOUT WILCO (92 min, Digital Projection) on Tuesday at 7:30pm at The Manor at Virgin Hotels Chicago (203 N. Wabash Ave.). Tickets available at www.eventbrite.com/e/82536566091.
MUSEUM AND GALLERY SHOWS/EXHIBITIONS
The exhibition Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through January 26. The show features a wealth of Warhol’s short films (fifteen “Screen Tests” and other early shorts, which are all showing on 16mm), videos, and television commercials, including some very rare items. A complementary exhibit, Cinema Reinvented: Four Films by Andy Warhol, will showcase four films over the course of the Back Again show’s run, all in 16mm. Warhol’s 1963 film HAIRCUT NO. 1 (27 min, 16mm) is on view through December 8; his 1963 film KISS (54 min, 16mm) is on view December 9-January 5; and his 1967 film TIGER MORSE (34 min, 16mm) is on view January 6-26. The films screen at the top of each hour starting at 11am.
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The 16mm short films (1963-66, approx. 4-5 min each) showing are: ELVIS AT FERUS, JILL AND FREDDY DANCING, EDIE SEDGWICK (SCREEN TEST 308), ANN BUCHANAN (SCREEN TEST 33), PENELOPE PALMER (SCREEN TEST 255), BIBBE HANSEN (SCREEN TEST 128), NICO EATING HERSHEY BAR (SCREEN TEST 246), ME AND TAYLOR, MARIO BANANA #1, JOHN WASHING, JACK SMITH (SCREEN TEST 315), RUFUS COLLINS (SCREEN TEST 61), BILLY NAME (SCREEN TEST 194), MARCEL DUCHAMP (SCREEN TEST 80), and SALVADOR DALI (SCREEN TEST 67); and the three television commercials are: THE UNDERGROUND SUNDAE (1968, 1 min, Digital Video), CADENCE [STANDING WOMAN] (1965, 1 min, Digital Video), and CADENCE [BOTTLE] (1965, 1 min, Digital Video).
CINE-LIST: December 13 - December 19, 2019
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kyle Cubr, Marilyn Ferdinand, Doug McLaren, Michael Metzger, Scott Pfeiffer
