:: FRIDAY, JANUARY 6 - THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 ::

Remember to check venue websites for updates and information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place for Covid prevention. We recommend verifying those before every trip to the theater.

🎉 YEAR-END LISTS

Here at Cine-File we like to wait until the year actually ends to publish our “best-of” lists, which abide by whatever rules the contributor chooses. View them on our blog.

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Seijun Suzuki’s Taishō Trilogy (Japan)

Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) [Free Admission]

Seijun Suzuki’s ZIGEUNERWEISEN (Japan)
Friday, 7pm
Even though the trailblazing director Seijun Suzuki had already been allowed to make movies again following his ten-year blacklist from the Japanese studio system, he was still in a state of semi-notoriety when he made his second post-blacklist film, ZIGEUNERWEISEN. Most theater chains refused to book it, and so Suzuki’s producer came up with the novel idea of screening it inside inflatable plastic domes on the roofs of Tokyo department stores. (And people said MEMORIA’s American release was unorthodox!) The attention-grabbing strategy paid off, and enough people went to see ZIGEUNERWEISEN to recognize that Suzuki had created a masterpiece. Not only did Japan’s top critics’ organization name it the best film of 1980; it won several top prizes at the Japanese Academy Awards the following year. Yet behind this winning story of Suzuki’s transformation from cult favorite to venerated art house figure lies one of the most mysterious and downright strange movies ever made. Set in the liberal period just prior to Japan’s turn to nationalism and imperialism in the mid-1920s (named the Taishō era after Emperor Taishō, who ruled the Japanese Empire from 1912 to 1926), ZIGEUNERWEISEN is an opaque chamber drama about the interweaving lives of two diametrically opposed men: Aochi (Kisako Makishi), an introverted university professor of German, and Nakasago (Yoshio Harada), a former colleague who’s gone mad and taken to the road like a nomad. Where Suzuki’s beloved ‘60s films employed brazenly weird camera and editing tricks to defamiliarize genre narratives, ZIGEUNERWEISEN tells a deliberately nonsensical story that feels akin to the early Surrealist literature André Breton was publishing in Europe around the time this takes place. Characters change their lives on a whim, die and refuse to stay dead, and, thanks to Suzuki’s trademark disorienting montage, seem to disappear and reappear at random. The results are haunting and affecting, though I couldn’t tell you why exactly. Like another great film of the 1980s, Alain Resnais’ MELO (1986), ZIGEUNERWEISEN conjures the world of the 1920s through a mix of knowing, theatrical artifice and aching emotional sincerity that shouldn’t work but somehow does disarmingly well. (1980, 144 min, DCP Digital)
--- 
Seijun Suzuki’s KAGERO-ZA (Japan)
Saturday, 4pm
Even when given the proper context, KAGERO-ZA is a challenging watch for western spectators; it’s certainly the most Japanese film of the Taishō Trilogy. Tony Rayns’ introduction to the Arrow Films Blu-ray release of the film comes highly recommended, as Rayns helpfully breaks down Suzuki and screenwriter Yôzô Tanaka’s complex relationship to Kyōko Izumi, the author who wrote the works on which KAGERO-ZA was based. Izumi (who died in 1939 at the age of 65) was a right-winger beloved by leftist artists for his romantically toned tales of the grotesque and supernatural. While Suzuki’s film shares its name with an Izumi novel—whose title is a surrealist portmanteau combining kagero (which means the heat haze in which mirages form) and za (which means theater)—it’s actually a free-form work that draws from multiple Izumi novels, short stories, and plays, in addition to the author’s biography. The closest western equivalent is probably David Cronenberg’s NAKED LUNCH (1991), which took a similarly eccentric approach to the life and work of William S. Burroughs, yet the mix of stately form and non-sequitur content is decidedly Japanese. Befitting a film whose main character is a playwright, KAGERO-ZA is even more theatrical than ZIGEUNERWEISEN; indeed, it culminates with a piece of children’s theater even crazier than the one in Suzuki heir Takashi Miike’s DEAD OR ALIVE 2: BIRDS (2000). This production ends with a breathtaking slow-motion shot of the theater collapsing in on itself, which is, per Rayns, a metaphor for the shocking end of the whole Taishō era. KAGERO-ZA takes place, crucially, in 1926, the last year of that era; the dreamlike narrative, which involves ghosts, eerie coincidences, and journeys that lead seemingly to nowhere, may be read as a metaphor for the illusory nature of Taishō Japan. (1981, 139 min, DCP Digital)
--- 
Seijun Suzuki’s YUMEJI (Japan)
Saturday, 7pm
Like KAGERO-ZA, the third film of the Taishō Trilogy is an idiosyncratic portrait of an idiosyncratic artist, in this case the poet and painter Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934), who was famous for his erotic portraits of women. A colorful, madcap fantasia that plays up the most salacious details of its subject’s life story, YUMEJI lands somewhere in the vicinity of Ken Russell’s composer films (THE MUSIC LOVERS, MAHLER, LISZTOMANIA), and like those movies, the tongue-in-cheek, ahistorical zaniness may be too much for some viewers. The movie has its diehard fans, however—among them Wong Kar-wai, who recycled the opening theme in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000)—and you can see right away how the film would inspire such mad devotion. To start off, YUMEJI stars the gender-bending pop star and actor Kenji Sawada (a cultural figure who’s often compared to David Bowie) in the title role, even though the real Takehisa was a bespectacled nebbish who looked more like Robert Crumb or Ron Mael. The bold casting makes sense, given that the film depicts Takehisa as a dashing ladykiller and devotes more time to his love life than to his art. Suzuki enhances the lusty atmosphere even further by designing the film in a bold color palette that makes the whole world seem like a ripe piece of fruit. To return to Russell’s composer films, YUMEJI feels akin to those movies in how it represents not a fictionalized biography, but a dramatization of what the subject’s work represents historically, culturally, and psychologically. The film is alluring, cartoonish, and ridiculously sexual—basically a Takehisa painting come to life. It concludes the Taishō trilogy on a boisterous note, celebrating the creative spirit of the era and suggesting it continues to thrive in the cultural memory.(1991, 128 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Akira Kurosawa's IKIRU (Japan)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm

Opening with an X-ray of the doomed protagonist Watanabe, the film's very modern satire of postwar Japan's urban bureaucracy quickly becomes overwhelmed with as coherent an exegesis of the French existentialism then in vogue as has ever been committed to film. Takashi Shimura's performance as Watanabe exemplifies the Sartrean protagonist: His character's stomach cancer (or, shall we say, nausea) brings him face-to-face with the possibility of nothingness, and correspondingly grants him his freedom, consciousness, and sense of responsibility. IKIRU's masterstroke is the severing of this narrative at the midpoint of the film, beyond which the tale is told by Watanabe's drunk, bickering, eulogizing co-workers; and it is here that Kurosawa does Sartre one better, suggesting that death is not the end of a man's possibilities, but that those possibilities can continue to refract and extend themselves in the social actions and interactions of others. Roger Ebert has said that IKIRU is "one of the few movies that might actually be able to inspire someone to lead their life a little differently"; we can conclude that IKIRU screenings themselves provide a practical demonstration of Kurosawa's theory. Screening as part of Doc’s Sunday series, “Facing Life, Meeting Death.” (1952, 143 min, 35mm) [Michael Castelle]

Frank Capra’s LADIES OF LEISURE (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm

Frank Capra didn’t want to cast Barbara Stanwyck in LADIES OF LEISURE, his fifth sound film and the first for Columbia over which he had total creative control; after a contentious audition, Stanwyck’s then-husband, vaudeville star Frank Fay, approached Capra to tell him how disappointed she was and persuaded him to watch one of her test reels. The rest is history. Stanwyck and Capra would go on to make five films together, all arguably masterpieces of both direction and performance. The first collaboration bears no sign of tentativeness from either partner; Capra directs with his usual assuredness and knack for shifting between disparate tenors of emotional intensity, and Stanwyck navigates these shifts with a soulful fervor born of her singular talent. She stars as Kay Arnold, a “lady of the evening” who meets artist Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves), the son of a railroad magnate, after the two leave their respective parties. He’s drawn to Kay for the hope he sees in her otherwise jaded visage, and she soon becomes his model, falling in love with the single-minded dreamer in the process. Class differences between the two prove a barrier to their eventual romance, and this comprises the central conflict of the film. Jerry’s father vehemently opposes the union, preferring that his son marry his long-time socialite fiance; his mother, on the other hand, visits Kay at her shoddy apartment and even sympathizes with the young woman’s predicament but ultimately persuades her to give him up. The film was based on Milton Herbert Gropper’s 1924 play Ladies of the Evening, which had been mounted on Broadway by David Belasco, the impresario who launched Stanwyck’s stage career and even changed her name. (Film historians have noted that a few initial reviews implied Belasco was the ultimate auteur of the text; between him, Capra, the playwright, and Jo Swerling, who adapted the play in his first collaboration with Capra, Belasco was the most influential at the time.) Marie Prevost, a favorite of Ernst Lubitsch for his silent comedies, co-stars as Kay’s roommate, Dot; what Stanwyck delivers in vigor Prevost matches in levity. One sequence involves the plumpish Dot running up twenty flights of stairs to catch Jerry before Kay sails away on a boat to Havana. It’s funny because of Prevost’s amiable sense of humor and the sheer tenacity with which she embarks on the task; though she’s a secondary character, she’s so fully developed that I wanted to be friends with her. It’s then no wonder that she and Kay have such a close relationship, which adds to the sense of actualization of all the characters. The film is a little world unto itself, in which the joys and struggles of life are presented with distinct verisimilitude. Screening as part of Doc’s Monday series, “Baby Face: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck.” (1930, 99 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Jacques Rivette's OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 10am

My first awareness of this 12-hour beast, which lived only in my imagination for 11 years, was through stills of Jean-Pierre Léaud in front of a chalkboard, and Bulle Ogier looking in a never-ending wall of mirrors. It was something that kept popping up in books. I could never find a copy and I had vague ideas about what it actually was. I avoided most descriptions of its "plot." I'd rather dream about it until it materialized in front of me. Unlike most filmmakers of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette existed mostly in obscurity. You could find a VHS copy of CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING, and maybe a few DVDS of his later work, but the majority of his films before the 1990s were extremely hard to come by (unless you're internet savvy). Rivette first unleashed OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE on the public in 1971, just three years after the events of May '68, leaving their fragile memories worn across every face, hallway, and locked door. Films like Godard's MASCULIN/FEMININ (1966), Eustache's THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973), and Garrel's L'ENFANT SECRET (1979) arrived at places deemed unattainable, convincing one of all those perceived "hidden qualities" that cinema uses to allow us a few glances behind the veil of real experience; these are films that could render ideas, images, and sounds in ways all too personal to seem born of reality. With OUT 1, this cinematic mystery/intrigue reached its zenith. The plot involves two experimental theater groups working on productions by Aeschylus; one is doing Seven Against Thebes, the other, Prometheus Bound. These groups will prepare their productions through various exercises, pulling the most personal feelings of reality out through the mechanics of presenting a false reality, all the while discussing personal ambitions, relationships, and art. Meanwhile, we will watch Jean-Pierre Léaud waking up in dreams, arriving at numbers and clues through books by Honoré de Balzac and Lewis Carroll, wandering Paris with his atonal harmonica wails, and the conviction he is about to uncover a conspiracy hidden within the day-to-day goings-on in Paris. You'll see Juliet Berto assuming the role of a thief straight out of a film by Louis Feuillade, fleecing various men around the city (including Cahiers du cinéma co-founder Jacques Doniol-Valcroze) and possibly stumbling upon the same discoveries as Léaud. Eric Rohmer is also going to try and help explain the "keys" of the film to you. It'll take a while for these characters to convene (no shit), and even longer for the film to arrive at its conclusions, but eventually, groups will dissipate, forming smaller groups, as a few truths rise to the surface. Hoping for a conventionally satisfying payoff is a waste of time, but so is assuming this is a mere work of pretentious buffoonery whose creator brandishes its great length like a jam-band playing at a crappy music festival. Its staggering runtime may be there to trick you, but not like a gimmick would; the "trick" in this film is the trick on which all of cinema is based. It will return your filmic expectations to zero, detoxifying any "accumulated errors." Filmmaker Claire Denis has described viewing this film on the big screen as something close to "an acid experience." Screening as part of the Settle In series. (1971, 729 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]

Ernst Lubitsch's NINOTCHKA (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am

In his interpretation of the phrase "the Lubitsch touch," Jonathan Rosenbaum opined that the effect is made up of three distinct qualities that both set the German director apart from his contemporaries and account for his being a significant source of inspiration to his successors. The first two parts of Rosenbaum’s definition refer to Ernst Lubitsch's "specifically Eastern European capacity to represent the cosmopolitan sophistication of continental Europeans to Americans" and "his way of regarding his characters that could be described as a critical affection for flawed individuals who operate according to double standards"; the third part refers to Lubitsch's incorporation of music in his films, but while Werner R. Heymann's score is certainly a compliment to the wonderfully funny and romantic story in NINOTCHKA, it is not as necessary to his distinct style in this film as it was in his acclaimed musicals from the late 20s and early 30s. Though Rosenbaum acknowledges that all three elements are not present in every one of Lubitsch's films, the first two most definitely account for the winning effect of "the Lubitsch touch" in this 1939 MGM production that is sometimes overlooked in lieu of his earlier and later successes. Similar to his 1942 film TO BE OR NOT TO BE, NINOTCHKA satirizes and even romanticizes a touchy but timely subject using Lubitsch's above-mentioned abilities. In the film a typically steely Greta Garbo plays a Russian envoy sent by the Soviet Union to Paris in order to broker the sale of the dissolved aristocracy's opulent jewels. They once belonged to the former Grand Duchess Swana, who now resides in Paris and has the charming Count Leon as her uncommitted romantic companion. Much to their own surprise, Ninotchka and Count Leon meet and fall in love; as a Communist from the Soviet Union and a capitalistic Count living lavishly in Paris, respectively, their coupledom is the base double-standard from which Lubitsch's 'touch' emanates. As with couples from other Lubitsch films, their romance is seemingly ill-fated, not so much against the odds as just odd, and insurmountable only in that, in a film by anyone else but Lubitsch, it wouldn't work at all. But above their romantic dynamic in terms of a double-standard is their political and cultural dynamic, which calls back to Rosenbaum's ideas about Lubitsch's sophistication. Film historian Jeremy Mindich declared NINOTCHKA "arguably the most complex American movie ever made about the Soviet Union," and while that is definitely arguable, it says a lot about Lubitsch's own cosmopolitan sophistication that his film both satirizes and humanizes Communist characters. Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the script, once described the Lubitsch touch as being the "elegant use of the Superjoke. You had a joke, and you felt satisfied, and then there was one more big joke on top of it. The joke you didn't expect." When asked by the three envoy-stooges who preceded her to Paris about the mass trials happening in their home country, Ninotchka replies that they were a great success, declaring, "There will be fewer but better Russians." But the big joke no one is expecting is Count Leon's response to Ninotchka's communist ideals. He reads Marx and even tries to convince his personal attendant that their professional dynamic is unfair. From there, the jokes get bigger and bigger until even Lenin is cracking a smile. In his essay for the Criterion Collection DVD release of TROUBLE IN PARADISE, critic Armond White observes that Lubitsch is "able to indulge carefree behavior because it is undergirded with his appreciation of life's hard facts." No less than such a sophisticated double standard is to be expected from Lubitsch, and NINOTCHKA is a prime example. Screening as part of the Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder Matinee series. (1939, 110 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Spike Lee's BAMBOOZLED (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) - Thursday, 9:30pm

As the new millennium approached, Spike Lee chose to reflect on Black entertainers in a supposedly “post-race” society and on Black minstrelsy in contemporary culture. BAMBOOZLED is a meditation on the previous 100 years, considering the birth of cinema and the portrayal of African Americans through blackface minstrelsy. The film’s title is taken from a speech by Malcolm X about the treatment of black Americans by the United States and capitalist machine: “Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled!” Many critics didn’t know what to make of it at the time, as it was pointing its finger at them as well as the industrial entertainment world at large. Unfortunately, and like many masterpieces, this led to the film's poor critical reception and box-office failure upon initial release. With the 1990s far in the rearview mirror, however, it's been reappraised as a brilliant satire and a gem of Lee’s filmography. The plot revolves around a Black, Harvard-educated TV producer, Delacroix; deciding he's had enough with his racist boss, Delacroix plans to escape his contract by getting fired. He writes a pilot for a program called Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show, a variety show with two hosts, Mantan and Sleep‘n Eat, played by Black actors in blackface. Rather than ruin his career, the show grows into an American cultural phenomenon, making it Delacroix’s Frankenstein monster. Damon Wayans’ performance as Delacroix fits perfectly into this borderline-dystopian world. He's matched by the ever-charismatic Jada Pinkett Smith as his personal assistant (the duo was inspired by Cary Grant and Rosalind Russel in HIS GIRL FRIDAY [1940]), and their onscreen rapport forms a unique modern romance. Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson display their talents as the two struggling artists who become minstrel superstars and grapple with success at the cost of their dignity. And Michael Rapaport nails the attitudes of liberal white America as a racist in denial. The film ends in documentary style, cutting across time through American films that took part in blackface minstrelsy. Ending on this note not only drives home Lee’s point about how this practice is embedded in American culture and the DNA of cinema, but poses a simple question: If this was how entertainment treated black people in the 20th century, what will the next 100 years bring? Screening as part of Doc's Thursday II series, "Blow Up My Video: Movies Shot on Video, Shown on Film." (2000, 135 mins, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]

Eloy de la Iglesia’s NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM (Spain)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

Eloy de la Iglesia stands outside the main history of European genre cinema while still participating in the continent’s horror boom of the ‘70s. While NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM is playing Chicago as part of a giallo series, it was made in a different context than its Italian peers. A gay socialist who began working in Franco’s Spain, de la Iglesia started out in two separate closets at the time, but both his sexuality and politics provide persistent subtext in his early ‘70s work. He helped bring degree of neorealism to the exploitation movie, with later work like NAVAJEROS (1980) hinting at early Pasolini working for Roger Corman. His queer gaze also brought a much different perspective to horror cinema, especially compared to Italian gialli, dwelling on images of handsome, shirtless young men while de-emphasizing female nudity and violence against women. Returning home to Madrid after a trip to London, upscale escort Elisa (Carmen Sevilla) sees a man (Vincente Parra) dump a woman’s body into their apartment building’s elevator shaft. (The film treats sex work without judgment or sensationalism.) It turns out he has just murdered his wife. He tries to ensure her complicity by forcing her to aid him, and together they get rid of the body. He also attempts to make her fall in love with him, which creates a perverse dynamic. Although Elisa already has a boyfriend, she seems to reciprocate his attraction as the two go on the road. NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM brings a light touch to this seemingly grim story, emphasizing the tension created by Elisa’s Stockholm syndrome. Without de la Iglesia’s example in Spanish cinema, Almodovar’s more perverse and Hitchcockian films might not exist. Screening as part of the January Giallo 2023 series, co-presented by Music Box of Horrors and Cinematic Void. (1973, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Shu Lea Cheang’s FRESH KILL (US) and Rea Tajiri’s HISTORY AND MEMORY: FOR AKIKO AND TAKASHIGE (US/Documentary)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm

Looser and more underground than Hal Hartley’s early features but less outré than what Jon Moritsugu was making around the same time, the largely forgotten indie FRESH KILL (1994, 78 min, DCP Digital) remains an agreeable example of post-Jarmuschian cool. It takes place on Staten Island and features almost no white characters; the principal exception is a woman who’s raising a Black daughter with an Indian-American woman and whose mother is also Black. She works at a trendy sushi bar where the other staff members are Latinx and Chinese, and practically everyone she knows loves to rant about how corporate culture is destroying the world. The ramshackle plot has something to do with a toxic waste spill and subsequent corporate cover-up, but FRESH KILL is best appreciated as a collection of wryly scripted moments held together by a hip, multicultural ambience. If the film feels indebted to STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984) and DOWN BY LAW (1986) in its understated humor and deliberate compositional style, it also anticipates GHOST DOG (2000) in its utopian racial politics. The depiction of nascent internet culture is fascinating too, reflecting another utopian dream of the 1990s that didn’t play out as many people hoped. The feature is preceded by the video essay HISTORY AND MEMORY: FOR AKIKO AND TAKASHIGE (1991, 32 min, DCP Digital), a short but far-ranging work that addresses the US government’s internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, director Rea Tajiri’s family connection to that sorrowful episode, and depictions of the internment camps in mainstream media. It’s generally plaintive and reflective, though Tajiri works in some much-deserved anger towards historical amnesia and cultural hypocrisy, especially when she discusses Alan Parker’s docudrama COME SEE THE PARADISE (1990). [Ben Sachs]

Paul Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight

What if memory is not an individual repository of information and facts but instead a socio-technical product which may have already been commoditized? What if "being yourself" is a thoroughly unnatural and processual task of auto-impersonation (a fact which proper names do much to conveniently disguise)? And what if advanced technologies of perpetual surveillance and statist suppression are necessary to maintain the existing, illusory qualities of these concepts? The true artist knows all this already, and Paul Verhoeven is one such artist. With the felicitous help of Jost Vacano's characteristically lurid cinematography; Jerry Goldsmith's suggestive soundtrack, which slips oneiric themes between bombastic brass horns and soaring synths; the outrageous make-up effects of Rob Bottin's team; and ingenious location managers (casting Mexico's Distrito Federal as an estranged and already-austere future-city), Verhoeven here links underappreciated and everyday moral and philosophical dilemmas of identity and knowledge into a traditional and implausible hero narrative about a laborer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) leading a subaltern people's revolt against an autocratic mineral sheik (Ronny Cox). (1990, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]

Charlie Kaufman’s SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm

Caden Cotard is broken. His mind, body, and spirit show steady signs of deterioration, with potential causes aplenty. Was it his failing marriage that started him down the spiral? Or was it his unfulfillment as an artist, an inadequacy planted and nurtured by a loved one. Perhaps it was simply the nasty bump to his head from an exploding bathroom faucet. The common thread running through Charlie Kaufman’s SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is that life is miserable for any person, for any number of reasons. At some point in a very aged Cotard’s life, far after any sense of time has disintegrated, he mentions that every person in the world is a main character and their story deserves to be told. By this point, his theater productions have evolved into worlds within worlds where Caden directs a person playing himself who’s directing his actors who are playing other people, and so on. In an attempt to understand the chaos that has enveloped Caden, after therapy sessions and doctors fail to help, he turns inwards to his obsessive recreations and ultimately makes only more chaos. Caden’s brief instances of respite come from the moments where he’s able to connect with others and their misery, and it almost always happens outside the bounds of his overwhelming production. Otherwise, things only seem to settle down once Caden has taken up the role of Ellen, the woman cleaning his ex-wife’s apartment. With SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK marking Kaufman’s debut as a film director, he tackles some reccurring themes like gender identity and alienation with a depth not as fully explored in his other filmed scripts. The amazing original soundtrack by Jon Brion and great performances (of performances) by the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, and Michelle Williams elevate the film to mark an amazing directing debut by one of our contemporary bests. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is a film that's densely layered and worth revisiting as many times as possible. Screening as part of Doc’s Friday series, “Philip Seymour Hoffman: A Retrospective.” (2008, 123 mins, 35mm) [Drew Van Weelden]

Jean Renoir’s BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING (France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 7pm

To quote the IMDB trivia page, BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING “so scandalized New York Times critic Bosley Crowther when it opened in the States in 1967 that he walked out.” So let me get this straight. First, American audiences didn’t get to see Jean Renoir’s early sound masterpiece—which stands alongside DUCK SOUP as one of the most liberated comedies of its era—for more than 30 years after it was made? And second, Bosley Crowther was really such a dork that he got his feathers ruffled over a movie this good-spirited? Yes and yes, but we all know who got the last laugh. Bosley Crowther is several decades deceased, while BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING remains very much alive. Between Renoir’s pioneering use of location shooting, the cheerful anti-bourgeois comedy of the script (which Renoir and Albert Valentin adapted from a play by René Fauchois), and Michel Simon’s extraordinary performance as the hobo who wreaks havoc on the middle-class household that takes him in, the film seems to pulse (like all of Renoir’s best films) like a living thing. Renoir himself called the film an homage to his star (who brought the play to the director’s attention after they worked together on LA CHIENNE), saying, “I wanted to take advantage of advantage of the fact that Michel Simon was so real, that he was not only a tramp among tramps, but that he was all the tramps in the world.” One could say the same thing about Chaplin’s beloved screen persona, yet where the Little Tramp is the perennial outsider wanting to be accepted, Boudu represents the sum of humanity’s impulsive, gross, and antisocial tendencies. His behavior is exhilarating and uninhibited, sometimes to the point of being appalling. For me, the movie comes down to a single shot of Boudu casually wiping his face with his hostess’ bedspread. Screening as part of Doc’s Wednesday series, “Jean Renoir: The Grand Reality.” (1932, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

​​Hayao Miyazaki's MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (Japan/Animation)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday and Sunday, 11am

The seminal Studio Ghibli film MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is one of director Hayao Miyazaki's most beloved and celebrated. Thought-provoking and poignant, Miyazaki's fourth feature is an enchanting hand-drawn masterpiece that demonstrates his creative passion. Mei and Satsuki, the two female protagonists, are perfect vehicles to allow the viewer to see the world through the eyes of children. The film does not rely on traditional narrative structure, where conflicts arise and obstacles must be overcome. Instead, Miyazaki appeals to the viewer to live in the now much like a child would. Both the pain and elation that Chika Sakamoto (Mei) and Noriko Hidaka (Satsuki) emote through their voice acting is palpable in every scene. From this vantage point, a feeling of wonderment occurs, and the dazzling animation invites a sense of nostalgia. This perspective makes it easy to believe that the strange magical spirit Totoro, his band, and the soot spirits are all very real. While these creatures may only be symbolic of nature (the wind, why plants grow, etc.), they serve as a source of comfort and hope for the two girls. Miyazaki's animation is bright and vivid—an homage to rural life—and the mystical quality of the film is bolstered by Joe Hisaishi's uplifting score. MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is a beautiful tale about love, family, and hope that makes for joyous viewing for people of all ages. Screening as part of the Film Center’s monthly Kid Flix series. (1988, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s NINJA SCROLL (Japan/Animation)

Facets Cinema – Thursday, 7pm

Rock men, murderous wasps, and poisonous sex are a few of the endless off-the-wall ideas found in the anime NINJA SCROLL. Released in Japan in 1993 (and later in an English-language dub in 1995), the film's explosive action and memorable style cemented it as a classic amongst anime aficionados. The film centers on two characters: one is a wandering, smart-mouthed ninja named Kibagami Jubei who charges in face-first with his katana to chop down foes of all sizes and shapes; the other is Kagero, who uses her knowledge of poisons and stealth to silently take down her foes. The two characters find themselves battling their way through a group known as the Eight Devils, with Jubei striving for survival and Kagero seeking revenge. Meanwhile, a conspiracy unfolds around them through deceit and backstabbing. The film really shines during the intense battles, as the remarkable animation brings everything to life. In the current flow of weekly anime series with tight budgets and quick turnaround times, you wish everything looked more like this. While NINJA SCROLL certainly uses some tried-and-true tricks--as in a repeated sequence where the same few ninjas are seen running onto a boat over and over--it does turn things up a notch when it needs to. Wood splinters fly out of a tree trunk as throwing stars are hurled at a foe, and exploding fountains of blood shoot out of men who have been cleaved cleanly in half. These elements, alongside the dramatic lighting choices, make NINJA SCROLL a far more visually engaging experience than most contemporary anime, which sadly look dull, flat, and rushed. (1993, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
---
Screening as part of the FACETS Anime Club monthly event double feature with Kawajiri’s 1987 film WICKED CITY (82 min, DCP Digital) at 9pm. Free for FACETS Film Club Members ($15/month). More info here.

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Olivia Wilde’s 2022 film DON’T WORRY DARLING (123 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 7pm, as part of the Docshees of Idasherin: New Releases series.

Hideo Sekigawa’s 1953 Japanese film HIROSHIMA (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the Splicing of the Atom: Nuclear Taboo in Cinema series. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts)
“Tribute Paid to Womanist Mentors and Other Artists I,” the second in the ten-week series that’s part of the Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts 2023, screens Thursday at 7:30pm. Includes films by Kathe Sandler, O.Funmilayo Makarah, Julie Dash, and Yvonne Welbon. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Carla Simón’s 2022 Spanish film ALCARRÀS (120 min, DCP Digital) and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2022 South Korean film BROKER (129 min, DCP Digital) begin screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2022 South Korean film BROKER (129 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week, and Sarah Polley’s 2022 film WOMEN TALKING (104 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. 

Scott Cooper’s 2022 film THE PALE BLUE EYE (128 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday and Saturday at 11:45pm. 

Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson’s 2001 animated film SHREK (90 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 9:45pm. Presented by Ramona Slick and Rated Q - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema. Enjoy pre-show drinks and a DJ set in the Music Box Lounge at 9pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

⚫ Video Data Bank
TJ Cuthand's NDN Survival Trilogy, comprised of EXTRACTIONS (2019, 15 min), LESS LETHAL FETISHES (2019, 9 min) and RECLAMATION (2018, 13 min), is available to stream for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: January 6 - January 12, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Ray Ebarb, Steve Erickson, Drew Van Weelden