:: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18 - THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24 ::

Check venue websites for holiday closures 🦃, as well as for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place for Covid prevention. We recommend verifying those before every trip to the theater.

🟠 BLACK HARVEST FILM FESTIVAL
AT THE GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

The 28th Black Harvest Film Festival continues through Sunday at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Reviews of select films can be found below. There’s a virtual component to the festival as well, starting Monday and going through Sunday, November 27. Films available to stream will be listed below the in-person screenings. This year's festival is dedicated to the late Sergio Mims, co-founder of the festival and its longtime co-programmer and consultant. More info on the festival here.

Laura Checkoway's THE CAVE OF ADULLAM (US/Documentary)
Friday, 6pm
Laura Checkoway’s new doc THE CAVE OF ADULLAM follows the titular Detroit martial arts studio, run by sensei Jason Wilson. Billing itself as “not a martial arts school, but a Transformational Teaching Academy,” the Cave approaches martial arts more as a mental/spiritual discipline than a physical one. True to the Old Testament reference of the title, the studio is a haven for its black adolescent students, with group training seen as a means for a sort of personal and collective liberation. Jason, the founder and primary instructor at the Cave, is a gentle and charismatic leader, an athletic-trainer-cum-spiritual-guru who occasionally also attends his students’ parent-teacher conferences. Thankfully this dynamic stays fairly warm and fuzzy, avoiding spilling over into cult-like territory because of Jason’s commitment to connecting the group’s work with the kids’ family lives as well as their futures outside the dojo. Like most documentaries about the intense discipline, CAVE OF ADULLAM is heavy on shots of the kids’ meditative practice and requisite Breakthrough Moments. But it’s the well-sketched milieu that gives these scenes weight, showing how the broader self-help mantras of the Cave have real applications for the students’ day-to-day lives. Interspersed throughout the film are scenes of the students’ personal lives, which show a bevy of personal problems including absentee families and academic struggles. Despite the racial and socio-economic particulars of the students, the film is a thoughtful portrait of adolescent masculinity more generally, presenting a sort of ideal space that encourages the students’ honest introspection at a time of their dawning emotional awareness. For whatever the film lacks in wraparound, structural understanding of the problems its subjects face, it’s a beautiful testament to a combined personal and communal accountability that fosters pride and direction in young men. (2022, 94 minutes, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
---
Jo Rochelle’s JASMINE IS A STAR (US)
Saturday, 5:15pm
Available to rent virtually through November 27 here
16-year-old Jasmine (Iyana LeShea) aspires to be a model, and she seems to have what it takes: the looks, the dedication, the drive. Writer-director Jo Rochelle’s auspicious debut feature delicately balances Jasmine’s dreams with a crucial aspect of her reality—Jasmine has albinism, which results in a lack of pigment in her hair, skin, and eyes. The film opens with Jasmine and her mother (Sha Cage) attending an IEP meeting at her school, as Jasmine, like many people with albinism, is legally blind and needs to be accommodated accordingly. Rochelle conveys the nuances of Jasmine’s experiences with expert subtlety. When she defiantly sits at the back of class in order to be near a boy she likes (she’s supposed to sit in the front), one understands the social limitations she experiences as a person with albinism; when she dons a pair of thigh-high boots and walks around a picturesque Minneapolis sculpture park, one gleans the seriousness with which she’s pursuing her dreams. This is also conveyed via audio of podcasts and other interviews with models that are intermittently heard over sequences of Jasmine thinking silently, further reflecting the internal journey underway. Eventually she’s booked for a local shoot, where, in galaxy print athletic wear, she’s made up as a beautiful, otherworldly alien. In another instance of the film’s sense of nuance, Jasmine’s father rightfully balks at the implication of the creative direction, that his daughter is only otherworldly as a result of her albinism; it does, however, seem standard for fashion, yet Rochelle’s framing of the scenario causes one to check their bias and consider the industry’s exploitative nature. Still, Jasmine’s passion endures in the face of such dilemmas, and it’s suggested that her motivation and ingenuity ultimately win out in the end. Rochelle’s direction is assured, and both LeShea and Cage deliver outstanding performances. (2022, 58 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
--- 
Alain Gomis’ REWIND & PLAY (France/Documentary)
Sunday, 1pm
Jazz great Thelonious Monk arrived in Paris in mid-December 1969 to play a concert and tape a performance and interview for the TV program Jazz Portrait; more than a half century later, Alain Gomis assembles raw footage from the program to re-create Monk’s slow-burn confrontation with interviewer Henri Renaud, whose steering of the musician’s remarks is downright insulting. Renaud, who boasts on camera about having met Monk when he made his Parisian debut in 1954, questions the pianist in English and translates his words into French for viewers, a power relationship he augments by rehearsing Monk’s answers with him and posing his questions again and again until he gets the responses he wants. Sitting at the keyboard, Monk endures all this with stoic, detached amusement, but his irritation is evident when Renaud tries to walk him through a question about whether his music was “too avant-garde” for the French back then. After Renaud tries to clean up Monk’s unflattering account of the festival promoters, Monk gets fed up and bolts from the piano bench; a rough cut finds him back at the Steinway and composed enough to get through the taping, which he concludes tongue-in-cheek with “Nice Work If You Can Get It.” Before the last chord can ring out, he’s off the bench and out of frame, leaving Renaud to wrap up with an empty plaudit for Monk’s “excessively relaxed way of looking at life.” Songs performed include “Round Midnight,” “Crepuscule With Nellie,” “Epistrophy,” and “Ugly Beauty.” Preceded by Alex Mallis and Titus Kaphar's 2022 documentary short SHUT UP AND PAINT (21 min, DCP Digital). (2022, 65 min, DCP Digital) [J.R. Jones]
--- 
Jennifer Holness’ SUBJECTS OF DESIRE (Canada/Documentary)
Available to rent virtually through November 27 here
As the title of Jennifer Holness’ documentary suggests, the Black women who are the focus of SUBJECTS OF DESIRE are telling their own stories about their relationships to beauty and the stereotypical roles that white society set aside for them. Framed around the 50th anniversary of the Miss Black America beauty pageant, begun in 1968 to celebrate the Black beauty that was totally absent from such contests as Miss America and Miss USA, the film offers a penetrating look at how Black women have been characterized in media of all sorts during and after slavery as nurturing, loyal Mammies, angry Sapphires, and sexually voracious Jezebels, the latter image a staple in rap music videos. (“Sex sells,” singer-songwriter India Arie proffers ruefully.) Ryann Richardson, who won the Miss Black America pageant featured in the film, explains how pageants were her way of paying for a great post-secondary education and how she was advised to look less “ethnic” if she wanted to have a chance to win the various beauty contests she entered that were not exclusive to Black contestants. Ironically, we learn that the hair-straightening products developed by Black entrepreneur Madame C. J. Walker in the early 20th century helped their users feel liberated from the hair policing they previously endured and that continues in fits and starts today. Passing-for-Black pariah Rachel Dolezal is interviewed extensively. While she has been roundly condemned for her actions, particularly in the Black community, I thought that her feeling of Blackness from an early age had a certain resonance with the gender dysphoria numerous young people feel and wondered if there might be something to it that didn’t smack of appropriation. Holness brings up the issue of colorism in the Black community, and one of her interviewees says that Black men are the only ones who reject their own women in favor of a different race, a patently false and limiting statement. Nonetheless, the contestants, researchers, entertainers, and commentators interviewed in SUBJECTS OF DESIRE are encouraged to speak their truth—a truth that, despite its contradictions, needs to be heard. (2021, 101 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
--- 
Derek Grace’s WHAT'S YOUR STORY? THE COMMUNITY FILM WORKSHOP'S 50 YEAR JOURNEY (US/Documentary)
Available to rent virtually through November 27 here
The Community Film Workshop is an invaluable part of local history. Founded in 1971, it’s one of several Chicago-based organizations that have recently celebrated or are nearing golden anniversaries, a testament both to the tenacity of the organizations’ leaders and the community that supports them. Derek Grace’s WHAT'S YOUR STORY? THE COMMUNITY FILM WORKSHOP'S 50 YEAR JOURNEY is a love letter to the storied organization, the beneficiaries of its offerings, and the hardworking people who have kept it going all these years. Now housed on the South Side, the Community Film Workshop’s mission has always been to bring educational resources and equipment to underserved aspiring filmmakers. The documentary spans the organization’s history, starting with its founding as part of a nationwide effort to establish local film workshops. Here in Chicago the honor of leading up the project was bestowed to Jim Taylor, also known as JT, a photographer and filmmaker who had trouble finding work because he was Black and who then wanted to help others in his community. (He passed away in 2000.) Crucial to his and the workshop’s success is Taylor’s wife, Margaret Caples, the organization’s longtime executive director. She appears frequently in the film, both in archival footage and interviews shot specifically for the film; she’s always excelled as an advocate, helping to secure funds and promote the importance of media arts. Grace’s documentary also looks at the nuts and bolts of how the workshop functions, from class curricula to the hurdles a nonprofit must jump over to continue operating. The workshop has a dual mission of helping disenfranchised community members tell their stories—a privilege denied to them by society at large—and preparing its students for jobs in the industry. There’s also footage from the workshop’s fiftieth anniversary celebration, where, among others, Kartemquin’s Gordon Quinn elaborate on the organization’s impact on the Chicago filmmaking community. (2022, 30 min) [Kat Sachs]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Norman Z. McLeod's IT'S A GIFT (US)

Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm

Like Chaplin, Keaton, and all the great film comedians, W.C. Fields' work has genuine tenderness as its center. And because his character is frequently so misanthropic and cranky, the poignant moments feel that much more surprising. Just such a moment occurs near the end of IT'S A GIFT. Fields' Harold Bissonette has dragged the whole family out to California to start a new life on an orange ranch, which naturally turns out to be a worthless field of dust and a shack that's falling apart. His shrewish wife huffs off with both kids in tow, while Harold calls them back. In vain. Alone, deserted by his family, he sits down on the fender of his car. Which promptly disintegrates. So, he plants himself on the steps of the shack. Takes a pull from his flask. Then the family dog comes over and licks his ear. Aww. But of course, that moment comes after half a dozen classic set pieces of frustration and irritation. "What about my cumquats?!" Preceded by Leslie Pierce's 1932 short film THE DENTIST (22 min, 16mm), which also stars Fields. (1934, 68 min, 35mm) [Rob Christopher]

Jacques Rivette’s JOAN THE MAID: THE BATTLES (France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 5pm

One of the most enduring tales in Western civilization is that of Joan of Arc, the illiterate teenager from a small village in northeastern France who, in 1429, led a successful series of military campaigns to free French cities from English occupation, thus allowing the dauphin of France to travel safely to Reims to be crowned King Charles VII of France. Dubbed the Maid of Orléans for the first city she freed, Joan’s assaults on Paris and Compiégne were repelled, and she was captured and eventually burned at the stake as a heretic in 1431. Canonized in 1920, her story has inspired everything from works of art and literature to numerous screen adaptations—even an iconic TV series in its own right, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What has kept Joan a perennial favorite is not only the improbability of her quest and her dramatic, tragic end, but also the religious visions that propelled her into action and inspired the faith of seasoned soldiers and a would-be king to follow her lead. It seemed inevitable that French director Jacques Rivette, a man drawn to the theatrical and to stories about women, would undertake a telling of the life of this very French icon. His two-part, six-hour-long JOAN THE MAID: THE BATTLES (screening this week) and THE PRISONS (screening Sunday, December 4) has received a long-awaited restoration and release by the Cohen Media Group, a huge improvement over the extant versions of the film, at least one of which cut two hours out of its running time. Rivette is a director given to patient presentation, with a reverence for the written word that shows up on screen in stagey sequences of conversation and exposition. A work like JOAN THE MAID may try the patience of some viewers, but it is precisely in the atmosphere engendered by sitting still and paying attention to the how of Joan’s story that the film is able to work its magic. Sandrine Bonnaire is an actor of unparalleled skill who can get inside the skin of characters as disparate as a homeless rebel, a middle-aged factory worker, and, yes, a saint in the making and suggest the deep waters beneath a mysterious or withdrawn façade. Rivette wants us to see Joan as a living, breathing person who laughs and feels pain, fear, and the righteous conviction of her beliefs that is characteristic of most teenagers. Bonnaire suggests somewhat imperfectly Joan’s youth primarily through her put-on swagger and her fearlessness in battle, but it is the older actor’s maturity that imbues Joan’s seriousness of purpose with the power to sway powerful men to her cause. This is not to say that we viewers are necessarily persuaded. It is not our country that is occupied by a hostile force, so we have no reason to want to believe her. In fact, once Joan sees Charles crowned, the culmination of the mission she has steadfastly heralded from the beginning of the film, we can see that she is at loose ends. Her visions no longer give her explicit instructions, and it seems likely that Joan may be just a girl who wants to live as a man. In the 15th century, invoking St. Catherine and St. Margaret may have been the only acceptable way for a transgender person to live out their true identity. On the other hand, when, as a prisoner of the English, Joan agrees to wear women’s clothing—a bargain she makes to avoid being burned—it’s pretty obvious to see the disadvantages of being a woman at the mercy of men in or out of prison. The battle sequences, a bit paltry due to budget constraints, offer an object lesson in the mechanics of siege warfare at a time when most cities were surrounded by walls. Joan watches from a high window as French and English soldiers taunt each other across a stream. They throw stones at each other, and eventually, several of the French soldiers chase the Englishmen away from the shore. This gives Joan the idea to force the English to retreat by attacking them from an island farther removed from their strongholds. Combat is personal. We see her troops use ladders to scale the city walls and engage in hand-to-hand combat. When a page is killed, Joan offers a sympathetic ear to her own distraught page. There is room in her heart for compassion, both for the occupied and the occupiers. JOAN THE MAID provides a grounded version of a story best known to many of us only in terms of her fiery martyrdom. Rivette’s humanizing chronicle brings Joan back to life without disturbing her religious mystery. Screening as part of Doc’s Sunday series, “Jacques Rivette, New Wave Master.” (1994, 160 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Charlotte Wells’ AFTERSUN (UK/US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

There’s something about the quality of DV home-movie footage that feels particularly, singularly fragile. Maybe it’s the tendency of the image to pixelate at relatively slight movements, or the fact that the format now exists in hindsight as a consumer video relic that experienced only the briefest of heydays before being usurped by HD and smartphones. Whatever the case, writer-director Charlotte Wells employs DV to poignant effect in her debut feature. The film opens in the low-resolution format, presented as video taken by 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) of her father Calum (Paul Mescal). The pair, whom we soon learn are sharing a motel room near a resort in Turkey, are spending one last summer vacation together before Sophie heads back to live with her divorced mother in Scotland. Wells will return to the girl’s video diaries throughout, although it takes one a while to situate them in time: are they sweet documents of the present or fragmented representations of the past? What’s the difference? Such temporal indeterminacy gradually reveals itself to be central to the meaning and effects of the film, which regards memory as always a hazy refraction of the then, now, and never-quite-was, an equation that, as it so happens, finds expression in the ontology of moving images. Not unlike the work of Wells’s compatriot Lynne Ramsay, AFTERSUN comes at its characters and events from oblique angles that delay or preclude our apprehension. In visual terms, this sometimes manifests as a darkness in which figures are barely or fleetingly perceptible; at other moments, Wells composes shots using various reflective surfaces, such as when we see Sophie’s live video playing on a tube television in front of a mirror, the source of the action never glimpsed directly, just as Calum’s unspoken inner turmoil remains elusive to Sophie. Based on Wells’ relationship with her own father, who passed away when she was an adolescent, AFTERSUN both diegetically depicts the splintered, wistful process of remembrance and evokes it through a nonlinear, diaphanous formal construction. During the climax, an outsize emotional crescendo set to “Under Pressure,” the film snaps into focus as a kind of spiritual bridge from daughter to father, through which their “last dance” leaves a perpetually echoing afterimage. (2022, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s PARTY GIRL (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight

PARTY GIRL is the mid-’90s incarnate. The first person on screen is legendary New York City drag queen Lady Bunny, seen as the camera wobbles up the stairs in a point-of-view shot to the entrance of a rave; it immediately demonstrates the film’s sincere homage to the downtown queer club scene in NYC of the time it was shot. Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s independent classic is also known for being the firs= ever film to make its premiere on the internet. Its costume design, too, is a bold exemplification of ‘90s aesthetic, all layered outfits of tights and jackets, with clashing colors and metallics. These fashions, never settling between grounded and whimsical, work so well because of Parker Posey’s iconic turn as carefree Mary, who spends her time clubbing and throwing house parties. When she’s thrown in jail for helping to organize an underground rave, Mary reaches out to her godmother, Judy (Sasha von Scherler), a librarian. Judy gets Mary a job as a clerk in exchange for posting her bail. At first, Mary is annoyed by the work, but slowly starts to dedicate herself to the Dewey Decimal System. The eventual clash of her two worlds, however, threatens her place in both and Mary needs to decide which path to take. Filling the plot with engaging side characters, von Scherler Mayer spends enough time with each to build out a lived-in and complex world surrounding Mary and her journey. PARTY GIRL, with humor and sincerity, ingeniously celebrates career club goers and librarians alike. Featuring a pre-show vinyl DJ set and dance party by Gaudy God starting at 11:30pm in the theater. (1995, 94 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Gaspar Noé's ENTER THE VOID (France/Japan)

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

In his third feature-length film (after I STAND ALONE and IRREVERSIBLE), Gaspar Noé continues to deploy an arsenal of stylistic devices to create a disorienting—and often supremely unpleasant—movie experience. ENTER THE VOID imagines the Tokyo underworld as seen by someone who's dead, and it transpires entirely through his disembodied perspective. The camera is almost always in movement, circling and sometimes even levitating above the action; the editing, which suggests a flickering consciousness shuttled between present reality and painful memories, is frequently jarring. The aestheti s would be unsettling enough, but Noé goes several steps further by setting much of the film in drug dens, raves, and seedy hotel rooms, and presenting numerous episodes of traumatic violence. The film makes a powerful, visceral impact on the spectator (especially when seen in a theater; it will surely lose much of its effect on DVD), and one is likely to respond either in awe or disgust. Beneath the spectacle, however, are some rather conservative notions about family bonds and personal responsibility. The main character, an American ex-pat in Japan, suffers as a direct result of dealing and taking drugs, and his most redeeming quality is his concern for his younger sister, whom he follows from beyond the grave. (Perhaps out of fear of appearing sentimental, Noé stages their relationship as quasi-incestuous.) The sister is played by Paz de la Huerta, in a performance that must be commended for its sheer physical commitment. De la Huerta's Linda submits to prostitution, frequent emotional abuse, and one of the most graphic abortions ever depicted on film. Her willingness to confront so much ugliness matches Noé's own; the purpose of such daring (catharsis? artistic discovery? a desire to expose the brutality of existence?) is a compelling mystery. Screening as part of Doc’s Friday series, “Programmers’ Picks.” (2009, 137 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

S.S. Rajamouli's RRR (India)

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

వావ్! వావ్! వావ్! If you can read that, chances are you’ve already been eagerly awaiting the theatrical opening of RRR, the latest extravaganza from Telugan director S. S. Rajamouli. If you can’t, you’d better grab a ticket before the Indians who are already hip to this smash hit buy them out. This is a rare chance to see a genuine, large-scale, first-run movie event complete with built-in intermission on the big screen—not that you’ll want to take time out to visit the bathroom or concession stand. RRR is such an exciting, eye-popping, entertaining film that its 183 minutes fly by, leaving you wanting more. RRR is a product of India’s “Tollywood” film industry, centered in Hyderabad, Telangana, which has replaced Mumbia-based Bollywood as the largest center of Indian filmmaking in terms of box office. Director S. S. Rajamouli, Tollywood’s most successful director, trafficks in fantasy, Indian mythology, and period pieces. He brings all three to bear in RRR as he imagines what would happen if two of India’s real-life revolutionaries, Komaram Bheem and Alluri Sitarama Raju, met in the late Raj period of the 1920s and forged a friendship. The film begins in a Gond tribal village, where a middle-age British woman (Allison Doody) is being sung to by a girl (Twinkle Sharma) who is applying a henna design to her hand. Well pleased with the song and design, the woman, who is the wife of the British governor (Ray Stevenson), abducts the girl to serve her at the palatial mansion where she lives. The scene ends in an act of brutal violence against the girl’s mother. Bheem (Jr NTR) is dispatched to find and return her to the village. Raju (Ram Charan), also called Ram, is a member of the British police who we first meet superhumanly capturing an Indian who has smashed a picture of King George VI during a protest of hundreds of Indians at colonial headquarters. Ram and Bheem, the latter disguised as a Muslim, meet as they work together to save a boy from a burning train that has fallen off a trestle into the river below (only one of about a dozen spectacular action sequences in RRR) and become the best of friends. Even as the film shows the joy of their burgeoning bromance, the boldly rhythmic song “Dosti” foretells trouble ahead. Ram has been charged with arresting the man sent to rescue the girl, with a crucial promotion promised to him if he succeeds. When Bheem’s identity is revealed, life will become hell on earth for both of them. The energy and imagination that Rajamouli has infused in this politically charged action-adventure is truly mind-blowing. For example, a sequence in which Bheem and those abetting his mission go into the forest to capture a (CGI) wolf is scary, exciting, and rather touching, as Bheem thanks his captive animal for his help with a scheme he has dreamed up; the payoff is too crazy-good to spoil here. While the film is not wall-to-wall music and dancing, it contains an excellent score by M.M. Keeravani I’d love to have in my CD collection and choreography by Senthil Kumar that tips a hat to Bollywood, as well as Busby Berkeley. The joyous “Naatu Naatu,” a dance number in which the friends show up the snooty Englishmen at a garden party, is a particular standout, but the somber “Komuram Bheemudo,” meant as a paean to courage and inspiration occurs during a grisly torture sequence. RRR is extremely violent and bloody, but by creating Bheem and Ram more as mythological gods than real men (Ram actually finishes the film dressed as the god Rama), the film bathes its violence in fantasy. As usual in Indian films about the Raj years, the British are heartless, sadistic bigots whose comeuppance we can’t wait to see; their end in RRR is a cataclysm on a par with the destruction of the White House in INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996). Ram Charan and especially Jr NTR are charismatic and a pleasure to spend three hours with, and the film ensures that the real men behind the ones they play are not forgotten, as their basic actions accord with real events, and Bheem’s slogan, “Water, Forest, Land,” is reiterated in the film. The final credits roll during a charming song and dance featuring images of other champions of Indian independence, including Sardar Vallabhai Patel, a prominent figure in the Indian freedom struggle who became India’s first deputy prime minister and home minister; Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh; and Tangutoori Prakasham Pantulu, an Indian jurist, political leader, social reformer, and anticolonial nationalist who served as the chief minister during the Madras presidency. This multilingual pan-Indian spectacular is a great way to kickstart your summer. Screening as part of Doc’s Saturday series, “Top Doc: Maverdock—New Releases.” (2022, 183 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows (Shorts)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday and Sunday, 11am

Returning after a two-year COVID hiatus, the Show of Shows collects ten short animations from around the world, all technically excellent and the first three stunning: (1) Patrick Smith and Kaori Ishida’s head-spinning stop-motion BEYOND NOH (U.S.-Japan, 2020) presents some 3,475 masks from “every culture in the world,” centering them against a black field and flicking through them to a frenetic drumbeat. They range from the traditional Japanese masks of the title to African ceremonial masks to Guy Fawkes masks to black leather S-M masks to hockey masks to Western Halloween masks (Pokemon, Hello Kitty, Spiderman, an assortment of US politicians) to everyone’s favorite mask, the N-95. (2) Geoffrey de Crecy’s haunting computer animation EMPTY PLACES (France, 2020) unfolds to the strains of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” played from a spinning LP. In brightly colored 2-D images, a disco ball rotates, reflections breaking up in its mirrored squares; an elevator door closes, opens, and closes again; the ridged steps of an escalator rise and resolve; a glass revolving door spins lazily; groceries pile up on a checkout conveyor belt; a sprinkler chit-chit-chits its way around a yard. As the piece progresses, de Crecy pulls back from this repetitive motion to show it transpiring in a public space devoid of people: a golf course, a supermarket, a ballroom, a tennis court, a deserted hilltop apartment where “Moonlight Sonata” plays on a turntable.... (3) Gil Alkabetz’s hand-drawn BESEDER (GOOD AND BETTER) (Germany, 2021) uses cartoons reminiscent of the New Yorker’s interstitial illustrations to explore a series of surrealist conceits: a man with a periscope for a head, his face peering through the top; a room whose door and window slide down farther in the wall; a woman whose heaved sigh deposits another pair of sad eyes onto her face; a woman whose blown scarf ends are a man’s hands. Alkabetz gets a lot of comic mileage from Escher-like interpolations of positive and negative space and other visual paradoxes.  ||  I also quite liked Piotr Milczarek’s RAIN (DESZCZ) (Poland, 2020), a bitter parable about people leaping from a zillion-story skyscraper, rendered in bold black and white with sky blue highlights, and Gisli Darri Halldorsson’s 3-D computer graphics animation YES-PEOPLE (Iceland, 2019), whose pear-shaped characters are brought to vivid life with little more than twisted lips, twiddling fingers, or a sideways glance. Screening as part of the Film Center’s monthly Kid Flix series. (Approx. 91 min, DCP Digital) [J.R. Jones]

Ali Abassi’s HOLY SPIDER (International)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

This gripping and often grueling Persian-language drama by Ali Abassi (BORDER) fictionalizes the true story of Saeed Hanei, a construction worker, family man, and religious extremist who murdered as many as 19 sex workers in the Iranian city of Masshad in 2000 and 2001. Like Hanei, Abassi’s killer (Mehdi Bajestani) tools around on a motorcycle picking up women, takes them to the family home, strangles them to death, and dumps their bodies. “My intention was not to make a serial killer movie,” Abassi has explained. “I wanted to make a movie about a serial killer society.” For a movie attacking misogyny, this offers more close-ups of women piteously choking until their eyes go dim than I’ve seen in a long time. Welcome relief from this death porn comes in the form of an invented subplot about a Tehran journalist (Zar Amir Ebrahimi in a flinty, Cannes-award-winning performance) tracking the killer and navigating her own rocky way through Iran’s religious codes. This is all pretty schlocky for an art house film, but after the Spider is apprehended the story deepens considerably as Abassi turns to the killer’s wife and son and the religious militants who rally to his defense in the streets outside the courtroom. Especially disturbing is Abassi’s treatment of the school-age son, whose shame over his father’s crimes is so intolerable that his only escape is to embrace his father’s wicked ideology. (2022, 117 min, DCP Digital) [J.R. Jones]

Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s UTAMA (Bolivia)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 4pm; Tuesday, 6pm; and Wednesday, 1pm

Water has often been central to stories about the conflict between tradition and modernity: think Elia Kazan's WILD RIVER (1960) or Jia Zhang-ke’s STILL LIFE (2008). UTAMA puts a contemporary spin on this theme: here, the problem is not an excess of floodwater, but climate change leading to a desolate landscape that makes it impossible for Bolivians to live in the countryside. It’s set in a tiny village where an indigenous elderly couple, Virginio (José Calcina) and Sisa (Luisa Quispe), tend to their flock of llamas and gather water. However, their life turns increasingly arduous, as Sisa and her neighbors trek for miles to a completely dry well and a riverbed on the verge of evaporation. Viriginio shows signs of illness, developing a hacking cough and spells of forgetfulness. Their grandson Clever (Santos Chaque) arrives to convince them to move with him to the city. UTAMA won the World Dramatic Competition at Sundance last January, and in many respects it’s a typical example of the kind of world cinema they tend to show. It’s full of artfully crafted long shots of the desert, while the story favors the preservation of rural values and honoring elderly people. However, Loayza has a background in photography; working with cinematographer Barbara Alvarez (who shot THE HEADLESS WOMAN), he depicts rural Bolivia in surprisingly bright colors. The land itself has a real presence. The film is very quiet, using only a few songs on the soundtrack and containing little dialogue (which is spoken in both Spanish and Quechua.) But the actors, all non-professionals, make a convincing family, and Calcina breathes life into a stoic male archetype. (As austere as this film is, he could be a character in a 1950s Western.) UTAMA rests a great deal on his shoulders, as his character’s physical vulnerability is used to symbolize that of the earth itself. But while the film has larger ideas on its mind, it never forgets the family drama at its center. Spectators with elderly parents are likely to see their own tensions reflected in it. (2022, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]

Hong Sang-soo’s THE NOVELIST'S FILM (South Korea)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 8:15pm and Wednesday, 3pm

Another year, another couple Hong Sang-soo features. THE NOVELIST'S FILM, the first of two movies Hong released in 2022 (followed by WALK UP), is also the third of his films to win a Silver Bear at the Berlinale in the past three years. In spite of the recent acclaim (or perhaps even because of it), Hong's extreme prolificity can make it easy to take each of his new features for granted. Given the similarities between so many of his movies in terms of form and content, it can also be easy to overlook what he might be doing that's new each time out. THE NOVELIST'S FILM is a witty black-and-white drama that centers on a veteran novelist, Jun-hee, who attempts to overcome writer's block by making her first short film. This continues Hong's recent trends of focusing on female characters and offering a substantial lead role to an older actress (the star is Lee Hye-young, who also played the lead in Hong's previous feature, IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE), a welcome development in his work. What's most fascinating about THE NOVELIST'S FILM, though, is the way that Hong investigates the creative process by focusing on the role that chance encounters can play in sparking artistic inspiration—and by daringly keeping the actual production of the film-within-the-film offscreen. Most of the running time is spent following Jun-hee over the course of a single day as she first meets an old acquaintance who runs a book shop, then a film director who once expressed interest in adapting one of her novels (but ultimately failed to do so) and, finally, a popular actress in semi-retirement named Kil-soo (the inevitable Kim Min-hee) with whom she shares a mutual admiration. The ending jumps ahead several months to a scene outside of a screening room where a private viewing of Jun-hee's short is being held. Although the film itself is never glimpsed, Hong provides a mysterious documentary-like coda featuring Kil-soo arranging a bouquet of flowers with another actress in a public park that seems intended to "stand in" for Jun-hee's footage. This sequence—which is partially shot in color and resembles the controversial coda to Abbas Kiarostami's TASTE OF CHERRY (1997)—is the key to THE NOVELIST'S FILM, as it contains a moment where Hong himself can be heard offscreen telling Kim, his real-life paramour, that he loves her. It's a breathtaking scene that dissolves the line between documentary and fiction and asks us to reconsider the entire project along more highly personal (perhaps even autobiographical) lines. (2022, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Olivier Assayas' PERSONAL SHOPPER (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

PERSONAL SHOPPER continues to explore themes that run throughout Olivier Assayas' oeuvre, especially CLEAN (2004) and CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (2014). Much like CLEAN, which starred Maggie Cheung, the film centers on an isolated, inward-facing character recovering from trauma in the city of Paris. Much like CLOUDS, the film stars Kristen Stewart, who plays a personal assistant (specifically in this case, a personal shopper) to a glamorous actress entrenched in the world of celebrity and fashion. Unlike CLOUDS, however, PERSONAL SHOPPER delves into the world of the assistant, and the single-name celebrity, Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten), is seen rarely. Kristen Stewart commands almost every second of screen time, much like Maggie Cheung does in CLEAN. Drawing comparisons among these three films is helpful in finding more depth and meaning in PERSONAL SHOPPER, which suffers in some ways from a meandering, underdeveloped screenplay that elicits accidental laughs and does too much juggling of tone to strike a resounding emotional chord. Assayas called the movie a "collage," but unfortunately the collage is uneven in execution, despite an incredibly impressive performance from Stewart. Apart from the unevenness of the screenplay, the movie has many interesting aspect, and one of the most inspired is allowing Kristen Stewart to do things without being highly sexualized and without speaking. She emotes in a subterraneously explosive manner, indicating the enormous tension within her character without overtly emoting. It's surprisingly captivating. PERSONAL SHOPPER vacillates between several genres, from dark comedy to coming-of-age to psychological thriller, and lastly to horror. The reason the film vacillates so much is due in part to the actual plot: Maureen (Stewart) is a personal shopper by day, and a medium on nights and weekends, mourning her dead twin brother who said he would send her a sign from beyond. She is in Paris for an indefinite amount of time, putting off her own life, and existing as something of a ghost herself, just waiting. Because the movie accepts the existence of ghosts as a given, it turns into a psychological thriller (revolving around an exchange of text messages with an unknown number who may or may not be Maureen's brother...it gets old, fast, watching text messages pop up on a screen), and then a spooky horror (by far the weakest element of the movie), while exploring elements of Maureen's character in quieter, sadder, less suspenseful scenes, hinting at depths the movie never quite reaches. Critics have disagreed widely in their reviews of the film, and it is easy to see why, but it is still highly recommended to see the film for yourself and wonder what this could have been with a stronger screenplay, given how fascinating it is to watch already. Screening as part of 50/50, the Siskel’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (2016, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

Park Chan-wook's DECISION TO LEAVE (South Korea)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

When the 59-year-old South Korean artist Park Chan-wook sat down to write a neo-noir for the modern age, he knew he wanted to write a love story. While it may seem like a story of the detective and femme fatale descending into tragedy, there is much more at play in the drama and technique of this one-of-a-kind filmmaker. In both writing and cinematography, it’s clear that Park is experimenting with his tools in the hopes of reaching a broader audience, much like Bong Joon-ho did with PARASITE (2019). Cinematographer Ji-yong Kim creates gorgeous visuals of a colder palette and close-ups of a Sven Nykvist sensibility; Park, meanwhile, is a great defender of his actors, having known to be more upset when they aren’t nominated for international accolades than himself. He provides the groundwork for both stars here to commit to their characters. The audience falls for Tang Wei’s great performance as a suspiciously indifferent widow the same way her male counterpart does. As the investigator and her soon-to-be lover, Park Hae-il wins audiences over as a charismatic leading man. Park has always been known for extreme violence with films like OLDBOY (2003) but even he has stated in interviews this film is separate from the rest of his filmography. As a police procedural, DECISION TO LEAVE takes influence from Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) and Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (1958). While many detective noirs have been made in the history of cinema, DECISION TO LEAVE is enthrallingly enigmatic even among Park's own filmography. He interweaves genres and an unusual love story; it’s sexy yet asexual, as scarce intimacy is shown between lovers. There are few police procedurals that successfully integrate modern technology into the storytelling, making not only scenes more relatable to adding to the greater cause of having a film speak to the modern times of communication and connection. Park’s film breathes fresh air into the detective film through its inventiveness and manages to express profound thoughts on love in the new age of social media and smartphones. (2022, 139 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
The extensive Asian Pop-Up Cinema series continues its fifteenth season. Their in-person and virtual offerings are too many to list. Visit here for more information.

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Moufida Tlatli’s 1994 Tunisian film THE SILENCES OF THE PALACE (114 min, 35mm) screens on Friday at 7pm. More info here. 

⚫ FACETS Cinema
The 39th Chicago International Children’s Film Festival continues through Sunday. The festival includes a diverse array of short and feature-length films for children ages 2 through 25, with both in-person and virtual screenings. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Rebecca Halpern’s 2022 documentary LOVE, CHARLIE (97 min, DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 2pm and Monday at 7pm. The Saturday screening includes a post-screening Q&A with Halpern, Anne Trotter and Lisa Ehrlich, moderated by chef Rick Bayless; the Monday screening includes a post-screening Q&A with producer Renée Frigo, chef Rick Tramonto, chef Carrie Nahabedian, and chefs Karen and John Shields. 

John Fasano’s 1988 horror film BLACK ROSES (90 min, DCP Digital) and Charles Martin Smith’s 1986 horror film TRICK OR TREAT (98 min, 35mm) screen on Wednesday as part of a Satanic Panic Double Feature starting at 8pm, presented by Metal Movie Night and Kuma’s Corner, and sponsored by Metal Blade Records. Metal Vinyl Weekend kicks the party off spinning records and summoning spirits in the Music Box Theatre Lounge starting at 6pm; the screening also features a pre-show starting at 7:45pm and an intermission full of classic metal videos, creations from the artist Skinner, horror trailers, giveaways and much more. More info on all screenings here.

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

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

CINE-LIST: November 18 - November 24, 2022

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, J.R. Jones, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Michael Glover Smith