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📽️ THE MUSIC BOX 70MM FILM FESTIVAL
The Music Box Theatre’s seventh 70mm Film Festival continues through Thursday. Reviews of select films are listed below; other films screening this week are Walter Hill’s 1993 western GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND (115 min, 70mm) on Friday at 2pm and Saturday at 6pm and Douglas Trumbull’s 1983 film BRAINSTORM (106 min, 70mm), preceded by a newly restored 70mm print of HERE’S CHICAGO! CITY OF DREAMS (see below for review), on Sunday at 7pm. More info here.
David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (UK)
See Venue website for showtimes
If there is a single sequence in the history of film that tells you what watching a movie on a big screen really means, and how that larger-than-life way of experiencing a movie can be so important, it's in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. A breathtaking long-shot of the desert. A view extending to the horizon. At first, we see nothing more than a shimmer. A mirage. Then a speck. Then, finally, a rider on a horse. Trotting toward us at a deliberate pace. All at once an Arab in the foreground rushes to his own horse, pulls out a gun—and is shot. His body falls to the ground, a streak of blood across his black robe. It lies on the sand. Peter O'Toole looks down at it. After a time, the rider sidles right up to him and undoes his veil. Omar Sharif. They exchange words. The Pinteresque intimacy of their dialog is startlingly paired with the infinite vastness of the desert. It's only one of countless great moments in this truly great film. And when the ten-minute intermission occurs, I dare you not to go to the concession stand and buy yourself a drink. (1962, 216 min, 70mm) [Rob Christopher]
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Joel Schumacher’s FLATLINERS (US)
Presented with Music Box of Horrors and Shudder – Saturday, 9pm and Thursday, 9:30pm
In FLATLINERS, our cast of characters investigates what happens after death. The film is set in Chicago and centers around a group of medical students looking to embark upon this grand experiment for a variety of reasons; curiosity, notoriety, or even to try and seduce a classmate. Unsurprisingly, things don’t go as smoothly as one would hope. The film enters a balancing act of horror, thriller, and science fiction, though at times this balance is askew. The experiment leads to mysterious consequences for the team—is it supernatural, of the psyche, or something completely different altogether? While the writing of the film feels like it would suit itself better with some stone cold sci-fi, the decisions made are understandable and it results in a fun film nonetheless. There is some dynamic cinematography at play here from Jan de Bont; the camera circles around the cast as they stand over a stretcher attempting to resuscitate a dead man. Simple decisions like this help to elevate scenes that would otherwise get repetitive and start to flounder after the first experiment. The film also features solid performances by a cast of familiar faces like Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, and Julia Roberts. It isn’t the most complex, but it still leaves some breadcrumbs for your brain to chew on. All in all, FLATLINERS fits the bill as a solid horror movie night flick for any Chicagoan. (1990, 115 minutes, 70mm) [Drew Van Weelden]
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Jim Henson & Frank Oz's THE DARK CRYSTAL (US)
Sunday, 12pm and Thursday, 7pm
Though not as charming or funny as any of the GREAT MUPPET movies or its successor, LABYRINTH, THE DARK CRYSTAL is an impressive and immersive feature that still accomplishes a good bit of cinematic alchemy. Henson and Oz decided with this feature to shoot a somber, epic high-fantasy story with not a single human actor. It would be impossible to shoot a movie with Muppets and not inject a little silliness in here and there, though, and the credit for that silliness goes to the character designs and sensational voice acting (most notably by the Chamberlain, a sycophantic and especially grotesque villain). THE DARK CRYSTAL tells the story of Jen, a gelfling (an elf-like creature) who was orphaned by the evil skeksis, hilarious bird-like grotesques that rule the land since the dark crystal was sundered 1000 years ago. The costuming and character design of the skeksis are just perfect. Such an intricate amount of detail went into every nook and cranny of this film, but especially the wrinkles and hideous folds of the withered, avaricious faces of the skeksis. Though the prophecy foretold that a gelfling would bring about the end of the skeksis, they have tried to battle their fate by wiping out the entire race. Little did they know, Jen survived and was rescued by the mystics, many-armed and humpbacked creatures reminiscent of Buddhist monks. A convergence of three suns is foretold and the mystics send Jen on a journey to find the shard to repair the dark crystal and heal the land. Jen's journey takes him through magical landscapes that take full advantage of Brian Froud's art design and the then-flashy technique of optical printing to enhance the enchanting experience. Though the story is not very original, and the script is not witty like LABYRINTH or some of the other later Muppet movies, the charm and splendor of this movie really lies in the painstaking attention to detail. A very dear film from my childhood, as an adult I can return to it and appreciate the care and creativity and joy that was clearly expressed in creating fantastically weird and majestic Muppets, villages, castles, miscellaneous forest creatures and plants, backstory, mystical pictographic language and hieroglyphics, and hideous villains. Like many dark fantasies of the 1980s (RETURN TO OZ and THE SECRET OF NIMH jump to mind), THE DARK CRYSTAL struck a sharp contrast to saccharine Disney animations. Henson and Oz instead drew on the tone and archetypes of The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, and the result is horrifying and thrilling, as any traumatized 1980's child will testify. The mere fact that Henson was able to make Muppets terrifying and their tragedy heart-wrenching is reason enough to watch this film, but the gorgeous detail in every frame is the real reason to watch it at the 70mm Film Festival. Bring your children with you so that you can traumatize a new generation of loyal Muppet fans. (1982, 93 min, 70mm) [Alex Ensign]
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Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's WEST SIDE STORY (US)
Sunday, 3pm and Wednesday, 7pm
The United States is a young country with an old history. Rising to the highest heights of power in the blink of an eye through rapid expansion across a broad land rich in natural resources, achieving unity far before the much more ancient Europe even made a start at it, and now prematurely gray as it struggles to adapt to a global economy and a shattered self-image, the American story has been a tough one to tell. Perhaps with the exception of the Great American Novel, Huckleberry Finn, no work of art has broken through as a wide-ranging reflection not only of who we want to be, but also of who we really are. So it may be a bold declaration to make, but if I had to pick the one work that has been and will continue to be the greatest telling of the Great American Story, it would be WEST SIDE STORY. Riding on the timeless popularity of tragic love as rendered by William Shakespeare in Romeo & Juliet while delivering that play’s crucial message about the costs of hate, WEST SIDE STORY poses a direct challenge to the complacent belief in the American Dream and the elusive principle for which it stands, “liberty and justice for all,” through the most American narrative of all—immigration. Director Harold Robbins (Robert Wise was brought in when Robbins was fired), composer Leonard Bernstein, book writer Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim—all members of despised and persecuted groups in American society—crafted a coming-of-age tale for America itself and those who would lose themselves in its myth through its focus on adolescents struggling to mature and find a place for themselves in the world. The creative team centered the rivalry among the children of poor European immigrants precariously established in New York City and those from the American territory of Puerto Rico who moved to the mainland during the 1950s. As Sondheim’s lyrics to “America” ironically suggest (“Nobody knows in America/Puerto Rico’s in America”), the members of the Sharks might have an earlier claim to being American than do the teens who make up the Jets. This conflict already distinguishes WEST SIDE STORY from Shakespeare’s blood feud of two aristocratic families as a pointedly American concern. The film features a magnetic cast of dancers and actors, with George Chakiris and Rita Moreno as standouts. Natalie Wood was put in the unfortunate position of being an Anglo playing a Latina and disliking costar Richard Beymer, the man she was supposed to be passionately in love with, but her professionalism (if not her dismal Puerto Rican accent) carry the day. All of the singing was dubbed, with veteran singing double Marni Nixon taking on Maria’s songs and Jimmy Bryant taking on Beymer’s. This is understandable considering the difficulties of Bernstein’s operatic score and does not, in my opinion, detract from the overall effect. The otherwise soundstage-bound film opens up in the “Prologue,” which was shot on location in New York, thus creating a mise en scène of the contested turf that lingers in the audience’s mind as the rest of the film progresses. Robbins, comfortable with stage choreography, manages to combine the best of both worlds throughout the film. His work in the opening “Prologue” illustrates the Jets’ exuberant dominance of their turf. Robbins moves them wordlessly from playground, to street, to basketball court in a combination of random, everyday movements by individual Jets that build to a coordinated dance. Jets leader Riff (Russ Tamblyn) whoops happily as some children run past on the street and leaps joyfully with his gang, only to run immediately into Sharks leader Bernardo (Chakiris). Bernardo handles their taunts, only to strike an obviously symbolic red stripe on a wall with his fist. Small gestures again build, this time menacingly, and the “Prologue” ends in an all-out brawl. Camera cuts, overhead shots, close-ups of smug and resentful looks form a dance of their own, one the dancers assault by running directly at the camera lens, forcing it to cut away. Robbins may have been a novice filmmaker, but his dancer’s understanding of space and how a frame can open and choke it is second only to Gene Kelly’s. Many music scholars have commented on Bernstein’s use of tritones—playing a key note followed by a note three whole tones away from the key note—which is an important method of introducing dissonance in Western harmony. During the Middle Ages, tritones were considered diabolus in musica (“devil in music”) for being hard to sing in tune. While many people consider “Maria” one of the most beautiful songs in the score, it is sobering to realize that its first two notes form a tritone; considering that Maria’s admonishment to Tony to stop the rumble ends in the deaths of her brother, Tony’s best friend, and Tony himself, she certainly does seem to have done the devil’s work, however unwittingly. Again and again, the songs and characters of WEST SIDE STORY communicate the need to belong. Maria and Tony, caught in the ethnic divide, find their sense of place in each other, which they affirm in the moving “Somewhere,” a place that is destroyed when Tony is gunned down by Maria’s formerly gentle suitor Chino (Jose De Vega). And a very interesting character nicknamed Anybodys (Susan Oakes) exemplifies a different kind of exclusion; dressing and acting like a boy, she rejects society’s assigned role for her and is, in turn, rejected by the Jets. But she refuses to go away or give up on being a part of the action. At a time of great social foment, WEST SIDE STORY offered a narrative to help Americans find a new, more worthwhile image for a more mature and realizable Great American Story. (1961, 153 min, 70mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Ted Hearne’s HERE’S CHICAGO! THE CITY OF DREAMS (US/Documentary short)
Presented by the Chicago Film Society with BRAINSTORM – Sunday, 7pm
With funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Chicago Film Society has restored HERE’S CHICAGO! THE CITY OF DREAMS, a short, reverential travelogue about the greatest US city. It was shot on 70mm and, per CFS, “screened nearly every day at the Water Tower Pumping Station from 1983-1993, until the exhibit was closed prematurely in a classic City of Chicago lease dispute.” Alas, the film doesn’t offer a sense of that colorful, albeit not entirely legal Chicago way of business that informs everything here from mayoral politics to the way pricing is determined on an Italian beef sandwich. THE CITY OF DREAMS is primarily a tribute to downtown architecture, filled with numerous helicopter and low-angle shots that underscore the majesty of Marina City, the Willis (né Sears) Tower, and other landmark skyscrapers. The Art Institute, Board of Trade, and Chicago River also factor into the montage, which is never less than stirring, thanks to the booming orchestral score. But the real attraction is the 70mm cinematography, which grants an almost frighteningly grand quality to even such banal images as a random person waiting for the red line at Loyola. That shot, incidentally, is one of precious few of the city’s many neighborhoods; THE CITY OF DREAMS is so focused on the Loop and the Magnificent Mile that it makes Chicago seem more like a theme park attraction than a place where people actually live. Still, there’s no fun quite like a theme park, and seeing this on 70mm is always a great ride. Screening before Douglas Trumbull’s 1983 sci-fi film BRAINSTORM (106 min, 70mm). (1983, 13 min, 70mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (UK/US)
Tuesday, 7:30pm
For many, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is not simply a masterpiece, but the apotheosis of moviegoing itself. In no other film is the experience of seeing images larger than oneself linked so directly to contemplating humanity's place in the universe. Kubrick achieves this (literally) awesome effect through a number of staggering devices: a narrative structure that begins at "the dawn of man" and ends with the final evolution of humankind; one-of-a-kind special effects, the result of years of scientific research, that forever changed visual representations of outer space; a singular irony that renders the most familiar human interaction beguiling; blasts of symphonic music that heighten the project of sensory overload. It isn't hyperbolic to assert, as film scholar Michel Chion has in his book Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey, that this could be the most expensive experimental film ever made; it's certainly the most abstracted of all big-budget productions. As in most of Kubrick's films, the pervasive ambiguity—the product of every detail having been realized so thoroughly as to seem independent of an author—ensures a different experience from viewing to viewing. Much criticism has noted the shifting nature of "thinking" computer HAL-9000, the "star" of the movie's longest section, who can seem evil, pathetic, or divine depending on one's orientation to the film; less often discussed is the poker-faced second movement, largely set in the ultra-professional meeting rooms of an orbiting space station. Is this a satire of Cold War diplomacy (something like a drier follow-up to DR. STRANGELOVE)? An allegory about the limitations of scientific knowledge? Like the "Beyond the Infinite" sequence that makes up most of the film's final movement—an astonishing piece of abstract expressionist art every bit the equal of the Gyorgy Ligeti composition that accompanies it—one can never know concretely what it all means, nor would one ever want to. (1968, 142 min, 70mm) [Ben Sachs]
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Frederick Wiseman’s PUBLIC HOUSING (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm
Reality is the life blood of documentary filmmaking, but there are many ways to cut reality to fit a documentarian’s objectives and timeframe. Singular among documentary filmmakers is Frederick Wiseman, whose professional brief is the observation of American ecosystems. The 91-year-old director’s incredible curiosity and social conscience has led him to record, largely without comment, a ballet company, the U.S. legal system, medical facilities, research work, and many more of the moving parts that make up the U.S. body politic. His absolutely riveting PUBLIC HOUSING documents life in the now-demolished Ida B. Wells Homes, which stood at the heart of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. The development, which was finished in 1941, had become a broken-down tenement community by 1997, the year Wiseman’s film was released. Wiseman and cinematographer John Davey enter the apartments, offices, and meetings of Wells residents, beginning with Helen Finner, the indefatigable advocate for the residents who spends all day, every day arguing with the Chicago Housing Authority about maintenance work that is months overdue. We see her secure one or two successes, but can imagine those hard-fought battles are lost more often than not, as the bureaucrats at the Daley Center wade through the piles of forms we learn the residents are required to file to get something as simple as a leaky faucet fixed. We also see some maintenance workers helping elderly residents with pest control and plumbing problems, and are impressed with their respectful and helpful behavior. We also get different sides of the Chicago police who are ever-present at the complex. Several cops harass Black men crossing the common areas, and one warns a 30ish woman to stop hanging around a known drug corner. In the first case, the man being questioned is very respectful despite the cop’s threatening behavior; eventually, he is let go and warned not to walk in that area again. In the second, the cop says he sees potential in the woman and is trying to keep her off the drugs he clearly suspects her of waiting to buy. In large part, PUBLIC HOUSING documents efforts by the residents and those who serve them to battle against the circumstances in which they all find themselves. Scenes showing attempts to help residents start businesses, educate and tend to the project’s children, act as positive male role models, prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and end the scourge of crack cocaine, one person at a time, present a poignant and damning picture of how these people—all of whom are Black—have been isolated and excised from the majority society. How Wiseman was able to film an extremely candid interview between a social worker and a convicted felon who is trying to get into a drug treatment program is beyond me, but then, that is the genius of this invaluable filmmaker. Somehow he engenders trust and allows the people being filmed to be themselves, for good or ill. His more than 50 years’ worth of documentaries provide the most complete record of the U.S. social contract we will ever have—and what a treasure it is! Highly recommended. Screening as part of 50/50, the Film Center’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (1997, 200 min, 16mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Ely Landau’s KING: A FILMED RECORD… MONTGOMERY TO MEMPHIS (US/Documentary)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm
Sidney Lumet and Joseph L. Mankiewicz both turned in uncredited directorial work on this epic documentary, but it seems more fitting to attribute authorship (as the film’s credits do) to producer Ely Landau. Like Landau’s subsequent project the American Film Theatre (1973-’75), KING: A FILMED RECORD seems motivated by the noble intention of bringing serious culture to a mass audience. It was originally released on March 24, 1970, as a one-night-only event, with all proceeds going to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Special Fund; as this was less than two years after King was assassinated, the release plan suggests something like a mass-scale memorial service. Yet the most remarkable thing about the movie may be that its artistry transcends its function as public service. Devoid of narration (though punctuated by short considerations from celebrities ranging from Harry Belafonte to Paul Newman), KING: A FILMED RECORD constructs its narrative from existing documentary material, allowing the history of King’s public work to play out in the present tense. The direct-cinema immediacy has lost none of its power; if anything, it reinforces King’s message that the struggle against bigotry and for equality is always with us. Acting in counterpart to the immediacy of the footage is the historic perspective King invoked in his speeches, some of the most eloquent ever delivered by an American. King invoked not just the historical precedents that shape our present lives, but also the history we are capable of making, and KING: A FILMED RECORD feels designed in part to preserve the awe his contemporaries felt of watching this heroic figure make history. The film recounts his most documented words and deeds as a public individual, often in uninterrupted long-takes that feel refreshing in contrast to the highly edited version of contemporary history we get from TV news. The epic length allows the filmmakers to consider multiple chapters of King’s tragically short life as a public individual, giving as much room to the political radicalization of the last few years of his life as it does to more celebrated moments like the Montgomery bus boycott or the 1963 March on Washington. KING: A FILMED RECORD presents in full statements from the last few years of King’s life where he condemned racism in Chicago, American military might abroad, and economic inequality everywhere. That many of these statements still feel relevant today is one reason why the film remains crucial viewing. (1970, 182 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Hype Williams’ BELLY (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 5pm and Saturday, 8:30pm
There are multiple filmmakers who started as music video directors—David Fincher, Michel Gondry, and F. Gary Gray—but Harold “Hype” Williams is something special, not just for what his work meant to Black culture, but for what it did for mass culture. While the others went on to be more conventional filmmakers, Hype made only one feature, and it is so consistent with his pioneering music video style that there is no change in aesthetic from the earlier work. He didn’t choose one or the other; he pushed his language further, possibly to its limits. Generally, hip hop videos before Hype featured mostly dudes in junkyards next to barrel-fires (a la F. Gary Gray’s "Natural Born Killers"). Hype had tried his hand with that world with "Wu-Tang Clan Aint Nuthing ta F' Wit," but it seems around the time of Missy Elliot's “Supa Dupa Fly” in 1997 that he really nailed his style: the fish-eye lens; the saturated colors; light glistening off skin, clothing, and objects; the almost abstract use of the widescreen ratio; and split screens (both length- and width-wise). Hype’s cinema (and it is certainly that) was a significant part of most mornings sat watching MTV or BET. Not to downplay the producers and musicians whose work he helped visualize, but Hype presented a generation of songs in a way that made the videos almost indistinguishable from the songs themselves. They're some of the few examples where music videos actually compliment the music, rather than distract from it: the wild surrealism of Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson’s "What's It Gonna Be," the minimalist perfection of TLC’s “No Scrubs” (and TLC's own T-Boz stars in BELLY), the bombastic use of red and BELLY-adjacency in Mobb Deep’s remix for "Quiet Storm," which featured Lil’ Kim in her prime. BELLY, made the year after "Supa Dupa Fly," is a kind of a gangster film. Hype was no stranger to that genre--given his videos for Usher’s "Nice & Slow," Biggie’s "Warning," and R. Kelly’s "Down Low"--but BELLY is closer to Pop Art for the big screen. The film’s plot is nothing to get too excited for, as it leans heavily into familiarity with SCARFACE and every cliched plot mechanism the genre can muster, but that isn't the point of appreciating BELLY. The late DMX (in a fantastic performance) and Nas (in a so-so performance) are two friends trying to make it in the drug game; as priorities and morals change, they find themselves at a crossroads in their personal lives, not to mention squaring off against a smoked-out Jamaican drug lord (the movie also features maybe the most blunt-smoking of any movie to date, as nearly every scene has someone blazing up). From the hair-raising, much-discussed opening scene to Method Man’s first-person shooter moment to the hypnotic re-rendering of SCARFACE’s infamous finale (transposed to 3/4 of the way in the plot), the movie gives viewers enough to admire, even though the story may leave a lot to be desired. The released version is heavily compromised, with Hype and his team having battled the money people left and right throughout the production; as a result, the movie can feel off-kilter and disorienting on first viewing. None of this takes away from the singular experience of BELLY’s intoxicating rush of hallucinatory visuals and sounds, an experience truly fit for 35mm. (The Blu-ray transfer of the movie significantly lightens the film’s intentional hypnotic contrast; Hype apparently fought with executives over their insistence that he use a film stock that "lightened" black skin.) Yet Hype’s moviemaking, aside from BELLY, has been non-existent, which is astounding. He was attached at one point to the SPEED RACER remake, and most tantalizingly of all, was developing a 3-D reggaeton zombie film set in Jamaica. BELLY provides ample justification that Hype remains a premier artist of our time, and we should be thankful for whatever bits and pieces of his imagination we get. (1998, 92 min, 35mm) [John Dickson]
Charles Walters’ SUMMER STOCK (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm
No Hollywood genre has been as consistently self-reflexive as the musical, particularly the backstage musical, in which the dramatization of “putting on a show” evokes the production process of the film itself. As Jane Feuer has noted, these musicals operate ideologically to present mass entertainment as if it were as spontaneous and communal as folk performance, in effect effacing the capitalist labor conditions behind the work. SUMMER STOCK, the third and final onscreen pairing of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, exemplifies this paradigm. Garland stars as Jane Falbury, a farmer whose bucolic existence is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a city theater troupe at her property. The troupe, led by Kelly’s Joe Ross, has been invited to rehearse at the barn by Falbury’s snooty actress sister Abigail (Gloria DeHaven). Although Falbury is engaged to the wimpy Orville Wingait (Eddie Bracken) and none too pleased with the hijacking of her farm, she eventually falls for Joe and becomes the star of his revue. With its title cleverly conflating artistic and agricultural labor--and with its valorization of the communal, “amateur” efforts of putting on a show--SUMMER STOCK promotes a romanticized image of mass entertainment as for and by the people. The insidiousness of such an illusion is particularly pronounced here due to the presence of Garland, who knew tragically well the actual costs of working in the industry (Kelly’s retort that her character doesn’t know what it’s like “rehearsing all day, knocking yourself out with the same routines” feels like a grim meta-textual joke). At the same time, the magic and magnetism of Garland and Kelly is very real, evident here as it was in their previous two paeans to show business, FOR ME AND MY GAL (1942) and THE PIRATE (1948). Against the simultaneously rustic and artificial sets by the great Cedric Gibbons, the pair get to perform a range of memorable numbers. Garland rides a tractor while singing “(Howdy Neighbor) Happy Harvest”; Kelly does a solo soft-shoe with some newspapers and a squeaky floorboard; and in the film’s most iconic scene, Garland dons a tuxedo jacket and nylons to belt out “Get Happy” amid a fawning circle of male dancers. SUMMER STOCK would be Garland’s final picture for MGM, as her worsening mental condition and the backstage dramas that compounded it led to the termination of her contract. Keep this in mind while the film asks you to “forget your troubles, come on get happy.” Screening as part of the Judy Garland Summer Centennial series. (1950, 109 min, 35mm) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
2022 Chicago Film Archives Media Mixer (US/Experimental)
Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) – Thursday, 8:30pm
For anyone familiar with how Chicago Film Archives organizes their collection of Midwestern moving-image ephemera, it can be interesting to see a work related to CFA—either something in their care as a standalone viewing or during the annual Media Mixer, when the organization pairs local filmmakers and musicians to create short works using films in their collection—and find out from which collections it originated. Some collections in particular stand out, such as the ones from Mort and Millie Goldsholl and JoAnn Elam; those are just two of the sources for the hypnotically edited and beautifully scored visual amalgamation that is Kishino Takagishi and Daniel Knox’s SEE! (7 min, Digital Projection). It’s likewise interesting to have some familiarity with the collections and consider how the filmmakers adapt, rearrange, manipulate, and ultimately transform existing footage that otherwise spends its days being lovingly preserved in an archival setting. That’s to say these artists give new life to materials whose appreciable existence is semblant of CFA’s mission to prolong that physical and spiritual vitality. SEE! embodies this mission in how Takagishi utilizes fragments of films, either out of context or collaged with other carefully preserved detritus, to create out of them a thing which retains the essence of the original material while also baring the mark of originality. Though all sorts of images are used, it’s those of people in motion (or not) that create the most transfixing sequences, particularly a section where two separate images of people twirling are juxtaposed against an image of a person lying motionless on the floor. Knox—a venerated local musician and former Music Box projectionist responsible for two wide-reaching David Lynch retrospectives—complements the imagery with a lulling score, knowing but still whimsical, much like the naifish auteur whose work he’s been instrumental in exhibiting. Millie Goldsholl’s REBELLION OF THE FLOWERS (1992) features prominently in Tempestt Hazel and Azita Youssefi’s FRESH CUT FLOWERS (5 min, Digital Projection), set amongst and against footage of Black life, images of the Goldsholl film’s whimsical floral animations in concert with the depictions of Black joy and living. The original tells the story of a gardener who becomes accursed with the power he yields over his floral oasis and is eventually vanquished by the beautiful things he’d wished to dominate. This sublime reimagining is set to a pert entreaty composed by Youssefi, whose soundtrack helps shape the reconstituted narrative. Janelle Vaughn Dowell and Sen Morimoto’s ELSEWHERE (12 min, Digital Projection) evokes feelings of being just that, whether in mind, body, or soul. It’s inspired by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s 2020 book Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, a provocative acknowledgement that casts the airy imagery of people at rest and at play (but never at work or partaking in any other kind of physical or emotional labor) in a more symbolic light. Interestingly, Vaughn Dowell’s LinkedIn page notes that her work "emphasizes the need for rest and rejuvenation,” a radical concept that plays an important role in discussions of inequity and how that might be rectified. Morimoto’s jazzy accompaniment reveals a similar abutment of leisure and a longing for it, enforcing the edit's subtle dynamic. Each work in the CFA Media Mixer, this year as well as years past, ultimately variates on the concept of revealing the beauty and complexity of the past’s lingering remnants, preserved by CFA for how they connect us to the past and remixed by the selected artists so that they may connect us to the present. Hosted by Amy Beste, curator of Conversations at the Edge and the Director of Public Programs and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sen Morimoto will perform live and all artists except Daniel Knox will appear in person for post-screening discussion. More info here. [Kat Sachs]
Hong Sang-soo's IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE (South Korea)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
Hong Sang-soo's work ethic is certainly one to aspire to, and his need to create always proves fruitful. IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE is a minimalist film, like much of Hong's work, but that doesn't mean the film lacks complexity or substance. To those unfamiliar with Hong’s oeuvre, it may appear that there isn't a lot going on here. It focuses on a former actress’ visit to her native country of South Korea, and unfolds mainly in two major parts. In the first, the actress visits with her sister to catch up; in the second, she meets with a director who is interested in casting her in a project. It sounds simple enough, but there's in fact a lot at play here. Hong's strength as a filmmaker lies in his ability to elevate everyday occurrences—for example, spilling soup on your pink blouse. This type of sequence could easily occur in any number of films; perhaps a giant, heaping pot of chili gets dumped on a person's chest or someone feels the horror of a stain before the first date. Where Hong excels is in bringing gravity to mundanity, finding a certain joy in the everyday, even in a goofy accident like spilt soup. If there is one blessing I gained from the pandemic, it’s the reminder to appreciate these immensely graceful mundanities, because now that the world has started spinning again it will be hard to stop it. (2021, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
Steven Spielberg's A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm
In many regards, A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE represents the inverse of Steven Spielberg's E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982). In this film, the alien creature is not from outer space but manmade, and the broken family he attempts to heal rejects his efforts. Adapted by Spielberg from a script he'd developed with Stanley Kubrick, A.I. imagines a dystopian future where rising water levels have rendered much of Earth uninhabitable; androids, who live like second-class citizens, mediate most human interactions. The film's first act focuses on a couple who adopt an android boy to take the place of their biological son, who's in a coma. After the couple abandons their adopted son (in one of the most upsetting passages in Spielberg's filmography), the android embarks on a search to recover his human family, discovering unwelcome truths about himself--and humanity--in the process. The movie divided audiences on first release with its conclusion, which imagines the end of humanity and the ironic fulfillment of the android boy's wish to be reunited with his mother. For some, Spielberg's handling of this development constituted a betrayal of Kubrick's cynicism; for others, it represented a strange and powerful conflation of Spielbergian uplift and Kubrickian ambiguity. That the ending has inspired so many readings confirms that A.I. is more in line with Kubrick's work than Spielberg's, despite the surface sentimentality. Spielberg has often said that he considers Kubrick the greatest director of all time, and A.I. is a moving and multifaceted tribute to his hero's career. The emotionalism doesn't detract from the Kubrickian themes of dehumanization and annihilation, but rather complicates them and renders them strange. Screening as part of the Control.Alt.Delete series presented as part of Science on ScreenⓇ. (2001, 146 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Henry Hathaway’s SPAWN OF THE NORTH (US)
Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
The true star of Henry Hathaway’s wobbly Alaska-set SPAWN OF THE NORTH isn’t Henry Fonda, George Raft or Dorothy Lamour, good as they all are in it. No, it’s a seal, called Slicker in the film, a loyal buddy to Raft’s Tyler and Fonda’s Jim, longtime friends finding their way in America’s northernmost frontier. When Tyler returns from a fishing trip in the arctic, it’s Slicker who jumps into the water to kiss him hello (complete with audible smooching foley); next to greet him are Lamour’s Nicky, spit-fire owner of the town’s hotel, and Jim, who in Tyler’s absence has started a salmon cannery. As the town’s newspaperman (John Barrymore, drunk for most of filming) remarks to his daughter (Louise Platt), soon to become Jim’s love interest, the man’s ambition has put him into the position of those who own the proverbial apple trees, while Tyler is among those more likely to scavenge the tempting fruit. This embodies the dilemma at the heart of SPAWN OF THE NORTH, as the latter man, endeavoring to buy a schooner, falls in with a gang of Russian pirates who’ve made a career of stealing from the locals’ fish traps. The plot is a bit niche—the stakes are apparently high enough to warrant a team of vigilantes killing anyone caught stealing fish—but whatever it lacks in clear exposition it makes up for with stupendous location shots and special effects, deserving of the appropriately Special Award for outstanding achievement in creating Special Photographic and Sound Effects it received at the 11th Academy Awards. It also opens with documentary-like footage of an Alaska salmon run, situating the story against nature’s larger, more transcendent purpose, cemented by a surprisingly self-aware scene where Jim connects the local Native Americans’ salmon summoning ceremony to he and other fisherman praying for similar miracles of the natural world. This is one of those films with a what-could-have-been history: it was originally slated to star Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, and Carole Lombard, and was going to be shot in Technicolor. Still, Lamour delivers a fierce performance as Tyler’s hotelier-moll ride-or-die, and the black-and-white cinematography beautifully emphasizes the frigid setting. All this is to say nothing of Slicker’s memorable performance, which must be seen to be appreciated. Preceded by Tex Avery’s 1955 short THE LEGEND OF ROCKABYE POINT (6 min, 16mm). (1938, 110 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS (Germany)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm
METROPOLIS is the first modern blockbuster, the big-budget big bang, but it clinches that title only owing in part to its visionary grandiosity, its awesome scale, its ribald ridiculousness. The thing that really marks METROPOLIS as the first of its kind is its oppressiveness—the mix of elation and enervation, triumph and trepidation that greets everything from Joseph L. Mankiewicz's CLEOPATRA (1963) to Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (2011) to the "Untitled DC Comics Movie" that Warner Bros. has slotted for next year already. Reviewing METROPOLIS in 1927, the young Rudolf Arnheim complained that "[e]ven before its opening, the magazines have stirred us up and tired us out for so long behind the scenes of this film that we now stagger into the theater quite exhausted and apathetic." The flying cars of METROPOLIS have not yet come to fruition, and yet all the social media events of our age—trailer premieres, poster reveals, production blogs, Instagram clues, budgetary gossip, obnoxious hashtags and subtweets—descend directly from the METROPOLIS saturation marketing playbook and seem fully consistent with the film's futurism. More importantly, METROPOLIS serves as the blueprint for the film that's too big to fail—and too vulnerable to offend. It's no secret that the plot of METROPOLIS is an unadorned, incoherent mush that decries class stratification while painting the working class as dull-witted jackanapes who would accidentally drown their offspring if left to their own devices. Like today's blockbusters calibrated for an increasingly globalized audience, METROPOLIS is made for everyone and no one at the same time—it simultaneously flatters and profanes the prejudices of communists, fascists, Christian democrats, New Women, and old men. In other words, it's a mess and one we deserve more with each passing year. Nota bene: when I graduated from Doc Films in 2008, I thought I would be among the last generation of student programmers to fill out a summer calendar with dodgy 16mm prints. In those days, there were still elderly distributors hawking 16mm dupes in printed catalogs, many blissfully (or conveniently) unaware that the GATT treaty had restored the copyright to many of their public domain imports. Borrowing a 16mm print from EmGee or Biograph was almost never a good experience, but it was definitely an experience. This transaction was a living connection to a vanishing (or mostly already vanished) world of non-theatrical 16mm distribution, before VHS, laserdisc, DVD, and comprehensive studio repertory divisions made the whole thing illegible. In the case of METROPOLIS, we have a film that's been restored and reconstructed perhaps more often than any other. Giorgio Moroder's version remains the gold standard, though subsequent efforts took a more scholarly bent. Enno Patalas's decades-long quest to restore METROPOLIS resulted in the 2001 reconstruction (The Gene Siskel Film Center will screening this version --eds.), as well as the 2005 "study version" released on DVD. These restorations build upon previous preservations of drastically truncated editions, including such curios as the Australian release version and Paramount's American cut-down prepared by Channing Pollock. All this culminated in the 2008 discovery of a 16mm duplicate negative in Buenos Aires, which represented the most complete extant version by far. When this restoration met its public in 2010, the acclaim was immense. I dissent—not on account of the quality of the restoration but because the longest version of METROPOLIS is not necessarily the best. The vertiginous graphic energy that predominates in the shorter versions gives way to fully-rounded, tiresomely justified character motivations in the Buenos Aires version. It is the most exhaustive edition of a film that never much rewarded extended contemplation. It was immensely important to finally glimpse what audiences in the first few months of 1927 saw—but we shouldn't slight the shortened versions that audiences studied and canonized for the next eight decades either. Screening as part of the Control.Alt.Delete series presented as part of Science on ScreenⓇ. (1927, 124 min, 35mm) [K.A. Westphal]
Alfred Hitchcock's SHADOW OF A DOUBT (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 8:30pm
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest strengths as a storyteller is his ability to reveal information within his films that clues the audience to the realities of the situation while simultaneously withholding this information from his characters. Not only does this drive the plot but also adds a combination of both hope and dread that these secrets might not come to a nefarious fruition for the characters the audience has recently become attached to. In SHADOW OF A DOUBT, he seeks to do exactly this. Teenaged Charlie (Teresa Wright) lives in a small town in California with her mother leading a rather disenchanted life when one day her Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) comes to visit. Charlie has always idolized her Uncle, after whom she’s named. When two men claiming to be national surveyors and photographers come to pay a visit at her mother’s home, Charlie starts to suspect her Uncle is not what he seems and begins to fear the worst. Hitchcock deftly blends the idyllically shot Santa Rosa and deep family nostalgia with the slowly creeping realization that kin might not always be what they appear to be to create a disquieting feeling that on the surface may loom cheerful but is laden with unsavory subtext beneath. The internal turmoil felt by Charlie is peak Hitchcock even if the film undeservedly continues to hold a less prominent place in his oeuvre. Cited as a personal favorite of the director among his own works, SHADOW OF A DOUBT is a subversive thrill ride. (1943, 108 min, 35mm) [Kyle Cubr]
Orson Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (Switzerland/Spain)
Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 7pm
A thoroughly thrilling experience, inspiring on every conceivable level, and one of the saddest films ever made. Welles made a life-long study of Shakespeare, adapting him on stage many times and making, in MACBETH and OTHELLO, two of his best movies. As a very young man, he attempted a mammoth adaptation he called Five Kings, combining scenes from the eight history plays revolving around the War of the Roses and The Merry Wives of Windsor, a project that here, transformed from a youth's ambition to a mature artist's melancholy, forms the seed for CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, a sprawling, strange, and deeply big-hearted melodrama of love and death, honor and betrayal, cowardice and duty, profligacy and desperation. In his films he has always demonstrated a fascination with texture, with visual patterning, with the complex choreographies of incoherent human figures made possible through spaces of grotesque and labyrinthine depth. This is nowhere more apparent than here. In a series of grand kinetic dances, Welles arranges haunting specters of death, swirling amongst and engulfing the lusty, hot-blooded, and immanently life-loving commoners and nobles that populate Shakespeare's version of history. There is no-one so ignoble not to deserve the adoration of Welles's camera, or the dignity of Welles's staging. As Hal, the wastrel son of the usurper King Henry IV, Keith Baxter deserves particular note: he is as affectionate and as cruel as can be borne by one mere character, and his masterful portrayal of Hal's contradictions mirror the contradictions at the heart of the film. No one for more than a moment here is what he or she seems, no space is wholly trustworthy, and no plot truly secret, for the most serious of all games, and the most pleasurable, is that which is played with one's own life as the stake and with no hope of surviving to collect the winnings save in the songs of our loved ones. In short, this film is magic itself, a celebration of cinema as the grandest of tricks, that which alone can transform the past into the present as palpably as memory, and the whole of the material world into the effervescence of poetry. The greatest film by the greatest director. Michael Dawson, who produced the new restoration of CHIMES OF MIDNIGHT that Chicago Filmmakers will be screening, will appear for a post-screening discussion. (1965, 119 min, Digital Projection) [Kian Bergstrom]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Phil Tippett’s MAD GOD (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
There are passion projects and then there’s MAD GOD. Shot by Phil Tippett over a 33-year period, the film takes place in an enormously detailed apocalyptic dystopia that reflects his background as a special effects artist. Tippett cites Hieronymous Bosch’s paintings as his major influence, and this comes through in images like a diorama of bloodied bodies seen through a building. But cinematically, his vision suggests Alexei German’s HARD TO BE A GOD combined with the avant-garde animation of Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. Sans dialogue, MAD GOD stays just shy of becoming a narrative film, although the closing credits introduce us to characters like “Last Human,” “The Surgeon” and “The Assassin.” It’s possible to piece together fragments of a story, as the film’s key scene depicts a brutally bloody C-section that destroys the mother’s body and sprays the surroundings with gelatinous gore but retrieves an insectile baby. The world of MAD GOD is populated by humans alongside other creatures both real and imagined. The credits include “newt wrangler,” while jellyfish float past poisonous chartreuse mushrooms. But MAD GOD devotes most of its energy to building a brutal, oft-ugly world one step away from utter collapse. Its cities are made of buildings that are toppling over and turning into flakes of grey dust; the powerful don’t hesitate to crush humanoid figures under their wheels; and a pustule-faced creature watches film of a mushroom cloud exploding. Tippett, now 70, was the subject of a 2019 documentary and has benefited from a lengthy career specializing in stop-motion animation, working on the original STAR WARS trilogy, JURASSIC PARK and STARSHIP TROOPERS. However, MAD GOD has little to do with such mainstream films, even Verhoeven’s. It feels like a strange, impeccably crafted piece of outsider art inspired by disgust with war and environmental destruction, carrying the weight of obsession but made with enough resources to bring its homemade world to life. Even as a brief feature, it’s too grim and unpleasant to be reduced to eye candy. Its imagery transcends the literal tendency of film violence, describing a hellish devaluation of life that alludes to the Holocaust and other historical horrors without directly depicting them. (2021, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
Spike Jonze's HER (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
"I don't get this new world," quipped Benjamin Netanyahu several years back. His subject was smart-phones. "Everybody's taking pictures. When do they have time to live? ... If you didn't take a picture, it's like you never actually lived it. I lived and didn't take a picture ... So I'm the only person here without all these electronic devices. And I'm a free man and you're all slaves. You're slaves to your gadgets." The Israeli prime minister is voicing a common sentiment, one that finds expression in St. Vincent's latest, self-titled album (especially the biting single "Digital Witness") and, much less artfully, in all those critiques of narcissistic millennials endlessly churning through the op-ed/think piece/click bait swamps. This zesty zeitgeist also threatened to swallow whole Spike Jonze's HER—a movie willfully misapprehended by many observers, pro and con. The standard rap on HER is that it's about our relationship to our gadgets and devices—a ready-made statement on How We Live Now, a sleek iMeditation on love and sex in a world that's outgrown face-to-face communication. Are we slaves to our phones, our tablets, our laptops, our e-mail, our social media feed? If we judge HER on these pressing questions, or the ones raised by critic Richard Brody about the movie's stealth consumerism, then it's an obnoxious, twee, feature-length evasion. I'd propose, however, that this interrogation misses the point of HER, reduces its complicated emotions and expansive horizons to the space of a hashtag. Ultimately, HER is a piece of superlative, speculative science fiction—an eternal story about consciousness and corporeality that sat in wait until technology caught up to it, made its premise plausible and relatable. On the plot level, it's about whether Joaquin Phoenix can develop a loving, rewarding, sexually fulfilling relationship with an operating system (Scarlett Johansson). Detractors scoff that this relationship is impossible and vaguely insulting—but even the most hidebound screenwriting manual would acknowledge that Johansson's Samantha qualifies as a full-formed, functional character: she has desires, needs, goals, problems, all quite independent of Phoenix's high-waisted pants and hipster glasses. The empathetic leap demanded by this movie is the recognition that HER is fundamentally about her. Samantha's story parallels Pinocchio's, though we never quite grasped his nebulous, essentially academic reasons for preferring fallible flesh to durable wood. Why should he want to be a real boy, anyway? In contrast, Samantha's yearning for a body—any body—reasserts the centrality of that vessel to the human (and superhuman?) experience. (HER also improves upon another Pinocchio descendant, A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, which contented itself with asking whether a computer can give sexual pleasure; HER radically asserts that a computer can receive that pleasure as well.) HER presents feeling in search of form, delicately and movingly suggesting the limits of both. And speaking of form: HER is one beautifully conceived movie, with K.K. Barrett's production design shouldering a significant narrative and emotional weight. Jonze, so long assumed to be a game but unobtrusive midwife to Charlie Kaufman's scripts, also proves himself to be a genuinely visionary filmmaker, seamlessly weaving together footage shot in Los Angeles and Shanghai to create an urban utopia comparable to Vertov's fusion of Moscow and Kiev in THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA. Screening as part of the Control.Alt.Delete series presented as part of Science on ScreenⓇ. (2013, 126 min, 35mm) [K.A. Westphal]
Robert Z. Leonard's IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm
Of the surfeit of movie musicals to come out of Golden Age Hollywood, IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME doesn’t typically rank among the best; its score, comprised of turn-of-the-century standards, is not especially memorable, and there’s little dancing to make up for what the music lacks. However, the film remains of interest for a number of reasons, which have helped secure its legacy. Most notably, it serves as the middle of a series of major film adaptations of Miklós László’s 1937 play Parfumerie, with Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940) as its predecessor and Nora Ephron’s YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998) as its much later successor. Director Robert Z. Leonard relocates the story from Budapest to Chicago, where his protagonists, both working in the same music shop, unknowingly conduct a romance via anonymous pen pal letters. Van Johnson takes over the James Stewart role (he even seems to mimic Stewart’s voice for part of the picture), while Judy Garland fills the role previously played by Margaret Sullavan. IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME is notable for being Garland’s penultimate film at MGM. Although the actress was infamously dealing with personal struggles and clashes with the studio, you wouldn’t know it from her performance, as she attacks the role of the headstrong but hopelessly romantic Veronica Fisher with feisty gusto, juicily sparring with Johnson’s salesman before silently realizing her growing infatuation for him in a lovely piece of facial acting late in the film. Garland is as sharp here as she ever was, her full-blooded vocal performance and presence enlivening what are often listlessly executed musical numbers. Other standout roles are played by the wonderful character actor S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall and Buster Keaton in his first MGM picture in 16 years. Keaton also served as a gag writer on the film, and he was unsurprisingly responsible for the two best comedic moments, both faux pas involving wrecked personal belongings. Despite barely taking place in the titular season, IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME is a mostly sunny affair, a colorful, good old time with some of Hollywood’s all-time great players. (Add to that list Liza Minnelli, who makes her first film appearance as an infant in the closing shot!) Screening as part of the Judy Garland Summer Centennial series. (1949, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Jean-Luc Godard's ALPHAVILLE (France)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 5pm
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, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
Satoichi Kon's PAPRIKA (Japan/Animation)
Facets Cinema – Thursday, 7pm
PAPRIKA was Satoichi Kon's final film, and what a wonderful way to wrap up a remarkable career. Kon passed away in 2010 due to pancreatic cancer at the early age of 46, but his work has left a lasting impression on cinema, inspiring filmmakers worldwide and even garnering some copycats, to put it nicely (just Google it). In PAPRIKA, we see the culmination of themes and stylizations that occur throughout his work; it also represents a boundlessly creative approach to the anime medium. Kon often blurred the line between reality and fantasy, and in PAPRIKA he addresses the world of dreams and its position in our worldview. The titular Paprika is the dream persona of a psychologist who enters patients' dreams to help guide their rehabilitation. Things get chaotic when someone steals a device that makes Paprika's dream-hopping possible and starts to use it for nefarious purposes. PAPRIKA successfully juggles a multitude of genres—it’s a horror movie, comedy, and psychological thriller at the same time. Kon, like a few of his contemporaries, recognized the similarities between cinema and dreams. Filmmakers like David Lynch and Apichatpong Weerasethakul are known for utilizing dream logic in their films, and Kon deserves to be mentioned in the same discussions about the close relationship between these two forms. In PAPRIKA, Kon recognizes that cinema has the power to manipulate and replicate dreams, and he questions the morality of cinema's ability to do so. Is it wrong to toy freely with dreams, places of purity and unbounded freedom and safe havens from the harsh reality that plagues our waking lives? Kon decides that, through cinema we can take the joy and freedom of our dreams and transplant them into our day-to-day lives for everyone to enjoy. (2006, 90 min, Digital Projection) [Drew Van Weelden]
Michael Glover Smith’s RELATIVE (US)
The Wilmette Theatre (1122 Central Ave., Wilmette) – Sunday, 7pm
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. Followed by a Q&A with the the film's producer Aaron Wertheimer. (2022, 97 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]
Cooper Raiff’s CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH (US)
Landmark's Century Centre Cinema (2828 N. Clark St.) – See Venue website for showtimes
The American film industry always seems to be looking for the next big thing, and when it comes to directors, the younger the better. This tendency births a lot of stories no one over the age of 18 is likely to enjoy. Of course, there are exceptions, and one of them is Cooper Raiff’s CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH. Twenty-five-year-old Raiff wrote, directed, and stars in this tale of a new college graduate named Andrew (Raiff), who has no idea what he wants to do with his life. He lives at home with his mother (Leslie Mann) and loathed stepfather (Brad Garrett), sharing a room with his 13-year-old brother David (Evan Assante) and working behind the counter of a fast-food joint. His life changes when he meets Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her 16-year-old autistic daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), at a bat mitzvah. Andrew rouses the guests to have fun, and his success leads him to become a professional party starter, primarily for bar and bat mitzvah celebrations where the guests are the same people from party to party because all of the celebrants are in the same grade at school. Lola and Andrew share a special understanding, and he starts babysitting for her and becoming attached to Domino despite the 10-year difference in their ages. Audiences have come to expect that there will be a clinch between these two attractive people, but Raiff has a different agenda. Domino and Andrew are at different stages in their lives, making their attraction problematic. Despite his youth, Raiff is not a first-time director, and his interest in a more mature handling of romance shows that he is a thoughtful filmmaker to watch. The performances, no matter how small, are very good, marred only by the fact that Raiff and Johnson don’t look that far apart in age. As I watched the film, I was reminded of Lynn Shelton’s OUTSIDE IN (2017) in story, tone, and performances. Given that I thought OUTSIDE IN was one of the best films of its year and many others, that is high praise indeed for CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH, a warm and wise film. (2022, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
âš« Cinema/Chicago
Jonathan Keijser’s 2021 Canadian drama PEACE BY CHOCOLATE (96 min, Digital Projection) screens on Tuesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.). Keijser will take part in a post-screening discussion moderated by critic Lee Shoquist. Free admission with online registration. More info here.
âš« Comfort Film at Comfort Station
Henry Sala’s 1986 horror film NIGHTMARE WEEKEND (86 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 8pm as part of “Released and Abandoned: Forgotten Oddities of the Home Video Era.” Free admission. More info here.
âš« Facets Cinema
Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 sci-fi action film THE RUNNING MAN (101 min, Digital Projection) screens with the theatrical cut of Kinji Fukasaku’s 2000 manga adaptation BATTLE ROYALE (113 min, Digital Projection) on Friday as part of Cinema Deathmatch: Round One. The former screens at 7pm, the latter at 9pm.
Audrey Diwan’s 2021 French abortion drama HAPPENING (100 min, DCP Digital) screens multiple times Saturday and Sunday. Check Venue website for showtimes. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
The 2022 Sundance Film Festival Short Film program continues and Rebecca Huntt’s 2021 autobiographical documentary BEBA (79 min, DCP Digital) begins this week.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2002 Turkish film DISTANT (110 min, 35mm) screens four times this week. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Hyde Park Art Center
Movies in the Lot with Sin Cinta Previa takes place on Thursday at 8pm in the lot of the Hyde Park Art Center (5020 S. Cornell Ave.) The event, titled Trans-Parent Material, includes a work-in-progress screening of Oli Rodriguez’s upcoming film PAPI’S PREGNANT (11 min, Digital Projection) and a full screening of Rodriguez’s 2018 documentary LYNDALE (24 min, Digital Projection). More info here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
The Music Box Garden Movies series continues. See Venue website for list of films screening and showtimes.
Dean Fleischer-Camp’s 2022 film MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (89 min, DCP Digital) screens on Thursday at 4:45pm in advance of a full run starting on Friday. More info on all screenings here.
âš« 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.
🎞️ ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST (Italy)
Available to rent on Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube Movies and to stream on Kanopy through participating libraries
THE CONFORMIST is a beautiful and surprisingly assured work that revered Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci and equally respected cinematographer Vittorio Storaro made when they were only in their 20s. The film dropped quickly from sight after its rave reception at several film festivals and only got a very limited run in the United States after the likes of Francis Ford Coppola urged Paramount to release it. The film also was scarce in its native country because of its depiction of the popularity of fascism in 1930s Italy. The story of the conformist, Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), begins by showing some sort of disconnect between Marcello and his surroundings—a shabby figure moving nervously in an elegant hotel room. Soon, the film reverts to flashback as we watch Marcello move from privileged childhood to fledgling spy for the Italian government. Marcello is friends with a blind fascist named Italo (José Quaglio). This not-very-subtle symbol for Italy under Mussolini broadcasts fascist propaganda on the radio and introduces an eager Marcello to the colonel (Fosco Giachetti), who can help Marcello realize his ambitions. Marcello enters a monumental building, his tiny figure like an ant moving across a vast marble expanse. He enters the wrong room for a brief moment and catches a glimpse of a ranking fascist seducing a woman in mourning attire who is laying across his desk. Marcello’s and the woman’s eyes meet for an instant. Excusing himself quietly, Marcello goes on to the colonel’s office, where he offers to try to infiltrate the antifascist movement through his former philosophy professor, a middle-age man named Quadri (Enzo Tarascio) who is a self-exile in Paris. When the colonel learns Marcello is soon to be married, he considers a honeymoon in Paris as the ideal cover. His fiancée, Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), is a simple-minded bourgeoise whom Marcello chose because of her sheer ordinariness, her good looks, and her sexually eager nature. Giulia is shown in a black-and-white striped dress, and the shadows created by the light coming through some blinds suggest a noirish atmosphere, but moreso a rigid geometry surrounding Marcello. His desire, like all fascists, is for strict order. The Clericis’ train makes a stop before they proceed to Paris. Once the newlyweds are ensconced in their hotel room, Marcello phones Quadri to suggest a meeting for old times’ sake. When the Clericis arrive at the Quadri home, they are greeted at the door by a large dog and Anna Quadri (Dominique Sanda). Marcello seems thunderstruck by her, and we get the distinct impression that they know each other. In fact, Sanda played the woman in black and a whore Marcello encountered when he met a fascist contact in France. She is clearly the woman of Marcello’s dreams, and he spends the rest of the trip pursuing her. After a shocking and brutal scene in which Marcello carries out his orders, the film fast-forwards to the end of the war and the fall of Italy’s dictatorship. On the street, Marcello has an encounter that upsets everything he ever believed about himself and turns him into a raging lunatic. His fascist control is gone from inside him as well as from the city that swallows him up in the night. So, what is it that drives Marcello? What is it that he believes about himself that leads him to pursue social conformity in spite of the irrational urges that spill forth when he is confronted with Anna and her lookalikes? We are led to believe that a homosexual encounter Marcello had when he was 14 made him feel different. In addition, his mother (Milly) is a morphine addict and his father (Giuseppe Addobbati) is in an insane asylum. It would certainly not be a surprise if Marcello was a little touched himself, or at the very least, fearful of being overtaken by the madness that felled his father and drove his mother’s addiction. Those who seek to fence out the irrational will naturally gravitate to the safe, narrow tracks of society’s rules and, in the extreme, to fascism. Marcello’s attitude toward women is at least as repressed as his other urges. When the Quadris and Clericis go out for Chinese food and dancing, Anna asks Giulia to dance. The two do a seductive tango that disturbs the conventional couples on the dance floor and scandalizes Marcello. Quadri is content with their behavior: “They both look so pretty.” He has accepted the bisexual Anna as she is, whereas Marcello holds his wife in contempt, threatened by the fact that his conventional wife is more sexually liberated that he could have imagined. As the ultimate irrational in a man’s psyche, women must be as predictable as possible for the man Marcello desperately wants to become. Like all of Bertolucci’s films, THE CONFORMIST is deeply sensual. Storaro and film editor Franco Arcalli provides sumptuous visual effects that make the film appear to be a dream inside a dream, with an impressionistic, almost surrealist feel even as they create a mood and narrative drive that build from illusion to horror. Jean-Louis Trintignant, who died on June 17, 2022, at the age of 91, created a memorable character who, ironically, remained an unknowable shadow to himself. (1970, 113 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING
âš« 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 24 - June 30, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Drew Van Weelden, K.A. Westphal