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.
NOTE: The Music Box Theatre and other area theaters that had been running physical screenings have suspended them for the time being due to new city restrictions.
CINE-FILE SELECTS: DAMNATION
In partnership with film distributor Arbelos, Cine-File is presenting the exclusive Chicago virtual screening of Béla Tarr’s 1988 film DAMNATION, in a stunning new digital restoration. The film is available here for two weeks; rental is $10, with half the proceeds going to Cine-File (funds will be used for general expenses, future programming, and to provide honoraria to our contributors).
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Béla Tarr’s DAMNATION (Hungary)
Available to rent here
With DAMNATION, his fifth theatrical feature, Béla Tarr proved himself to be the successor to master directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky, advancing a style of intricately blocked long takes and ravishing-looking scenes of industrial decay. The film specifically evokes Antonioni in its towering visual compositions and thematic focus on the de-spiritualized nature of modern life; it recalls Tarkovsky in its fetishistic obsessions with rain, mist, stray dogs, and crumbling buildings. Yet DAMNATION never feels derivative—Tarr filters his influences through a distinctive sensibility informed by black humor, film noir, and the world of small-town Hungary in the final days of Communism. The resulting style is hypnotic, inspiring such fascination with the settings and despairing mood that the minimal plot comes off as secondary. The story isn’t bad, though; it’s essentially a drawn-out Hungarian joke. A drunken layabout named Karrer (Miklós Székely B.) falls head over heels with the married woman (Vali Kerekes) who sings at his town’s only bar. When a local criminal offers Karrer a job transporting contraband from across the country, Karrer extends the offer to the singer’s husband (who’s already suspicious of Karrer’s behavior towards his wife) in order to get the guy out of town for a few days. In spite of the heavy air of defeat, things actually play out in Karrer’s favor for a while. But the film lives up to its aesthetic (not to mention its title) and the drunk arrives at his doom in grand fashion. It’s a critical cliché to describe DAMNATION as a decisive break from Tarr’s first four features, but those early achievements inform the film in significant ways. The documentary-style dramas FAMILY NEST (1977), THE OUTSIDER (1981), and THE PREFAB PEOPLE (1982) introduced the director’s interests in economic desperation and broken relationships, which he’d take to nearly abstract extremes here, while his theatrical ALMANAC OF FALL (1984)—notable for being Tarr’s only theatrical feature shot in color—revealed his talent for making very slow camera movements seem highly engrossing. Still, the newfound literary sensibility of DAMNATION marks a distinct change in Tarr’s filmmaking; this progression can be likely attributed to novelist László Krasznahorkai, who collaborated with Tarr on the script and would go on to co-write all his features after this. (Two of those features, SATANTANGO [1994] and WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES [2000], are adaptations of Krasznahorkai novels.) The dialogue, when it occurs, is rich and philosophical in the tradition of William Faulkner, and the passages of intense concentration on mundane activity evoke the kind of burrowing-in to life one finds more often in novels than in films. Tarr shares the “film by” credit for DAMNATION not only with Krasznahorkai, but with some other important collaborators: cinematographer Gábor Medvigy, editor Ágnes Hranitzky (also Tarr’s wife, who would co-direct some of his subsequent features), and composer Mihály Vig. It follows that an atmosphere so dense would be the work of multiple individuals. (1988, 120 min) [Ben Sachs]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Jindřich Polák’s IKARIE XB 1 (Czech Republic)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Unmistakably an influence on the consequently influential—and more familiar—films of the late 60s and 70s (namely 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), IKARIE XB 1 is a stunning landmark in the science-fiction genre. Loosely based on a book by Solaris author Stanisław Lem, this is a restored version; the film was previously widely known through a botched international reedit. Set aboard a spacecraft, IKARIE XB 1 cold-opens with a scene of concern over the well-being of panicked shipmate, Michael (Otto Lackovič), who eventually screams ominously, “The earth is gone; the earth never existed.” The film then flashes back to the early days of the voyage, aboard the “space town,” Ikarie XB 1. The year is 2163 and forty travelers are on a fifteen-year mission to discover life on other planets. Though there are some personal concerns about the journey, the residents of Ikarie XB 1 are fairly comfortable: they’re working out, finding romance, and teasing each other about the sentimental objects from Earth they took with them, including an “antique” robot named Patrick. Things take a darker turn when their on-board fun is interrupted by the discovery of a spacecraft; they learn it is from the 1980s and filled with dead bodies and dangerous weapons. As they continue to move further away from Earth, they must face the perils and wonders of traveling into the unknown. Director Jindřich Polák uses smooth, steady camera movements to take the audience throughout the immense ship, allowing for exploration of the graphic space alight with striking circular and linear shapes. Shot in black and white, the imaginative design, both visually and in the use of sound, is at once unembellished and surreal—this is especially evident in the film’s impressive opening credit sequence. While the hairstyles perhaps give the production away, IKARIE XB 1 rarely feels like a markedly 60s science-fiction film; Patrick, in his clunky Lost in Space robotic-style, is purposefully placed to distinguish between “ancient” ideas of technology with this more advanced, sleeker design. It is, however, a distinctly Cold War science-fiction, coming out of the Eastern Bloc. As with the most affective films of the genre, IKARIE XB 1 focuses not only on conceptions of the far future, but on anxieties about the present and what’s looming on the horizon; as Commander Abayev (Zdeněk Štěphánek) profoundly notes after finding the ship from the 1980s in 2163, “We’ve discovered the 20th century.” (1963, 81 min) [Megan Fariello]
Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, and Anonymous’ 76 DAYS (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
It has been a little more than a year since the first case of COVID-19 was recorded, in Wuhan, China. We didn’t know then what it meant, but slowly we came to understand that an apocalypse was building, moving inexorably toward us like the nuclear fallout coming to claim the last people on earth in Stanley Kramer’s ON THE BEACH (1959). Even now, pandemic fatigue, magical thinking, and personal entitlement have many ignoring the danger to themselves—and especially to others—as they eat, drink, and make merry. It is these people who should be made to watch 76 DAYS, an incredible record of this modern plague from the first day of Wuhan’s lockdown in January to the lifting of restrictions 76 days later. Filming mainly inside four Wuhan hospitals, Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, and an anonymous third director show what actual pandemic fatigue looks like. Healthcare providers work past exhaustion tending to an ICU full of COVID-infected patients while swathed in layers of protective gear so all-encompassing that they must write their names on their jumpsuits just to tell each other apart. Throngs of sick people press in panic against a door trying to gain admission into one hospital on a bitterly cold night as a beleaguered nurse tries to convince them that everyone will get in eventually. Shots taken on the streets of the city reveal an eerie emptiness, broken only by ambulances and vans carrying the dead. 76 DAYS is made in the mold of Frederick Wiseman’s NEAR DEATH (1989), though it’s clear that the Chinese government may have influenced the directors to paint a brighter picture of their plague than actually existed. One couple comes into the hospital together; when the husband’s condition starts to deteriorate, their story is abandoned in favor of patients who survived. Nevertheless, the directors are careful to document the devastation, opening the film with the uncontrollable grief of a daughter whose father has died and closing with the citywide blasting of sirens at the end of the lockdown as residents mourn the dead. The bravery and dedication of the healthcare workers come through most strongly for me in one beautifully captured image of an elderly man who is being discharged placing his hand over the heart decal he received from his medical team, treasuring his reclaimed life and those who saved it. Highly recommended. (2020, 93 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Frederick Wiseman’s CITY HALL (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Frederick Wiseman has always said he makes movies about institutions, but his thematic focus is much broader than that. His films are about how institutions reflect larger social structures, what values seem to guide them, and whether they uphold our collective hopes for civilization. Wiseman’s concerns lend themselves to considerations of the zeitgeist, and indeed, many of his films capture the spirit of their times in which they were made. LAW AND ORDER (1969), which features a cameo from Richard Nixon himself, speaks to America’s reactionary response to the events of 1968; ASPEN (1991), which presents a divided city of materialistic elites and blue-collar have-nots, may be the ultimate film about the Reagan-Bush era; and the multicultural panorama IN JACKSON HEIGHTS (2015) gives dramatic form to the promise of the Obama years. Now, Wiseman gives us his Trump film, CITY HALL. Characteristically coy, it features nary a conservative onscreen; even Trump’s rhetoric gets acknowledged only indirectly. Yet the movie profoundly considers Donald Trump’s poisonous impact on American culture, from his attacks on immigrants to his heartless disregard for people in need. “We don’t have leadership coming from Washington right now,” says Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh in one of the many committee meetings we see him attend in the film, and much of CITY HALL presents a community taking steps to lead itself and set a positive example for the nation. The most memorable scenes tend to present discussions among the diverse staff of the institution, with everyone making an effort to listen to people unlike themselves and confront difficult truths. A common question emerges from these encounters: How do we make our society more equitable for historically under-represented groups such as women, immigrants, ethnic minorities, disabled veterans, and the poor? In other words, how do we empower the people Trump is encouraging Americans to hate? Perhaps we can start by electing more leaders like Walsh, who honor civic responsibility and the people they’re working for. CITY HALL is one of the few Wiseman films centered on an individual person; we see Walsh all around the title location and all over the city at large, attending charity events, meeting with Latinx youth, and lecturing at a senior center about how to avoid scam artists. In one of the film’s emotional highlights, Walsh opens up to a gathering of war veterans about his decades in recovery for alcoholism, noting he knows what it’s like to need to ask for help with your problems. The Mayor isn’t especially charismatic or eloquent, but his effort to locate common experience with others is touching. CITY HALL sustains this uplifting tone for most of its running time, which makes the tonal outliers seem all the more unsettling. One sequence that appears late in the film finds an agent from city pest control stopping by the house of a sickly, 70-ish divorcé who unexpectedly starts lamenting his life’s misfortunes. The man delivers the sort of colloquial aria one finds all over Wiseman’s films, but its inclusion is mysterious. Maybe it’s another reminder that, for all the optimism on display, there are some very big rats lurking just outside our view. (2020, 275 min) [Ben Sachs]
Gabriel Mascaro’s DIVINE LOVE (Brazil)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
I have only vague memories of Gabriel Mascaro’s first two features, AUGUST WINDS (2014) and NEON BULL (2015), though by looking up my old reviews I see that I had a low opinion of the first and a mildly positive view of the second. In contrast, I’m not sure what I think of Mascaro’s third feature, DIVINE LOVE, but I’m confident that I won’t forget it any time soon. A peculiar mix of political allegory, science-fiction, and soft-core pornography, the film looks and feels like little else; and thanks to the droning electronic score, you may find yourself hypnotized by it. The story takes place several years in the future. Brazil is now a technologically advanced, highly bureaucratized theocracy whose state religion preaches the sanctity of life, marriage, and free love. Joana (Dira Praes) is a model citizen of this new society. Working for the state records department, she processes divorce certificates from couples about to separate and uses her position to dissuade the couples from breaking up their marriages. Joana and her husband Danilo (Julio Machado) attend couples’ therapy sessions in the evenings where they praise Jesus, then take part in group sex; their lives are centered on trying to conceive a child. Mascaro presents all this in trance-inducing long takes marked by slow camera movements and lots of neon light. The actors, for their part, maintain the director’s deadpan tone with unwaveringly solemn performances, and their commitment reflects the characters’ devotion to the order of the day. One surprising aspect of the film is that the explicit sex emerges as automated and cold—but then, this makes sense, given that Mascaro’s subject is the willingness of some people to accept nearly any form of social control. (2019, 100 min) [Ben Sachs]
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI (Taiwan)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Seven years ago, a friend and I made the cold November trek to Hyde Park for what we considered an unmissable screening: Hou Hsiao Hsien’s FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI. I can’t recollect the exact quality of the print, but what remained in my mind were the hazy, glowing interior spaces wrapped in ribbons of opium, the smoke from the brothel patron’s carefully packed pipes, the opening scene's circular gaze fixing us in a quiet, placid reverie. These were all scenes I had seen before, but blown up to such height and scale, I felt I had re-entered that world anew. After being subjected to the Kino Lorber DVD of FLOWERS for years, which suppressed many of the film’s formal strengths, everything the film contained was present; and now, thanks to a luminous restoration by L'Immagine Ritrovata, we have another imperative reason to revisit this masterpiece. At last rescued from the dregs of inadequate transfers and sub-par DVD releases, the immense richness and depth of the film can be seen without waiting for the Shochiku print to makes its rounds again. Set during the Qing Dynasty, FLOWERS unfolds across planes of time and half-recollected thought as the young women of the upscale brothel (or “flower house”) seek to buy their own freedom while maintaining their clientele’s physical and emotional needs (though Hou displays only the latter onscreen). The men and women play games together and smoke; some choose to let their passions develop beyond the careful confines of the flower house, allowing jealousy to seep through the tiniest of cracks, threatening to disrupt the delicate balance within the ornate walls. Likewise, atmosphere and plot become almost as detached as the stoned patrons’ glances and gestures permeating the stillness. Scenes fade to and from black; Hou reveals moments of memory, then returns them to the dense void of time and space. Thinking back on that screening almost seven years ago today, at the beloved and sorely missed Doc Films, I’m reminded that there is an essential feeling to every film by Hou that surpasses most of what qualifies today under the hot term "slow cinema." Hou’s vision is impartial, but one he hopes we can follow along without wasting too much time deciphering. In fact, what Hou believes probably is rather simple. Not simplistic, but simple in the way one might call Ozu or Rossellini simple: plot specifics are deceptively by the books (though in Hou’s case the linear structuring becomes the thing fragmented), actors seem to emote into the tunnels of time, and moments of melodrama make minor appearances, never disturbing the harmony and texture. One might find SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON a closer cousin to this period, given that both FLOWERS and RIBBON share a common belief in light and color as the ultimate emotions. With Hou, plot specifics advance past what most filmmakers may think they need to feed their audience to get their story across, paying little attention to the obvious, trusting the viewers' intuition. In Hou’s trust, he remains as revelatory and fresh as when he began. We may not have the main theaters of Doc or the Music Box right now, but make no mistake, this is as essential a watch as it gets. (1998, 113 min) [John Dickson]
Manoel de Oliveira’s FRANCISCA (Portugal)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
At various points in FRANCISCA, the actors break the fourth wall to stop whatever they’re doing and look directly at the camera. It’s an audacious gesture, and only in part because it disrupts the film’s narrative flow. FRANCISCA takes place in the mid 19th century, and, for the most part, Manoel de Oliveira doesn’t let you forget it—the film advances a deliberately antiquated aesthetic, with declamatory line readings, tableau-like imagery, and extended passages where title cards summarize offscreen dramatic action. Such devices can feel alienating at first, but they have a way of luring you into the past setting. Oliveira doesn’t want to re-create the look of the 19th century, but rather invoke how people comprehended the world then. It’s significant that the film spends so much time on people writing and reading letters; Oliveira wants us to understand how the ubiquity of written expression shaped relationships and perceptions at this point in history. The director’s authoritative sense of the past informs everything about FRANCISCA, even those moments when the actors break the fourth wall. In Oliveira’s hands, the actors’ gazes into the camera suggest the 19th century looking out at us in the present. This experience is rare in cinema, as most historical films dramatize the present looking at the past, yet it defines almost all of Oliveira’s work. To watch a film like FRANCISCA is to stand in dialogue with history, not passively absorb it. The movie recounts a tragedy in the life of author Camilo Castelo Branco (whose novel Doomed Love provided the source material for another Oliveira film), when his friend José Augusto seduced and married a woman Branco had loved, the titular Francisca. For Oliveira, the relationships between these three characters reflect 19th-century (and historically Portuguese) notions of honor, passion, and domination; the film, in its grand provocation, asks us just how distant we feel from the values on display. (1981, 167 min) [Ben Sachs]
Tyler Taormina’s HAM ON RYE (US)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
HAM ON RYE, a suburban coming-of-age comedy-drama with a large ensemble cast, boldly stands out from the crowded landscape of recent American indies for its genuine narrative weirdness and singular aesthetic ambition. What seemingly begins as an end-of-high-school nostalgia trip, in the vein of AMERICAN GRAFFITI and DAZED IN CONFUSED, soon gives way to something far darker and more subversive: The movie's first half features deft cross-cutting between short, clever scenes in which dozens of teenage characters are getting dressed and prepping for a big, prom-like event, an annual rite-of-passage where kids in late adolescence are expected to congregate at a popular local delicatessen in the unnamed town where the film is set, and ultimately pair off into couples for a celebratory dance. But, as in the early work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, HAM ON RYE proves to be something of a narrative shapeshifter—the warmth and humor of the early daylight scenes are soon displaced by a second half imbued with a potent, Hopper-esque sense of nocturnal melancholy. Most of the characters from the first half disappear at the dusky half-way mark—some quite literally into thin air—only to be replaced by a new cast of more disaffected-seeming young adults. One character, Haley (Haley Bodell), who pointedly flees from the deli before the dance begins, bridges the film's two halves but it is unclear how much time elapses in between; the second half could either be taking place the same night as the first half or a couple of years later, an ambiguity that lends the movie much of its haunting and dreamlike power. What does it all mean? I think that Taormina, a first-time feature filmmaker but hardcore cinephile who is also a talented musician, intends for the narrative to function as a kind of complex metaphor for the notion of "growing up" in general and, more specifically, the way some people leave their hometowns in an attempt to fulfill ambitious destinies while others choose to sadly remain behind. But see it and decide for yourself: independent American cinema of this uncommonly poetic caliber deserves to be seen and discussed far and wide. (2019, 85 min) [Michael Glover Smith]
Joshua Tsui’s INSERT COIN (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
An interviewee calls Midway Games the “punk rock” of video game companies and while INSERT COIN is a fairly straightforward documentary, its approach offers a detailed history. The Chicago-based company became well-known for its coin-operated arcade games and development of photorealistic graphics using video digitization, especially in its most famous title: Mortal Kombat. As the documentary addresses, this opened up a lot of discussion—and disagreements—about showing realistic violence, both between those working at Midway and in larger conversations about the cultural effects of video games. With no narrator, the interviewees share their personal experiences, and director Joshua Tsui (a former game developer at Midway) provides structure through an arcade-style credit countdown as the film progresses chronologically. The interviews have an informality about them, and none of the personalities overpower the others, emphasizing the collaborative—and at times very competitive—aspect of game development and programming. A clever feature are the chyrons under interviewees’ names, that change according to which company they’re with at the time or on which specific game they’re working; it’s a subtle way to address the instability of the video game business. While footage of the games is featured throughout, with a fun video game-style soundtrack by electronic artist Savant, INSERT COIN is most interested in the people behind the scenes and their effect on gaming history. It benefits from that focus, letting the story of Midway speak to video game culture as a whole. The film isn’t just a glowing celebration, but an honest look at the inner workings of one company in a competitive and ever-changing business. It’s clear from the many Chicago barcades that Midway has had a continuing influence, and INSERT COIN made me miss those unique arcade spaces even more. (2020, 101 min) [Megan Fariello]
Luchina Fisher’s MAMA GLORIA (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
MAMA GLORIA is a deeply personal documentary that illuminates a larger history of transgender people of color in Chicago. Gloria Allen, now in her 70s, is an icon of the community, having started a charm school for transgender people at the Center on Halsted. The charm school inspired Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins’ Charm, and Gloria became known for her maternal support for and engaged work with transgender youth. The charismatic Gloria narrates her own story, which is filled with traumatic moments of violent abuse and loving acceptance from her family and friends, especially her mother. Allen begins by telling how her grandmother worked as a seamstress for drag performers in the early 20th century; she’s aware of how her personal history intertwines with a broader one, framing her story against historically significant moments and people, from the Civil Rights Movement and Emmett Till to the Stonewall Riots and Marsha P. Johnson. MAMA GLORIA emphasizes the power of Gloria sharing her story, not just directly with the film’s audience, as she recounts her personal history into the camera, but also with others, most compellingly with the queer youth she inspires. Gloria mentions, in a lovely scene where she shares a meal with her friends from high school, that she was voted “most friendly,” and the camera captures her welcoming nature. Gloria is also aware that her older age signifies survival, as she mentions losing so many friends; MAMA GLORIA notes that only 14% of transgender identifying adults in the U.S. are seniors. Gloria’s story is compelling not just in its engagement with history, but in its acknowledgement of contemporary struggles, as transgender rights are threatened and incidents of extreme violence against transwomen of color continue. MAMA GLORIA is an optimistic film that also recognizes there is still a lot of work to be done. (2020, 76 min) [Megan Fariello]
Joyce Chopra’s SMOOTH TALK (US)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Winner of the 1986 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film, SMOOTH TALK stars Laura Dern as Connie, a fifteen-year-old exploring her sexuality, navigating the carefree life of a teenager obsessed with boys and the terror of unwanted sexual attention. Spending the summer before her sophomore year with her friends at the beach and the mall, Connie avoids helping her parents (Mary Kay Place and Levon Helm) and is constantly negatively compared to her more obliging older sister (Elizabeth Berridge). Connie spends nights out flirting with boys, but things get dark when it becomes clear she’s being stalked by an older man (Treat Williams). Director Joyce Chopra deftly balances SMOOTH TALK’s pastel-colored 80s coming-of-age story as it teeters into horror. Williams is so completely menacing that his first quick appearance on screen—watching Connie from afar—creates a distinct shift in the film. His physicality, especially in a scene where he moves further from his parked car towards Connie alone in her house, using the titular “smooth talk” to disarm her from outside the screen door, presents an anxiety-inducing amount of threat. The dread is very much grounded in reality, however, and the film never feels exploitive or critical of Connie. Rather, SMOOTH TALK takes seriously the distinction between Connie innocently exploring her own desires and someone else aggressively forcing his upon her; it’s an overall powerful take on the coming-of-age film. Dern expresses so clearly the fluctuating excitement and unease of a teenager pushing boundaries, and her chemistry with Place conveys a convincingly fraught, yet loving, relationship between concerned mother and teenage daughter. Also noteworthy is the way the film places an everyday importance on music for Connie and those around her—James Taylor acted as music director on the film. (1985, 92 min) [Megan Fariello]
Matthew Rankin’s THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Canada)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Most nations have their own primordial myths, stories of valor, ingenuity, and achievement that embed themselves in the cultural imagination and fortify a collective identity. Then, there are nations like Canada. What, as many have wondered, does it mean to be Canadian, to belong to a “middle power” that has for most of its statehood existed in the shadows of the British and French Empires, to say nothing of its downstairs neighbor? Cult film favorite Guy Maddin has famously answered by confabulating myths and memories of his own, resurrecting obsolete cinematic styles to simultaneously exhume a Canadian (film) history that never was; with THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, fellow Winnipegger Matthew Rankin carries the torch. In fittingly daffy, deadpan, and neurotic fashion, he tells the (highly) fictionalized story of the ascent to power of William Lyon Mackenzie King, the 10th and longest-serving prime minister of Canada. One could feasibly call this a “biopic,” but Rankin has no interest in detailing King’s 21 years in office, nor does he care much for historical fidelity (the film takes place in 1899, two decades before King was actually elected). Instead, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY uses the figure of the good-natured but inescapably diffident prime minister to sketch a lovingly scathing portrait of Canadian self-perception. For Rankin, it’s a self-image characterized by perpetual, mostly contented disappointment, by vacillating feelings of inferiority and humble pride, by warring impulses to follow and tamp down one’s desires. “Canada is one failed orgasm after another,” scoffs an embittered daughter of the Governor General. Those failed orgasms are metaphorically manifest in the film’s droll parade of absurdities, from the competition for prime minister itself, which entails such rounds as “Ribbon Cutting” and “Waiting Your Turn,” to, most explicitly, a tumescent cactus and a very noisy chastity belt. Rankin stages all this within brilliantly imaginative set design, utilizing Expressionistic geometric motifs and Lotte Reiniger-esque silhouettes to abstract Toronto, Quebec City, Winnipeg, and more into variably ominous dreamlands. Surreal though it is, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY is ultimately more restrained than Maddin tends to be, and is also more performance-driven. All of the actors give delightful turns (cross-dressing Maddin muse Louis Negin included), none more so than Dan Beirne as King. All clipped, prim cadences and genteel flop sweat, Beirne’s performance is a precision-timed gem of self-effacing comic underplaying. He could just be the face of Canada. (2019, 90 min) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
ZAPPA Reviews x 2
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Alex Winter’s ZAPPA (US/Documentary)
I first started listening to Frank Zappa when I was in middle school, and while I didn’t have enough knowledge of music to comprehend exactly why, I knew it was something profoundly exceptional. I’ve since gained a better understanding of the density of his compositions and their political and social commentary on American culture, but I’ve learned so much more from Alex Winter’s comprehensive and energetic documentary. ZAPPA is an excellent introduction to his work and features an overabundance of footage for those that may already be familiar. Winter interweaves together a detailed personal and musical history of Zappa primarily steered by the artist himself via extensive archive footage, along with interviews from his widow, Gail Zappa, and various musicians that played with him. The sheer amount of this material could be overwhelming, but Winter cohesively grounds it all in a larger historical context which is simultaneously reflected in Zappa’s concurrent music, played as soundtrack throughout. As with Winter’s other striking documentary released this year, SHOWBIZ KIDS, ZAPPA doesn’t sidestep the darker aspects of its subject, allowing for a more honest introspection about Zappa himself as well as outside forces affecting his work; the expressiveness of the film’s last section regarding Zappa’s cancer diagnosis and death is heart wrenching. His final live performance is featured, underscoring that the most arresting points of ZAPPA are when it decelerates to let the audience engage more fully with the music. There is a scene in which the Kronos Quartet play “None of the Above” and, particularly moving, a performance by former Zappa collaborators Ruth Underwood and Joe Travers as they play “The Black Page,” known for its complexity; it’s surprisingly poignant to hear both the musicians and filmmakers behind the camera cheer at the completion of the performance. With its intricacy of form, contradictions of genre, humor, cultural commentary, and avenue for collaboration, his music is the film’s ultimate guiding force and, as Underwood notes, “the music that Frank made, I think, will last;” I’m certainly going to keep listening. (2020, 129 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Alex Winter’s ZAPPA (US/Documentary)
If you know anything about musician/composer Frank Zappa, you will not be at all surprised that Alex Winter’s thorough-going documentary, ZAPPA, begins with the rocker mounting a stage in front of a packed crowd in Prague, where he was such a symbol of revolution that the Czech Republic asked the U.S. to appoint him as their cultural and trade representative. Zappa, whose lyrics were sexually explicit, politically iconoclastic, and seemingly designed to insult as wide a variety of “plastic people” as possible, and whose concerts were raucous and provocative (I attended one in which the stage was hung with the underwear he’d collected from women during the tour) was all about freedom. While he fought Tipper Gore and her Parent Music Resource Center to prevent censorship in music, mainly because none of his musician colleagues seemed interested in getting involved, he also brought a wide-ranging sensibility to his music, writing everything from silly ditties like “White Port and Lemon Juice” to a modern classical composition for the Kronos Quartet. Winter covers a lot of ground in ZAPPA, taking the amazingly self-taught musician from his literally toxic childhood next to a chemical factory where his father worked to his spacious home in Southern California’s Laurel Canyon where his massive archive of all of his work was stored. Interviews with his former bandmates include Steve Vai, a guitar master who started his career with Zappa, and Ruth Underwood, a percussionist who was lured from her elite training at Juilliard for the chance to do more than play the triangle in a symphony orchestra upon graduation. Zappa, we learn, was an emotionally withholding, relentless taskmaster who unilaterally broke up the first iteration of the Mothers, rarely saw his children, and openly cheated on his wife. It’s tempting to think that a fan attack that left him crippled for nearly two years was some kind of cosmic payback, but I felt nothing but sympathy for his disillusioned hurt at how so many people abandoned him in his hour of need. Whatever his faults, he fought the good fight to evolve as a musician, provide a decent living for himself and his bandmates, and expose the corrosiveness in American society. The film is a treasure trove of footage from his life on and off the stage, though I found it frustrating that the music, while ubiquitous, was only presented in snippets—no doubt a copyright-inflected condition producer Ahmet Zappa imposed on Winter. Zappa’s associations with Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) and stop-motion animator Bruce Bickford, who contributed so much to 200 MOTELS (1971), are satisfyingly explored, and the film does not shrink from his losing struggle with prostate cancer. Zappa’s singular focus on trying to achieve the sound he heard in his head eventually turned him to electronics in an effort to completely control the sound. Had he lived, I’m sure we would have seen some major innovations from his quick and exploratory mind. (2020, 129 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
SAIC
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2020 Film, Video, New Media, Animation, and Sound Festival continues online through December 6. Full schedule here.
Community Film Workshop & Reel Black Filmmakers
The South Side Online Short Film Series takes place on Zoom on Wednesday at 7pm. Info and link here.
Video Data Bank
The Video Data Bank continues its “Video Art and Mass Incarceration” series with a pair of 1991 documentaries by Wendy Clarke: ONE ON ONE: ARNOLD AND AHNEVA (47 min) and ONE ON ONE: RICKY AND CECELIA (29 min) here.
Gallery 400
Sara Ludy’s short videos DESERT ROSE (2016, 34 min) and SKY LAPIS (2018, 6 min) are on view through December 13 here.
Facets Cinémathèque
Matt Kliegman’s 2019 documentary MARKIE IN MILWAUKEE (88 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Daniel Vernon’s 2020 UK documentary THE CHANGIN' TIMES OF IKE WHITE (77 min), Thomas Vinterberg’s 2020 Danish film ANOTHER ROUND (116 min), and Julien Temple’s 2020 UK documentary CROCK OF GOLD: A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN (124 min) are all available for streaming beginning this week. Also, the Strides for Peace’s Choose Hope Film Screening, a program of shorts accompanied by a panel discussion, is on Wednesday at 7:30pm. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Deborah Shaffer and Rachel Reichman’s 2019 documentary QUEEN OF HEARTS: AUDREY FLACK (75 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Lawrence Michael Levine’s BLACK BEAR (US)
Available to rent on Amazon Prime, FandangoNOW, Google Play, and iTunes
Lawrence Michael Levine’s BLACK BEAR seems simple enough on its surface. A young filmmaker (Aubrey Plaza), seeking inspiration for her next project, goes to a remote lake house owned by a young couple (Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon.) Director Lawrence Michael Levine crafts an unsettling dynamic from the jump—sparing few details and instilling little trust in his less than saintly protagonists—that quickly becomes fuel for an inescapable, interpersonal fire. The couple’s relationship is already on the rocks, even as they’re expecting a child, and the addition of another woman feeds into that tension. But halfway through, the film takes a pivot: roles are switched and scenes are mirrored and distorted, the movie-within-a-movie takes hold, and you fall prey to the uncanny valley—grasping for a sense of what is real, what is not, and what it all means. Plaza is electric, balancing between playful manipulation and deep pain all while making sure you never keep your eyes off of her as she guides you through the all-consuming madness. Abbott and Gadon are also on their A-game, their characters committed to the pursuit of artistic and emotional control by any means necessary. BLACK BEAR may become more rewarding upon rewatch, as the parallels of power and a grueling (if not abusive) artistic process become even more apparent once you get your bearings. But it refuses to give you a simple answer to its own mystery—instead, BLACK BEAR engulfs you in its surreal nightmare, wholly and without compromise. (2020, 104 min) [Cody Corrall]
André de Toth’s PITFALL (US)
Streaming for free (with subscription) or available to rent on Amazon Prime Video
André de Toth’s PITFALL has the outline of a fairly boilerplate noir, following as it does an in-over-his-head protagonist, Second World War veteran and Los Angeles insurance man John Forbes (Dick Powell), who risks his solid marriage and cozy family life by igniting an affair with a mysterious model, Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott). Raymond Burr, boulder-like, terrifies as villainous private investigator MacDonald while hardly raising his voice above a library-acceptable whisper, and the way de Toth and DP Harry J. Wild foreground the cell bars in a series of jailhouse repartees menacingly obscures the actors’ faces. But what’s most exceptional about PITFALL is that, for all these portents of genre-tinged doom, the movie’s governing sentiment is one not of suspense but of malaise. De Toth ushers in a throughline of midlife melancholy right from the opening scene, in which John and his wife Sue (Jane Wyatt)—both recipients of yearbook superlatives back in their high-school days—trade nibbles of breakfast with disarmingly blunt reflections on their hopes and dreams. John later attends to his son (Jimmy Hunt), post-nightmare, in the middle of the night, comforting the boy with a peculiar monologue about the power of dreams. The bond between John and Mona—whose boyfriend (Byron Barr) is doing time for buying her presents with embezzled money—is itself informed by a loneliness lifted only temporarily by a quasi–MIAMI VICE (2006) reverie of giddy speedboating and afternoon cocktails. The marginal characters in PITFALL also chip in rich turns of language and affect, including Mona’s department-store colleague Terry (Margaret Wells), who offers a memorably disgruntled summary of what men like when they’re under the weather (“Lots of soup, plenty of babying, and some like bourbon”). But above all it’s Powell’s daringly downbeat performance—which pinpoints the agony in John’s sarcastic dismissals of the buttoned-up working life—that carries de Toth’s tone of low-key despair. (1948, 86 min) [Danny King]
Darius Marder’s SOUND OF METAL (US)
Streaming for free (with subscription) on Amazon Prime Video
Presented fully subtitled, SOUND OF METAL is a remarkably attentive and candid cinematic realization of phenomenological experience. Heavy metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is in the middle of touring with his bandmate and girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke) when he notices a rapid acceleration of hearing loss. Ruben panics at this sudden change, concerned about his career, which is also intrinsic to his relationship. Lou, worried that as a recovering heroin addict Ruben may relapse, helps check him in at a sober house for the deaf. Despite finding a sense of peace after being fully accepted by this supportive community, Ruben continues to wrestle with the desire to return to his former life as a musician with Lou. While attention on his and Lou’s relationship in the last quarter of the film sidetracks from the more interesting themes garnered by Ruben’s growing connection to his new community, SOUND OF METAL ultimately provides a profoundly affective cinematic experience. Director Darius Marder, through striking sound design techniques, sutures the audience to Ruben primarily through his personal experience of both sound and the absence of sound. This is exemplified in the film’s opening scenes which highlight specific sounds as Ruben makes breakfast: the dripping coffee and whirring smoothie maker. These everyday sounds are major indicators of Ruben’s hearing loss as they become distressingly silent only a few scenes later. That distress dissipates, however, as he becomes more integrated into the deaf community; the section that focuses on Ruben learning American Sign Language, making friends, and even teaching drumming to young students provides SOUND OF METAL’s most engaging and insightful scenes. Paralleling the unique sound design, Ahmed gives an astounding performance, conveying Ruben’s shifting emotions with intense tangibility. (2019, 121 min) [Megan Fariello]
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
Most independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals continue to have suspended operations, are closed, or have 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.
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Beverly Arts Center – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)*
Chicago Film Society – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Chicago Filmmakers – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled until further notice
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – Will be presenting online discussions and screenings*
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)*
Music Box Theatre – The Music Box has again suspended in-person screenings; it continues to present online-only 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:
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
CINE-LIST: December 4 - December 10, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, John Dickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Danny King, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Michael Glover Smith