Cine-File continues to cover streaming and other online offerings during this time of covidity. We will list/highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that have reopened and list streaming/online screenings below.
Cine-File takes no position on whether theaters should be reopening, nor on whether individuals should be attending in-person. Check the venues’ websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place.
PHYSICAL SCREENINGS
Brian Welsh’s BEATS (UK)
The Davis Theatre – Select showtimes Friday-Thursday; also available to rent digitally through the Music Box Theatre here
About a third of the way into Brian Welsh’s BEATS, two Scottish teenagers enter an abandoned building for a night that will change their lives forever. Along with the beatniks and the punks that pass them by, they’re greeted by a shirtless man with a microphone laying down the rules of the evening and the film’s thesis: “ACAB. ACAB. ACAB till I die.” Based on the play by Kieran Hurley, BEATS explores the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994—which barred unlicensed raves in the United Kingdom—through the lens of two unlikely friends who go out to one last party before their lives head in different directions. BEATS encapsulates a remarkably youthful political furor, especially in regards to the censorship of creative expression. Youth activism is nothing new, and the things that young people are passionate about—while varied across time and borders—can be drawn back to the dismantling of oppressive structures and the desire for expansive creative freedoms. BEATS takes its time to pull you in from a narrative perspective, but it quickly and completely becomes explosive from a technical one. When club scenes are so often doused in halogen lights with reckless abandon, BEATS’ stark but focused black and white cinematography stands out from the pack while still managing to channel the electricity of the club environment—and the pulsing soundtrack makes up for any color lost in the picture. BEATS may be a conventional story about the power of friendship, drugs, and music, at times, but it’s a welcome reminder that sometimes a protest is a party and vice versa. (2019, 101 min) CC
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Prerecorded Q&A with Brian Welsh and Steven Soderbergh included with the Music Box's virtual cinema admission.
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More info (including COVID policies) at www.davistheater.com.
Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (American Revival) [70mm]
Music Box Theatre – Friday-Thursday
Despite its massive popularity and canonization as the classic film, VERTIGO remains one of the most insidious, disturbing movies of all time, particularly as it relates to the tortuous labyrinth of the psyche. Out of all the films in the Hitchcock oeuvre, VERTIGO resonates with the most Freudian overtones. Indeed, there exists a strong thematic thread between the two men: both are essentially concerned with peeling back the facade of normalcy to reveal something perverse lurking underneath. As with psychoanalysis, nothing is as it seems in VERTIGO. The story—about Scottie (James Stewart), a former detective being lured out of retirement to investigate the suspicious activities of Madeleine (Kim Novak), his friend's wife—is a pretense for an exploration into the (male) creation of fantasies, a subject that's integral to how we experience movies on the whole. From the very beginning of the film it's almost as if Scottie is subconsciously aware that Madeleine is an unattainable illusion. When he gazes at her in the flower shop, it feels as if the two are situated in different realms of reality. Even when Scottie and Madeleine are at their most intimate, he's kept at a distance by the enigma of her femininity. It's precisely because of this Delphic quality that Madeleine is elevated to the status of fantasy object after her death. In fact, her death only enhances her desirability, the notion that sex/Eros and death/Thanatos are intimately intertwined being one of Freud's most groundbreaking theories (though partial credit should be given to Sabina Spielrein, as David Cronenberg's A DANGEROUS METHOD suggests). Scottie's transformation of Judy into Madeleine in the second half of the film suggests that male desire hinges on the alignment of fantasy and reality; however, Judy is complicit in her metamorphosis from her true self into a fantasy object, evoking John Berger's supposition that "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at." The famous silhouette shot of Judy in the hotel room emphasizes the bipartite nature of the female psyche—a woman might love you, but she'll simultaneously take part in a nefarious murder plot at your expense. In the end, Judy/Madeleine is anything but a certified copy—she's tainted, corrupt, and cheapened. VERTIGO suggests that one cannot (re)create something that never truly existed in the first place. As Slavoj Zizek puts it: "We have a perfect name for fantasy realized. It's called nightmare." (1958, 128 min, 70mm) HS
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More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Natalie Erika James’ RELIC (Australia/US)
Music Box Theatre – Friday-Thursday; also available to rent digitally here
One of the reasons people enjoy the vicarious thrill of horror movies is that we get to root around in the darkest corners of the irrational mind and emerge safely with a mild feeling of catharsis and perhaps even triumph. Of course, the world is full of real nightmares from which escape is difficult, if not impossible. One of those perceived nightmares is dementia, the loss of what many believe makes us human—our memories. With RELIC, first-time feature director Natalie Erika James channels her real-life experience of visiting an elderly relative who had lost all memory of her into a haunted house story. Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) travel from Melbourne to Kay’s childhood home in the countryside to find and care for Edna (Robyn Nevin), Kay’s dementia-stricken mother, after she has been reported missing. RELIC doesn’t so much reinvent the conventions of horror as try to humanize them by showing how Edna has tried to cope with her dimming memory with Post-It notes stuck all over the house, and how she is failing. The opening scene suggests that Edna has a particular problem remembering to turn off running faucets. As the women start to meld their lives together, we are given lucid, sweet moments between Edna and Sam, such as when Edna gives Sam a cherished ring. Kay, feeling guilty about not visiting her mother more often and planning to institutionalize her, begins to tend to her mother with more care and sympathy as Edna’s depression over all the losses in her life pushes her to an irrational act to try to preserve the past. But there is the problem of Edna’s violent outbursts. Forgetting about her gift to Sam, she tears the ring from Sam’s finger. We learn that she locked a Down syndrome neighbor in a closet, which we can forgive as a memory lapse until Edna calls him a “retard,” a word likely to cause all kinds of condemnatory pearl-clutching among people younger than Edna. And frankly, that lack of understanding of generational conditioning and the problematic POV of this film are flaws that leave this film open to charges of ageism. In Jungian dream analysis, the house is the symbol of the Self, and this moldering house is manifesting the kind of decay that can only refer to Edna. However, James locates her film’s POV squarely with Kay and Sam. They seem to be inside Edna’s fracturing mind and experiencing her unharnessed emotions as physical attacks that, in their eyes, turn her into a monstrous Other. This was James’ stated intention, but by othering Edna, she has attacked this elderly woman in particular, and the aging process in general. Edna literally becomes the crazy old lady in the attic, and that’s a trope that should have long since been buried. Age brings with it infirmities, but it seems that in film, the elderly are often defined by what they lack rather than what they’ve gained and can offer. The horror, if you want to look at it the way RELIC does, is that we are all doomed to get old and decline. Fulfilling another trope, Edna becomes the monster Kay chooses to care for, but by turning her into a monster, RELIC denies her her basic humanity. (2020, 89 min) MF
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More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Also screening at the Music Box this week: Dawn Porter’s 2020 documentary JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE (113 min, DCP Digital) continues with a single screening daily at 2pm, except for Sunday which is at 12:30pm.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Atom Egoyan’s GUEST OF HONOUR (Canada)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
With this opaque father-daughter drama, writer-director Atom Egoyan revisits a number of perennial themes: family dysfunction, guilt and atonement, peculiar obsessions, and the intervention of video recording in everyday life. The non-chronological structure, which alternates between different narrative strands taking place at different times, is also highly characteristic of Egoyan, who helped bring international attention to Canadian cinema in the 1980s and 90s with movies like FAMILY VIEWING (1987), THE ADJUSTER (1991), and EXOTICA (1994). GUEST OF HONOUR doesn’t reach the heights of those films, in large part because Egoyan has tread this ground many times before and seems too certain in his conclusions. Moreover, he seems to have lost touch with his sense of relatable human psychology; Egoyan’s characters have always seemed strange, but here they may as well be living on another planet. The film hinges on a number of implausible actions and motivations. A well-liked high school music teacher confesses to a crime she didn’t commit so she can be sent to jail. An aging food inspector announces to a room full of strangers that he wants to commit murder. A bus driver steals a colleague’s cell phone on a whim and uses it to send a text message soliciting sex from a teenage boy. It’s to Egoyan’s credit that all of this makes sense on a thematic level; one always knows what the filmmaker means with his flights of fiction. GUEST OF HONOUR is also worth watching for David Thewlis’ lead performance as the food inspector, a widower whose devotion to his adult daughter becomes clearer (and more affecting) as the stories unfold. Since his performance for the ages in Mike Leigh’s NAKED (1993), the British actor hasn’t had enough opportunities to carry a picture. It’s a treat to watch Thewlis convey how his character thinks to himself and reasons with others. (2019, 104 min) BS
Alysa Nahmias’ THE NEW BAUHAUS (Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Chicago is a proud city. One thing that it, and its people, firmly understand is how things that come forth from the city ripple outward, influencing the world. And while these things may not get the credit for being a catalyst at the time, or may require leaving the city in order for the fruits to grow, Chicago is still content to point and say, “That’s us. They are ours.” THE NEW BAUHAUS exemplifies this very Chicago attitude in its exploration of the life and work of Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. The definition of a polymath, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy worked in the fields of art, design, pedagogy, art theory, and even school administration. He was a former professor at the Bauhaus in Weimer, Germany, and the Nazi’s rise to power forced him as Jew to slowly move further west. First to the Netherlands in 1934, working commercially, then to London the following year where he attempted to open a Bauhaus school with Walter Gropius but failed due to lack of funds. In 1937, the same year his work was featured in the infamous Nazi “Degenerate art” exhibition, he moved to Chicago. At the invitation, and financial backing, of Walter Paepcke of the Container Corporation of America, he opened the New Bauhaus school. Lasting only a year Moholy-Nagy’s vision of an experimental art school that could also work hand-in-hand with technological design didn’t fail as much as falter, as he reopened the school as the School of Design in Chicago. Operating from his proclamation, “Everyone is talented,” this school has lasted ever since, now known as the Illinois Institute of Design. It’s in his work during his Chicago era that THE NEW BAUHAUS focuses on his under-recognized, if not unsung, legacy. With interviews including Elizabeth Siegel (Photo Curator for the Art Institute of Chicago), Thomas Dyja (noted Chicago historian and author), and other experts, along with his daughter, grandsons, and former students, we get a very robust portrait of Moholy-Nagy as a man. Equally extrapolating on his egalitarian and experimental personality, as well as his body of work, a very strong argument is made as to why he should be considered one of the great artists of the 20th century. Even though THE NEW BAUHAUS is a documentary about art, it’s incredibly hard to put into words the beauty that is captured in the film. Moholy-Nagy’s life may be quite interesting, and interwoven into the fabric of some the most important and influential artistic and geopolitical movements of the 20th century, but it’s his art that takes center stage here. The effusiveness of the talking heads makes for charming lecture on the man, but the images of his works, and the processes behind them, make THE NEW BAUHAUS the worthwhile documentary that it is. It’s quite obvious that the filmmakers want to champion Moholy-Nagy and did the leg work to gain access to collections that would help this cause. Never becoming cheap hagiography, THE NEW BAUHAUS is a film that does perfectly what it’s supposed to do: it lets the subject be the star. The genius of Moholy-Nagy needs no defense, and THE NEW BAUHAUS shows us just that. (2019, 89 min) RJM
Makoto Nagahisa’s WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES (Japan)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
It’s no secret that video game movies get a pretty bad rap—but that reputation might have a worthy challenger in Makoto Nagahisa. Known for his exuberant music videos and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning short WE PUT GOLDFISH IN THE POOL, Nagahisa’s debut feature WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES has a commanding visual style paired with a macabre wit. Four deadpan teenagers, recently orphaned, meet one another at a crematorium as their parents turn to ash. In search of any feeling, and a sense of purpose, they come together to form a revolutionary band and make their mark on the world. WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES explores each orphan’s perspective with refreshing dark humor, and the film’s unconventional narrative is spliced with 8-bit graphics, chiptune music (also by Nagahisa,) and in-your-face title cards. Nagahisa takes clear inspiration from classic video games and Japanese hyper-pop, among a myriad of other creative nods that are jam-packed into the film’s underbelly. WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES can feel bloated at times, but it doesn’t leave any feeling off the table: from tragedy and comedy, to teenage angst and biting social commentary. The film’s production design is also noteworthy, featuring embellished costumes, absurdist sets, and frenetic visuals. Nagaisa has certainly proved the value of his unique, albeit intrusive, voice in this feature—and dares to challenge the standards of film form and execution as we know it. WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES is unflinching and uncompromising in its vision—and is easily one of the year’s most daring marvels. (2019, 120 min) CC
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Otilia Portillo Padua’s BIRDERS (US/Mexico/Documentary)
Available for free via Full Spectrum Features through 6/12 here
Anyone who birds knows about and dreams of visiting some of the birding hot spots around the world. Chicago has one—the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary at Montrose Avenue on the lakefront. As great as Montrose is, however, there really is nothing like the areas in South Texas and Mexico featured in the Otilia Portillo Padua’s BIRDERS. Not only are these areas rich in migratory birds that also visit Montrose, but they have significant numbers of beautiful and interesting species that live there year-round and can be found nowhere else, including the spectacular scissor-tailed flycatcher that opens the film. Where BIRDERS: THE CENTRAL PARK EFFECT focuses its binoculars mainly on birdwatchers, BIRDERS spotlights the guides, banders, and stewards whose vocation or avocation lies in preserving, protecting, and helping others enjoy the birds and the precious habitats that helps them thrive. While there is some awareness of the border wall that may not be a barrier to birds but that threatens the habitat they need, the film is largely apolitical. We spend time in 11 nature areas, with the largest amount of time at raptor hot spots in Mexico, at one of which stewards somehow manage to capture and band birds of prey. The film doesn’t offer identification of many of the birds shown, and the shots of migrating raptors flying high in the sky are just as frustrating as they are in real life for birders who want to get a good look at them. I most enjoyed meeting a Mexican bird guide nicknamed “Blue Mockingbird” because of his skillful bird-call imitations, one of which he demonstrates to coax a green jay out for Portillo Padua’s camera. BIRDERS is a short and rapid Cook’s tour through this special region, but it manages to inform and amaze all the same. (2019, 37 min) MF
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The film is part of a series titled “Chicago Cinema Exchange: Mexico City,” presented by Full Spectrum Features.
Ulrich Köhler’s BUNGALOW (Germany)
Available to rent through Facets Cinematheque here
The first feature by acclaimed German filmmaker Ulrich Köhler (SLEEPING SICKNESS) is a dry comedy about arrested adolescence, sexual frustration, and not giving a shit. It begins when Paul, a young man engaged in mandatory military service, abandons his troop during a period of leave. He hitchhikes his way back to his family home in an unspecified suburb, where he takes advantage of his parents being gone to loll about and evade requests by the German military to return to base. Shortly after Paul arrives, he discovers that his older brother Max is also crashing at the family bungalow with his girlfriend Lene, a Danish actress who becomes the object of Paul’s infatuation. The AWOL soldier’s obsession gradually becomes the focus of the film, and Köhler generates more suspense from the question of whether Paul will convince Lene to sleep with him than whether he’ll go back to the army. Actually, suspense may be too strong a word—so much of BUNGALOW concerns the antihero passively wasting time that the film occasionally suggests an anti-drama in the tradition of early Fassbinder. Yet there’s more than meets the eye in this impressively subtle film, which hints at longstanding familial tensions through its depiction of how the characters interact over a few days. Gradually it becomes clear that Max’s resentment of Paul reflects years of disappointment with his younger brother and that Paul’s seemingly random decision to go AWOL is in keeping with his chronic tendency to disappoint people. Köhler shares with his wife Maren Ade a talent for suggesting complicated personal histories through forward-moving narratives, though his poker-faced aesthetic, rooted in longish takes and inquisitive tracking shots, feels more aligned with contemporaneous German directors Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec. In any case, BUNGALOW feels distinctive in its understated humor and rich characterizations, and thanks to this new restoration, more viewers will be able to recognize its place in the German cinematic renaissance of the early 21st century. (2002, 86 min) BS
Bora Kim’s HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD (South Korea)
Available for rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and via the Chicago International Film Festival here
At one point in the luminous South Korean drama HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD, I was reminded of Bong Joon Ho’s phenomenally successful PARASITE (2019). The family on which HUMMINGBIRD focuses owns a rice cake store, and we see them work together to create and roll out long logs of rice dough and lay them side by side for further processing and packaging. The scene echoes in some ways in PARASITE’s opening scene of the Ki family folding pizza boxes to make ends meet, but there is a significant difference between the families and how they handle their lot in life. It may be more pleasing to audiences to root for the Kis as an underclass family whose larcenous designs on a fabulously wealthy family allow us a vicarious class reckoning. With HUMMINGBIRD, her directorial debut, Bora Kim offers us no clear us vs. them argument. What she does is provide a backdrop of economic pressure on middle- and working-class South Koreans by alluding to the land grabs and economic hegemony of foreign and upper-class elites as she bores intensely into the experiences of Eunhee (Jihu Park), the 14-year-old youngest child. The action takes place during the momentous year of 1994, when North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Il-Sung died and the Seongsu Bridge over the Han River in Seoul collapsed, killing 32 people. Eunhee’s family life is fraught—her father (Ingi Jeong) is having an affair and is harsh with Eunhee and her delinquent sister, Suhee (Bak Suyeon). Eunhee’s brother, Daehoon (Son Sangyeon), beats her and is not likely to fulfill his father’s dream of becoming a university graduate. Eunhee, starved for love, is willing to entertain any shows of affection, from a boyfriend to a lesbian classmate to her Chinese-language teacher (Saebyuk Kim). It’s likely that Bora Kim has channeled some of her adolescent experiences into the character of Eunhee, whose interactions are so personal and moving. It’s interesting that the women and girls in this film are much stronger and more stoic than the men, who break into tears at the potential loss of their loved ones. In creating her wholly believable female characters and imbuing them with full personalities and ways of relating, Kim has created a robust feminine landscape that is both edifying and deeply affecting. I particularly liked her fixation on hands and food as imagery that reinforce the feminine projects of nourishment and service. Indeed, her images are rich, well-chosen, and deeply engaged with her subjects. There was not a single moment in which I did not care what was happening to Eunhee and those around her. (2018, 138 min) MF
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There will be an online Q&A on Thursday at 7pm (Central Time) with director Bora Kim and producer Zoe Sua Cho, moderated by former Cine-File contributor Christy LeMaster. Check the CIFF website for details.
Bill Duke’s THE KILLING FLOOR (American Revival)
Available for rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
A rare American labor union drama centered on Black experience, THE KILLING FLOOR is a minor miracle of narrative history, succeeding as drama, as pedagogy, and as a model of independent, inclusive, collaborative, local, unionized filmmaking. Shot in Chicago in 1983 for PBS’s American Playhouse series—an indispensable platform for some of the best independent filmmaking of the era, and a haven for voices and stories far outside the Reagan-era mainstream—THE KILLING FLOOR tells the story of Frank Custer (Damien Leake), a Black sharecropper who travels north to work in a stockyard during World War I. Eager to improve his wages and to reunite his family in the “Promised Land” of Chicago’s flourishing south side, Custer defies the ridicule of fellow Black workers to join a scrappy, mostly-white labor union. When the war ends and white veterans begin returning to the workforce (and to zealously segregated neighborhoods), racial tensions inside the union and out boil over, resulting in the violent 1919 riot that left dozens dead and displaced thousands of mostly Black residents. Producer and co-writer Elsa Rassbach, with a perspicacity uncommon today (let alone in the 1980s), found her way into this frayed historical knot through a footnote in William Tuttle’s book on the riot—a reference to a court record of a labor dispute between Custer and “Heavy” Williams (portrayed in the film by Moses Gunn), a Black stockyard worker whose vocal distrust of white unionists helped the packing company disrupt union organizing across racial lines. Thanks largely to director Bill Duke’s handling, what could have been a binary conflict between Williams’ pessimism and Custer’s idealism becomes remarkably nuanced—after all, Custer has justifiable misgivings of his own, and the film’s central dramatic question is whether his belief in the union can withstand the corrosive racism of its membership. Duke weighs Custer’s ambivalence through performance and point of view, as demonstrated in Frank’s first visit to the Union hall. Taking in the hectic air of jubilation and multilingual speechifying, Leake’s darting eyes register the white faces and powderkeg atmosphere with both wariness and enticement, his voiceover comparing the gathering to a Southern prayer meeting. In this sequence and throughout, THE KILLING FLOOR draws on familiar tropes and narrative conventions, but lends them a charge by introducing an alienated Black gaze to typically white spaces, pointedly validating the cultural knowledge that Black southerners bring as spectators to both the union hall and the historical drama. Celebrated dramatist Leslie Lee’s screenplay further makes virtues of archetypes and blunt expository dialogue; such immediacy is critical to the film’s educational economy, which captures the riot’s myriad underlying causes—the Great Migration, the First World War, the growth of organized labor, the European diasporas, and the centuries of exploitation and disenfranchisement of African Americans—in broad yet affecting strokes. But the film is also rich in detail and atmosphere, a quality starkly revealed in this new digital restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, making its international debut just in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Chicago riots. The renewed digital clarity also exposes some rough edges, of course—that’s to be expected from an ambitious historical drama funded largely by labor unions and populated with volunteer extras (including many from the Harold Washington mayoral campaign). Seen today, that roughness reminds us that THE KILLING FLOOR wasn’t so much a product of its time as a renegade in it—and a treasure in ours. (1985, 118 min) MM
Jose Luis Benavides’ LULU EN EL JARDÍN (US/Mexico/Documentary)
Available for free via Full Spectrum Features through 6/12 here
Chicago-based filmmaker, writer, and educator Jose Luis Benavides combines several years’ worth of research and reflection into a feature-length documentary about his mother, Lourdes Benavides, an incredible Latina woman who, as a teenager in the 1970s, was institutionalized after experiencing mental health issues and disclosing her same-sex attraction, then verboten in her community. This happened several years after she and her family returned from Mexico, adding another layer to Benavides’ staggering portrait of individual and generational trauma. As the director explores issues of race, migration and sexuality, so too does he expose an era of mental health care at the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center that was nothing short of appalling. Benavides interrogates these issues through a weaving of modes that effectively centers each issue and posits them in connection with the others; appearing throughout are ephemera surrounding the center and now-outdated mental health practices, which illuminate the environment in which his mother and others were being treated. One section is a reenactment (by an all Latina cast) of the transcript of the Knapp Commission on Mental Health Meeting, held at Chicago-Read Mental Health Center on February 15, 1972; this involved a female journalist going undercover at the facility to expose accusations of physical and sexual abuse. Other parts are more opaque, utilizing written texts and film clips with a poetic overtone. One throughline is nature—flowers and trees, flora abundant—likewise signifying Lourdes’ womanhood and sexuality, as well as emphasizing the ways that idyllic locales, like that which surrounds the institution, mask internal struggles to the outside world. This dual representation evokes beauty and pain—an appropriate metaphor for the filmmaker's extraordinary subject. (2018, 55 min) KS
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The film is part of a series titled “Chicago Cinema Exchange: Mexico City,” presented by Full Spectrum Features.
Peter Sellers’ MR. TOPAZE (UK)
Available for rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Albert Topaze (Peter Sellers) is a humble, scrupulously honest teacher in a second-rate private school for boys in provincial France. He is a patsy for the attractive daughter (Billy Whitelaw) of the school’s owner (Leo McKern) who cajoles him into correcting homework for her as he implores his fellow teacher and friend (Michael Gough) to help him win her hand in marriage. Unfortunately, Topaze sticks to his principles when a baroness (Martita Hunt) wants him to change her grandson’s report card and ends up unemployed. It is then that he is recruited into running a shell company for the corrupt lover (Herbert Lom) of a stage performer (Nadia Gray). What will become of Topaze and his high moral principles? Based on a play by Marcel Pagnol, the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française, MR. TOPAZE borrows from Pagnol’s own experiences as a student in a provincial town, a schoolteacher, and the husband of an actress. Pierre Rouve’s adapted screenplay is beautifully literate, giving Sellers the opportunity to imbue his high-minded character with the intelligence that will serve him well in the latter stages of the film. In his only outing as a director, Sellers employs an exaggerated mise-en-scène to reveal character that is sheer eye candy, but largely directs his cast—including himself—to underplay their roles. Only McKern is flat-out hilarious, but Sellers indulges briefly in some of the bumbling pratfalls that will reach their height in the Pink Panther movies and Hunt’s performance of the song “I Like Money” is a sparkling highlight. This comic gem digitally restored from the only surviving 35mm print is, in its way, a coming-of-age story that has a tinge of sadness about it. Highly recommended. (1961, 97 min) MF
Bill Gallagher’s RUNNER (US/Documentary)
Available for rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
The American poet e.e. cummings once wrote a short essay about a certain well-read pocket periodical’s formula for success. No matter what the circumstances—a biblical flood, a catastrophic earthquake, runaway wildfires—if the writer reports with the following tenets in mind—eight to eighty, anyone can do it, makes you feel good—he or she will earn the approbation of readers, editors, publishers and darn near the whole world. This publication would never do a follow-up that might contradict its feel-good conclusion, but sometimes the story goes sour. To break from the formula is a risk, but it’s a more honest approach to reporting that adults should be allowed to hear. Bill Gallagher’s documentary, RUNNER, considers a genuine underdog and his up-and-down battle to make a life for himself. Guor Marial (now Guor Mading Maker) grew up in war-torn Sudan. At the age of 8, he was kidnapped by a warring faction and destined for life as a slave, but he managed to escape. He was brought as a refugee to New Hampshire, where he learned English, developed into an award-winning runner on his high school and college track teams, and with little experience, qualified for the 2012 Olympics. At the same time, Sudan was splitting in two, and Guor’s native region became the world’s youngest country, South Sudan. Guor’s Olympic dream was almost over before it began when he was initially denied entry because South Sudan did not have an Olympic committee and he refused to run for Sudan. The IOC allowed him to run under their flag, and he did surprisingly well in the London games. If RUNNER had ended there, we would have had our magical uplift, but the cameras kept rolling. Among some of the triumphs—establishing a South Sudan Olympic Committee, starting a running camp, visiting his parents for the first time in 20 years—Guor’s race results started to decline, his country fell into a civil war, and we all know what has happened to his dream of competing in the now-postponed 2020 Olympics. Gallagher glosses over some aspects of Guor’s life that really need an explanation, like why he changed his name and why he left his parents again after a seemingly brief visit. Perhaps the answers would have irretrievably tarnished the hero story Gallagher seemed determined to make, but I, for one, was more moved by the broken-axle reality of Guor’s life. His is still an inspiring and interesting story, even moreso for knowing the damage that continues to haunt his life. (2019, 88 min) MF
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Gallery 400 (UIC)
James T. Green’s 2017 video A SURVEILLANCE MEDITATION (4 min) is available online through July 12 here.
Chicago Filmmakers
Visit here to find out about virtual screenings offered via Chicago Filmmakers.
Facets Cinémathèque
All of the films available for streaming via Facets this week are reviewed above, as new reviews or hold-overs.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Cheryl Haines’ 2019 documentary AI WEIWEI: YOURS TRULY (78 min) and Nikolaus Leytner’s 2018 Austrian/German film THE TOBACCONIST (117 min) are available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
The family-oriented animated shorts program One Small Step, which includes twelve films from 2004-19, streams this week; and Le-Van Kiet’s 2019 Vietnamese film FURIE (98 min) has a special online screening on Friday at 8:15pm, with live commentary by director-producer Warrington Hudlin and Lady Sensei, Founding President of the Women's Martial Arts Network. Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles.
Chicago International Film Festival
Check here for titles currently available for rental from CIFF’s Virtual Cinema.
Chicago Latino Film Festival
CLFF is offering a selection of features and shorts for rental. Information here.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RECOMMENDATIONS
Films by Bruce Baillie (US/Experimental)
Available for free at the National Gallery of Art through 7/14 here
One of the great filmmakers of the New American Cinema movement, Bruce Baillie (who passed away in April) not only made thoroughly gorgeous lyrical films but also was the co-founder of the enduring and vital film distributor Canyon Cinema. His subjects were often the great American symbols and myths, and his methods were unique and keenly resonant today in their balance of document and poetry. MR. HAYASHI (1961) is a quick and graceful "newsreel" about a Japanese immigrant gardener, complete with his hourly rate and contact info. THE NEWS #3 (THE PEACE RALLY) (1962) and HERE I AM... (1962) are more films in his distinctive sensitive and evocative "newsreel" style. A tribute to Wagner, TO PARSIFAL (1963) is an evocative travelogue from the Pacific to the Sierra Nevada mountains. MASS FOR THE DAKOTA SIOUX (1964) is complex and complicated in its use of European religious forms to pay tribute to Native American life. QUIXOTE (1965) is a raging and knotty work looking back on Baillie’s previous explorations of America's beauty and horror. CASTRO STREET (1966) is a poetic document of an industrial section of San Francisco (rather than the famous area named in the title) that shows his absolute control over superimposition and color film. VALENTIN DE LAS SIERRAS (1967) is a swinging, swirling portrait of people and objects in Jalisco, Mexico. Finally, ROSLYN ROMANCE (IS IT REALLY TRUE?) (1974) is an epistolary reflection on family, the seasons, and death. This is a long program that shows Baillie's depth, complexity, and styles and that can be enjoyed in its beautiful totality, or in the phrases and songs that speak and sing for you. (1961-74, approx. 135 min total) JBM
Richard Lester’s A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (UK)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel with subscription
Can a movie change the world? Here’s one that did. Watching the Beatles in Richard Lester’s A HARD DAY’S NIGHT again, I experienced the joy we feel when experiencing any work of timeless beauty; at the same time, I found myself unexpectedly weeping. The movie represents a certain innocence that seems so utterly lost. My reaction is hardly confined to me: both Greil Marcus and Roger Ebert speak of this innocence in their celebrations of the movie. The story of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT is legendary: a film that need only have been a piece of low-budget promo turned out to be the defining rock and roll musical, setting the style for all that came after. Shot in thrilling black and white, it is one of the most influential films ever made, a comedy that is as fresh and funny, as intelligent and exciting, as the day it was made. Though the Beatles had become international sensations in ’64, this film was in some sense their introduction—as the beloved characters of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. As actors, they proved able to deftly deliver the bon mots of Alun Owen’s droll screenplay, winning them, as Marcus writes, “an audience among the intelligentsia.” Presumably you know it by heart, from that opening blast of George’s 12-string Rickenbacker on. The boys play themselves, and the film makes their initial audience—the teenage girls who were the first people smart enough to realize how great the Beatles were—virtually a fifth member of the band. They’re part of the story from the get-go, with that anarchic race to the train setting a tone of comic, hurtling pandemonium that never lets up. The good-natured, youthful, headlong rhythm is sustained right up until the astonishing final concert sequence in the South of England, which reunites them with the ecstasy of their audience. Musically, the film represents the band at its exuberant peak. A word should also be said for Wilfrid Brambell as Paul’s grandfather, a “clean” old man—and one of the most rock-and-roll characters in the history of the movies, in my view. Richard Lester was an American in London, a TV director whose portfolio included commercials and documentaries. He warmed up for the Beatles with the rock-and-roll flick IT’S TRAD, DAD! Before that he’d joined with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, from the hugely influential radio program The Goon Show, to make the absurdist short THE RUNNING JUMPING & STANDING STILL FILM. The Beatles loved it, and picked him as their director on its strength. He would go on to make zeitgeist-defining films such as PETULIA and THE BED-SITTING ROOM. Perhaps just as surely as the Beatles’ irreverent worldview and long hair, Lester’s free-form, subversive, surreal aesthetic brought on the ‘60s. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway: I wasn’t born until 1971. By the time I first saw A HARD DAY’S NIGHT I’d seen longer hair on men, and I was so steeped in multi-angle music videos I could hardly appreciate that Richard Lester invented the form. Even as a teenager, though, I sensed that my freedom was in some sense thanks to the Beatles. Watching with my whole family, I got a feeling for how the movie must have transcended social barriers, as everyone delighted in its wit. Only later was I able to put A HARD DAY’S NIGHT in the context of early Godard and Cassavetes: Lester’s work is an innovative synthesis of these rule-breaking pioneers. It’s got the speed and jump cuts of BREATHLESS, the feel of, in Ebert’s words, “movies that played like dramas but looked like documentaries,” deploying “light 16mm cameras, handheld shots, messy compositions that looked like they might have been snatched during moments of real life.” The film is essentially a documentary of fun and happiness; perhaps its message for each generation is the revolutionary notion that life and work should be, in a word, fun. To watch it today is a wistful experience; it is also to be forever young. A thing of joy forever, the vanished world of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT is one we can always enter to refresh our humanity. (1964, 88 min) SP
Bert Stern and Aram Avakian’s JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY (US/Documentary)
Streaming free on Vimeo here
The history of motion pictures is inextricably tied to the field of photography, beginning with the motion studies of English photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s and moving through the 20th and 21st centuries with such photographer/directors as Agnès Varda, Stanley Kubrick, Gordon Parks, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Frank. Bert Stern, producer/director of JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY, was, like Frank, a commercial and fashion photographer. He’s best known now for his photos of Marilyn Monroe, but in 1958 he was interested in making an experimental film during the simultaneously occurring Newport Jazz Festival and the 18th running of the America’s Cup. Perhaps he was inspired by the entry of the first experimental yachts to be allowed into the Cup competition and the eclectic mix of Dixieland, big band, cool jazz, gospel, blues, and even rock ’n roll artists slated to appear at the festival. Whatever his motivation, he and five other cameramen descended on the elite island getaway and ended up creating, with the expert editing of Aram Avakian, the progenitor of the modern concert film. Dancing reflections in harbor waters are accompanied by the staccato sax of Jimmy Giuffre, the valve trombone of Bob Brookmeyer, and the guitar of Jim Hall playing “The Train and the River” as the credits introduce the talents Stern will feature. Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson get top billing. Gerry Mulligan, Dinah Washington, Chico Hamilton, and Anita O’Day follow, and then other featured performers and a host of expert sidemen. The film warms us to its subject as it tees up preparations for the start of the America’s Cup and the day’s concert. A Dixieland band literally blows their way into town in an antique jalopy and acts as our intermittent guides through the film. The battle on the waves, seen in random geometric formations from the air, is scored with Thelonious Monk’s magnificent “Blue Monk,” making one wish there were more tunes from this jazz pioneer. I wasn’t familiar with Anita O’Day before this film, and she seems a dainty woman here in a feathered hat, frill-bottomed shift, and white gloves. She gingerly negotiates some steps in a pair of Lucite, high-heeled mules, but from then on, there is nothing timid about her ingenious, pitch-perfect renditions of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Tea for Two.” Perhaps my favorite act of the film is the Chico Hamilton Quintet, most memorable to cinephiles as the combo that backs Martin Milner in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957), performing the tribal-sounding, hypnotic “Blue Sands.” I was also thrilled to see Dinah Washington, a favorite singer of mine whom I’ve only known through recordings, smile her way through “All of Me.” Throughout the film, Stern’s directorial and photographic eye finds particular faces among the concertgoers—a man with a long cigar snapping his fingers, a mother and her young daughter enjoying Louis Armstrong’s banter and red-hot trumpeting, four African-American women swaying and snapping to Mahalia Jackson’s jubilant rendition of “Walk All Over God’s Heaven,” a young couple swing-dancing to Chuck Berry. These miniature portraits, as edited by Avakian, become something of a call-response between the musicians and the audience, building a feeling for the event that makes JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY more pleasurable with each viewing. Bert Stern never made another film, but that’s no cause for distress. Perfection’s hard to top. (1959, 82 min) MF
Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill’s JOYCE AT 34 and Amalie R. Rothschild’s IT HAPPENS TO US (US/Documentary)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel (subscription required)
The phenomenal Criterion Channel series “Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories” is both a time capsule and a prognostication, though sometimes a dispiriting one, which tells us that, lamentably, not much has changed. Especially prescient is Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill’s short documentary JOYCE AT 34 (1972, 28 min), a first-of-its-kind public-television broadcast that focuses on Chopra’s experience as a new mother who’s eager to continue working. The film resonates at a time when many parents are being compelled to work from home and, in the absence of schools and childcare, mind their kids simultaneously. Chopra and Weill present the former’s late pregnancy and birth, the latter in graphic detail (according to an interview with Chopra for Brooklyn magazine several years back, this “was itself a milestone [as it featured] one of television’s first—if not first-ever—non-academic, non-medical live births”), as a glorious, life-affirming event. This is followed by the reality of having brought a person into the world that needs tending to, often at the expense of one’s own career and interpersonal relationships. Made during the era of second-wave feminism, Chopra tackles these issues with impressive honesty, not bothering to hide her frustration and occasional resentment as she elucidates on the troubling reality that child-rearing and housekeeping often fall to women. At one point, Chopra’s husband—playwright and screenwriter Tom Cole—is interviewed and admits his reluctance to handle these tasks himself. In another affecting scene, Chopra’s mother, a retired school teacher, unites with a group of fellow retired school teachers, all women, to discuss what it was like to be a working mother during and after the Depression. Throughout, we see Chopra as she attempts to make a film about a school during trips to NYC both with and away from her new daughter. In the aforementioned interview, Chopra explains that she didn’t necessarily set out to explore certain subjects or make polemical statements, but rather that she wanted to make her first film and simply liked the idea. She also mentions appreciating a review of the film by B. Ruby Rich for the Village Voice in which Rich pointed out that Chopra’s experience doesn’t represent that of working-class women. This is a viewpoint that reverberates as many privileged people are now experiencing the extraordinarily dire situation of having to work whilst likewise having no childcare. Chopra and Weill’s film is nevertheless a feat of subversion, as, for perhaps the first time, the travails of the working mother—heretofore endured quietly—were exposed for all to witness. JOYCE AT 34 premiered the same year as Amalie R. Rothschild’s IT HAPPENS TO US (1972, 33 min), a short documentary about abortion; that was also the year before Roe v. Wade, the landmark legal case that’s topical all these years later, insomuch as it’s routinely being threatened and, thankfully, upheld. Rothschild’s documentary presents a holistic view of abortion at a time when it was largely illegal and thus unsafe (however, it was both legal and medically safe in New York, where some of this was shot). Women who underwent each kind describe their experiences, the details accordingly traumatic where abortion was illegal and not-as-much where they weren’t. Rothschild also includes infographics about birth control and different types of abortions, plus discussions with physicians and abortion advocacy groups. Most affecting are the testimonials from the women themselves—Rothschild’s film features women of various races and ages as well as from various socioeconomic backgrounds, elaborating on their circumstances and the procedure in its multitude of forms. Naturally it’s the details of unsafe abortions that are most disconcerting; they illuminate why access to safe and legal abortions was and remains crucial. There may be nothing extraordinary about Rothschild’s filmmaking, per se, but her singular focus is audacious. Both of these films are honest portrayals of their respective subject matter; it’s beneficial, now, to be shown how it was then in such a straightforward way, as if a clarion call from the past warning us about the future. KS
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Both films are part of the Criterion Channel’s ongoing “Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories” series.
Ken Loach’s LOOKS AND SMILES (UK)
Available to stream for free on Tubi
Currently there are three films by venerated British director Ken Loach available to stream on the free site Tubi: LOOKS AND SMILES (1981), HIDDEN AGENDA (1990), and LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD (1994). There are reasons to watch all three, but the first may be the most compelling on a visual level, showcasing a refined aesthetic sensibility one doesn’t typically associate with Loach’s work. Filmed in black and white by the great Chris Menges (who’s shot multiple films for Neil Jordan and Bill Forsyth as well as Loach), LOOKS AND SMILES eschews the gritty look of most working-class British dramas in favor of something brighter, almost glossy. The film’s vision of Sheffield may be colorless—a reflection how the city has been hit by recession at the dawn of the Thatcher era—but it’s not entirely grim. The images still convey a sense of possibility, which is in keeping with the film’s theme of young adults discovering themselves. Unfortunately, that possibility goes mostly unfulfilled, as Loach concentrates on the obstacles to social mobility (and happiness in general) in Thatcher’s England. The protagonists, Mick and Alan, are best friends who leave high school early in order to pursue careers. Alan enlists in the British military, while Mick tries to find work as a machinist, albeit to no success. Much of LOOKS AND SMILES concerns Mick’s efforts to land a job: visiting the employment office, going on job interviews, honing his fix-it skills in the family garage. Loach and screenwriter Barry Hines (who also scripted the director’s first feature, KES) intersperse their sociological portrait with scenes of Mick and Alan partaking in Sheffield’s youth culture (one passage takes place at a punk concert) and a tender subplot about Mick’s on-again-off-again romance with Karen, another high school dropout who works at a shoe store. There are a couple scenes where the filmmakers shift their focus entirely to Karen and consider her troubled home life; some of the most affecting passages of the film, these scenes suggest a subdued variation on the “kitchen sink” realism that dominated British cinema in the 1960s. LOOKS AND SMILES received warm receptions at the Cannes and New York film festivals, yet Loach still considered it a failure, apparently because its anti-Thatcher message wasn’t explicit enough. Regardless of his thoughts, the film conveys plenty about the political climate that produced it and functions brilliantly as a character study. (1981, 104 min) BS
Krzysztof Zanussi’s SPIRAL (Poland)
Available to stream on Netflix (Subscription required)
A highlight of quarantine—if there can be said to be any—has been discovering this random Krzysztof Zanussi film on Netflix. Random insomuch as it’s not the Zanussi film one might expect a mainstream streaming service to feature (I’d have figured it’d be one of the three 1970s films restored by Martin Scorsese for his “Masterpieces of Polish Cinema” series from a few years back or Zanussi's more accessible 1985 film A YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN), but rather a somewhat obscure title from the Polish auteur’s prodigious oeuvre. Among its other distinctions, SPIRAL—listed as THE SPIRAL on Netflix but referred to as just SPIRAL most everywhere else—was praised by Susan Sontag in her essay “AIDS and Its Metaphors” as being “the most truthful account I know of anger at dying.” Indeed, it teems with existential acrimony, a near-tangible perception that places us in the position of its protagonist, Tomasz (Jan Nowicki, in an affecting performance), a youngish man dying of an unknown affliction. The film begins with Tomasz showing up at a mountain resort, planning to take his life by exposing himself to the elements on the mountaintop; his reason for wanting to do so, however, is not made clear until the film’s latter half. Before setting out, he circulates the lodge, engaging its occupants in verbal duels that, in hindsight, are clearly driven by his metaphysical frustration. Even though Tomasz starts fights with many of the guests, they nevertheless go look for him when they notice he’s disappeared. These people comprise a Greek chorus of sorts, at first absorbing Tomasz’s penetrating barbs, then helping to search for him despite his merciless behavior, and, finally, in the second half of the film, returning to visit him at the hospital where he's being treated. Each of the visitors—a would-be love interest, a young philosophy student, and a now-affluent veteran with whom Tomasz had quarreled at the lodge and who’s had his own dalliances with mortality—represents a different life experience that Tomasz loses in death: to have a lover and a child, and eventually to be old and wise, unafraid of death’s looming. Throughout there’s an anxious energy that defines many of Zanussi’s films of the 70s, which, with other Polish films from this era, were categorized as “the cinema of moral anxiety.” Here it’s perhaps less political but more abstract as it considers that greatest of moral concerns: death. The film’s final moments are breathtaking—for those who’ve continued watching Zanussi’s films in spite of his straying from the restless ambiguity of his best works, this scene might feel precipitous in advance of his later, more heavy-handed films. Less so then, it’s nevertheless the case that many of Zanussi’s films are didactic (in addition to directing, Zanussi has written most of them). Though his exact illness is never disclosed, Tomasz and those around him discuss death without reserve, a conversation into which we’re invited and from which we, too, can never escape. Photographed by Edward Klosinski, the film’s astounding visual sensibility is integral to the content; sweat on a dying man’s face is both resplendent and evocative, and a brightly lit window in a sallow hallway beckons death. (1978, 83 min) KS
Olivier Assayas’ WASP NETWORK (France)
Available to stream on Netflix (Subscription required)
Even when they take place in the past, the films of Olivier Assayas are all about time hurtling forward. The French writer-director has long been in the habit of cutting from one movement to another, and this strategy has the effect of connoting unstoppable momentum, be it of the creative process (IRMA VEP, CLEAN, CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA), globalized capitalism (LES DESTINEES, DEMONLOVER, BOARDING GATE), or geopolitical activity (CARLOS, WASP NETWORK). These are complex forces to be sure, and Assayas dramatizes that complexity by exploring the knotty emotional repercussions the forces cause. His characters are always being pulled away from domesticity and emotional stability by something bigger than themselves; that they acknowledge their relative powerlessness does not make things any easier for them or their loved ones. Such is the case with Rene (Edgar Ramirez) and his wife Olga (Penélope Cruz) in WASP NETWORK, Assayas’ espionage thriller about Cuban spies infiltrating anti-Castro terrorist groups in the 1990s. Rene, a pilot, leaves Cuba at the start of the movie to defect to the United States (or so he says), leaving Olga and their daughter behind. Naturally, the distance between them puts a strain on their marriage, and Assayas makes this tension palpable; one might say it infiltrates the larger suspense of whether Rene and his fellow spies will succeed in their espionage mission. WASP NETWORK doesn’t become a full-fledged suspense film until its second half, however, as Assayas spends the film’s first hour delineating, with characteristic inquisitiveness and attention to detail, what it takes to defect one country and lay down roots in another. After considering how Rene comes to Florida, Assayas shifts focus to another Cuban pilot, Juan Pablo (Wagner Moura), who defects and instills himself in Miami’s expatriate Cuban community. Only when Juan Pablo gets settled does Assayas backtrack four years to show how the Wasp Network of anti-anti-Castroists formed; finally, he resumes forward movement in time to dramatize how the network stopped terrorist attacks in Cuba. Some critics have complained about the narrative structure of WASP NETWORK, calling it messy or confusing; personally, I find it compelling and apropos, a reflection of the messy geopolitical situation Assayas is considering. (2019, 128 min) BS
Jeffrey McHale’s YOU DON’T NOMI (US/Documentary)
Available for rent on Google Play, iTunes, Amazon Prime Video and Vudu
On its release in 1995 the movie SHOWGIRLS somehow managed to be some kind of reverse King Midas, turning nearly everyone, and everything, it touched into a pile of wet garbage. It’s director, Paul Verhoeven, once praised for his violent satires of American culture, was thought to have lost his way and was virtually exiled back to Europe. The career of lead actress Elizabeth Berkeley, formerly a star of the wildly popular teen sitcom Saved by the Bell, was yoked with accusations of giving, quite possibly, the worst performance ever put on film. The movie was universally panned by critics and fans alike. Even its NC-17 rating, a designation Verhoeven actually hoped to get, with its gratuitous nudity and sexual content, couldn’t save the film. YOU DON’T NOMI explores the strange road SHOWGIRLS has taken, from being awarded “Worst Film of the Decade” at the Razzies to becoming a bona fide cult classic, with revival screening attendances often reaching 1000+. Director Jeffrey McHale includes interviews with authors, film scholars, film critics, and, mostly importantly, the queer community who embraced and championed the film’s campiness, to explain the circuitous path SHOWGIRLS has had. What makes this documentary interesting, and not just another rote tale of a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie, is that McHale works backwards from the place where, yes, SHOWGIRLS is a cult film. The film doesn’t argue for this point, it only illustrates and explains how it became that way. In doing so the movie also allows for the space to discuss Paul Verhoeven’s career as a whole, gender constructs in cinema, the sexual politics of Hollywood, acting theory, and the reclamation of marginal art by marginalized people from the hands of popular taste and critics. As someone who is a genuine fan of SHOWGIRLS’ high camp, this movie pressed all the right buttons to give me my desired doses of serotonin. At the same time, this is a perfect movie to introduce someone to the weird, insanity that is SHOWGIRLS if they only know it as that bad stripper movie. I can’t imagine anyone watching YOU DON’T NOMI and then not wanting to immediately watch SHOWGIRLS. If you’re into movies about movies, this is an absolute gem and very welcome addition to that sub-genre of documentary. If you’re into documentaries about weird culture, well, SHOWGIRLS is about as weird as it gets, so do yourself a kindness and watch this. (2019, 92 min) RJM
SUPPORT LOCAL THEATERS AND SERIES
As we wait for conditions to improve to allow theaters to reopen, consider various ways that you can help support independent film exhibitors in Chicago weather this difficult time. Memberships, gift cards, and/or merchandise are available from the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets. Donations can be made to non-profit venues and organizations like Chicago Filmmakers, the Chicago Film Society, South Side Projections, and many of the film festivals. Online streaming partnerships with distributors are making films available through the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets; and Facets also has a subscription-based streaming service, FacetsEdge, that includes many exclusive titles.
COVID-19 UPDATES
All independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals have suspended operations, closed, or cancelled/postponed events until further notice. Below is the most recent information we have, which we will update as new information becomes available.
Note that venues/series marked with an asterisk (*) are currently presenting or plan to do regular or occasional “virtual” online screenings.
OPEN:
Music Box Theatre – The Music Box reopens on July 3, presenting physical, in-theater screenings and also continues to present online-only screenings*
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Asian Pop-Up Cinema – See above for online offering; otherwise, spring series postponed till the fall*
Beverly Arts Center – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Events cancelled/postponed until furtuer notice*
Chicago Film Archives – The CFA’s annual “Media Mixer” event, previously scheduled for May, has been rescheduled for September 16
Chicago Film Society – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Chicago Filmmakers – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled with no set start date
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Screenings cancelled until further notice
Facets Cinémathèque – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
filmfront – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Gallery 400 *
Gene Siskel Film Center – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)
The Nightingale – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Park Ridge Public Library) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Festivals:
The Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Chicago Latino Film Festival (April 16-30) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Windy City Horrorama festival (April 24-26) – Cancelled; will possibly be rescheduled or reconfigured at a future date
The Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 1-7) – Postponed until further notice
The Chicago Underground Film Festival (June 10-14) – Postponed (tentatively in September)
CINE-LIST: July 10 - July 16, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Marilyn Ferdinand, JB Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Metzger, Scott Pfeiffer, Harrison Sherrod