Happy New Year!
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 the 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
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest film, MEMORIA (2021, 136 min, DCP Projection), is playing this week at AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois St.). Due to Neon’s unusual distribution plan for the film, we do not yet have a review on file; however, we think this run is worth mentioning here, and we plan to cover the film when it plays again in Chicago in spring 2022.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (Germany)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was not yet 28 when he released the film adaptation of THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT, yet he had already written and directed a dozen features. This set of factors helps explain why the movie feels at once youthful and mature. On the one hand, PETRA VON KANT (which Fassbinder originally staged as a play in 1971) exudes a brash defiance of conformism; it’s a profoundly angry work about how we internalize the oppressive order of capitalist society and replicate it in our personal affairs. On the other hand, the film reflects the confidence of a master artist: the eloquent camera movements, bold visual compositions, and astute manipulation of melodramatic conventions combine to make the cynical message feel like the stuff of earned wisdom. The action takes place exclusively in the apartment of the titular fashion designer (played by Margin Carstensen) and charts the rise and fall of her romance with a younger model, Karin (Fassbinder’s supreme muse Hanna Schygulla). The narcissistic Petra thinks she’s flaunting convention with her lesbian affair, and in the tradition of classical tragedy, her pride signals a fall—blinded by her infatuation with the younger, flightier Karin, Petra fails to recognize that her beloved does not love her back. Fassbinder embraced melodrama, in part, because he saw in the highly theatrical form a means of critiquing the unnatural conventions of society at large, in this case competition, oneupmanship, and exploitation. (Fassbinder took flak for showing that these conventions could be replicated even in a historically marginalized community, yet in hindsight, this decision underscores the universality of his concerns.) Yet he also loved melodrama for its ability to stir viewers’ emotions, and indeed, PETRA VON KANT is a heartbreaking experience in spite of (or perhaps because of) its cynicism. The film may be as crammed with movie references—the all-female cast recalls George Cukor’s THE WOMEN (1939), the central relationship recalls Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), and the sinuous tracking shots and ostentatious mise-en-scène evokes the work of Josef von Sternberg—but the force of Fassbinder’s anger cuts through the distancing devices. Screening as part of 50/50, the Siskel’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (1972, 124 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Pedro Almodóvar’s WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (Spain)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 7pm
WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN was Pedro Almodóvar’s break-out hit, the film that introduced him to a wider audience and secured widespread distribution of his work for the rest of his career. It isn’t as provocative as the Almodóvar films that immediately preceded it (WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?, MATADOR, LAW OF DESIRE), yet it reflects a breathtaking fluency in all aspects of cinematic art that hadn’t been achieved to such a degree in his work until then. WOMEN is gorgeously designed; the costumes, decors, and camera movements are not only impressive on their own, they interact sumptuously. Favoring bold colors and ostentatious bric-a-brac, Almodóvar creates something like a live-action cartoon or pop art painting. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the mise-en-scene, in fact, that the rapidly escalating plot developments can seem like a blur on a first (or even a second) viewing. The tone oscillates between melodrama and farce, charting a few calamitous days in the life of a frustrated actress (Almodóvar’s first muse, Carmen Maura) who can’t get in touch with her married lover, whom she suspects is going to leave her. Almodóvar shows great sympathy towards his characters’ desires and vulnerabilities while making light of hard drug use, terrorism, and the mentally ill, and the galvanic mixtures of good and bad taste match the visual design splendidly. If the film doesn’t add up to more than the sum of its parts, that may be because Almodóvar hadn’t yet developed the melancholy undertones that would enrich his work from THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET on. The mastery may be superficial here, but it’s still mastery. Screening as part of the Siskel’s ¡PEDRO! series. (1988, 89 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Dario Argento’s TRAUMA (Italy)
Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7:15pm
No one would hear the name Dario Argento and immediately think ‘Minneapolis.’ It’s unlikely that the Minnesota city would even crack a person’s top 10 guesses as to where in the U.S. he’d deign to place one of his gory fictions, so at odds are his usual highly-stylized settings and the gray doldrums of the American Midwest. Argento’s first and only feature-length film set and shot in the U.S. (he’d previously worked on a two-part horror anthology with George Romero, TWO EVIL EYES, which was shot in Pittsburgh), TRAUMA integrates the fundamentally nondescript nature of the locale with the sensationalist aspects of gialli. Argento’s daughter, Asia, stars as Aura, the teenage daughter of Romanian immigrants; it’s evident from the opening scenes that she struggles with addiction and mental health issues after a young man coaxes her down from the ledge of a bridge. Soon after, her medium parents (Piper Laurie plays her mother) are murdered by a killer whom the local news station dubs the Headhunter, as he decapitates his victims and takes off with their heads. Aura joins forces with the young man who’d helped her in the beginning, David (Christopher Rydell), to discover who murdered her parents. What starts out as a platonic relationship eventually turns romantic; the inadvisable lovebirds make sense of the killings by figuring out the connection between the victims, all former staff members at the same hospital. It’s also revealed that Aura suffers from anorexia, a condition treated by a psychiatrist somehow involved in the convoluted mystery. What TRAUMA lacks in narrative and tonal consistency it makes up for in gory set pieces (designed by Tom Savini)—Argento’s litany here being the repeated decapitation of the Headhunter’s victims, mostly by a homemade, garrotte-like handsaw, though in one inspired sequence a doctor played by Brad Dourif is beheaded by an elevator—and a disquieting ambience that combines the sensationalism of pulp and the machinations of noir with hints of preternatural intrigue. The latter is conveyed in a seance scene toward the beginning, just one of several Argento calling cards on display. Others include his preoccupation with Freudian psychology; a plot point centered on a character misremembering a pivotal moment; and several scenes shot from the perspective of the killer, whose identity, in keeping with many of Argento’s films, is not easily surmised. I doubt many would consider this his best (in fact, it’s often ranked among the worst of his 17 features), but there’s something to the way Argento, who had a part in devising and scripting the story, culls his thematic and aesthetic fixations into a personal statement on the titular phenomenon. Argento’s stepdaughter, Anna, who’s seen dancing on a balcony while the end credits roll and who sadly died in a car accident the following year, struggled with anorexia, and this experience influenced the story. His keenness for repetition, something I’ve long considered a weakness in his films, achieves significance in the context of trauma, as do his fascination with Freudian psychoanalysis (consider Freud’s comparison of grief to an open wound) and the tendency of his characters to misremember traumatic events. In light of the revelation at the end, the repetition compulsion of the killer assumes a similar poignancy—what is such violence if not a response to trauma? The involvement of Argento’s then 17-year-old daughter in such a violent film is eyebrow-raising, especially since she’s featured topless at one point. Still, it’s generally more nuanced than the simplicity of its title lets on. Note: The Music Box is screening a recent restoration of TRAUMA, which is more complete than versions previously available on home video. Screening as part of January Giallo 2022, presented by Cinematic Void and Music Box of Horrors. (1993, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Kathleen Sachs]
Steven Spielberg’s WEST SIDE STORY (US/Musical)
Various multiplexes (AMC, Regal, et al.) – See Venue websites for showtimes
It’s hard to imagine what cinema would be like without remakes. From the lowliest programmers to the most bizarre arthouse films, no producer, director, or film star seems immune from thinking, “I wonder what I could do with that.” But taking on a remake of a film as beloved and revered as Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ WEST SIDE STORY (1961) is another matter. Despite its flaws—an unconvincing Tony, an Anglo Maria, stagebound scenes and dances, dubbed singing—the world embraces that version and quivered in apprehension when Steven Spielberg announced his intentions to give it another go. I was concerned about what would happen to Jerome Robbins’ magnificent choreography and use of space, and whether Spielberg’s patented emotional manipulation would somehow trivialize the genuine emotional pull of the original. At the same time, the moment seemed right to bring this story of tribal division and violence to the screen. I am happy to report that this new WEST SIDE STORY more than justifies its existence. The film blends elements of the original, such as Robbins’ choreography for Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) at the school dance, with more realistic actions. Instead of the world falling away in a white haze as the teenagers fall in love, Spielberg stages this moment behind some bleachers. Yet, he doesn’t entirely abandon the poetry of Robert Wise’s mise-en-scène. For example, the neighborhood that is the setting for this tragedy is haphazardly crumbling under the wrecking ball of “urban renewal,” rather than being efficiently clear cut for new high-rise apartments and (ironically) today’s artistic mecca, Lincoln Center. He also hangs the back courtyard of Maria’s apartment building with laundry that never comes in to be folded. Justin Peck, resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet, largely coordinates his style with Robbins’, but finds a way to open up the dances to incorporate the community and the everyday lives of the characters—a big plus for “America,” though the dance still does not escape its clichéd construction. His new dance for “Cool” isn’t as evocative for me as Robbins’ crablike scream of shock from the Jets following Riff’s death because the sequence was moved back to its original spot before the rumble. Nonetheless, the mixture of playful sparring between Tony and Riff (a magnetic Mike Faist) as they vie for the handgun Riff has just purchased (a great new scene) and the danger of the rotting dock on which they dance provides a satisfying foreshadowing of death. The biggest change in this WEST SIDE STORY is the script by Tony Kushner. The film was so frontloaded with dialogue in both English and Spanish that I grew impatient to hear Leonard Bernstein’s magnificent score, which benefits from new orchestrations and singing voices that can handle its expert level of difficulty. That said, the intelligence of Kushner’s dialogue and where he locates each scene drive home the point that the outmoded gang culture represented by the Jets and the Sharks was bound to give way to the toxic nationalism that is currently tearing our country apart. In a stroke of genius, it is left to Rita Moreno, who has moved from her portrayal of a youthful Anita to the shopkeeper Valentina, to plead for “a new way of living” and “a way of forgiving” in her rendition of “Somewhere” that is as timely as ever. Her life experience and understanding of this sad story grace the film with a welcome depth that I found extremely moving. If you have qualms, put them aside and immerse yourself in the pain and glory of this new WEST SIDE STORY. (2021, 156 min, DCP Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
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]
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
Joel Coen’s 2021 film THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (105 min, DCP Digital) begins a two-week run; see Venue website for showtimes. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Joel Coen’s 2021 film THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (105 min, DCP Digital) begins this week; see Venue website for showtimes. 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 Sunday. More info here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Ryusuke Hamguchi’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
⚫ Media Burn Archive
On Thursday at 6pm, as part of Media Burn’s “Virtual Talks with Video Activists” series and presented in cooperation with BAVC Media, early video pioneers Howard Gutstadt and Ben Levine will participate in a virtual screening and discussion around their work with the Peoples Video Theater and Survival Arts Media collectives. There will also be a discussion with Morgan Morel, preservation manager for BAVC Media. The event is free; more info here.
⚫ 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 Sunday. More info here.
🎞️ ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
A. Edward Sutherland’s EVERY DAY’S A HOLIDAY (US)
As another New Year’s Eve rolls around with many of us foregoing the party scene, I’d like to suggest you welcome in 2022 with the Divine Miss M—that is, the original sex diva, Mae West. West was a talented original who moved from writing and performing in ribald plays on the Great White Way to writing and performing in ribald films in Hollywood under contract to Paramount. She helped put Cary Grant on the map by appearing with him in some of his earliest films and became the highest-paid woman in the United States by 1935. Nonetheless, her patented double entendres and sexually free persona hit the brick wall of the Production Code. Her last film for Paramount, EVERY DAY’S A HOLIDAY, is relatively tame by West’s previous standards, but the film still sparkles with her sequined gowns, self-assured presence, and knowing send-up of diva culture that she penned as the film’s screenwriter. The film opens on Dec. 31, 1899, a prime time for criminals to score big off drunken revelers. Thief and huckster Peaches O’Day (West) dodges a warrant for her arrest for selling the Brooklyn Bridge to a naïve immigrant (Herman Bing) with the help of sympathetic Police Capt. McCarey (Edmund Lowe). She reinvents herself as Mlle. Fifi, becomes the toast of Broadway, and fouls up the mayoral campaign of corrupt Police Chief John Quade (Lloyd Nolan). The first half of the film is a bit subdued, but when Mlle. Fifi appears, EVERY DAY’S A HOLIDAY becomes classic Mae West. West has a field day playing the temperamental French chanteuse whose beleaguered beaus try to roll with the potent punches she throws. Comic actors Charles Winninger, Charles Butterworth, and Walter Catlett make great foils for West. I particularly like Butterworth as one of Peaches’ clueless suitors, especially in a scene where he serves as a live dummy she traces around to cut a hole in a shop window and filch an ermine coat and some gowns. A rousing, if somewhat incoherent finale caps this spirited comedy. (1937, 80 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Andrzej Żuławski’s L’AMOUR BRAQUE (France)
Available to stream on MUBI (subscription required)
L’AMOUR BRAQUE is a singular experience. That does not mean it’s a pleasant one. Andrzej Żuławski fills the movie with violence, going out of his way to emphasize its ugliness and randomness. The Polish director explains in the credits that L'AMOUR BRAQUE is his homage to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot; his version brings an anarchic, punk spirit to the theme of a holy fool trapped in dangerous circumstances. (As one character says, “No more Beatles, just Attila and the Destroyers! No future!") It begins with a bank robbery whose participants are so excited they stumble into each other. Léon (Sebastian Huster) meets the robbers on a train after smuggling himself out of his native Hungary. He becomes friends with Micky (Tcheky Karyo), the group's leader, and they both become attracted to Marie (Sophie Marceau), a woman coiffed to resemble Louise Brooks. They try to free her from a life of bored exploitation, but Léon is inevitably drawn towards committing acts of violence he doesn’t fully understand. A plot summary can’t do justice to this film, which plays as though it were written, directed, and edited during a massive meth binge. Żuławski wrote the script with experimental musician Etienne Roda-Gil, and much of L'AMOUR BRAQUE suggests its full meaning is impossible to translate. POSSESSION (1981) translated many of Żuławski's preoccupations—exile from communist Eastern Europe, the thin line between extreme romantic passion and violence—into a horror film accessible enough to find a cult audience. L’AMOUR BRAQUE is a much rougher watch, as it's even less concerned with respecting the boundaries between high and low culture (for instance, a scene from Chekhov's Seagull gets nestled next to vomiting and a shootout) L’AMOUR BRAQUE tramples all over ideas of narrative coherence and good taste, taking the Parisian cinéma du look back towards the radical invention of late-‘60s Makavajev and Godard. (1985, 104 min) [Steve Erickson]
CINE-LIST: December 31, 2021 - January 6, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // John Dickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden