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
Christopher Nolan's INTERSTELLAR (US) [70mm]
Music Box Theatre — Friday-Thursday, Check Venue website for showtimes
Throughout the summer and early fall of 2014, INTERSTELLAR was discussed in hushed tones by Oscarologists and box office prognosticators, positioned sight unseen as an automatic blockbuster that would steamroll everything in its path—a feat of original I.P. that would tug at the heart and the wallet. Projectionists everywhere welcomed director Christopher Nolan's emphatically pro-celluloid public posture and marveled at the clout he exercised in goading Paramount Pictures to commit to a sizable run of 35mm, 70mm, and 70mm IMAX prints months after the studio had quietly abandoned analog distribution. When was the last time a one-sheet listed the available gauges under the contractual credits block? When word leaked that the film was nearly three hours long, the fanboys relitigated their starry-eyed comparisons to Kubrick and Tarkovsky. Physicists Kip Thorne and Neil deGrasse Tyson touted the movie's scientific bona fides. Then INTERSTELLAR actually came out. The reception was icier than the snow-swept landscapes that automatically connote a Nolan movie, a trope appearing in his work almost as frequently as murdered wives and guilt-ridden husbands. (How does Nolan's own spouse, Emma Thomas—also his producer—feel about all that?) It was pretentious, talky, sentimental, and it stopped the nascent McConnaissance dead in its tracks. The sound mix, including Hans Zimmer's Wendy-Carlos-at-the-electromagnetic-church-organ score, was roundly pilloried as unintelligible mud. Nolan and his co-scripting brother Jonathan cited 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as their Rosetta Monolith, but fell short of their inspiration: if the 1968 film melded the dreamy design of vintage sci-fi illustrations with the weighty, pseudo-spiritual aura of a photo essay in Life, INTERSTELLAR played more like a crumpled issue of the Saturday Evening Post, unstuck in time. All told, INTERSTELLAR is just about the squarest blockbuster to arrive in many a moon. (How square? When the INTERSTELLAR Oscar campaign failed to gain traction, Paramount bought a two-page spread in the Hollywood Reporter that reprinted a recent endorsement from David Brooks in its entirety.) In any other movie, astronaut Anne Hathaway's monologue about the unsung scientific value of love would come across as a moment of eye-rolling sexism. And it is that, but it's also unquestionably, unabashedly sincere. INTERSTELLAR believes in love and family as real forces in the physical world, and I don't have the heart to tell it otherwise. (It also literalizes string theory as a multicolored pane of time-bending strings behind your bedroom wall. Think about that for a moment!) The ambition of INTERSTELLAR is inseparable from its clean-shaven nuttiness and its discreet romanticism. Its essential value would only become more pronounced in the aftermath of THE MARTIAN, with which it shares many plot points and several cast members. Both films can be construed as infomercials for NASA and a renewed commitment to STEM education, but the smartass quips and transparent ingratiation of THE MARTIAN are utterly alien to straight-arrow awe of INTERSTELLAR. John Lithgow's grandfatherly ramblings just about sum it up: "When I was a kid, it seemed like they made something new every day. Some, gadget or idea, like every day was Christmas." Make America Great Again? (2014, 169 min, 70mm) KAW
---
More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Natalie Erika James’ RELIC (New Australian/US)
Music Box Theatre — Friday-Thursday, Check Venue website for showtimes
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
---
More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Jennifer Kent's THE BABADOOK (Contemporary Australian)
Music Box Theatre — Friday-Thursday, 4:30pm (Sunday, 4:10pm)
The modern horror film, as a whole, seems to have been divided into two distinct groups. On one hand, there are the CGI driven, jump-scare saturated exploits that most movie studios pump out purely for cheap thrills and a quick buck, and on the other, and much more rarely, there are those that entrust in strong storytelling, a building of tension, and promoting a sense of dread until the audience can barely stand it anymore without peeking through their fingers. THE BABADOOK falls into the latter of these categories. "If it's in a look. Or in a book. You can't get rid of the Babadook." These are the beginning lines of the demonic children's storybook, Mister Babadook, presented in Jennifer Kent's horrifying film. As unsettling as David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE and as claustrophobic as Roman Polanski's REPULSION, Kent's directorial feature debut is a much-needed adrenaline shot to the arm of the horror genre; a film that owes more to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Mario Bava, and Dario Argento than to the recent trend towards torture porn. Relying on a monochromatic color scheme that ranges from ashen white to ghastly black, Kent creates an ever-present sense of terror as a widowed mother and her son are forced to confront and battle the malevolent and mysterious Babadook in a slow descent into psychological torment. (2014, 94 min, DCP Digital) KC
---
More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Also screening at the Music Box this week: Christopher Nolan’s 1998 UK film FOLLOWING (69 min, DCP Digital) has a daily showing at 5:30pm (4:45pm on Sunday).
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross’ BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
For dive-bar aficionados and sleazy-atmosphere enthusiasts, BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS may be the ultimate quarantine movie. A transporting work so pungent that you can smell it, the Ross brothers’ film documents the last 24 hours inside of The Roaring 20s, a colorful Las Vegas watering hole, before its permanent closure. It begins with Michael Martin, a charismatic patron who resembles a drunken, degenerate version of Seymour Cassell, waking up in the bar in the morning, doing a shot of bourbon from a coffee cup then heading into the bathroom to shave with an electric razor—all with the full blessing of the bar’s daytime staff. In one of many humorous lines of “dialogue,” Michael states that he takes pride in the fact that he didn’t become an alcoholic until after he was “already a failure.” Does that sad logic make you smile? Then this is a movie for you. Does it make you wince? It still might be a movie for you. Over the course of what seems to be a typical day and night, the bar slowly fills up with regulars, all of them memorable characters in their own right. They watch Jeopardy, shoot the shit, dance to songs on the jukebox, and become increasingly intoxicated as the blinding sunlight visible through the establishment’s front door slowly fades from the sky, allowing the dingy, red-hued lighting of the bar’s interior to work its nighttime magic. BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS is an exceptionally beautiful film, a tough but empathetic portrait of working-class American life that Charles Bukowski would have loved. Among the many memorable moments: A Grizzly Adams-looking bartender serenades the room with a surprisingly poignant cover of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” on an acoustic guitar; a woman proudly bares her “60-year-old titties” to the stranger on the barstool next to her; a cake, emblazoned with the words “THIS PLACE SUCKED ANYWAYS” in frosting, is consumed; Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet Montage masterpiece THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN shows on a television monitor while country music incongruously fills the air; and the kids out back smoke weed while discussing the amount of Plutonium required to change the earth’s balance. There is nothing on screen to suggest that there are fictional elements, or filmmaking trickery of any sort, present—so revelations that the film's cast was actually found after a nationwide audition process and that the bar’s interiors were shot in New Orleans (over a span of two 18-hour days) then cut together with exteriors of Sin City, has rankled some critics and viewers who claim to feel duped by the filmmakers’ supposed dishonesty. But combining documentary and fiction techniques is as old as the cinema itself and, in the end, what matters is not how the thing is done but why. I would argue that, by presenting The Roaring 20s as a kind of microcosm of contemporary America, a space filled with a multiracial cast of self-medicating “99 percenters,” the Ross brothers have created an indirect critique of late capitalism that feels more truthful than what could have been achieved through traditional documentary means. (2020, 98 min) MGS
Emily Harris’ CARMILLA (UK)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
It’s wonderful to see that the vampire film has finally made it through the dark tunnel that was TWILIGHT and its terrible cultural influence. Going nearly as far back to its literary roots as possible, this darkly beautiful film is an impressive adaptation of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s 1872 Gothic novella of the same name. Predating Dracula by decades, though never achieving the cultural cache as that more popular work it directly influenced, the story of Carmilla is ripe for the screen. Isolated in the countryside and under the watch of a strict governess, a teenaged girl, Lara, becomes enchanted by a mysterious girl her own age who is brought into her home after being found in the wreckage of carriage accident. With no other survivors, and unable to recall her name, this strange girl has Lara choose her name: Carmilla. As the days go by, Lara and Carmilla become closer. Rumors of a mysterious disease afflicting young women in neighboring towns reach Lara’s household, but the governess is more concerned with what is obviously becoming a romantic attachment between young Lara and Carmilla. I’ll be giving away a few spoilers from this point, but given that the film is based on a 150-year-old story, I feel the statute of limitations on that has quite expired. Carmilla is the prototype for the lesbian vampire. What has now become a cliché and familiar trope traces its roots directly back to this story. But what makes this variation of the title character, and this adaptation of the story, particularly good is that it strips the malevolent antagonism of Carmilla from the original, along with the exploitative salaciousness of other countless adaptations. Director Emily Harris plays the connection between Carmilla and Lara far less like victim and prey and more as a young woman being seduced by her first love. There is a corrupted innocence to Lara’s character that she would give herself so fully to a stranger. Lara seems less a victim of a predatory supernatural being than that of a strict, repressive Victorian society. There is a wonderfully tender queer eroticism that plays throughout the film that adds tension to the perfectly-Gothic impending dread. There is a palpable inevitability to CARMILLA that is used masterfully to propel the story; the viewer may know the fates of both Carmilla and Lara, but that only adds to the increasing emotional weight. In addition to this expert handling of the story and plot, CARMILLA is also a truly beautiful film—both grotesque and darkly lavish. There seems to be a familiarity with the films of Jean Rollin, but stripped of that very French, very male, gaze. The women here are put on the screen to be attractive to each other, not necessarily to the audience—and certainly not specifically to men. It’s a period piece, of course, but made in a way that will still appeal to the modern aesthetics of the eternally moody, dark, teenager in us all. And one that definitely appeals to this queer who is still firmly in the second decade of their goth phase. If this was made when I was a teen, or in my early 20s, I can guarantee that I would have been utterly insufferable in making my friends watch it with me over and over (and over). And if you’re a spooky, witchy, gothy queer femme/woman, this is the absolutely perfect movie, made just for you. CARMILLA is a perfect dark, queer love story—candelabras and all; as seductively haunting a telling of this story now as it was 150 years ago. (2019, 96 min) RJM
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Brian Welsh’s BEATS (UK)
Available to rent 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
---
Prerecorded Q&A with Brian Welsh and Steven Soderbergh included with Virtual Cinema Admission.
Christopher Munch’s THE 11TH GREEN (US)
Available to rent through Facets Cinematheque here
When does a conspiracy theory become historic truth? Does it even matter? THE 11TH GREEN takes us through the backrooms of The Deep State from Eisenhower to Obama, with the secrets about extraterrestrials and their technology finally coming out. We follow an investigative reporter who is writing the story about his recently deceased father, a former security liaison of Eisenhower’s. What he didn’t know, though, was that his father and friends were there for some close encounters of the wait, what the hell am I watching now? kind. During his investigation it’s revealed to him that, yes, UFOs are real, and, yes, aliens have contacted our government, and, yes, we have it on film. THE 11TH GREEN uses this fantastical scenario to discuss the ethics of nuclear warfare, humanity, and international governments. The film describes itself with opening text as “a likely factual scenario of extraordinary events.” Now, I don’t know if Obama being visited by both an ageless alien and the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower is either “likely factual” or even “extraordinary,” but it’s definitely weird in a way that few films these days seem to go for. It’s hard to tell if director/screenwriter Christopher Munch believes in the “facts” of the story he’s telling, or just believes that it’s a fun story to tell. To be fair, it doesn’t matter either way. Intentions be damned, THE 11TH GREEN is entertainingly bonkers. It feels like a movie out of time: a mix of hand-made xeroxed fanzine screeds, the experimental conspiracy films from Craig Baldwin, Church of the Sub-Genius pranksterism, X-Files fanfiction, and legit Cointelpro psyops. You know, the fringe ends of the 80s and 90s. Now, I’m not one to say whether or not any movie watching experience can actually be enhanced by someone ingesting weed, but I will say that THE 11TH GREEN feels like that friend of yours that definitely did, and now they want to tell you about how they connected all the dots, man. So maybe you’d like to get on their level. Or not. Either way, it’s still a wild trip. (2020, 108 min) RJM
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
Bora Kim’s HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD (South Korea)
Available to 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
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
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
---
The film is part of a series titled “Chicago Cinema Exchange: Mexico City,” presented by Full Spectrum Features.
Peter Sellers’ MR. TOPAZE (UK)
Available to 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 to 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
Goethe-Institut Chicago
AHNEN AHNEN (175 min), a filmed recording of rehearsals for choreographer Pina Bausch’s "Ahnen. Ein Stück von Pina Bausch" (shot in 1986-87 and edited in 2014), will be available on Vimeo from Saturday at Noon to Monday at Noon. RSVP here.
American Writers Museum
Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco’s 2020 documentary FLANNERY (97 min) is available for rent locally via the AWM here.
Filmfront
A program of videos by Ebony Bailey will be available free online beginning Sunday and running through July 25. A Zoom Q&A with Bailey and local programmer Janelle Ayana Miller is on July 25 at 6:30pm. Email info@filmfront.org for video and Zoom links.
Gallery 400 (UIC)
Karina Skvirsky’s 2009 video GIOCONDA (8 min) is available for free through July 27 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 hold-overs.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Ciro Guerra’s 2019 US/Italian film WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (113 min) and Dawn Porter’s 2020 documentary JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE (96 min) are available for streaming beginning this week. Check here for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Check here for any additional hold-over titles.
Chicago International Film Festival
Check here for titles currently available for rental.
Chicago Latino Film Festival
CLFF is offering a selection of features and shorts for rental. Information here.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RECOMMENDATIONS
Archival Screening Night: The Roadshow
TCM Primetime — Tuesday, 7/21 at 9:30 PM CT
For the first time ever, the Association of Moving Image Archivists’ annual Archival Screening Night has been made available to the public—on Tuesday, it will be shown as part of Turner Classic Movies’ “30 Years of Milestone Films” celebration. It’s also AMIA’s 30th anniversary this year; the jubilant press release I received exclaimed that Archival Screening Night is now accessible to the public “after 30 years in secret.” Any cinephile lucky enough to have archivists as friends can relate to the jealousy I feel each year when they descend upon their annual conference, where this sublime event takes place. We can watch it now, but it’s nevertheless a bit sad that we can’t experience it in its intended glory, an event where, to quote the program’s co-curator Rebecca Hall (co-founder of the Chicago Film Society and one-time contributor to this site), “the artifact is as important as the content.” The program does a good job of incorporating information about the physical objects with information about the works themselves; title cards before each segment list information about the film (whether it’s a complete short or an excerpt from something longer), the archive it came from, the original format (format diversity being an important factor in the program and for the organization as a whole), and details about how it was preserved or restored. So not the event as it was originally intended to be experienced, or even a close approximation, really, but insomuch as we can enjoy the content in lieu of being able to experience the artifacts, it’s a rousing way to spend an evening. It includes 22 short selections from various moving image archives, ranging from the likes of Milestone, the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, the George Eastman Museum, and the Smithsonian, to lesser known (at least among those who wouldn’t know otherwise) archives such as the Eye Filmmuseum in the Netherlands, the 'Ulu'ulu Moving Image Archive at the University of Hawai'i West O'ahu, and even Chicago’s own Media Burn Archive. Each work is estimable for its own reasons, but a few stuck out at me. The program opens with a clip, courtesy of Milestone Films, from THE WORLD OF GILBERT & GEORGE (1981), featuring the titular artist duo “bending it” to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich’s all-too catchy song, which you won’t be able to get out of your head for days after. From the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration comes CURIOUS ALICE (1971), a trippy animated short warning against drug use. It fails at doing so (one might even say it has the opposite effect) but succeeds in being weird and beautiful. Per the introductory title card, “[w]ithout a way to effectively time this with equipment, preservation specialist Charlie Joholske timed it by eye and made dazzling new preservation prints for the collection.” In a newsreel outtake entitled JOSEPHINE BAKER VISITS VOLENDAM, 1928 (FOX NEWS STORY C8059), from the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina, the legendary entertainer appears radiant. The footage, similarly to and as a result of its star, has a certain something that’s just indescribable. Another of my favorites is a local television news segment called BEHIND THE SCENES OF “HAIRSPRAY” (1988). Hailing from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive, it’s a behind-the-scenes look into the filming of John Waters’ HAIRSPRAY produced by the same Baltimore television station that originally aired The Buddy Deane Show, the inspiration for the teen dance show in Waters’ cult classic. It recalls a simpler time in entertainment journalism, and it’s surprisingly apt in its appreciation of Waters’ weirdness considering it was made for a local TV station (or perhaps that’s why they got it—is there anything weirder than local news?). Speaking of local, WHAT'S UPTOWN? A VIEW FROM THE STREETS, from the MediaBurn Archive, is an incisive mid-1970s portrait of the now rapidly gentrifying Chicago neighborhood, at once shocking and captivating in its brusqueness. Finally, in Louis Feuillade’s BOUT-DE-ZAN ET LE CROCODILE (1913), restored by the Eye Filmmuseum, a little boy has some fun by dressing up a man’s dog as a crocodile, terrifying the stodgy gentleman in the process. Per its introduction, “the nitrate decomposition is fairly extensive but this hand-colored delight is truly beautiful to watch.” All the content is superb, but as Hall reminds us, “you're not just watching a cool repertory shorts program… the people involved in collecting these shorts know the collections they come from very well[,] and… all of these things that you're looking at exist in physical form.” This is true about much of what we’re all watching in quarantine, something that’s easy to forget as we succumb to the allure of streaming. “Remember that behind every repertory film you watch digitally,” she says, “there are archivists and film preservation workers caring for the physical...and the digital material behind the scenes.” The average cinephile has always been somewhat removed from that process and is even more so now, as the ability to convene in public and share our respective experiences as purveyor and spectator has been reduced, if not eliminated altogether. This program will hopefully serve as a reminder and perhaps inspire viewers to contribute to their local moving image archive, of which there are several in Chicago, including the Chicago Film Archives, the South Side Home Movies Project, and the aforementioned Chicago Film Society and Media Burn Archive. In addition to Hall, the program was co-curated by Andrea Leigh, Library of Congress; Brittan Dunham, Archive Consultant; Katie Trainor, Museum of Modern Art; and AMIA President and Milestone Films co-founder Dennis Doros, who will introduce live on air. (102 min) KS
Werner Herzog’s FATA MORGANA and LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS (Germany/Documentary)
Available to stream for free on Tubi
“The meaning of the world lies outside the world,” David Berman once sang. He may have well been summarizing the films of Werner Herzog, which consider inexplicable phenomena of our earthly existence and speak to the universal human curiosity to know the unknowable. You can presently watch almost 20 of Herzog’s works on the free streaming site Tubi; thankfully more than half of them come from the 1970s and early 1980s, before the German director’s sense of spiritual wonderment ossified into schtick. Of particular interest are two short documentaries that received their German premieres in 1971: FATA MORGANA (1971, 76 min), an experimental work shot in the deserts of Africa, and LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS (1971, 85 min), a more straightforward film about deaf-blind individuals in Germany. Despite their differences in subject matter, these movies have a lot in common. Both are concerned with spirituality as experienced within extreme conditions, and both advance a philosophical perspective through Herzog’s use of music and voiceover narration. FATA MORGANA is somewhat obscure in its content, though the director’s attitude is never in doubt. In the first of the film’s three parts, “Creation,” film critic Lotte Eisner reads a version of the Mayan creation myth (aka the Popol Vuh) over shots of desert landscapes. Some of these shots feature people or technology (the movie famously begins with shots of a jet plane landing in the desert played in a loop) while many are unpopulated. Herzog’s theme here is that we build our philosophy of the world out of a sense of deprivation; the film’s second two parts (“Paradise” and “The Golden Age”) complicate that theme by focusing on things that would seem to have little to do with it, such as a giant sea turtle, a scientist who studies desert lizards, and a bad musical duo performing on a sparsely decorated stage. This is one of numerous Herzog films where the story of its making is as interesting as the movie itself. At one point during the shoot, the director and his crew were imprisoned because cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein happened to share a name with a German mercenary whom Cameroonian authorities were seeking; Herzog was beaten in jail and contracted a parasitic blood disease there. The director has said that these difficult experiences forced real life into FATA MORGANA, and the film retains its power as the record of a spiritual quest. The same can be said of LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS, though presumably Herzog and his crew didn’t suffer as much in making this one. LAND begins as a profile of Fini Straubinger, a woman in her mid-50s who lost her sense of sight in pre-adolescence and her sense of hearing before turning 20, then expands its perspective to consider other people who were born deaf-blind. At first the film is surprisingly prosaic for Herzog, as it focuses on the practical matters of how the deaf-blind navigate the world; it becomes more unearthly, however, as it considers the complex means by which the deaf-blind communicate and contemplates what and how the deaf-blind perceive. The quintessential moment may be when Herzog plays classical music over shots of a young man who was born deaf-blind wading in a pool of water. (The young man’s teacher at an institute for people with multiple handicaps explains it took him a year to overcome his hydrophobia, which makes the scene a record of triumph.) One gets the feeling that this young man perceives things in the water that other people cannot, and Herzog heightens this feeling as LAND moves towards its concluding shot of another deaf-blind man passionately feeling his way around a tree. What emerges is a vast inner world as mysterious as anything in FATA MORGANA. BS
Shubhashish Bhutiani’s HOTEL SALVATION (India)
Available free on Tubi and on Kanopy through participating libraries with your library card
In the last week, I watched two films about death. One was François Truffaut’s period drama THE GREEN ROOM (1978), based on a Henry James short story, in which a World War I veteran and obituary writer in provincial France draws an estate auctioneer into sharing his mission to keep the dead alive through a lay version of perpetual adoration. The second was the film under consideration here, HOTEL SALVATION (MUKTI BHAWAN), a look at 77-year-old Dayanand Kumar (Lalit Behl), whose dream indicating that his end is near propels him to travel to the holy city of Varanasi to try to achieve salvation after death. Seeing these two films in such close succession put into high relief the very different attitudes in the East and the West toward mortality and, in some ways, the place of faith in society. Whereas Truffaut’s protagonist totally rejects the promise of everlasting life and reunion a priest offers as comfort, the residents of Mukti Bhawan, a real hospice-like hotel in Varanasi, look forward to their passing with a calm acceptance. One woman, Vimla (Navnindra Behl, wife of costar Lalit Behl), who accompanied her husband to Mukti Bhawan and remained for 18 years after his passing, even envies those who have died. While the subject may seem dark, the approach of the film is loving, even light and humorous, with fascinating looks at a beautiful and evocative nexus of Indian culture. Director/screenwriter Shubhashish Bhutiani’s first feature, which won the CICT-UNESCO Enricho Fulchignoni Award and UNESCO Gandhi Medal at the 2016 Venice International Film Festival, examines changes in Indian society through the character of Rajiv (Adil Hussain), Daya’s middle-age son, who is caught between the unfeeling demands of his boss and his filial duty. I really enjoyed the dynamic between the two men, particularly the understated way Daya commands instant obedience by meeting all of Rajiv’s protests with “I’ll go by myself” or “I’ll do it myself.” Although Bhutiani pokes fun at the manager of the hospice (Anil Rastogi), who provides nothing but a roof over his guests’ heads and extensions of his “strict” 15-day occupancy policy as long as the guest registers again under a different name, his dedication to ensuring his guests have “free” (with donation) digs to await their end by the banks of the Ganges River is sincerely portrayed. While Rajiv’s cellphone and spotty Skype calls clash with the prayers and rituals that occupy his father, the film settles into a relaxed rhythm that gives room to the story and dignity to the characters who are preparing to say good-bye to the world and each other. Lalit Behl, looking for all the world like a kohl-eyed Santa Claus, does the near-impossible: he becomes the embodiment of faith. Beyond that, he offers an image of old age and death that not only contradicts Western attitudes, but puts them to shame. HOTEL SALVATION is a singular film for tackling the most essential aspects of human existence with clear-eyed compassion, wit, and charm. Strongly recommended. (2016, 100 min) MF
Claude Barras’ MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI (Switzerland/France)
Available to stream on Netflix with subscription
It’s become something of a cliché to remark that animation is not just for kids. What once seemed like a necessary reminder to those whose knowledge of the medium stopped at Disney and Saturday morning cartoons now feels rather quaint in a media landscape populated by South Park, BoJack Horseman, Studio Ghibli, and any number of works that wield the animated form as art. Yet even those accustomed to the endlessly varied permutations the medium can take might briefly be stunned when, minutes into MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI, the child protagonist accidentally pushes his mother down the stairs to her death. It’s an early warning that the film is going to be tackling some heavy topics, and an assurance that it won’t be slathering them in the sugary syrup that dilutes so many kid-centered flicks, animated or otherwise. Now parentless (we glean that the father had earlier left the family), the boy, named Icare, is taken to a kindly police officer, and transferred to an orphanage among a group of other children who, for often even more disconcerting reasons, have been left behind by their caretakers. Icare has trouble fitting in at first, especially as the brunt of the designated bully’s hostilities, but with the introduction of new and vulnerable girl Camille, the shared adversity of the group becomes a powerful bonding agent. Bringing up everything from drug abuse to suicide and incarceration, MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI must negotiate a tricky balance between the frankness and seriousness such subjects require, and the emotional accessibility they need to be understood by a potentially young audience. That the film mostly pulls this off is largely thanks to writer Céline Sciamma, who continues to demonstrate a natural sensitivity for the ways underserved or otherwise neglected kids learn to cope with their circumstances. The stop-motion animation style, too, keeps the film from being either too sentimental or morose, with its cheery colors tempered by gangly, downtrodden-looking figures, whose crimson noses and ears make them seem as if they’re in the midst of a perpetual cold. Even in its brevity, MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI moves deeply as a clear-eyed and empathetic portrait of childhood adversity, exhibiting an honesty and approachability that should resonate with viewers of all ages. (2016, 65 min) JL
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s YOUNG AHMED (Belgium)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel (Subscription required)
The controversy surrounding the Dardenne brothers’ YOUNG AHMED has less to do with anything in the film than with its right to exist. Those opposed to it raise a worthwhile question: Should white, Christian filmmakers be allowed to make a movie about a Muslim boy, particularly one who’s been radicalized by an extremist imam? In interviews, the Dardennes have responded to this question thoughtfully, invoking the “utopia of art” that enables storytellers (and audiences) to penetrate the lives of people unlike themselves. They’ve also noted that they spent about a half-year researching Islam before writing the script of YOUNG AHMED and that an imam was present on set throughout the shoot to ensure the film was accurate in its depiction of Muslim rituals. Indeed, YOUNG AHMED is as immersive as anything the Dardennes have made, but more importantly, it’s a profoundly sympathetic film, not only with regards to Belgium’s Muslim community (which it presents as richly heterogeneous and thus impossible to characterize as a whole) but also the title character, a 13-year-old driven by his religious fanaticism to attempt murder. The Dardennes make clear from the opening scenes that Ahmed is a victim, having been indoctrinated with a distorted reading of his religion. Sadly, Ahmed (played powerfully by newcomer Idir Ben Addi) is easy prey for brainwashers: his father is deceased, his overly taxed mother doesn’t have enough time for him, he has a mild learning disability and problems making friends, and he yearns for some kind of order in his life. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Ahmed is that his middle-class family is not particularly devout—they practice a version of Islam that allows them to take part in secular society. Also surprising is what the Dardennes choose not to show. The film begins after Ahmed has been radicalized, and after he attempts to murder his community’s Arabic teacher (on the grounds that she teaches modern Arabic and may be dating a Jewish man), the filmmakers bypass his trial and sentencing, proceeding straight to his incarceration. The scenes in the juvenile detention center are as detailed as anything that’s come before, delineating how therapists, case workers, and offenders themselves take part in the rehabilitation process. That process forms the heart of YOUNG AHMED, which is ultimately about the universal theme of redemption, a subject the Dardennes know very well (c.f., THE SON, L’ENFANT), and never sentimentalize. (2019, 84 min) BS
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 17 - July 23, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Kyle Cubr, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Glover Smith