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
Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD (Contemporary US) [70mm]
Music Box Theatre — Friday-Thursday, Check Venue website for showtimes
More often than not, modern movies are endlessly clogged with flimsy, cardboard cutouts of the “classic love story,” a trend hopefully being seared away entirely, given that they seem more offensive in a cavernous last year of cynicism and bitterness. The genre has been in desperate need of a refurbishing to allow for a better understanding of what’s embedded inside its own fragile construction. Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest and possibly greatest achievement isn’t without a mind of its own; it is a wonderfully conceived cinematic dream, wrapped in the lush, evergreen imagination of an artist working closely within the inner representation of his creations, much like Daniel Day-Lewis’ dress-making main character, Reynolds Woodcock. Anderson achieves something much closer to the actual emotions and feelings that echo throughout a relationship between two people, avoiding many of the stale and dry trends found in the modern romance movie. These lifeless morality lessons, usually soaked in a pale blue sadness, seem too bitter and lazy to have much real purpose and functionality, allowing Anderson to spin a delightedly deceptive chamber piece instead. Given the film’s advertising, championing PHANTOM THREAD as a brooding sure-fire contender in the race for awards-season gold, you might be surprised to discover a strange rom-com hiding in the lining of its framework. The plot involves a dressmaker (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his closely-curated daily home and work life, right as another of his romantic relationships is beginning to dim out. As another unfulfilled and lifeless relationship goes, Woodcock decides to retreat to one of his favorite restaurants (it is here I’d like to heavily underline the film’s ideas about taste and hunger, given new literal and metaphorical life in a way that is shockingly unpretentious). It is at this place of dining that he meets Alma, played by newcomer Vicky Krieps, that leads to an intimate portrayal of love’s inherent mystery, built inside an almost hermetic world of imagination that conjures up visions of the classical Hollywood era, while simultaneously managing to subvert the work of “tradition,” straddling the lines of the modern and classical film structure/form with the skill of a master operating at the height of their creative abilities. Despite taking place in Great Britain, this is far from the British-ness on display in BBC dramas and endless droves of Oscar bait. Beginning with its suggestive point-of-view, then unwinding between not two points of view, but a shared point of view, the personal nature of this film for Anderson is evident, with Anderson not only writing the script, but also shooting nearly every frame of film himself (though he goes uncredited in that role). The everyday gestures, glances, embraces, arguments, and alluring atmosphere between two people seeps through every frame, delivering unexpected surprises carefully yet unabashedly. This is one of the few films in recent years that is really essential to witness in 70mm. The projection’s colors and light are captured in spellbinding luminosity, the sounds and images pushing forth the relationship of one woman and one fragile male ego, across a tapestry of sensual pleasures with hardly a hint of on-screen sex in sight. The results trace the lines around eroticism, rather than circling it directly, letting them blossom into a rare achievement in recent American cinema, a precious gift inside the fabric of its own design; one to keep close through the next several years. (2018, 130 min, 70mm) JD
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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
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More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Also screening at the Music Box this week: Dave Franco’s 2020 film THE RENTAL (74 min, DCP Digital) and Mike Judge’s 2006 film IDIOCRACY (84 min, DCP Digital).
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL — BEST OF CUFF
The Chicago Underground Film Festival presents a month-long online retrospective, Best of CUFF, from July 28 to August 28, which includes at least 21 features and 14 shorts programs. All programs will be available for streaming for 30 days, beginning on Tuesday. Passes are $30 and individual programs are a suggested $10, or pay what you can. We’ll be including rerun and new reviews of select programs beginning next week. Full details at www.cuff.org.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Films by Ebony Bailey (US/Documentary)
filmfront and Sin Cinta Previa — Email info@filmfront.org to receive links for the films (available through July 25)
It’s felicitous that this program includes a music video, as documentary filmmaker Ebony Bailey’s practice exudes a certain rhythm that connects all three selections; they pulse with a beat reflective of the combined cultures they’re expressing. A self-described “Blaxican” (a person who identifies as both African-American and Mexican-American), Bailey explores the sublime nuances and lamentable adversities of that duality. The music video, ATOLITO CON EL DEDO (2020, 5 min), is for the Aguaje Ensamble, which features in her newer work, JAMAICA Y TAMARINDO (2019, 20 min); there’s also footage from the latter in the video. The music is excellent, and Bailey’s realization serves it wondrously—it captures the lively and at times surreal atmosphere of its setting in Mexico. LIFE BETWEEN BORDERS: BLACK MIGRANTS IN MEXICO (2017, 15 min) probes the Afro-Mexican experience, from Haitian immigrants at the border awaiting entry in the United States to the African diaspora in Mexico City, where many of Bailey’s interviewees have forged identities marrying the two cultures. It’s a beautiful complexity that, as is shown in the documentary, begets wonderful art, music, and food, which embody the lives of the people making them. Interviews with the Haitian immigrants are stirring, as they convey an awe-inspiring fortitude that’s eclipsed only by a zest for living. JAMAICA Y TAMARINDO takes a more elegiac approach, with the Jamaica flower and tamarind as starting points from which it explores “Afro Tradition in the Heart of Mexico,” as the documentary's full title elucidates; both are ingredients commonly associated with Mexican cuisine that originated in Africa. As a metaphor for identity and culture, the concept of ingredients is apt—what are people if not a combination of ‘ingredients,’ and what is culture if not the meal of which all that consists? Statements from Afro-Mexican people on their respective experiences often and necessarily veer away from the gastronomic focus, but Bailey brings it back to the titular victuals, which represent the intricacies, and, ultimately, the joys of being. Her cinematography in the latter work is especially stunning; it’s both naturalistic and ravishing, with an eye toward a beauty that too often goes overlooked. KS
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Email with links will include an invitation to the live Zoom conversation on Saturday, July 25, featuring Bailey in conversation with Chicago-based artist Janelle Miller and filmmaker/curator Jose Luis Benavides.
Gero von Boehm’s HELMUT NEWTON: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
There’s no one quite like Helmut Newton, for better or for worse. In the years since his tragic death in 2004, there have been few working photographers able to match his distinctive style—erotic, commanding, and heavily reliant on the female form. Through the use of archival footage and interviews with many of Newton’s subjects, Gero von Boehm’s documentary HELMUT NEWTON: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL grapples with the complicated legacy of the controversial artist. Newton’s work earned him a reputation as a provocateur, keeping him in the spotlight and opening him up to plenty of criticism. Susan Sontag notably called Newton’s photographs misogynistic on live television—and after spending much of the film gazing at some of his more compromised female subjects, it’s hard to disagree. But the beauty of THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is how it allows Newton’s subjects—and the women who worked with him behind the scenes—to speak for themselves. From Grace Jones to Anna Wintour to Isabella Rossellini, the narrative is a uniquely positive one, one in which his collaborators are given power and agency through Newton’s vision. The film is less concerned with exploring the psyche of Newton or his relationship to the male gaze in his work, but they make it clear that the media already did a lot of that work, though they focus largely on gossip and reductive bad-faith criticism than genuine criticism. There are also moments of his home life woven throughout the film, which helps to bring down the seemingly impenetrable curtain of celebrity. THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is complicated, quite like Newton himself. It’s a worthy examination of how we interpret art in these times—like how an image can be degrading for some and empowering for others—and how that interpretation can change over time. (2019, 93 min) CC
Dawn Porter's JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
It seems fitting that JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE is being released when it is. As we grapple with the racism made plain by the police killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, this film provides context for the present moment in this country’s still unfinished work for civil rights and racial equity. And while the current White House occupant until recently could not be bothered to wear a mask to help quash a global pandemic, this documentary celebrates a man who fearlessly put his body on the line for a cause greater than himself. The highlights of Lewis’ life may be familiar from obituaries and tributes: the Nashville sit-in movement, the Freedom Rides, his leadership of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the March on Washington, the “Bloody Sunday” confrontation with state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus bridge during the first Selma march. The filmmakers cover these points as well as other stories (like his childhood preaching to barnyard chickens) that Lewis himself acknowledges in the film he has told often before. Yet the filmmakers, working with Lewis, find ways to make these stories fresh, including visiting Lewis’ siblings and asking him to respond to previously unseen footage from the civil rights movement. The film covers his Congressional service, tracking one long day of constituent meetings and dropping in on a staff reunion; it also recounts the origin of the viral video of Lewis dancing in his office. Lewis does not always come off well in the film—we learn that his contentious 1986 primary election battle with former colleague Julian Bond fractured their friendship for years—and his decades-long marriage to his wife Lillian gets less attention than it should. Still, this documentary provides a well-rounded portrait of a courageous yet humble visionary who never stopped seeking justice or, in his words, making “good trouble” whether at the lunch counters of Nashville or the floor of the US House. Although Lewis himself is no longer with us, we are fortunate to still have JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE to tell his story and capture his spirit. (2020, 96 min) FT
Karen Maine’s YES, GOD, YES (US)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
YES, GOD, YES is the directorial debut of Karen Maine. Clocking in at a breezy 78 minutes, this expansion of her 2017 short film with the same title barely crosses the line for being feature length. Even so, this movie never feels either dragged out to reach that running time, nor falling too short to get it’s point across. A period piece set in 2001, YES, GOD, YES, lets us into the world of teenaged Alice, a good Catholic girl who is starting to get those all-too-familiar confusing thoughts about sex. Maine does a great job capturing the tail-end of the wild west era of the early internet. Alice is lured into the world of internet pornography by a random email and a message via AIM with those three letters and two words that defined an entire generation’s digital sexual awakening: “A/S/L,” and “Wanna cyber?” The film plays the angle of religion very strongly and leans into the very Catholic ideas of guilt and humiliation. While Alice is on her own, naively wondering about sex and masturbation and how she can reconcile it with being a morally good person, she has to endure rumors of her hooking up with a boy and doing something called “tossing his salad.” A large section of the film centers on a multi-day retreat, Kirkos, which is a barely veiled stand-in for the very real American Catholic high school retreat Kairos. As someone who went to Catholic school for a period of time and left just in time to avoid this strange, cultish outing, YES, GOD, YES does a surprisingly good job of taking the retreat down a couple pegs, while still respecting the concept. In fact, I could see people arguing that this film is, in fact, a Christian film. And a very good case could be made for it. That being said, it only preaches the good aspects of Christianity—forgiveness, understanding, and compassion. We get to follow Alice on her journey of self-discovery, both sexually and morally, and the film neither judges nor preaches to either her or the audience. While not as biting a critique on American Christian schooling as Brian Dannelly’s perfect 2004 film SAVED!, YES, GOD, YES, is the lovely little sister companion film. A perfect throwback to the teen films of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, YES, GOD, YES is a light, tight comedy that delicately teases out both teenage lust and religion; a definite welcome addition to the catalog of teen films. (2020, 78 min) RJM
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
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
Tirtza Even’s LAND MINE (Documentary/US)
Available to view for free through Partial Witness from Friday at 6pm to Saturday morning here
LAND MINE moves so gracefully between personal essay and regional portrait that it’s difficult to pinpoint where one mode ends and the other begins. Director Tirtza Even introduces the film as a documentary about the Jerusalem apartment building where she grew up in the 1960s and 70s; as she delves into the lives of her neighbors from childhood and the building’s current residents, a partial history begins to take form of the conflict between Jewish settlers to Israel and the Palestinians they displaced. In a characteristic passage, Even presents an interview with her sister about being a child during the Six Days War of 1967, then cuts to onscreen text about how, after the war, the Israeli government created dozens of minefields in Palestinian territory that had been used previously for farmland. That isn’t the only atrocity Even considers in the film: Israel’s 1982 military aggression against Lebanon receives a fair amount of screen time, and one of the more powerful shots presents the aftermath of more recent Israeli bombing campaigns in Gaza. While national guilt is one of Even’s chief concerns, her interviewees barely address it, making it the structuring absence of most of the onscreen testimonies. (Fittingly the filmmaker has subtitled LAND MINE “The Other Side of Silence.”) What we hear is still plenty fascinating, as Even incorporates information about her literary scholar father; the Hebrew author Y. H. Brenner (whom Even’s father wrote about); and the composer Ido Shirom, who now resides in Even’s childhood home and who has written music inspired by national tragedies. The themes of coming-of-age and death intertwine when Even recounts how several men in her building died of unnatural causes over a period of several years in the 1970s—the building’s troubled history mirrors that of the region, and one comes away from the film with the feeling that one can’t talk about Israel without acknowledging some sense of loss. (2019, 85 min) BS
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Followed by a Zoom discussion at 7:45pm. See link above for info.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Goethe-Institut Chicago
SACRE REHEARSAL (46 min), a filmed recording of rehearsals for a work by choreographer Pina Bausch (shot in 1987 and edited in 2014), will be available on Vimeo from Saturday at Noon to Monday at Noon. RSPV here.
American Writers Museum
Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco’s 2020 documentary FLANNERY (97 min) is available for rent locally via the AWM here.
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
The only film available for streaming via Facets this week is reviewed above.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Check here for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Romola Garai’s 2020 UK/Emirati film AMULET (99 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. 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
Will Vinton’s THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN (US/Animation)
Available to stream for free on Tubi
One of the numerous unexpected delights to have turned up recently on the free streaming site Tubi has been the little-known cartoon film THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN, the sole feature directed by Claymation patenter Will Vinton. It’s odd that the film never attained a higher profile, given that Vinton’s work—which includes the California Raisins ad campaign and the “Speed Demon” portion of Michael Jackson’s MOONWALKER—was ubiquitous in the 1980s. MARK TWAIN is also a feat of animation wizardry, which took more than three years to make and features a bevy of inspired visual gags. Lastly, it’s a fittingly unorthodox tribute to Twain’s life and writing; Vinton and company incorporate passages from almost a dozen Twain works as well as a slew of his aphorisms. Tying together the various conceits is a wacky fantasy premise about Twain helming an airship around the turn of the 20th century so he can go to space and see Halley’s Comet up close. He’s joined on the journey by his characters Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher, who sneak onboard the ship at the beginning of the film and subsequently provide a rapt audience for his tales. Twain shares with the children his first successful story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” as well as portions of his “Diaries of Adam and Eve” and “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” The travelers are also visited by Satan as imagined by Twain in his unfinished novel The Mysterious Stranger; in a creepy self-referential moment, Satan instructs the children to make small figures out of clay, which he then brings to life and causes to suffer. Some TV stations excised this passage of MARK TWAIN when broadcasting the film on the grounds that it might frighten small children—as if you needed another reason to watch this odd gem. (1985, 86 min) BS
Films by Madeline Anderson (US/Documentary)
Available to stream for free from Pacific Film Archive here
Madeline Anderson's film work and personal story are deeply stirring and inspiring. A Black woman film pioneer making sharp, passionate documentaries of the civil rights era, her work resonates today in so many maddening and unfortunate ways. A lifelong cinephile, she didn't see a traditional way into filmmaking for herself. She found an early supporter and mentor in cinema-verité progenitor Ricky Leacock while she was studying psychology at NYU. She went to work for Leacock's production company and shortly after made INTEGRATION REPORT 1 (1960) which is generally regarded as the first documentary made by a Black woman. It's an adroit, lucid piece of reportage that ultimately is heartbreaking, when one realizes that the 60-year-old sounds and images of state violence and inequalities could have been shot today. After making her first film, Anderson redoubled her pursuit of a filmmaking career, leaving Leacock's company, attending classes at MoMA, working on Shirley Clarke's THE COOL WORLD, and taking legal action to join the New York editors’ union, which allowed her to become the first Black employee at WNET (New York Public Media). There she worked with William Greaves on the series "Black Journal," and made the film A TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X (1969), a gripping portrait and memorial to the slain leader. In it, we see how her work grew in complexity and passion in the preceding decade. I AM SOMEBODY (1970) was funded by her union to show the organizing struggles of nurses in Charleston, SC. The story of Black women taking control of their value and their fate was a personal story for Anderson, and the film uses documentary elements but is more of an ardent, spirited cinematic song in praise of these women and their cause. Anderson went on to have a very successful career, creating her own production company, working for the Children's Television Workshop (including directing episodes of Sesame Street!), and being the first Black woman to executive produce a nationally broadcast TV series. But Anderson's career is more than a series of impressive firsts; every film she makes is an eloquent demand for film as an art form with the power to create change. (1960-70, approx. 66 min total) JBM
Alejo Moguillansky’s CASTRO (Argentina)
Available to stream in the Mubi library (Subscription required)
Like many U.S. critics, I’ve been asleep on one of the most exciting cinematic movements of the past decade: a second-wave of the New Argentine Cinema (led by Lisandro Alonso and Lucrecia Martel in the early 2000s), which comprises such directors as Mariano Llinás, Matías Piñeiro, Laura Citarella, Alejo Moguillansky, and Rafael Filipelli, and such actresses as Laura Paredes, María Villar, Agustina Muñoz, Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, and Julia Martínez Rubio. The internationalist film website Mubi currently has much of their work available to view in their library, along with several films by Martín Rejtman, a writer-director-novelist widely considered to be the movement’s spiritual godfather. One highlight of my time in quarantine has been catching up with all these remarkable artists. (Full disclosure: I have written at times for Mubi's film journal, the Notebook.) Besides frequently collaborating with each other, these people share a view of cinema as an art that encompasses both theater and literature; tellingly, several of them belong to an experimental theater troupe in Buenos Aires called Piel de Lava. This new crop of New Argentine Cinema is grounded in the work of its performers to such an extent that they deserve to be credited as co-auteurs. Role-playing is a principal theme in most of the films, which means the company players—most of them women—get to exhibit their full range with nearly every movie. (Several of Piñeiro’s films find the characters rehearsing for productions of Shakespeare plays, and in Llinás’ gargantuan, ten-years-in-the-making LA FLOR [2018], each of the four leads plays multiple roles.) This explicitly performative quality of the more recent New Argentine films counterbalances their very literary nature—all the major writer-directors delight in egregiously fictional innovations and convoluted plots. Llinás in particular has drawn comparisons with Thomas Pynchon, and Moguillansky’s second feature CASTRO acknowledges Samuel Beckett’s novel Murphy in the credits as a direct source of inspiration. Like many Beckett works, CASTRO is an absurdist comedy about spiritual entropy; it’s drily funny but motored by the characters’ flailing despair. The title character is a 38-year-old layabout who attempts to change his life by moving to Buenos Aires with a younger woman named Celia. For some unexplained reason, a group of conspirators—headed by an older gentleman named Samuel and including Castro’s soon-to-be-ex-wife—wants to stop Castro and bring him home. Moguillansky, who’s also edited most of the recent New Argentine films, sustains a breathtaking momentum, moving deftly between the different sets of characters while playfully evading questions about who they are and what they want. CASTRO also features a surprising number of chase scenes for an art film, both on foot and by car; at times it suggests an Argentine variation on that grand post-Nouvelle Vague entertainment, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s DIVA, and like that film, the twin emphases on performance and conspiracy suggest the influence of Jacques Rivette. Lack of resolution is a key component of Rivette as well as Beckett, and Moguillansky fuses them brilliantly and personally, playing on the knotty layout of Buenos Aires so that the work feels inalienable from its setting. (2009, 89 min) BS
Akira Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW (Japan)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel (subscription required)
Akira Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW is a film about the haves and the have nots, the rich and the working class, and the moralities that lie between those distinctions. Kingo Gondo (Toshirô Mifune) is an executive at National Shoes and lives a luxurious life in a nice home on top of a hill that overlooks the city with his wife, son, and servants. In the midst of making a power play that would see him gain majority control of the company’s stock, a kidnapping occurs leaving him on the hook to pay a ransom of 30 million yen. The trouble is that money was earmarked to pay for the stock and he’s borrowed against his entire livelihood to obtain it. HIGH AND LOW is primarily told through two vantage points, Gondo’s and the police detectives in charge of tracking down the kidnappers. Kurosawa pointedly displays the distinctions between the two parties’ social class. Gondo is rarely seen leaving his air-conditioned mansion and is clad in fine suits. He lives his life in absolutes and with his own best interests always coming first. Meanwhile the detectives are seen in their sweat-soaked shirts cramped into tiny rooms trying to solve the case for him and to garner him public sympathy. The film provides excellent social commentary on the effects of capitalism in postwar Japan. In addition to all of those points, HIGH AND LOW is also a thrilling game of cat and mouse. The plot devices the film employs to ramp up the tension are quite clever and one such scene that takes place aboard a train is a masterpiece of editing and shot composition. A movie about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, HIGH AND LOW’s message about social inequality continues to resonate today. (1963, 143 min) KC
Cristina Comencini’s LATIN LOVER (Italy)
Streams free on Tubi and Amazon Prime Video (subscription required)
The movie industry trades in all types for all tastes. Among male matinee idols, you have your blond-haired, blue-eyed men with boyish good looks (Tab Hunter, Brad Pitt), your frail, poetic, doomed types (Leslie Howard, Robert Pattinson), and your approachable sophisticates (Cary Grant, George Clooney). No matter what flavor you prefer, what’s great about matinee idols is that they are meant to delight, to provide us with enjoyment and vicarious romance. Taking the image of the matinee idol too seriously would ruin the pleasurable escape they provide. This featherweight quality also makes them perfect targets for satire. It is in this spirit that a large raft of women in the film industry—director/co-screenwriter Cristina Comencini, co-screenwriter Giulia Calenda, and a bevy of actresses, including the great Virna Lisi in her last performance—came together to create LATIN LOVER, a spoof on the type of smoldering lothario that gives the film its title. The Latin lover in question is Saverio Crispo (Francesco Scianna), an Italian movie star whose serial infidelities stretched across Europe and the United States, leaving many broken hearts and attractive children in his wake. Saverio has been dead for 10 years, and the unveiling of a commemorative plaque in his home town prompts his Spanish second wife, Ramona (Marisa Paredes), his five acknowledged daughters, several illegitimate offspring and their children and partners to gather at the home of his Italian first wife, Rita (Lisi), to attend the ceremony. It’s hard to keep the players straight, at least during the opening scenes of the film, but eventually, the nonstop introduction of characters and polyglot dialogue mostly comes to an end and their personalities start to shine. Intrigue is stirred when Saverio’s stunt double, Pedro (Lluís Homar), shows up, and Ramona and Rita work hard to keep him away from a writer (Claudio Gioè) who is working on a life of Saverio. The actors work off each other with exquisite timing and broad emotional interplay, turning what is largely a sex farce into a breezy comic masterpiece. The old masters, Lisi and Paredes, offer brilliant portrayals of women who adhere to the non-Bechtel-approved roles of the sexes. The sisters seem resigned to multiple marriages and unfaithful husbands, and argue more over the lack of a fatherly presence in their lives. I was captivated by Toni Bertorelli, who plays Picci, an old chum of Saverio’s from their home town who shares his memories of his famous friend whenever possible in endlessly boring fashion. But it is Homar who nearly walks off with the picture as the ruggedly handsome oldster who can still spin a gun like a Wild West performer, chase down a nosy photographer, and cry like a baby at the thought of his “workmate,” Saverio. In the final analysis, the beating heart of LATIN LOVER is Saverio himself. A quick review of his career via the reminiscences of Picci shows him performing in every kind of film imaginable, from Hollywood musicals and beach bum films to spaghetti westerns and neorealist dramas. The various clips and the very structure of LATIN LOVER call to mind some of the greats of Italian cinema, from Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone to Pietro Germi and Mario Monicelli. The final montage of Saverio images reveals that the women and men who were unhappy with Saverio the man found their greatest fulfillment in worshipping him as their ultimate matinee idol. LATIN LOVER is a superb comedy with heart that shows Italian cinema still has a great deal to offer, with or without its Latin lovers. (2015, 104 min) MF
Alejandro Galindo’s UNA FAMILIA DE TANTAS (Mexico)
Available to stream for free on Tubi
From roughly the late 1930s through the 1950s, Mexican cinema experienced a golden age. While Hollywood churned out films that related in one way or another to World War II, Mexico’s prolific film industry produced a wide variety of high-quality movies that explored everything from moody romances to slapstick comedy and horror that satisfied audiences in Latin America hungry for a range of stories. Alejandro Galindo spent time learning his craft in 1920s Hollywood and then returned to Mexico in 1930 to start on his path to becoming one of the most lauded, versatile, and prolific directors in the country. One of his best films is UNA FAMILIA DE TANTAS, a probing look at middle-class life in Mexico City that puts patriarchy squarely in the crosshairs. Rodrigo Cataño (Fernando Soler) is the undisputed head of his household. His wife, Gracia (Eugenia Galindo), supports him in policing his five children’s behavior and chastity. Eldest daughter Esela (Isabel del Puerto) can’t even look at her boyfriend Leopoldo (Manuel de la Vega) during a visit to the Cataño home without chaperone Gracia raising a disapproving eyebrow. Nonetheless, Galindo presents this controlling parenting with a degree of understanding, emphasizing Rodrigo’s love for his children during daughter Maru’s (Martha Roth) quinceañera celebration. Now officially a woman, Maru begins to look forward to more freedom. It arrives in the form of door-to-door salesman Roberto del Hierro (David Silva), who pushes his way into their home to demonstrate a vacuum cleaner. Rodrigo is furious when he learns Maru was alone in the house with a man, but when Roberto returns later that evening to close the sale, he wins over Rodrigo with his purely professional and courteous manner. Maru is impressed with and attracted to the confident and kind Roberto, and begins a very constricted relationship with him—they talk while she walks to and from the corner bakery to get bread for dinner. Galindo stages the film almost exclusively within the Cataño home, and as family conflicts increase and eventually explode into violence, we get a palpable feel for the tyranny of patriarchy as filtered through Rodrigo and the growing feminist consciousness of Maru. The film provides an interesting window onto mid-century Mexican culture, with an indigenous servant (Enriqueta Reza) and material striving one assumes were characteristic of many middle- and upper-class Mexican households. The film’s title, UNA FAMILIA DE TANTES, translates as “a family like many others,” signaling that this family dynamic is engrained in Mexican culture. It appears that Galindo, who wrote the screenplay, understood the power of the social problem film, but was smart enough to wrap his commentary in a multidimensional family film expertly performed by his large and talented cast. (1949, 130 min) MF
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 24 - July 30, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, JB Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Glover Smith, Fred Tsao