:: FRIDAY, JUNE 10 - THURSDAY, JUNE 16 ::

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📽️ CUFF BENEFIT

“You're All Wizards: A Benefit for The 29th Chicago Underground Film Festival” takes place on Saturday, 6pm, at Co-Prosperity (3219 S. Morgan St.). Tiered ticketing begins at $35, with four overall ticket packages offering different perks and experiences. The event includes a screening at 7pm of a “secrete [sic] screening of a film so taboo, we can't name it here or he who should not be named will send his death eaters after us.” We can’t spill the Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, but it’s a good one. You won’t want to miss it! Purchase tickets and learn more here.

📽️ AFRICAN DIASPORA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The African Diaspora International Film Festival takes place through Sunday at Facets Cinema. Below are reviews of select films from the festival. More info on the festival here.

Wagner Moura’s MARIGHELLA (Brazil)
Friday, 8:30pm
Wagner Moura is a well-established actor, famous not only for his work in Brazil but recognizable around the globe from the Netflix hit Narcos as the one and only Pablo Escobar. With MARIGHELLA, Moura proves his talents as a director are just as strong as his acting chops. The film is based on a biography of Brazilian politician Carlos Marighella; it gives a glimpse into his fight against the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1964. A noted poet and writer, his most famous work was the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla. Guerrilla fighting is heavily present in the film, as Marighella and his group, the Ação Libertadora Nacional or National Liberation Action (ALN) go from robbing a bank and train to carrying out revenge assassinations. “An eye for an eye” is a mantra that Marighella repeats to his followers, with varying levels of acceptance amongst the ALN. Alas, once things start to escalate it seems impossible for them to cool down; personalities clash, infighting starts, and the police are breathing down their necks while the corpses of their comrades multiply. For a feature film debut, Moura proves himself more than capable of juggling the elements of an epic drama. Our characters are relatable, and each possesses their own unique backstory and shortcomings. Well, except for the villainous police and their imperialist collaborators from the United States, who are shown to be relentlessly cruel, violent, and racist. Unsurprisingly, this has caused some controversy. The film premiered at festivals in 2019 but was subject to censorship from the Brazilian National Cinema Agency prior to its release. Finally in November 2021, it was released to theaters and has become a hit in Brazil. Hopefully Moura continues to make films that are this complex, controversial, and necessary. (2019, 155 min, Digital Projection) [Drew Van Weelden]
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Narcisse Wandji’s MOTO TAXI – BENDSKINS (Cameroon)
Saturday, 3pm
Comparable to the Chadian films of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, this multi-character drama from Cameroon delivers a timely social portrait in a lively, entertaining fashion, and it works in a welcome theme about female empowerment for good measure. Narcisse Wandji splits the narrative between three present-day motorcycle taxi drivers: Sani, a young cinephile whose girlfriend is afraid to tell her police officer father that she’s pregnant; Marie, an itinerant single mother determined to avenge herself on the man who raped her when she was a teenager; and Franck, a middle-aged man with an advanced business degree who can’t find a job for which he’s qualified. Together, these subjects comprise an affecting cross-section of Cameroonian society, bound not only by their profession and economic struggles, but by their industriousness, good humor, and self-respect. Befitting a movie about taxi drivers, BENDSKINS is alive with movement—Wandji sets an engaging pace with his cross-cutting, and the performances are highly physical. The scenes on the moto taxis are also quite energizing, as they punctuate the central storylines with sharp little portraits of various social types whom the drivers pick up on their shifts. (I was not surprised to learn that Wandji once worked as a “bendskin,” or moto taxi driver, himself.) In all, this is the sort of vibrant social drama that Hollywood was so good at making during the Great Depression, advancing a sympathetic view of urban life and the laboring class without overwhelming these concerns with an obvious message. One comes away from the movie a little wiser about the workaday lives of other people. (2021, 90 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Skinner Myers’ THE SLEEPING NEGRO (US)
Saturday, 7pm
This L.A.-shot independent feature feels at times like a companion piece to Ephraim Asili’s Philadelphia-shot indie THE INHERITANCE (2020) in that it draws inspiration from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s movies on the one hand and the writings of prominent Black thinkers on the other. But where THE INHERITANCE was a celebratory film about Black liberation, THE SLEEPING NEGRO is an angry, pessimistic film about Black alienation. The title is a nod to a James Baldwin quote that appears in the opening credits: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” Writer-director-star Skinner Myers goes on to dramatize how Black people still have a lot to be enraged about in 2020s America, following a few days in the life of a nameless white-collar worker whose Blackness becomes the subject of every encounter he has, regardless of whether or not he wants it to be. The most significant encounters transpire with the hero’s white boss (who tries to bribe him with the first edition of a Baldwin text so that he’ll commit an act of fraud for their mutual employer), an estranged Black friend (whose current lifestyle the hero regards as a betrayal to Black solidarity), his white fiancée (with whom he has a long, exacerbating argument that plays like a politicized version of the one in Godard’s CONTEMPT [1964]), and an elderly Black woman he’s been tasked with evicting. These scenes play out in expertly controlled long takes that underscore the hero’s discomfort by forcing us to consider it in real time; these shots are also remarkable because they often present at least one shift in the onscreen power dynamic before Myers cuts to the next shot. In addition to invoking young Godard, Myers also invokes young Godard’s biggest hero, Bertolt Brecht, in how the dialogue is at once rhetorical and emotional. All the characters clearly represent particular social types, yet Myers builds dramatic tension in how they defend the position of their social group. (2021, 72 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Angus Gibson’s BACK OF THE MOON: SOPHIATOWN 1958 (South Africa)
Saturday, 8:45pm
Set against the forced removal of black South Africans from Johannesburg’s Sophiatown district by the country’s white overlords, director and co-screenwriter Angus Gibson’s BACK OF THE MOON tells an emotional story about how Max, aka Badman (Richard Lukunku), the leader of a street gang, makes a stand against the evictions and his own violent crew. Max, a Congolese transplant to Johannesburg commanding a small group of Zulu toughs, has taken Kid (Siya Xaba) under his wing in hopes of helping him make better choices and avoid a life of crime. Max is a reader and appreciates good music, and he has fallen for a local singer, Eve Msomi (Moneoa Moshesh), who is about to leave for London to launch a larger career. His thoroughly despicable gang wants nothing more than to rob, rape, and pillage anyone—even their “own people,” much to Max’s disgust. One of those people is Eve, whom they pull offstage and take to their hideout to rape. Max steps in, banishes them, and through his gentleness and protection, earns Eve’s affections. But, of course, the gang isn’t through with either of them. There is something almost quaint about BACK OF THE MOON, reminiscent of Hollywood gangster movies like ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938) in which the toughest guy of them all shows his tender-heartedness. The gang also is reminiscent of an earlier time, specifically the 1950s of the musical West Side Story, when gangs fought with fists and switchblades, and there is only one gun between all of them. Interestingly, literature plays a role in the film, and Gibson is quite deliberate in what he chooses to include in the script. Max makes references to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Most telling is a scene during which Kid is reading aloud from Black American genre master Chester Himes’ Real Cool Killers, which created folk heroes out of Black detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, best known to cinephiles as the protagonists in COTTON COMES TO HARLEM (1970). Despite Gibson’s tributes to American and French literature (Paul Verlaine is quoted twice), there’s no question that this film is planted firmly in South Africa. The cinematography of Zeno Peterson and production design by Dylan Lloyd create an atmosphere redolent of a steamy, impoverished, yet vitally alive neighborhood that scared the hell out of white South Africans. The records Max and the gang play is the township jazz that found fertile ground in Sophiatown. (I was delighted to hear the Orlando Six, one of my favorite African jazz groups, on the soundtrack.) Finally, the final scene in the rain melts into archival footage showing the rainy day on which the evictions hit Max’s section of Sophiatown. As Max vanishes into legend, the lingering memory of the brief, moving love affair of Max and Eve brings the film to a satisfying, poignant close. (2019, 95 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Juan A. Zapata’s SUGAR CANE MALICE (Dominican Republic/Spain/Documentary)
Sunday, 3pm
SUGAR CANE MALICE is reportage of the highest order, not only for the crucial information it imparts, but for the sober, sophisticated way that it imparts it. The film’s subject is the sugar cane industry in the Dominican Republic today. Workers in this industry are effectively slaves, tied to plantations because they need a place to live and because never make enough money to go anywhere else. Juan A. Zapata builds the film through short, pointed interviews, mostly with the workers themselves (though there are also some choices quotes from an economist and a labor organizer); their testimonies about daily life on the plantations accumulate steadily, until the obscenity of slavery becomes overwhelming. Like Claude Lanzmann’s SHOAH (1985), SUGAR CANE MALICE approaches a mammoth dehumanizing system on the ground level, considering what it takes, person by person, to strip a population of its humanity. In one scene, a laborer traverses the plot of land she works to show how much sugar cane she needs to cut to make just twenty dollars in US currency. In another, a young woman notes how quickly her mother had to decide whether she wanted to remarry after becoming a widow because she could only remain in her company-sponsored housing if she was married. Some of the most harrowing revelations come in the form of silent shots: a black, polluted stream abutting a workers’ community where the inhabitants must dispose of their bodily waste; the small shacks that serve as home to three separate families, the living areas demarcated by hanging sheets. The relentlessness of such “little” details communicates how slavery stains every aspect of slaves’ lives, but the film is just as grim when Zapata pauses to consider the bigger, societal picture. As one expert explains, slavery persists in the Dominican Republic in large part because the plantation owners have the government and the courts in their pocket; it’s a worthy reminder that when injustice of this magnitude remains in place, the whole society that permits it is corrupt. (2021, 75 min, Digital Protection) [Ben Sachs]
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Robert Guédiguian’s DANCING THE TWIST IN BAMAKO (France/Senegal)
Sunday, 4:45pm
Although it relates a familiar narrative of a young idealist growing disillusioned with socialism, the period drama DANCING THE TWIST IN BAMAKO is nonetheless eye-opening for its portrait of Mali in the early days of national independence. Set in 1962, it centers on Samba, a Socialist Party member in his early 20s whose job is to tour the villages and sing the praises of the new, postcolonial political system. In one village, he encounters Lara, a young woman fleeing a forced marriage; he helps her get to the capital of Bamako, and as Lara forges a new, independent life, she and Samba fall in love. The threats to their romance take two forms: first, there are Lara’s brother and husband, who vow to track her down and forcibly return her to her family home; and second, there’s the morally prescriptive leadership of the Socialist Party, who frown upon Samba being involved with a married woman. Those leaders aren’t fond of dancing either, and as they ratchet up their pressure on Samba, they also start to persecute the young people who frequent the new, western-style nightclubs. This development suffers a bit from its obvious moral shading. How can one not dislike a political order that hates young people doing the twist? At the same time, cowriter-director Robert Guédiguian makes an effort not to demonize the party chiefs entirely. Some of the movie’s most compelling scenes entail conversations between Samba and superiors who argue for the necessity of socialism as a means of freeing Mali from European influence; these moments point to the complicated reality of building a postcolonial society (and, as the film’s haunting, 2012-set coda reminds us, a nation can suffer fates much worse than socialism). DANCING THE TWIST IN BAMAKO also benefits from two charismatic lead performances and a winning soundtrack filled with French and American pop hits of the early 1960s. (2021, 129 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Michael Glover Smith’s RELATIVE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 7pm and Wednesday, 8:15pm

In his writing on movies, both here at Cine-File and elsewhere, Michael Glover Smith has advanced an acute understanding of how the framing of performers in narrative cinema can underscore the emotions they express and how camera movement (or, put another way, the re-framing of performers in time) can develop viewers’ relationships to onscreen characters. Smith’s features as writer-director seem to grow directly out of his insights in this area—deceptively “dialogue-driven,” they express their greatest eloquence not with words but with mise-en-scène. It matters in RELATIVE whether the principal characters are together in the same shot or whether they’ve been individuated by close ups; it matters whether we can distinguish who’s in the background of a shot or whether those characters have been obscured. These things matter because the film is ultimately about the competing forces of community and individuality that shape our identities in 21st-century life and how we navigate between them almost constantly. The action in RELATIVE covers a few days before, during, and after a young man’s college graduation party on Chicago’s far north side, a celebration that draws his two older sisters from out of state and his older brother (a divorced Iraq War veteran who’s been slowly self-destructing for the past four years) out of seclusion in their parents’ basement. Smith gracefully interweaves the lives of all four siblings, their liberal Baby Boomer parents, and a handful of other characters as they come together amiably and unhurriedly, employing the time-honored scenario of the big family gathering to consider how many of us live at the dawn of the 2020s. Not surprisingly, the internet factors into things (though thankfully not too much); so too do food co-ops, queer-straight alliances, and the social normalization of weed. Yet Smith has more on his mind than enumerating aspects of the zeitgeist; RELATIVE is also concerned with the legacy of the Baby Boom generation and, more generally, how each generation honors the previous one while taking a seemingly opposite approach to life. Yasujiro Ozu is an obvious reference point for this sort of laidback family portrait, though I was reminded more of critic-turned-filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier’s A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY (1984) in the low-key sociological thrust of the drama and of the first episode of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s recently rediscovered miniseries EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY (1972-’73) in the polyphony of the extended graduation party sequence. For all its international flavor, however, RELATIVE is a local production first and foremost, reflecting its maker’s deep affection for the neighborhoods he calls home. Each screening followed by a Q&A with the director and select cast and crew; VIP tickets available to the Friday screening, with reserved seating, ticket to the movie and VIP afterparty including one complimentary beverage. More info here. (2022, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Todd Haynes' SAFE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Director Todd Haynes has restless eyes and ears that never linger in one aesthetic or time-period for longer than a film. And despite his continual shifts, it's the aesthetic that tends to star in his films, but this is never a shallow engagement. If Haynes can be said to have a formula, it is to find a pristine surface and scratch until we can see the uneasy construction underneath. His first (banned) public experiment was SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY, in which he used Barbie doll whittling as an inspired, literal representation of Karen Carpenter's struggle with her eating disorder. FAR FROM HEAVEN honored and interrogated the world of Douglas Sirk. In I'M NOT THERE, he chipped away at the impenetrable image of Bob Dylan, all the while pointing at the impossibility of his project with a graphic mix of sympathy and irony. SAFE takes a break from public images to get intimate with a housewife's health. Shot and lit with the peachy haloes of a douche commercial, SAFE's blurry suburban Los Angeles is an unlikely venue for horror. We follow Carol White on her errands, to her exercise classes, with her friendly acquaintances; no one seems to mean her any harm. But it's precisely this vagueness—of purpose, of symptoms, of identity—that begins to gnaw at Carol until she is reduced to her flintiest self-preservation impulse. She suffers from both the controversial Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and the middle-class affliction of Unlimited Healing Budget, and either condition could prove fatal. Haynes takes care not to fix any problems or to answer stupid questions; the ending lingers in one's mind like an unresolved chord. Screening as part of 50/50, the Film Center’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (1995, 119 min, 35mm) [Josephine Ferorelli]

Jean-Luc Godard's ALPHAVILLE (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

The first maximalist film by the prolific director Jean-Luc Godard. While there are no Langian sets or blockbuster effects, Godard creates a science-fiction noir that pulls from both his earlier work and other films in the genre. Inspired by 20th-century pulp fiction, Godard asked audiences of his day to imagine a future technocratic dictatorship where technology kept emotional language away from members of society. This unsettling piece of alienation, coupled with sensual visuals, adds a unique flavor to Godard’s filmography; it's a step away from more intimate films like BREATHLESS (1960). Taking the camera around Paris of 1965, Godard pervades our vision with a futuristic gloom and plants us in the world of Lemmy Caution (played by Eddie Constantine, re-creating a role he'd played in multiple B noirs). Godard borrows genre tropes from noir and science fiction, incorporating key factors that audiences will immediately find recognizable. Yet as a notorious deconstructionist, he pulls the rug out from under the viewer by mixing his influences together until they become, simply, Godardian. Today, audiences still find ALPHAVILLE unique in its experimentation with genre conventions. As one expects from Godard, the director constantly plays with editing within scenes, reminding the viewer of the showman’s presence. Screening as part of the Control.Alt.Delete series presented as part of Science on ScreenⓇ. See the Venue website for announcements about presentations or discussions with science and technology experts. (1965, 99 mins, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]

Charles Walters' EASTER PARADE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm

Charles Walters was the most natural, graceful, and true director of musicals Hollywood ever had. The genre saw more accomplished auteurs who operated in a grander scale who made the more established classics, but Charles Walters seemingly was the genre made flesh. He was the heart and soul of MGM musicals. He had a 22-year career with the studio, working as a performer (most famously partnering with Judy Garland at the end of PRESENTING LILY MARS), as "dance doctor" for other films, and as a choreographer for everything from MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS to an Abbot and Costello film. He maintained a long relationship with Garland as a collaborator on screen and on the stage. His films are supremely confident while seemingly simple and effortless. "Breezy" is the most-used descriptor of this style, which is true, but it ignores how good you have to be to make it look so easy. While I might prefer the bustling GOOD NEWS or the messier SUMMER STOCK, you can't deny that EASTER PARADE was Walter's most overwhelming financial success and his unimpeachable artistic triumph. The film features Judy Garland at her nimble best, some classic Irving Berlin songs (including "Steppin' Out with My Baby"), Ann Miller making her MGM debut, and Fred Astaire in the unbelievably good and magically minimal number "Drum Crazy." (1948, 103 min, 35mm) [Josh B. Mabe]

Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner’s STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (US/Silent)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 2pm

Few things make my heart stop like the iconic scene in STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. where the frame of a house, torn asunder by a cyclone, falls onto the perennially stone-faced Buster Keaton, the bulky structure just narrowly missing him. As they say, when one door closes, a window opens—or, in Buster’s case, when one door is closed, it’s a good thing the attic window was open, as it’s that precarious rectangular space that comes careening down on the impassive wastrel, sparing both the character and the comedian. It’s hardly news that Keaton did many of his own stunts, the fact of which still manages to amaze, especially in this day of underappreciated stuntmen and digital manipulation. Still, one can’t help but to be both impressed and uneasy over the thought, feelings that endure more than 90 years and probably ten times as many critical analyses later. Keaton stars as the titular prodigal son, William Canfield, Jr., who’s just left college and is seeing his father, the original ‘Steamboat Bill,’ for the first time since he was a baby. Steamboat Bill, Sr. owns a paddle steamer that’s just gotten some competition, the man whose daughter is Jr.’s love interest. Suffusing the competition between the steamboat proprietors is Sr.’s disappointment with his son, who’s shorter (the actor playing Sr., Ernest Torrence, was conspicuously tall) and fancier, eschewing work clothes for first a beret and later a proper captain’s ensemble. (In another one of the film’s best moments, father and son are trying on a variety of new hats when the salesman hands Jr. a porkpie hat, Keaton’s signature chapeau. He looks at himself iin the mirror—in this case, the camera and therefore us—quickly taking it off before his father can see, an unusual nod to Keaton’s real-life fame.) STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. was co-directed by Keaton and Chaplin collaborator Charles Reisner; Keaton said it cost around $330,000, almost as much as his 1926 film THE GENERAL, largely owing to the cyclone scene. It was the last film he made independently under the auspices of Buster Keaton Productions, the unit bequeathed to him by producer Joseph M. Schenck, who ‘presented’ much of Keaton’s best work; soon thereafter he signed with MGM, a decision he would later regret. Though he often played the infelicitous everyman, his turn as the disesteemed son, yearning to be appreciated, here seems especially fitting. With live organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott; screening as part of the Restored Films of Buster Keaton series. See “Physical Screenings/Events – Also Screening” below for more information. (1928, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Prince and Albert Magnoli’s SIGN O’ THE TIMES (US)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7:15pm

Succumbing to the joys of SIGN O’ THE TIMES at a thirty year remove from a first viewing hardens my belief that films don’t change, but we do, or can; what once upon a time seemed slapdash and often didactic to eye and ear now feels spirited and downright charming. It’s a scrappy production, with interstitial footage, a bit of story, Skid Row set design, and restaged performances turned into a satisfying rhythmic whole miraculously pulled out of the fire of unusable arena concert shoots. Prince is as generous as can be, a leader who lets everyone play and cut loose; there’s a sweet interlude where the band plays a fat slab of Mingus leading into Sheila Escovedo ripping into a drum solo—everyone gets room to roam, especially the stunning dancer/singer Cat Glover, who on occasion seems like a strip club Cyd Charisse. The man himself is, of course, Himself. You experience Prince’s very body as cinema, his quicksilver bursts and twitches, the pop-and-lock, the clenched, deep-into-it eyes moving to high doe-eyed flirtatiousness in a millisecond, the hunch over the guitar moving into splits—his movements contain the paces of satisfying editing, with its intuitive variances, jaggedness butting up against slow flow. There’ll be no more displays of that munificent talent and giant heart, but screenings like this afford opportunities to commune with each other, and with that spirit and body equalized by pain, to love anew the will and wit and sexy, churchy funk of it all. And if that seems overly sentimental, I would submit that a life given over to art that doesn’t contain a measure of sentiment is worth less than nothing; you might as well take up solitaire. (1987, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Jim Gabriel]

Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s THE GOOD BOSS (Spain)

Cinema/Chicago at the Chicago History Museum – Tuesday, 6:30pm

It’s been a joy to watch Javier Bardem age and not only get better at what he does over time, but be able to find new characters to inhabit that manage to show us that he really is on par with the Daniel Day-Lewises of the world. With this film, we have peak (as of now) Bardem as Julio Blanco, the head of a very successful scale manufacturing company in small town Spain, who is willing to do whatever it takes so that his company wins a business award. This concise premise gives so much room for anything to happen to Bardem’s mediocre Machiavelli. Nestled somewhere between a comedy of manners and a comedy of errors, THE GOOD BOSS brings a distinctively Spanish dark charm to a story that would equally befit the world of the Coen brothers. Bardem’s Blanco is so obsessed with everything being in perfect order (he does manufacture scales after all) that as problems start to occur in the personal lives of his employees, he sees it as his duty as a paternal boss to help remedy them. Everything that goes wrong is in the pursuit of perfection. And everything Blanco does is drenched in false magnanimity. Whether or not Blanco sees this we’re never quite sure. So, like so many stories of a man fighting the world and attempting to control the things he cannot, we see the unraveling of Blanco’s world coming at the worst possible time—as the committee for the one business award he has yet to win is due to visit. This film is equal parts corporate satire, sex farce, class analysis, and morality play. Yet despite all these things happening at the same time, THE GOOD BOSS maintains a surprisingly digestible decorum. Everything is in its place as it falls out of place, and the story never falters or muddles. In fact, I had the good luck to see this the week it opened while in Spain alongside my travel companion who doesn't speak much more than passing Spanish. Despite there being no subtitles, they were able to follow the film perfectly and we actually had a great conversation about it afterward. Honestly, this is a near perfect film storytelling wise. And boy oh boy did the Spaniards seem to agree. This film was nominated for a record 20 Goyas (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars) and won six (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Original Screenplay, Score and Editing), so it’s kind of a ringer if you’re looking for a quality picture to watch. Plus you get to see something absolutely magical which is Javier Bardem dressed, and acting, as a middle aged, middle of the road, uninteresting businessman. We’re given this sleight of hand where we get to see exactly what Bardem would be like if he wasn't one of the most successful actors in the world. If it was anyone but Bardem I’d call it stunt casting, but in this case it’s not only charming, but ingenious. Free admission with online registration. Followed by a discussion led by Pepe Vargas, director of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, and Marius Laurentiu Radoi, Instituto Cervantes. (2021, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Vincente Minnelli's THE CLOCK (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 2pm

THE CLOCK is one of the great Hollywood movie romances, a film that simply exudes amorousness—to watch it is to fall in love with the leads as they fall in love with each other. The story is simple: an Army corporal (Robert Walker) on a 48-hour leave in New York City meets an office worker (Judy Garland) in Penn Station. He convinces her to show him around town, and over the course of their time together, love blossoms. Though the film was shot at MGM Studios, THE CLOCK is nonetheless one of the supreme urban love stories; like SUNRISE (1927) before it and THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE (1991) much later, it depicts the city as a giant playground for lovers, with the various sights and thoroughfares opening up worlds of possibility in the city at large and between the two protagonists. For me, the loveliest sequence takes place at night, when Walker and Garland meet a milkman at a bar and ultimately have to take over his route: it’s a poignant metaphor for how love inspires responsibility, with the delivery of milk alluding to the domestic life the film’s lovers imagine themselves sharing one day. The movie isn’t a musical, despite the involvement of Garland, director Vincente Minnelli, and producer Arthur Freed (who collaborated the previous year on MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS), yet it’s the sort of film in which you expect people to start singing at any time—the world it creates is just that lyrical and exuberant. Minnelli’s direction is particularly musical, as he executes plenty of the balletic camera movements for which he was renowned; he also makes his leads seem radiant. THE CLOCK was made around the time Minnelli and Garland got married, and the star wholly earns the attention the director’s camera bestows upon her with a performance of disarming sincerity. One reason for Garland’s enduring appeal lies in the way her deep vulnerability as an individual complicated her assurance as a performer; this quality is a particular asset to THE CLOCK, as one feels Garland’s need to be loved in her interactions with Walker, not to mention her wrenching anxiety when she’s unexpectedly separated from him. The film’s climax is one of the most emotional passages in Minnelli’s filmography, a sequence of such powerful heartache that it borders on existential dread. Screening as part of the Judy Garland Summer Centennial series. (1945, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

David Cronenberg’s CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (Canada)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

David Cronenberg is the most phenomenological of directors. I never feel more aware of being human, more embodied than while watching his films. This is certainly spurred on by his visual body horror, but it’s also found in his fascinating themes about what it means to exist—about consciousness being firmly grounded in the corporeal and whether technology amplifies or obstructs that experience. CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is this Cronenberg at his best, with themes from his previous films coalescing and evolving into something new. Particularly reminiscent of his last true body horror, eXistenZ (1999), where video game consoles are essentially external organs, CRIMES OF THE FUTURE imagines technology as textured and tangible, beautiful and grotesque; with a lot to admire in the film, the viscerally stunning design of the futuristic technologies stands out. It's set in a dystopian future where humans are mutating so they no longer feel pain, surgeries are performed on the streets and new government agencies like the National Organ Registry are founded. Kristen Stewart’s Timlin, an enthusiastic and awkward assistant at that agency, is the highlight in a film of striking and funny performances. But the protagonist here is Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen). He and his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) are well-known performance artists, sensually using Saul’s body— primarily the unique organs he can grow—as their canvas. They find themselves at the center of a secretive conflict about humanity’s future —will these strange new mutations be stopped or is there a leaning into the evolution? The plot draws heavily on neo-noir, as Saul covertly slinks through the city, trying to uncover secret factions at work. CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is overall claustrophobic; this dilapidated future is rich with dark corners, shadows, and crumbling structures. At one point a character speaks of the interior of the body as "outer space," suggesting the external world is empty compared to what’s going on inside. The science-fiction world of CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is completely realized, but expertly reveals only so much of its secrets, leaving one with the disappointment that it must end and an eagerness to revisit all of Cronenberg’s work. (2022, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Terence Davies’ BENEDICTION (UK/US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Terence Davies is a conundrum for me. It’s hard to watch the director self-flagellate in his self-referential works, particularly given his tendency to believe in the primacy of the written word and his half-realized attempts to emulate poetic construction in his shooting style. Yet THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (2000) is one of the most beautifully realized films I have ever seen, and his abilities with actors are evident in all of his feature films. BENEDICTION, a biopic of 20th-century British poet Siegfried Sassoon (played beautifully by Jack Lowden), combines the best and worst of Davies’ tendencies, but the balance does tip in his favor by the end. Davies bookends his film with direct consideration of World War I. Sassoon, an officer who was cited for extreme bravery at the Western Front, presents a letter to his superiors in which he refuses to return to duty because he disagrees with the purposes of the war. Instead of being court-martialed and executed, he is sent to a military hospital for psychiatric treatment. He meets poet Wilfred Owen there, forms a mentorship and platonic attachment with him, and bids him a tearful farewell when Owen, cleared for duty, returns to the fighting and meets his end. From that point on, Davies concentrates almost exclusively on the gay relationships Sassoon had—one with a horrible, selfish Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine), another with decadent aristocrat Stephen Tennent (Calam Lynch), and a brief one with actor Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth), a nice guy Siegfried can’t appreciate. While it is great that Davies has finally come out of the closet in his film life, the lives of the gay men he depicts are sad, hurtful, and not all that interesting—perhaps a reflection of the times, perhaps a reflection of Davies’ own unhappiness and nostalgia for a world of beauty and art that was often only skin deep. Davies indulges in his characteristic film collages and ellipses that make his story both unnecessarily opaque and rather obvious in places, and the embittered Sassoon of the 1950s, played with pained ferocity by Peter Capaldi, is just too loathsome for words. In a strange way, however, Capaldi’s characterization could stand for Britain itself, shattered inside and out by the Great War. While a bit on the nose in this regard, Davies’ final scene—a voiceover recitation of Owen’s brilliant poem, “Disabled,” while the events of the poem are depicted on screen—is powerful, moving, and worth the price of admission. (2022, 137 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT (US/UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 6pm

Seen in any version (there are at least seven), BLADE RUNNER is a monstrous mess—a mélange of film noir, Philip K. Dick, action-heavy cineplex sadism, and horny chinoiserie. A critically derided flop on its initial release, BLADE RUNNER carries the uncanny suggestion that its story not only revolves around androids, but may actually have been conceived and shaped by non-human intelligence—a quality it shares with that other misunderstood Summer of '82 sci-fi spectacular, TRON. When viewed alongside director Ridley Scott's prior effort, the masterfully controlled and minutely calibrated terror show ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER feels programmatic and kludgy, as if all decisions about staging, atmospherics, and rhythm were simply fed into an overheated circuit board. (The original ending—an improbably sunny coda repurposed from second-unit outtakes from THE SHINING—plays like the product of an inelegant Surefire BoxOffice algorithm.) It's not so much that art direction, set design, cinematography, editing, music, and acting are working at cross-purposes—instead, they're merely zipping along semi-autonomously, without being shaped into a grammatical whole. So, it's odd and kind of touching that Ridley Scott has repeatedly re-asserted his authorship of this unruly, seemingly author-less masterwork—first in a hastily produced 'Director's Cut' in 1992, subsequently in a "Final Cut" released in 2007. (If Scott follows Oliver Stone's example with ALEXANDER, the "Final Cut" need not really be final; there's always the promise of an "Ultimate Cut" peeking out over the smoggy horizon.) It now takes on the impossible grandeur of a medieval saga, a lumbering epic embroidered and corrupted by countless textual variants. Most of the major changes were performed for the so-called Director's Cut: Harrison Ford's sleepy voice-over is gone, an origami unicorn rhymes with and undercuts a re-inserted dream sequence, and the freak ending is excised. The Final Cut, by contrast, services superfans, correcting gaffes imperceptible to the uninitiated: matte lines are cleaned up, lip sync is fixed with lines re-dubbed by Ford's son, Joanna Cassidy's face is digitally plastered over the body of a stunt double, Rutger Hauer treats his father more decorously. I still prefer the original 1982 theatrical cut above all others—it really heightens the contradictions, as the student Marxists used to say. But the Final Cut is still queer and ungainly enough to slosh around in. Screening as part of the Control.Alt.Delete series presented as part of Science on ScreenⓇ. See the Venue website for announcements about presentations or discussions with science and technology experts. (1982/2007, 117 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Chloe Okuno’s WATCHER (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

When two similar films are released almost simultaneously, their differences can be instructive. Alex Garland’s MEN and WATCHER both present a vision of a world where women navigate daily life as a string of microaggressions committed by men. While MEN is an A24 release, WATCHER has an “I can’t believe it’s not A24” air, with its languid pacing (no violence is committed onscreen till the end), emphasis on atmosphere, and dark cinematography. But if MEN is “surreal” and “dark” in an easily consumable manner, with a simplistic view of the differences between men and women, then WATCHER offers something creepier and more nuanced. It benefits from its central premise: an American woman, Julia (Maika Monroe), has moved to Bucharest with her husband Francis (Karl Gusman) so he can work there. A Romanian-American, he speaks the language, but she does not, so she relies on him during her interactions. When a cab driver speaks in Romanian about her, he initially translates it as “He hates you,” then says he was joking and amends the remark to “He thinks you’re beautiful.” But how can she tell what the driver—and other Romanian speakers—really think about her? Meanwhile, women in Bucharest are being hunted by a serial killer known as the Spider. Julia becomes suspicious of her neighbor Weber (Burn Gorman), accusing him of peeping on her through his window and following her around a movie theater and grocery store, though she has little proof of his intentions. Chloe Okuno frames her actors in large, sterile spaces that dwarf them. If the first half of WATCHER takes place in a representation of our world, the direction grows increasingly stylized as it ramps up the menace. COVID restrictions contributed to a vision of isolated people in a de-populated city, suggesting the Venice of DON’T LOOK NOW and the menacing Italian cities of ‘70s gialli. Okuno’s direction also brings out the spectator’s own voyeurism. A lengthy shot zooms out very slowly from Julia and Francis’ bedroom as they have sex, placing us in the position of a peeping tom. Throughout, her choice of camera angles presents cinema as a reflection of hostility towards women; it’s no coincidence that Julia used to be an actor. (2022, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (US)

The Wilmette Theatre (1122 Central Ave., Wilmette) – See Venue website for showtimes

Nobody’s life is perfect, but the Wang family’s is more or less in meltdown. The coin-op laundry they run is failing and being audited by the IRS, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), are battling all of the time, Evelyn’s sickly father (James Hong) has one foot in eternity, and Evelyn’s husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), is filing for divorce in hopes of getting Evelyn to face their problems and work things out. The title of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s 1961 musical, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, might come to mind, as it did when screenwriter-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert inserted a snippet of the play in their wacky cinematic fantasia, EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. In their fertile imaginations, the term “multiverse” escapes the banalities of comic book movies and plops into an infinitely more entertaining wuxia setting, with the queen of wuxia, Michelle Yeoh, learning how to save the multiverse from the threat of—her daughter. The imagination that went into creating the various universes in which Evelyn plays various roles—among them a movie star, a Chinese opera star, a tabletop grill chef, a lesbian with sausage fingers who uses her feet for most things—is mind-boggling. The mechanics of operating across universes are logical, simple, and incredibly funny. And the cast, including an almost-unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis as tax auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdre, all perform their fast-changing identities with perfect comic timing and grace. The lessons of the movie are really quite simple—value and honor family ties, most things are manageable if you put them in perspective, people will surprise you if given half the chance. The quick edits and the quick wits of Kwan, Scheinert, and company elevate this to a thoroughly joyful ride. (2022, 139 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
The second night of “Through the Looking Glass: Reflecting the World Around Us,” the two-night NU MFA Doc Media Thesis Showcase, takes place on Friday at 7pm, with films by Oluseyifunmi (Debs) Akinlade, Desiree Schippers, Guanyizhuo Yao, æryka hollis o’neil, and Lily Freeston and preceded by a post-screening Q&A. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
Tadashi Imai’s 1959 Japanese film KIKU AND ISAMU (117 min, Digital Projection) screens on Saturday at 7pm as part of the “Black Actors in Foreign Cinema” series presented by the Blacknuss Network. More info here.

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station
Dana Ross’ EMPATHY, featuring skateboarders in Minneapolis and Chicago, screens twice starting at 9pm on Friday.

The Mezcla Media Collective presents a program of short films made by collective members on Thursday at 8pm, with films by Nikki Kanjiani, Julia Relova, Olivia Lilley, Shaquille Roberts, and Christina Shaver. Both events are free. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s 2021 Afrofuturist film NEPTUNE FROST (105 min, DCP Digital) begins this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (92 min, 35mm) screens on Sunday at 2:30pm as part of the Control.Alt.Delete series presented as part of Science on ScreenⓇ.

Jono and Benji Bergmann’s 2021 documentary MAU (77 min, DCP Digital) screens on Tuesday at 7:30pm, preceded by a post-screening discussion with the film’s subject, Bruce Mau. Note that additional showtimes of the film will be announced. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
The Friday and Saturday midnight shows are Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult classic THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) and Jim Sharman’s 1975 all-around classic ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm), respectively. The latter screening is a special Pride-themed edition of the event.

Several restored Buster Keaton films screen this weekend in addition to STEAMBOAT BILL, JR (reviewed above): James W. Horne and Keaton’s 1927 film COLLEGE (66 min, DCP Digital) and the 1920 Edward F. Cline and Keaton short ONE WEEK (22 min, DCP Digital) screen on Saturday at 11:45am; John G. Blystone and Keaton’s 1923 film OUR HOSPITALITY (76 min, DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 2pm; and Keaton’s 1925 film GO WEST (83 min, DCP Digital) screens on Sunday at 11:45am. All with live organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott.

Alex Garland’s 2022 horror film MEN (100 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. 

The Chicago Film Society, in a co-presentation with The Numero Group, screens Andrew Davis’ 1978 film STONY ISLAND (95 min, 35mm) on Monday at 7pm, with star Richie Davis in person. Preceded by excerpts from "The Chicago Party" (1982), a public access TV program produced by South Side nightclub The CopHerBox II. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ South Side Home Movie Project
The South Side Home Movie Project is participating in the Key/Change exhibition at the Weinberg/Newton Gallery (688 N. Milwaukee Ave.), ongoing through July 16. The exhibition centers on housing; per the event description, “silent home movies and idiosyncratic sculpture subsequently suggest that housing is a productive place in which intimate moments, lifelong memories, and nurturing meals are made and shared.” More info here.

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS

Sergei Loznitsa’s DONBASS (Ukraine)

Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here

DONBASS is acutely aware of its existence as a thoroughly partial, mediated depiction of war in the east of Ukraine. The opening scene shows a woman having makeup applied, followed by another woman directing a cast of extras to run outside as a fake explosion goes off. The director’s commands have a military ring; like a drill sergeant, she shouts, “Follow my orders! Get a move on!” Is this a vision of the making of DONBASS itself? Only when the film’s final scenes return to the makeup trailer does the audience get a firm grip on the level of reality at work. DONBASS looks upon journalism as the most insidious version of fiction, showing camera crews shoot repeated takes and change camera angles to get traumatized people to play the most convincing versions of themselves. Since DONBASS is a narrative film, it feels freer than Loznitsa's documentaries to engage with our “post-truth” world. It's composed of 13 segments, sometimes connected by recurring characters, each introduced by an onscreen title relating the location. A woman accused of taking bribes barges into a meeting to dump a bucket of shit over a politician’s head. In the next scene, nurses protest the hoarding of food, medicine, and diapers in the hospital where they work while a slimy suit lies to them. Loznitsa risks caricaturing the separatists: for example, a scene where a helpless old man is crowded and beaten by young men would play quite differently if he were a macho soldier capable of fighting back or if we saw the graphic effects of the landmines he’s accused of planting. (The film features a great deal of onscreen cruelty but no gore.) Even in scenes with no physical threats, bullying is constant, as are people on opposing sides speaking at cross purposes. The fact that almost no characters are given names enhances the mood of dehumanization. Loznitsa mixes long takes (with the final scene taking this style to its limit) with cramped widescreen framings of crowds. DONBASS feels rooted in the dark satire and pissed-off mood of Vera Chytilova or Kira Muratova’s late films. The end offers no respite, just a withdrawal into a bird’s eye view of the media’s exploitation of terror that hints at an indictment of DONBASS itself. (2018, 121 min) [Steve Erickson] 

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

⚫ Video Data Bank
“Spring with Mike Kuchar” is available to stream for free on VDB TV. The program includes Kuchar’s SUNLIT SORCERY (2022, 34 min), composed of his works ECHO’S GARDEN (2010), A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE (2008) and THE VERNAL ZONE (2008), and Oscar Oldershaw’s AN AFTERNOON WITH MIKE KUCHAR (2014, 32 min). More info here.

CINE-LIST: June 10 - June 16, 2022

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Ray Ebarb, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jospehine Ferorelli, Jim Gabriel, Josh B. Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Drew Van Weelden, K.A. Westphal