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.
SNIPES!
The Chicago Film Society has put four 1980s snipes featuring Chicago radio icon Larry Lujack up on their Vimeo page here. A more general set of snipes, posted a while back, are also still available here.
PHYSICAL SCREENINGS
Hillary Bachelder’s REPRESENT (New US/Documentary)
Music Box Theatre — Check Venue website for showtimes; also available to rent here
Even as more and more election years are deemed “the year of the woman,” women still are far and away underrepresented in contemporary American politics. Hillary Bachelder’s documentary REPRESENT follows three women—each running for different offices in different parties—through the highs and lows of their campaigns. The women Bachelder focuses on represent a new kind of political candidate, regardless of whether they win their respective elections. Myya Jones’ campaign for mayor of Detroit is a clear standout—she’s young, passionate, and goes viral from a politically-informed rap music video. The two other candidates Bachelder follows are Julie Cho, a Korean immigrant who runs for Illinois State Representative on the Republican ticket, and Bryn Bird, a farmer turned political junkie who runs for township trustee in Ohio. Along with their campaigns’ upsides, the film also delves into the real risks associated with trying to change the system: from not being taken seriously by older voters to going into debt just to run a campaign. Bachelder delicately balances the diversity of emotions throughout a typical campaign, and doesn’t shy away from bringing out the emotions of her subjects. Cho is especially vulnerable canvassing in her liberal district and breaks down when people refuse to engage with her due to the Republican label she is enthusiastically attached to. It’s hard not to compare REPRESENT to Rachel Lears’ 2019 film KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE, but the film makes enough of a case for itself by expanding the breadth of candidates it documents. (2019, 93 min) CC
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More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Also screening at the Music Box this week: Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film INCEPTION (162 min, 70mm) and Egor Abramenko’s 2020 Russian film SPUTNIK (113 min, DCP Digital).
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL — BEST OF CUFF
The Chicago Underground Film Festival presents a month-long online retrospective, Best of CUFF, continuing through August 28, which includes at least 21 features and 14 shorts programs. All programs will be available for streaming for the duration of the retrospective. Passes are $30 and individual programs are a suggested $10 or pay what you can. Reviews of select programs are below, and we’ll be running additional new and rerun reviews each week. Full details at www.cuff.org.
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Shorts Program Eight
All four works in this program exude a distinctive sense of place, though the first two achieve this effect through an insider’s perspective and the second two adopt ethnographic strategies. Paul Turano assembled his TOWARD THE FLAME (2014, 6 min), which kicks off the program, from firsthand video sources depicting an eventful February morning in 2013 when a meteor detonated midair over Chebarkul, Siberia. Cutting between several different videos (some personal recordings, some taken from CCTV), Turano conveys what life was like around Chebarkul in the moments leading up to the explosion, then presents how the disaster impacted each location under consideration. The film’s title comes from a Scriabin piano composition (“Vers la Flamme”) written to commemorate another explosion that took place above Siberia in 1908; Turano plays this piece over the video footage, creating a pensive quality that provides counterpoint to the immediacy of the explosion. In contrast, Benjamin Buxton’s ON THE RINK (2018, 10 min) offers nothing but good vibes. This short documentary celebrates an old-school roller rink on Chicago’s South Side, with loving shots of people lacing up skates, learning to perform tricks, and taking care of the 40-year-old establishment. Buxton exhibits a strong eye for observation; the recurring shots of floorboards and painted stripes on the walls make the Rink seem palpably vivid. This vitality makes ON THE RINK more than an exercise in nostalgia—as long as people frequent the Rink, Buxton implies, the pastime of roller skating remains alive and well. The message of Ben Russell’s ATLANTIS (2014, 24 min), on the other hand, is more difficult to parse, in part because former Chicagoan Russell (who describes the film as his most poetic) chooses to weave together his ideas rather than assert anything definitive about them. By turns, ATLANTIS considers the fabled underwater city of the title, the island of Malta, folk singing, a modern discotheque, and the search for a perfect society. Russell’s signature approach—a mix of ethnographic and experimental filmmaking techniques—renders these subjects mysterious and exciting, and he cuts between them unpredictably. Throughout the work, Russell presents images of the Maltese landscape as reflected in chest-sized handheld mirrors (he’d used this device before in the short TRYPPS #7), and the spirit of playing with images defines the film as a whole. Though it features numerous scenes of a monkey acting out tricks, THE MASKED MONKEYS (2015, 32 min) is less playful than ATLANTIS, although directors Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy share Russell’s winning curiosity about cultures unlike their own. Shot in black-and-white on the island of Java, the film introduces viewers to the traditional Indonesian art of training small monkeys to perform for audiences. A narrator explains near the beginning of MONKEYS that this practice originated in tribal death rites, and the filmmakers exhibit a respectful attitude befitting the spiritual customs. They also communicate surprising sympathy for the performing monkeys they film, often placing the camera at a low height to emulate the animals’ perspective. One comes to recognize the monkeys’ talent, dignity, and importance in upholding tradition. BS
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Shorts Program Nine
This program showcases the outsider, marginalized, or downright weird perspectives that have always been CUFF’s stock in trade. EVERYBODY (2009, 4 min) sets the stage with crude animation of hand-drawn animals professing sexual longing and insecurities about their bodies; directors Jessie Mott and Steve Reinke heighten the strange vibe by employing a disorienting range of music, from classical compositions to contemporary dance pop. Mike Gibbiser’s SECOND LAW: SOUTH LEH ST. (2011, 15 min) explores a different kind of insecurity; it looks at the filmmaker’s grandmother as she navigates life alone in her home. The film inspires homey feelings with its warm celluloid cinematography and images of beloved possessions that the subject has surely owned for decades. Gibbiser undercuts these feelings, however, with commentary by physicist Richard Feynman, which comes up on the soundtrack about halfway through the film. The second law of physics regards entropy, and fittingly this is a work about life slowing down. Some of the most affecting moments contain no people at all, as if Gibbiser were contemplating how life will look once his grandmother’s life has stopped moving entirely. The next short on the program, MIGRAINE AND MICHAEL: A LOVE STORY (2011, 5 min), contemplates the non-lethal—but still very aggravating—debilitation of migraine headaches. Director Adrian Goodman depicts the title character’s frequent migraines as a woman clutching her body around his head, then presents the two combatants in various social situations. It’s a one-joke movie, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome. By contrast, you may finish Nellie Kluz’s documentary short YOUNG BIRD SEASON (2011, 19 min) wishing it were longer; the film introduces a community vibrant enough to sustain an entire feature. Kluz considers the Braintree Pigeon Racing Club in Pennsylvania as they prepare their birds for a race to New York State. The filmmaker incorporates some poetic imagery, such as the shot of hundreds of pigeons taking flight from a truck that opens the work; yet most of the footage is journalistic in the best sense, taking viewers into the nitty-gritty of raising, monitoring, and caring for teams of racing birds. There’s also a nice sense of blue-collar camaraderie in the scenes of trainers’ daytime drinking rituals, which include lots of big talk and grilling hot dogs. One comes away from YOUNG BIRD SEASON with an appreciation for hobbyists and the enthusiasm they inspire in the people around them, but more importantly, the film asks us to think about our complicated relationship to animals and nature in general (the shots of highly specific pigeon-tracking technology are provocative in this regard). Jennifer Reeder’s BLOOD BELOW THE SKIN (2015, 33 min) closes the program with a burst of punk attitude. Somewhat reminiscent of Gregg Araki’s youth pictures, this narrative short follows two high school girls as they work through the challenges of adolescence. For all the sex talk and shock value (one of the girls makes spending money by selling her mother’s used underwear to local men), the film ultimately conveys a tenderness towards its subjects. BS
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Shorts Program Ten
Aldous Huxley wrote, “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards,” an aphorism whose circuitous merits we often debate on and in front of screens big and small. Each film in this program ruminates on that quandary, some more directly than others. Kent Lambert’s RECKONING 3 (2014, 11 min) is an enigmatic tone poem composed largely of visuals and audio taken from over two years of game play on Mac and Playstation 3 consoles. Its probings are likewise hopeful (a description of the film details its aims as being an exploration into, along with terror, the “wonder in big-budget virtual worlds,” as well as “[t]he poetics of blockbuster aesthetics) and irascible; this dissonance, inherent to the medium itself, is unsettling. Lisa Truttmann’s 6500 (2015, 8 min) is one of the works less obviously related to technology, but its contemplations of subjectivity are nevertheless connected. Over an array of colors filling the screen, a woman in voiceover delivers a series of statements that reflect the volatility of speech, the viewer’s mind then associating the individual statements with the colors on screen at the time. The film then transitions to shots of a white piece of paper placed in various tableaux, serving as either a contrast or a complement to its surroundings, reflecting a visual sort of subjectivity. Then, again over panes of single colors, provocative quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Colour” appear on screen, more explicitly calling into question the ponderance of subjectivity at hand. Truttmann said that the project “started out as a simple camera lighting test,” its connection to technology thus being that it reveals the fundamental subjectivity of such devices, which many consider to reflect the world in an objective way—at least as they see it. Deborah Stratman evokes something similar in HACKED CIRCUIT, a single-shot depiction of the process by which Foley artists add sound to movies (here Francis Ford Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION). Stratman elaborates on the technical process and also the uncanniness respective to it; her use of THE CONVERSATION, specifically a scene in which Gene Hackman’s character tears up a room looking for a ‘bug,’ points to the paranoia surrounding the sensation of hearing something that’s not really there and vice versa. Surveillance is prominent in many works in this program, both in terms of government intervention and something we ourselves do, to lesser effect, in our daily lives through engaging with technology and utilizing certain media channels. The name of Jesse Malmed’s film more or less sums it up: HOW TO HAVE YOUR OWN TELEVISION SHOW! (YOU ALREADY DO) (2016, 13 min). In his typically droll and delightful deadpan style, “an unreliable narrator details how to deliver people in the age of surveillance from within and without, a how-to for lateral minds, a hippie family sitcommune set to a bootleg of Peter Hutton's FLORENCE, a drearily rousing theme song as gps-to-mp3 directions out to the country,” per Malmed’s own description of the film. I’d like to think I understand, even if I clearly don’t. Lastly, Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis’ SWATTED (2018, 21 min) explores the phenomenon of swatting, a prank whereby internet trolls call the police with the intention of them dispatching emergency services to the houses of unsuspecting persons, often gamers. Over footage of their preferred mediums—YouTube and streaming sites—it features testimonies from victims about this practice, as well as the disturbing 911 calls themselves. This takes on an even more frightening tone in today’s world, considering the routine weaponization of the authorities against people of color. These films don’t necessarily provide an answer to the existential question posed by Huxley’s maxim; if anything, they’re collectively a litmus test of sorts, gauging one’s response. KS
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Chaim Bianco and Steven Saylor’s THE POPE OF UTAH (US)
When I think back on the golden era of 1990s American independent cinema, and how exciting the films that played at small film fests during that time were, THE POPE OF UTAH fits my memory perfectly. Chaim Bianco and Steven Saylor, who also wrote the film, take the same well-tempered punk attitude that turned hardcore into college rock and apply it to their story about a sleazy televangelist stuck in a battle with an embittered, failed comic that works at his TV station. The film has great cinematography and the visual language is wonderfully dynamic and engaging, reflective of this period in which indie film were especially creative. This was the first generation of filmmakers who not only grew up with near instant access to the history of film via VHS and the video store, but also with MTV’s new high-speed collage style. New rules were being written, broken, and re-written at breakneck speed. THE POPE OF UTAH is a near Platonic example of how these influences could translate themselves into a narrative film. The colors are bright, the costumes are cartoonish, the edits and camera angles sharp and attentive. And through all of that there is a knowledge of classic Hollywood and TV style that is utilized to its fullest for both narrative and visual punch. THE POPE OF UTAH’s plot pits televangelist Melvin Pressin against failed 60s stand-up comedian Del Shandling. They work together at the same TV station; they have a friendly relationship, but are far from being friends. Pressin oozes Jimmy Swaggart-sleaze while Shandling is a true schmuck. Shandling blames all his life failures on his wife, whom he only married because she owned a TV station which he hoped to use to host his own Soupy Sales-styled comedy show. His wife, though, sold the station (it was turned into a parking lot), and later becomes enthralled by Pressin’s televangelism and starts giving all of Shandling’s money to his ministry. As Shandling starts to unravel he decides to try to take Pressin down with him. This is a hilarious film filled with anti-heroes and generally bad people all around. No one is likable, and rightfully so—THE POPE OF UTAH is a film fueled completely by greed, hypocrisy, and petty revenge. Even with all that, it managed to be incredibly entertaining, and even a bit prescient, with depictions of proto-media streaming and “deep fake” plots. THE POPE OF UTAH is the exact kind of gem you hope to find at small, indie film fests, and it’s a goddamn shame that it hasn’t risen to the kind of cult status that films like REPO MAN, BORDER RADIO or other punk-tinged films have. This is one of the most punk films I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have any punk rock in it whatsoever. My only regret in watching this is that I didn’t do it sooner. (1993, 83 min) RJM
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Michal Kosakowski’s ZERO KILLED (Germany/Documentary)
In this utterly unique documentary, which deftly balances philosophical and moral discourse and debate and exhaustively brutal violence, Michal Kosakowski forces both his documentary subjects and the film’s viewers to face their ideas of murder. The premise is fully unique: each nameless documentary subject is asked to discuss their darkest, and most taboo, desire—how would they kill someone if they had a chance. Taking this even one step further, Kosakowski then allows them the opportunity to act out their fantasy on film. ZERO KILLED is a thought exercise brought to life and given the form of an exploitation film. And it’s breathtaking. Ten years after filming the various murder scenarios the director then returns to the people involved in the mock-murder re-enactments, both murderers and victims, and asks them about how they felt during the filming. This engaging discussion brings on more nuanced conversation about morality, intent, personal psychology, and violence in the media. The murder scenes are filmed and edited to be as realistic as possible, reminiscent of the infamous Japanese GUINEA PIG proto-torture porn/faux-snuff film series. One could easily prank the internet by cutting some of these scenes out of the film, dirtying up the resolution, and dropping them on some creepazoid subreddit or chan site, and convince people they’re watching legitimate “rekt” footage. In fact, this film is very much conscious meta-commentary on de-contextualized violence in the media. One of the subjects addresses how violence presented on the news preceding a human-interest story about an elderly birthday lowers both to pure entertainment. Violence, no matter how extreme, can be rendered completely abstract to the point of becoming pornographic. Its context is the only thing that can prevent that, and perhaps we are losing the ability to give it that context. Or perhaps we simply don’t care to because it doesn’t matter. What makes ZERO KILLED better than a middling, run-of-the-mill documentary about social violence is that it gives its subjects the ability to enact this violence, viewers the ability to witness it, and only then does the discussion happen. It’s as close to reality as anyone can get on the subject, and you can see how the film affected the outlook of all those involved, both “murderers” and “victims.” Though the premise is simple, almost simplistic, Kosakowski’s execution is marvelous. I have to tell on myself and say that I was absolutely enthralled by the faux-snuff scenes and their barbarity; I genuinely felt gross about it. But I suppose that’s the point the film is trying to make. It’s especially interesting that this film was begun just before the rise of the New French Extremity movement and the torture porn horror sub-genre but completed at the exhausted end of those cycles. ZERO KILLED manages to be both prescient social commentary and gore filled exploitation, and better at both than most. (2012, 81 min) RJM
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Scott Crawford’s CREEM: AMERICA’S ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL MAGAZINE (US/Documentary)
Available t0 rent through the Music Box Theatre here
For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve been nearly as interested in criticism of music and movies as I have been in the thing itself. In my teenage years in the mid-‘80s, I began reading the first generation of rock critics—fiery writers like Lester Bangs and Dave Marsh, who found their initial place of freedom at a place called Creem, which I learned was this legendary Detroit-based magazine. Now the story of this seminal chapter in rock criticism is told in Scott Crawford’s alternately joyous and heartbreaking documentary, CREEM: AMERICA’S ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL MAGAZINE. Creem was founded in inner-city Detroit in 1969 by a hip capitalist named Barry Kramer, and soon attracted a group of young local misfits. When Bangs arrived from California, the “band” was complete. As writers they were a hell of a group, gifted; Bangs was a genius. Ferocious and iconoclastic, profane and wisecracking, Creem’s basic idea was, if some other magazine said “you can’t do that,” they’d do it. It treated music as if it were pure hilarious fun on the one hand, and the most serious thing in the universe on the other. The film follows the magazine’s trajectory outward from the inner city, whence they decamped to a communal farm in Walled Lake, and from there to the relatively tony environs of Birmingham. After Barry Kramer’s death in 1981, his ex-wife Connie sold the magazine and it moved to L.A., where it folded in 1989. Kramer and Bangs both died young and accidentally, in some combination of drug misadventure, personal demons, and illness. The film is essentially an homage to Barry Kramer—a driven, plucky man, an idealist and opportunist in competing measure. It honors the way that, as a publisher, Kramer unleashed a singularly puissant group of writers. These young Creem journalists became intellectuals and editors simply because Kramer anointed them as such. He goaded them until he smothered them, and then they had to leave him. Marsh departed circa ’74; Bangs in ’76. Though Creem was indelibly a product of a certain time and place—the squalor of Detroit in the terminal days of the ‘60s—it went on to become a kind of emblem of the ‘70s: degenerate, perhaps, but still teeming with life. Where I came in with rock ’n’ roll was, for better or worse, with Kiss—my favorite group when I was eight. In a famous stunt, Creem writer Jaan Uhelzki even reported on what it was like to go onstage with Kiss, decked out in full makeup and regalia. Creem gave female rock writers like Uhelzki, Roberta “Robbie” Cruger, and Susan Whitall, all of whom speak out in the film, a home for their writing, even if it basically set out to titillate teenage boys. That said, Creem never condescended to its young readers. As Marsh states, “I had a vision of what the magazine could do for kids who were out there getting ridiculed and beat up and all that shit…there’s some other kid who’s gonna read this thing, and be freed by it.” Cut to Michael Stipe of R.E.M., who testifies that he was that very boy—a queer kid who found his community by reading Creem. There was a time when I was quite interested in researching this subject, myself. I tracked down a couple old issues from ’71 or ’72; one featured poetry by Patti Smith. Director/co-writer Scott Crawford makes a solid, professional, occasionally exhilarating job of this. The film was co-written by Uhelzki, who also co-produced, along with J.J. Kramer, Barry’s son, whose on-screen grappling with the legacy of his late father—he was four years old when his dad died—is keenly poignant. There’s footage taken by a public television crew at Creem headquarters, located in the bombed-out Cass Corridor of the post-1967 uprising, that’s worth the price of admission all by itself. I love this vision of Creem as a place where everyone was passionately caught up in a common project. I liked the animated interludes, including a hilarious bit where a cartoon Marsh and Bangs reenact their famous—in certain circles—brawl involving dog-doo and typewriters. Cameron Crowe opines that the stakes Bangs and Marsh were really fighting over were “why and how to love the thing they love.” This jibes with Bangs’s legendary, breathtakingly hostile—and deeply funny—series of interviews with Lou Reed, which Greil Marcus opines were really about Lou and Lester trying to express their love for each other. The movie is very fast: it hops between a dizzying array of interviewees, though not some of the ones you might expect—there’s no Patti Smith, for example. It’s all over in a brisk hour and 16 minutes. There are ways the film could have gone deeper: there was a whole radical political context in Detroit for early Creem that the film barely touches. Still, because of my personal predilections, I enjoyed this tremendously. While refusing to flinch from the dark side, the film conveys the essential glory of Creem: its idealistic, truthful, and, finally, deeply affectionate spirit. Even as I age, Creem symbolizes a sensibility—a kind of integrity, a sense of community—that I’ll always try to keep close to my heart. Among many others, the film features appearances by John Sinclair, Ted Nugent, Chad Smith, Bebe Buell, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Jeff Daniels, Kirk Hammett, Peter Wolf, Suzi Quatro, Don Was, Lenny Kaye, and Thurston Moore, as well as critics and journalists including Robert Christgau, Ann Powers, Robert Duncan, Ed Ward, Chuck Eddy, John Holmstrom, and Legs McNeil. (2020, 76 min) SP
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Kôji Fukada’s A GIRL MISSING (Japan)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and the Gene Siskel Film Center here
The three films I’ve seen by Japanese writer-director Kôji Fukada—HOSPITALITÉ, HARMONIUM, and now A GIRL MISSING—are commendable for the very quality that makes them difficult to write about—that is, they change shape unpredictably. The pleasure of discovering Fukada’s work is tied to being surprised by it; because I want readers to enjoy the movies, I don’t want to deny them the surprises. I will say that Fukada’s plot twists never feel manipulative or desperate, but rather they seem to emerge from the mysteries of life itself. Life takes strange turns, so movies should too, Fukada seems to be saying. In A GIRL MISSING, fate intervenes cruelly in the life of a home-care nurse played movingly by Fukada regular Mariko Tsutsui; the film’s twists are generally tragic in nature. What makes them especially sad is that the nurse, Ichiko, suffers so randomly. She isn’t punished for a past sin, as in many classical tragedies; rather, she’s the victim of circumstance (and, later, the kind of herd mentality that’s so pervasive online). Even before Fukada introduces the element of tragedy, A GIRL MISSING is a quietly fascinating film, due in large part to the perceptive way it observes the heroine’s life. Ichiko is the sort of character that narrative movies tend to neglect: she’s a single, childless middle-aged woman who can support herself just fine. She isn’t sick from lovelessness, like Katherine Hepburn’s beloved spinster in SUMMERTIME, but something seems precarious about her life. Fukada presents the minutiae of Ichiko’s job as though her career hangs in a delicate balance, as though any small mistake could bring her downfall. The worst does occur, but Fukada holds off on letting it happen, cutting away from the story Atom Egoyan-style to a second story line about Ichiko’s bourgeoning relationship with a younger male hairdresser. How these narratives converge comprises another one of Fukada’s successful surprises. (2019, 111 min) BS
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
Kris Rey’s I USED TO GO HERE (US)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Someone finally made it. And thank god it was Kris Rey. Up until now, nearly every film dealing with millennials have been stuck delivering the same tired avocado toast-style jokes, or have been nostalgic trips back to high school or the rosy days of the pre-2008 financial meltdown. With I USED TO GO HERE, Rey handles, with deft aplomb, what it’s like to be in your late-30s in the modern day. Gillian Jacobs plays author Kate Conklin, the writer of a rather terrible novel who is invited back to her alma mater by a former professor to give a reading. Returning to her college (the barely veiled Southern Illinois University, the actual alma mater of the writer/director, where the film was partially shot on location), Kate finds that she losing herself in a mire of self-doubt and aimlessness. All her friends back in Chicago are having babies, her fiancé has left her, and she’s been asked to take a teaching position at her old college. The idea of the Baby Boomer hating their steady corporate job and buying a sports car mid-life crisis is long dead and an impossibility for a generation who has lived through two financial crises; instead, Rey shows us what its really like for someone having an existential life crisis in 2020. Kate Conklin considers going back to early adulthood and shirking the life she once had. As an alum of SIU myself, who attended the school the same time Rey did, I absolutely understand this. In fact, I actually did this myself. I moved back to Carbondale for five years and went back to school. And I am far from the only person to have done it. Many people have written songs about the town being a black hole. It truly is a charming, bucolic, insidious place that way. Sigh. But anyway… Besides making a film that understands the realities of adult millennial weltschmerz, the manner in which Rey shows Conklin’s regression from self-assured adult to college-age ball of insecurities is masterful. I USED TO GO HERE begins as a rather straightforward dramatic comedy, replete with Girl Boss energy; but soon Rey not only plays with, but subverts, the entire style of the film until you find yourself in the back of a van full of college kids, alongside Conklin, as the film switches from thirtysomething dramedy into a by-the-book teenage college comedy film as Kate slowly befriends the college students who live in her old house, across the street from the Bed & Breakfast she’s staying at. There are absurd revenge schemes and sexual tension played for laughs. Soon, Kate gets caught up in the drama of college life, friend groups, infidelity, and sexual power dynamics. While the details of her story aren’t necessarily universal, the way she maneuvers through them definitely are. Even when the film plays the generational clichés for laughs, it does it with an honesty that is more self-reflective than cheap exploitation. Also, this is the first movie that has some straight up Millennial/Zoomer love going on, and I thoroughly appreciate that. As we reach our 40s, it’s those in their 20s that are going to be doing all the heavy lifting—culturally, socially, politically. Rey does a wonderful job of showing that, through the friendship and support this group of college kids gives. It’s genuinely heartwarming. (2020, 86 min) RJM
Bert Stern and Aram Avakian’s JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
The history of motion pictures is inextricably tied to the field of photography, beginning with the motion studies of English photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s and moving through the 20th and 21st centuries with such photographer/directors as Agnès Varda, Stanley Kubrick, Gordon Parks, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Frank. Bert Stern, producer/director of JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY, was, like Frank, a commercial and fashion photographer. He’s best known now for his photos of Marilyn Monroe, but in 1958 he was interested in making an experimental film during the simultaneously occurring Newport Jazz Festival and the 18th running of the America’s Cup. Perhaps he was inspired by the entry of the first experimental yachts to be allowed into the Cup competition and the eclectic mix of Dixieland, big band, cool jazz, gospel, blues, and even rock ’n roll artists slated to appear at the festival. Whatever his motivation, he and five other cameramen descended on the elite island getaway and ended up creating, with the expert editing of Aram Avakian, the progenitor of the modern concert film. Dancing reflections in harbor waters are accompanied by the staccato sax of Jimmy Giuffre, the valve trombone of Bob Brookmeyer, and the guitar of Jim Hall playing “The Train and the River” as the credits introduce the talents Stern will feature. Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson get top billing. Gerry Mulligan, Dinah Washington, Chico Hamilton, and Anita O’Day follow, and then other featured performers and a host of expert sidemen. The film warms us to its subject as it tees up preparations for the start of the America’s Cup and the day’s concert. A Dixieland band literally blows their way into town in an antique jalopy and acts as our intermittent guides through the film. The battle on the waves, seen in random geometric formations from the air, is scored with Thelonious Monk’s magnificent “Blue Monk,” making one wish there were more tunes from this jazz pioneer. I wasn’t familiar with Anita O’Day before this film, and she seems a dainty woman here in a feathered hat, frill-bottomed shift, and white gloves. She gingerly negotiates some steps in a pair of Lucite, high-heeled mules, but from then on, there is nothing timid about her ingenious, pitch-perfect renditions of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Tea for Two.” Perhaps my favorite act of the film is the Chico Hamilton Quintet, most memorable to cinephiles as the combo that backs Martin Milner in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957), performing the tribal-sounding, hypnotic “Blue Sands.” I was also thrilled to see Dinah Washington, a favorite singer of mine whom I’ve only known through recordings, smile her way through “All of Me.” Throughout the film, Stern’s directorial and photographic eye finds particular faces among the concertgoers—a man with a long cigar snapping his fingers, a mother and her young daughter enjoying Louis Armstrong’s banter and red-hot trumpeting, four African-American women swaying and snapping to Mahalia Jackson’s jubilant rendition of “Walk All Over God’s Heaven,” a young couple swing-dancing to Chuck Berry. These miniature portraits, as edited by Avakian, become something of a call-response between the musicians and the audience, building a feeling for the event that makes JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY more pleasurable with each viewing. Bert Stern never made another film, but that’s no cause for distress. Perfection’s hard to top. (1959, 82 min) MF
Dawn Porter's JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here, the Gene Siskel Film Center here, or the Music Box Theatre 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 dragged out to reach that running time, nor does it fall short in getting its 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 – Also Screening/Streaming
American Writers Museum
Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco’s 2020 documentary FLANNERY (97 min) is available for rent locally via the AWM here.
Facets Cinémathèque
Charlie Buhler’s 2020 film BEFORE THE FIRE (104 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check here for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Local filmmaker Ines Sommer’s 2019 documentary SEASONS OF CHANGE ON HENRY'S FARM (83 min) and John Sheedy’s 2019 Australian film H IS FOR HAPPINESS (98 min) are available for streaming beginning this week. Check here for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Reiner Holzemer’s 2019 documentary MARTIN MARGIELA: IN HIS OWN WORDS (90 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check here for 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
Amy Seimetz’s SHE DIES TOMORROW (US)
Available to rent or purchase on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, and YouTube Movies
For most of us, a feeling of dread has permeated the last six months of living. A cloud hovering above us at all times, it becomes harder to ward off the anxiety, the discomfort, and the general sense of alarm that fills up your body when you lay your head on your pillow. Though Amy Seimetz made her newest film pre-pandemic, the writer/director’s SHE DIES TOMORROW fills its characters with this impending sensation of doom, and in this case, death. Following a group of somewhat connected people over the course of a couple days, the terrifying thriller explores our premonitions, and the little hypochondriac in us that can whisper into our ears. Bright and boasting a sense of color and style, SHE DIES TOMORROW isn’t a traditional horror film, opting for a building intensity instead of jump scares or visible villains. It allows you to imagine the monster, letting it grow inside of your head as you watch these characters struggle with their own mortality. Seimetz searches for meaning with SHE DIES TOMORROW—the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and the meaning of every moment in every day if tomorrow is your last. Her film features palpable tension between each character and his/her mind. Flashing colors catch your attention throughout the film, but the ideas glued themselves deep in my brain. I questioned my own health, after realizing how ideas can be passed amongst all of us, like an intangible, haunting sickness, especially as many of us continue to be sheltered inside our homes, apartments, and box-like rooms. Kate Lyn Sheil leads a stellar cast, which includes Jane Adams, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, and even Michelle Rodriguez, who appears just long enough to be psychologically infected; they all play their parts with blank faces of realization, not desolation. These people believe that they’re going to die, and it’s less about the sadness, and more about the severe cognizance of this predetermined fact. Once they believe it, it’s impossible to go back. And once you’ve seen SHE DIES TOMORROW, you’ll understand their expressions. (2020, 84 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 has reopened in a limited capacity, presenting physical, in-theater screenings and also continues to present online-only screenings*
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Asian Pop-Up Cinema – 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 (UIC) *
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:
Rescheduled with new dates announced:
The Gene Siskel Film Center will present a delayed online edition of the Black Harvest Film Festival from November 6-30. Information will be available at the Siskel website, www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
The Chicago Latino Film Festival – Originally scheduled for April, the Chicago Latino Film Festival will take place as a delayed online edition September 18-27. Information will be available mid- to late-August at www.chicagolatinofilmfestival.org.
Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival (presented by Chicago Filmmakers) has announced that the festival will take place online September 24-October 4. Information will be available at https://reelingfilmfestival.org.
Postponed with no announced plans yet:
The Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – 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: August 14 - August 20, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer, Fred Tsao