Happy holidays from our cinephile family to yours!
We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that are open, grouped in our standard Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended sections, as well as all other physical screenings, and list streaming/online screenings below.
Please note: With an uptick of Covid cases, remember to check venue websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place. More and more venues are now requiring proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test. We recommend verifying those protocols before every trip to the theater. And, of course, stay home if you’re sick, be nice to theater staff and always wear a mask!
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Paul Thomas Anderson’s LICORICE PIZZA (US)
Music Box Theatre - See Venue website for showtimes
There are strong similarities between LICORICE PIZZA and PHANTOM THREAD (2017), Paul Thomas Anderson's previous film, though they present very different depictions of burgeoning romance. PHANTOM THREAD wrapped its lovers inside a hermetic world of high-end fashion, poisonous mushrooms, and very precise food orders. While the tone seemed to spell a romance bathed in doom, the results were closer to an arthouse rom-com. Anderson kicks up the romance and comedy for LICORICE PIZZA, yet the film’s construction doesn’t feel as pensive or classical as that of the previous film; it's something looser and shaggier, if only on the surface. LICORICE is glossy, loud, bright, and brimming with comedic subplots, but what holds it together are the experiences of its two main characters, played by Alana Haim (of the band Haim) and Cooper Hoffman (son of the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman)—their youthful romance will tug on the heartstrings of even the most jaded filmgoers. The film takes place in a world where youth is subjected to the forces of impending adult realities, represented here by a coked-out film producer (Bradley Cooper's winking portrayal of Jon Peters, the producer of the 1976 A STAR IS BORN), a gay politician with a cold attitude toward love (writer-director Benny Safdie, portraying LA politician Joel Wachs), or a pair of thrill-seeking actors hellbent on continuing the raucous nature of their lives well into their 60s (Tom Waits and Sean Penn, the latter portraying a character based on William Holden). The protagonists even encounter an actress based on Lucille Ball and America's gas-shortage crisis (pay close attention to a Herman Munster cameo as well). Though our young main characters remain locked in their growing views of love and human relationships, they're challenged in their beliefs when they come into contact with each of these adults. Anderson throws in plenty of quirks that could read as random flourishes, yet these quirks are designed to highlight our main characters’ lack of awareness of their surroundings, how the things they encounter make no sense to them; it makes sense that the audience isn’t allowed an easy explanation. I'm sure the surface-level casualness will be more deeply understood as the years roll by, but as far as entertainment goes on an immediate level, you aren’t going to find anything more heartwarming or funny than LICORICE PIZZA. (2021, 133 min, 70mm) [John Dickson]
Vittorio De Sica’s MIRACLE IN MILAN (Italy)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Vittorio De Sica started his career as an actor and became successful as the star of romances and light comedies; a few years after he started directing films, he revealed himself to be a master tragedian with the neorealist touchstones BICYCLE THIEVES (1948) and UMBERTO D. (1952). This snapshot of De Sica’s career might suggest he divided his light and dark impulses between light and dark films, yet even a cursory inspection uncovers a wide mix of emotions in most of his work. A born crowd-pleaser, De Sica could find humor and uplift in the most desperate situations (consider those scenes between Umberto D. and his dog Flag); at the same time, many of his lighthearted films as director acknowledge the misfortunes of the world. MIRACLE IN MILAN is a comic fantasy that literally opens with “Once upon a time” and concludes with a community of hobos flying away on broomsticks, but in between these two bookends lies a melancholy portrait of the people swept aside during Italy’s postwar economic boom. The hero, Totò, is an unflappably optimistic young man who can’t find a home or a job. He finds a sense of community among other homeless people living in a vacant lot on the outskirts of Milan; in a particularly rousing sequence, the hero leads the group as they all construct a shantytown out of scrap metal. De Sica described MIRACLE IN MILAN as his tribute to Chaplin, and there’s quite a bit of the Little Tramp in Totò; but whereas the Tramp was a loner, Totò finds strength with others (the romantic characterization of the shantytown recalls Frank Borage’s Depression-era classic MAN’S CASTLE). The film feels like a fantasy even before the introduction of magic elements, embellishing the camaraderie of the underclass to the point where it seems cartoonish. Yet De Sica, who grew up in poverty himself, never lets the film become overly sentimental, maintaining a certain degree of dispiriting realism in his depiction of what it’s like to have no money. The film was also De Sica’s tribute to his longtime writing partner Cesare Zavattini, who wrote an early draft of the script in 1940 and later novelized it as Totò the Good. As opposed to subsequent European cinematic movements, Italian Neorealism privileged writers as much as directors, resulting in complex works that reflect multiple creative visions. (1951, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
František Vláčil's MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (Czechoslovakia)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm
MARKETA LAZAROVÁ is much revered by the Czech people (and by many others lucky enough to have seen it). You will hear from nearly every Czech national you ask that this is simply the best Czech film of all time—a claim that is bolstered by an official nation-wide vote in 1998. Its heady, disarming structure helps engender this reverence. During the film, there is hardly any space for reflection or distraction within its nearly three-hour-long barrage of stunning, immersive images that depict life (and, just as frequently, death) in 13th century Bohemia. Based on Vladislav Vančura's novel of the same name, this medieval epic is not some delicately spun tapestry of castles, moats, and courtly love. Instead, the characters wander, forge, and fight their way through each frame caked in dirt and blood and shit, sometimes haphazardly and sometimes with frightening deliberation. It is extreme historical accuracy taken to simultaneously surreal and hyperreal effect; Jaroslav Boček called it "baroque, barbaric and antique." Vláčil began filming with the single-minded intention of realizing his cinematic vision through extreme measures, which included forcing the cast to live in the Šumava forest for two years—experiencing the same conditions their characters would have. He spent most of that period hovering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, but his efforts paid off: the resulting work would seem to match his vision of the ideal film, in which there is "no dialogue, everything is clear, comprehensible from the picture alone." The lack of dialogue and narrative makes for an unusual literary adaptation, although the film does retain certain literary elements, such as chapter headings with ornately printed text. Without any prior exposure to the source material, it's nearly impossible to extrapolate backwards and imagine how Vančura's novel must read; in Vláčil's film the image reigns supreme and sequence is largely inconsequential, leading to a pervasive feeling of disorientation and awe. The only semblance of a narrative we are given is a series of brutal conflicts between dueling elements, which could have been broken down rather neatly (Christianity vs. paganism, man vs. nature, clan vs. clan) but in Vláčil's hands, are presented through constantly shifting perspectives that defy allegiance. (1967, 163 min, 35mm) [Anne Orchier]
Christopher Makoto Yogi’s I WAS A SIMPLE MAN (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 1pm and 7:30pm; Wednesday, 5:15pm; and Thursday, 5:15pm
While there will never be a shortage of films in which characters die, the number of thoughtful films in which the main protagonist confronts their own process of dying is much smaller. Among the best of this type of film—Francisco Athié’s VERA (2003), Piotr Dumała’s THE FOREST (2009), Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010), and Albert Serra’s THE DEATH OF LOUIS THE XIV (2016)—few come from the United States, where death is a sanitized secret. The denial of death is a subtext of Christopher Mokoto Yogi’s Oahu-set I WAS A SIMPLE MAN, something of a breakthrough American film on the subject I find especially timely as that denial rages all around us. Although the lush landscape, evocatively shot by Korean cinematographer Eunsoo Cho, and the absence of white people may suggest that this is a foreign film, the director, who was born in Honolulu of Japanese ancestry, straddles the modern American world in which he was raised and the Japanese traditions of ancestor worship handed down to him from previous generations. His protagonist, Masao Matsuyoshi (Steve Iwamoto), lives in the rural home on Oahu’s North Shore he shared with his wife, Grace (Constance Wu), and the three children they were raising until Masao sent them to their aunt upon Grace’s untimely death. Now Masao is facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, and his interior struggle to accept his universally shared fate is matched by his family’s reluctance to support him through his final days. His thoroughly American grandson, Gavin (Kanoa Goo), is especially eager to escape the death watch, as Masao’s failing body and imaginary conversations with people from his past fill Gavin with disgust and embarrassment. However, Makoto Yogi spends most of the film imagining Masao’s experience of dying, and perhaps in homage to UNCLE BOONMEE, sends him Grace’s ghost from the enormous tree where he and his daughter scattered her ashes. In deference to the Western notion of having one’s life pass before one’s eyes as death approaches, Masao time-trips through his early romance with Grace and the aftermath of her death (possibly by suicide). In the absence of family, Grace is Masao’s main source of comfort. In the end, however, she forces him to face the truths of his life before he must answer for himself to her and his ancestors. (2021, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CURE (Japan)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Identity as a motif has preoccupied numerous filmmakers, from Ingmar Bergman (PERSONA) to Monte Hellman (ROAD TO NOWHERE) and Abbas Kiarostami (CLOSE-UP). Identity is often tied up with psychosis, and psychotics frequently feature in horror and suspense films because they channel the restless, faceless Id that resides in all of us. The idea that any one of us could become a gruesome killer if someone or something pierced our social conditioning is at the heart of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CURE. Kurosawa, interested in the shocked comments people invariably make after a neighbor or acquaintance commits a brutal murder (“He was such a nice man. They were an ordinary couple.”), explores the nature of identity and whether our bodies and minds are mere vessels waiting to be filled. On a busy street in Tokyo, a man (Ren Ohsugi) walks through a damp tunnel as cars pass on his right. A fluorescent light illuminating the tunnel blinks and buzzes. We next see the man in a hotel room with a naked prostitute. He is moving about the room, and she is sitting up in bed. Suddenly, he grabs a pipe and bashes her twice on the head. When next we enter the room, it is filled with police investigators. The lead detective, Kenichi Takabe (Kôji Yakusho), observes that a deep “x” has been cut across the prostitute’s neck and chest. The man is found naked, hiding in an air duct in the hallway. When he is questioned at police headquarters by Takabe and police psychiatrist Makoto Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki), the man has no idea why he killed the woman. Takabe will have several more such murders to investigate as the film goes on, but he must balance this puzzle with the increasing burden posed by his wife Fumie’s (Anna Nakagawa) mental deterioration. As other “x” cases come to the fore, we and Takabe slowly discover what links them together: a young amnesiac who is soon identified as Kunio Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), a medical school dropout whose disheveled home reveals shelves of books about psychiatry, psychosis, and works about and by Franz Mesmer, a German physician who developed the idea of animal magnetism, or in the term used in the film, hypnosis, to influence behavior. As with most detective-centered stories, Takabe is no ordinary cop. Mamiya entices him with an accurate assessment of the detective’s torment. It is Mamiya’s conviction that most people don’t know themselves, the many selves hidden under the surface, the duality of their generous and vicious impulses. He considers Takabe extraordinary, like himself, for recognizing the split in himself. Kurosawa’s camerawork is beyond good. He scouted locations in and around Tokyo that reek of decay, giving us a fair approximation of a haunted house in the penultimate scene where the final showdown between Takabe and Mamiya takes place. He combines handheld work with static long shots of great beauty and atmosphere. He knows how to create tension by considering the images outside the frame, for example, having Sakuma enter Mamiya’s cell, which has a short wall hiding the toilet area in which Mamiya is standing. We don’t see the prisoner, but we know what he’s capable of, and the fear of actually looking at him infuses this scene powerfully. Indeed, Mamiya is rather like a filmmaker, bringing us under his spell, finding our triggers, and conjuring images through exposition and suggestion. With CURE, Kurosawa has created a powerhouse of psychological horror. (1997, 111 min, DCP Digital - New Restoration) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Lauren Hadaway’s THE NOVICE (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center - See Venue website for showtimes
I have never been convinced that competition was all that healthy—particularly in athletics—and it seems as though experienced sound editor and first-time feature director Lauren Hadaway agrees. She draws on her experiences as a competitive rower at Southern Methodist University in Texas to tell the story of Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman), a first-year student and novice on the rowing team who, when an opportunity arises for the novices, becomes obsessed with making the Varsity 1 team in her first year. We notice Alex’s tremendous amount of energy from the start, as we see her running to her first novice meeting after being the last person to finish an exam in her physics class. She fumbles like the other novices at the rowing machine, but soon gets into her rhythm. She isn’t the natural athlete that her teammate Jamie (Amy Forsyth) is, but she works incredibly hard. The heavy breathing, the mechanical drone of the rowing machines, the sweat-soaked exhaustion of both young women when they flop together on the floor after practice envelop the viewer in this painfully focused activity. Hadaway reveals Alex’s psychological dysfunction gradually. When she finds out she has made the varsity team, which is short of members, because another woman turned it down, her stricken face and self-punishment are unnerving. Her drive to be the best, to conquer difficult obstacles, is the kind of thing our society rewards, and woe betide those who admit to weakness or fail to live up to expectations—Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and tennis star Naomi Osaka learned that lesson when they chose mental health over their fans’ reflected glory. Cinematographer Todd Martin creates an inky, watery world that mirrors the darkness in Alex, and Hadaway and Matthew Lessall’s lean, kinetic edit expresses Alex’s jittery instability and single-minded focus that eschews anything but her essential tasks. Fuhrman digs deep to offer a multifaceted performance that generates sympathy and a start at understanding her alienating character. (2021, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Ryusuke Hamguchi’s DRIVE MY CAR (Japan)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
How do we deal with misfortunes that arrive when we least expect them? In DRIVE MY CAR, the characters channel their emotions (or lack thereof) into their art, their tools, and their environments. The film follows Yūsuke Kafuku, a theater director who is known for putting on multilingual productions, a concept you could spend hours discussing. For a large portion of the film, we find him traveling in his car, listening to a cassette recording of his wife reading lines for Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in preparation for a production he's going to put on. The film takes on these various layers (it's a cinematic lasagna, if you will), filled with references, different languages, and emotions that are both explosively expressed and shamefully hidden. This comes as no surprise, given that the film is an adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami, whose work is also filled with references and taboo eroticism. Hamaguchi delivers a nuanced film that should only get better with each viewing, as details and subtleties are weaved into things said or left unsaid. This makes sense—Kafuku’s multilingual production raises some interesting questions on the ways we can approach communication. Despite a language barrier, or an unwillingness to say something out loud, intentions and feelings can still seep through with a knowing glance or shy shift of the body. Often, the audience and maybe one or two characters might know the truth of the scenario, but Hamaguchi places us in an awkward position, knowing right next to the main cast. It’s hard to say what's the right way to deal with these scenarios, but delaying the inevitable impact of your feelings will only do you harm in the long run. (2021, 179 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE (Italy)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 5:45pm
Some westerns—whether traditional, Spaghetti, or revisionist—seek to ennoble the American West (or at least aspects of it, from the formidable landscapes to its various populations), while others mine the genre to more expressly suggest the futility of any so-called organized society. Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE, considered one of the superlative Spaghetti Westerns, embodies the latter, offering a stunningly beautiful—and stunningly bleak—anti-authoritarian allegory that was propelled into being by the assassinations of Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy. The plot (influenced in part by Marcello Mastroianni once remarking to Corbucci that he wanted to play a mute gunslinger because he couldn’t speak English) centers on the titular Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a quasi-vigilante who’s made a career out of slaying bounty hunters—but only if they shoot first. He’s called Silence because of an injury sustained after his parents’ murder, a harrowing scene shown in flashback. Silence is drawn into a revenge plot by two women, the mother of a young boy killed by one bounty hunter and the wife of a man killed by another, the notorious Loco (Klaus Kinski). At the same time, a venerable soldier (Frank Wolff) is made sheriff of the surrounding region by the governor, who wants to imbue order amongst the treacherous bounty hunters and their starving prey, criminals whom Corbucci implies are either innocent or else driven to crime out of desperation. Pauline (Vonetta McGee), one of the women who solicits Silence’s help, is herself preyed upon by a local banker, a crucial figure in the mysterious renegade’s origins. She wants Silence to kill Loco; the banker wants Loco to kill Silence; Loco and his gang conspire to bait the fugitives hiding out in the snowy expanse so that they may kill them and collect the rewards; and the sheriff wants order for all. As this is happening, Silence and Pauline fall in love, adding a tender foil to the otherwise brutal affair. It’s interesting that the bounty hunters are portrayed here as the bad guys, a revisionist aspect of the film that serves Corbucci’s intentions in creating a parable about the assassinations of key political figures, whom it could be said are like the film’s unjustly pursued and often extrajudicially punished “criminals.” The snow-laden Utah settings (in the days leading up to the Great Blizzard of 1899) are atypical for a western, but they finely evoke the purity of some characters’ roughhewn idealism and the stinging chill of capitalism, which spurs people to commit murder for financial gain. Shot by Silvano Ippoliti, THE GREAT SILENCE retains some key traits of the Spaghetti Western style, though the severe settings (filmed in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains) and solemn tone refine its coarser edges. The cast is superb, from Trintignant’s thoughtful silence to Kinski’s unnerving waggishness to McGee’s skill in carrying scenes wherein she’s the only one speaking. Also of note is Corbucci’s subversiveness in portraying an interracial relationship between Silence and Pauline; race isn’t at the forefront of the plot but again complements Corbucci’s political objective. Finally, Ennio Morricone’s dauntless score aids in conveying Corbucci’s disenchantment with the civic landscape and his reverence toward the physical one. Screening as part of the Siskel’s Let It Snow series. (1968, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Kathleen Sachs]
Douglas Sirk's ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 5:45pm
Though it was intended by Universal to be a Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman vehicle—building upon their popularity in MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, rather on than Sirk's popularity as a director—ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS is every bit as personal as its predecessor, even if only because of Sirk's hefty allowance (both artistically and economically). Wyman plays the pussyfooting Cary Scott, a recent widow in a tight-knit, high-strung, upper-class American town. She falls in love with her gardener (Hudson), and her children object and buy her a television to replace him. It's a film about people making things difficult for themselves and others because they have nothing more pressing to attend to. They impose tragedy on themselves as a matter of course, but Sirk is sympathetic. For all the stunning grandeur of his heavily saturated colors and Superscope compositions, Sirk never lets his characters become washed out, nor does he treat them as secondary to his visual style. His sympathies save films like ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS from their own absurdities, and the more ridiculous his storylines and intricate visual compositions become (take note of the way he frames characters within things like window frames and television sets), the more beautiful his films seem. Screening as part of the Siskel’s Let It Snow series. (1955, 89 min, 35mm) [Julian Antos]
David Lean’s DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (Italy/UK/USA)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 3:45pm
What better way to ring in the merriest time of year than with a film set amidst the Russian Revolution? All kidding aside, the most pleasant parts of David Lean’s DOCTOR ZHIVAGO are the quiet moments he manages to find between the terror. The film follows Yuri Zhivago as he goes from medical student to husband and father, and so on. His morality and beliefs are tested time and time again as he sees his country transform around him; he's stuck in the middle and uninterested in committing to either side. Despite his upbringing in a wealthy adoptive family, he can understand the feelings of the Bolsheviks. Zhivago is also an upstanding man of his community with an unparalleled ability to empathize, though our main character is not without foibles. He finds himself tip-toeing between his devoted, upper-class wife and the woman he continually runs into, perhaps by fate. What drives someone to gamble away an idyllic life? Perhaps it's the war around him that pushes him to act on his impulses, or maybe he just gets bored. Lean successfully guides us through ZHIVAGO's epic, roller-coaster arc, and it is no doubt a beautiful sight to behold. My only complaint is that Zhivago, who's also a renowned poet, doesn’t share much of his work, and I am a sucker for Russians whispering poetry over quiet scenes of nature (thank you, Mr. Tarkovsky). The runtime may seem daunting, but there's a nicely placed intermission. It's the perfect film for a snowy winter day, if it were to snow this December. Screening as part of the Siskel’s Let It Snow series. (1965, 197 mins, 35mm) [Drew Van Weelden]
Luchino Visconti’s WHITE NIGHTS (Italy)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Sunday, 1:30pm
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella White Nights has spawned at least three great movies: James Gray’s TWO LOVERS (2008), Robert Bresson’s FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER (1971), and Luchino Visconti’s eponymous 1957 adaptation. (I can’t speak for the Iranian feature nor the five Indian films it inspired.) The reason it’s been adapted so frequently probably has to do with the fact that it’s the most concentrated of Dostoevsky’s major works, taking place over just a few days and containing relatively few characters. That it also concerns one of the most cinematic of subjects—unrequited love—makes it a wellspring for audio-visual splendor. Of course, White Nights wouldn’t be a Dostoevsky story without despair, and this dark undercurrent gives the tale a tonal complexity that filmmakers can translate to screen simply by preserving the central dramatic conflict. The hero is a benign variation on Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, a lonely urbanite longing for human connection. He finds it in the form of a young woman who’s desperate for the return of her lover, who’s been gone for a year. These two characters meet randomly and become friends, and just as the isolated hero blossoms out of love for the woman, the lost paramour reappears. The story exemplifies the axiom that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, narrativizing the brief spell during which these two sad people find solace in each other. In his adaptation, Visconti taps into the story’s romanticism, employing an opulent style that builds upon that of his previous film, SENSO (1954), and which anticipates his baroque masterpieces of the 1960s and 70s. “Abandoning his usual habit of shooting on location, [Visconti] filmed the entire project in a studio,” Geoffrey Nowell-Smith wrote for the Criterion Collection in 2005. “To achieve the tight geographical focus needed, the director and his crew had one large set and various smaller ones constructed, roughly modeled on the Tuscan city of Livorno... Whereas in SENSO the settings were real but managed accidentally to look artificial, here the setting is both artificial and clearly intended to be seen as such. This is partly due to the photography and lighting, which produce an unexpectedly dreamy look, with unusually graduated contrasts reminiscent of the poetic realism of Marcel Carné. But it is also due to the disjunctive presentation of the characters in relation to their surroundings.” The gorgeous black-and-white photography, by the way, is by the great Giuseppe Rotunno, who would go on to shoot Visconti’s THE LEOPARD, as well as numerous Fellini titles, ALL THAT JAZZ, and Robert Altman’s POPEYE. Screening as part of the Siskel’s Let It Snow series. (1957, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's WINTER SLEEP (Turkey)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm
Nuri Bilge Ceylan follows up his 2011 masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA with this impressive companion piece, a Chekhovian chamber drama that focuses on dialogue-driven interior scenes as much as the earlier movie did on its majestically filmed journey through the barren Turkish landscape at night. The central figure here is Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a retired, middle-aged actor who runs a hotel in rural Anatolia with his pretty young wife, Nihal (Melisa Sözen), and his combative, recently divorced sister, Necla (Demet Akbag). The verbal sparring which Aydin frequently engages with both women serves to mask the disappointment he feels with himself over his inability to start his long-cherished dream project of writing a non-fiction account of the history of the Turkish theater. Some critics complained that the Jane Campion-led Cannes jury was only recognizing the longest film and not the best by bestowing Ceylan with the Palme d'Or, but these complaints do a disservice to his achievement. WINTER SLEEP does indeed require each one of its three hours and 16 minutes in order to fully illustrate Aydin's predicament in both its tragedy and ridiculousness (the film is at times surprisingly funny), and no contemporary director has a better compositional eye than Ceylan, who was a professional photographer before he turned to filmmaking. Perhaps not as formally perfect as ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA, this is nonetheless a spellbinding experience—masterfully written, directed and performed. Screening as part of the Siskel’s Let It Snow series. (2014, 196 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
Wes Anderson’s THE FRENCH DISPATCH (US)
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes
Wes Anderson's intricate compositional sensibility is on full display in THE FRENCH DISPATCH, his 10th feature film and the first to focus on the practice of journalism. Anderson lends his idiosyncratic style to a new fixation, meticulously crafting each moment as he explores another way of life. His style has lost luster for some audiences, yet this compendium of stories from a newspaper's single issue—told through three long vignettes and a travelogue—cements Anderson's storytelling as more than whimsy, his style more than schtick. His films are more than just dollhouse frames slammed together, despite protestations from detractors. His curiosity fills each scene here; one senses his love and admiration for journalism, a profession widely seen as on the brink of death. The writer-director brings together another giant cast, with Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Benicio del Toro, and Léa Seydoux standing out; the latter two appear in the most effective of the vignettes, "The Concrete Masterpiece." Following an artist prisoner, his guard, and his muse, the mini-narrative finds meaning in the ethereality of art. It finds del Toro, Seydoux, and Adrien Brody in top form. Anderson wants to amaze, educate, intrigue, and sift through an abundance of information, characters, plots, and emotions—the film is sure to reward on third, fourth, and fifth viewings. It's a treat to spend time with an artist like Anderson, a filmmaker unperturbed by box office showings and corporate intellectual properties, even though he's working with a $25 million budget and a never-ending procession of movie stars. He still finds catharsis, political meaning, and myriad themes, creating something that deepens with time, analysis, and conversation. (2021, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Frank]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
Also Screening
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Sidney Lumet’s 1974 film MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (128 min, 35mm) screens on Monday at 7:45pm as part of the Siskel’s Let It Snow series. More info here.
⚫ South Side Home Movie Project
“Home Movies for the Holidays: A Pop-Up Installation,” which includes beloved holiday home movies from the South Side Home Movie Project Archive and is sound-tracked with new scores from DJ Tess and Rob McKay, is available to view from the sidewalk outside the Arts Incubator (301 E. Garfield Blvd.) through January 2. More info here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Radu Jude’s UPPERCASE PRINT (Romania)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
UPPERCASE PRINT is an adaptation of a “documentary play” by Romanian theater director Gianina Cărbunariu, but it’s hardly filmed theater. Radu Jude, one of the most inventive filmmakers working today, doesn’t present a production of the play or even a filmic re-staging of it; rather, the movie represents a dialogue between Cărbunariu’s art and Jude’s—and, by extension, between theater and cinema. Much of the film transpires on a soundstage, where actors deliver passages from the production, which recounts an episode of Romanian history from the early 1980s. Jude intersperses these passages with archival footage of things that appeared on Romanian TV around this time, and the material alternately provides context for and ironic counterpoint to the stage show, resulting in a rich, tonally complex montage. The narrative centers on Mugur Călinescu, then a high school student in the city of Botoşani who took to the streets to express discontent about food shortages, the lack of free labor unions, and the totalitarian government’s suppression of civil liberties. Little did Călinescu know that as soon as he started writing his protest statements on public buildings, the state secret police opened a file on his activities and began an intricate manhunt to discover who he was. Much of Cărbunariu’s play derives from secret police files and official testimonies; in a Brechtian spirit (which also animated Jude’s 2018 film I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS), the material isn’t performed so much as recited, spotlighting the inherent dramatic power of political rhetoric. In this context, the TV footage takes on a rhetorical quality as well—programs that might seem innocuous otherwise (like scenes of adults singing to children) register as metaphors for the Ceaușescu regime’s efforts to distract or lull the restless population, while news reports of widespread unrest in Soviet Bloc countries seem to grow directly out of Călinescu’s protests. One reason why Jude is so valuable to contemporary cinema is that he uses filmmaking to confront dark aspects of his country’s history that many of his fellow Romanians would prefer to forget. More importantly, he recognizes that history repeats itself—his movies are ultimately warnings for the present. Late in UPPERCASE PRINT, Jude incorporates an archival news broadcast about the rise of neo-Nazi groups across western Europe. He just as easily could have included a contemporary report on the Proud Boys or any number of 21st-century blackshirt organizations. The threat of totalitarianism isn’t going away, which makes this film as necessary as it is stirring and intellectually provocative. (2020, 128 min) [Ben Sachs]
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY (Japan)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
HAPPY HOUR, the intimate epic that established Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's international reputation, achieves a novelistic density through the uncommonly detailed way it plumbs the emotional lives of its quartet of lead characters. WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY, the first of two 2021 releases by the director (followed by DRIVE MY CAR), resembles a short-story collection in how it depicts three narratively unrelated vignettes that are formally separated by their own chapter headings and credit sequences. Hamaguchi proves to be equally adept at the short-film format as he was with a 5-hour-plus run time: the mini romantic dramas that comprise WHEEL are gratifying to watch as self-contained episodes, but when one contemplates how they might be linked on a thematic level, the entire project attains a profound resonance (it wasn't until the morning after my first viewing that I realized the magnitude of Hamaguchi's deceptively modest approach). The first section, “Magic (Or Something Less Assuring),” begins with an extended Rohmerian dialogue between two female friends, one of whom regales the other about a "magical" date with a man she has fallen in love with, unaware that he is also her friend's ex-lover. It ends with a chance encounter between all three characters, punctuated by a brief but daring fantasy sequence. The title of the second section, "Door Wide Open," refers to a literature professor's policy of avoiding scandal by always keeping his office door open when meeting with students. One day he receives an unexpected visitor, a woman who is attempting to ensnare him in a trap. Or is she? The final section, "Once Again," is the best: two women who haven't seen each other in 20 years meet providentially on a train-station escalator before spending the day together and eventually realizing that neither is whom the other had thought. Hamaguchi himself has said that "coincidence and imagination" are the movie's main themes and, indeed, as the title indicates, each of the stories involves the intersection of the free will of the individual and the fickle nature of fate. But WHEEL is also about the inexorable pull of the past and how the characters' regrets over roads not taken have keenly shaped who they are. This latter aspect is the key to understanding how a film so charming on the surface can also contain such a melancholy undertow and how characters with only a small amount of screen time can seem so fascinatingly complex and believable. Hamaguchi shows the psychological underpinnings of everyday human behavior in a manner rarely seen in the movies. He knows how to pierce your heart. (2021, 121 min) [Michael Glover Smith]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Also Screening/Streaming
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Check hold-over titles here.
⚫ South Side Home Movie Project
“Home Movies for the Holidays: A Pop-Up Installation,” which includes beloved holiday home movies from the South Side Home Movie Project Archive, is available to stream virtually for free through January 2. The first of two programs, “Home Movies for the Holidays Mix #1” by DJ Tess, is available to view through December 17, after which “Home Movies for the Holidays Mix #2” by Rob McKay will be available through January 2. More info here.
CINE-LIST: December 24 - December 30, 2021
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Julian Antos, John Dickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Anne Orchier, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden