:: FRIDAY, JANUARY 26 - THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1 ::

🎉 Year-End Lists

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

📽️ Crucial Viewing

Tom Palazzolo’s Chicago (US/Shorts)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 3pm

If there's one thing Chicagoans love to argue about, it's the question of what makes someone actually "from Chicago." Is it only if you were born and raised within the city limits? Is it after a certain amount of time being a transplant? It may be a parlor game or an angels dancing on the head of a pin debate, but trust me when I say that if you bring it up at any corner bar, the conversation can go until last call. So at the risk of engendering further argument ,I'm going to go on the record as saying that St. Louis-born Tom Palazzolo is actually Chicago's greatest documentarian. Possibly its greatest filmmaker. Born in 1937, he came to Chicago in 1960 to study at the School of the Art Institute. Since then, he's continuously made films that capture not just the people and events of Chicago, but its spirit. Palazzolo's cinema verité style, often presented with a healthy bit of cheek, brings out the character of the city no matter what the subject is. This presentation of his works is a prime example. MARQUETTE PARK II (1980, codirected with Mark Rance) may be about the neo-Nazi American Socialist Party (the real-life inspiration for the infamous "Illinois Nazis" of the THE BLUES BROTHERS [1980]), but it's also about a changing city—its beliefs, attitudes, social mores. With JERRY'S DELI (1976), he looks at a quintessentially Chicago local character and "the neighborhood" through his business. BRIDE UNVEILED (1967) reveals what happens when Chicago, a city that deeply believes itself to be one of the great world cities, is presented with a giant public Picasso statue that no one seems to understand or like. LOVE IT/LEAVE IT (1973) puts nudists from nearby Indiana up against the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, balancing the political counterculture with the social one. RICKY AND ROCKY (1972, codirected with Jeff Kreines) takes us to a backyard wedding shower in the blue-collar near suburbs of Chicago, transforming something commonplace and banal into the kind of quiet celebration of the common person that falls directly into the same great tradition of other giants of post-WWII Chicago culture, like writers Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren, Lorraine Hansberry, and Mike Royko, and photographers Art Shay and Vivian Maier. Palazzolo's work does the double duty of being both singularly his as well as feeling so invisibly simple that anyone could do it. It's the unintimidating inspiration that exudes from his work that gives him a marrow-deep Chicago-ness. It's workingman's art. He's the hollered stories of three chord blues to fellow Chicago documentarian Steve James' symphonic narratives. While James may hit you in the heart, you feel Palazzolo in your bones. With this collection of Palazzolo's films, we see Chicago truly play itself. Everything from the quotidian to the ugly is appreciated, often even championed. Footage that may otherwise feel meandering or pointless is given both life and value. These films are love letters both to and from the city—the people, the spirit, the history. They're imperfect, but with dignity. Nakedly intimate without being exploitative. Overflowing with exuberant, yet considered, artistry but completely bereft of pretension. Anyone who wants to truly understand what made Chicago the city it once was, and will forever be, could only benefit from watching these movies. So while Nelson Algren was describing Chicago in his famous quote, he may as well have been writing a review of the films of Tom Palazzolo: "Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real." Presented in collaboration with Chicago Film Archives and Doc Chicago. Palazzolo in attendance. (Total approx. 85 min, 16mm and Digital Projection) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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Palazzolo will also be in attendance for two programs of his work at Chicago Filmmakers as part of the organization's 50th anniversary celebration on Saturday. At 5pm, Palazzolo's 1990 feature ADDED LESSONS (73 min, Unconfirmed Format) screens. At 7pm, Palazzolo will present another program of his short works (also Unconfirmed Format), which will include: O (1967), THE TATTOOED LADY OF RIVERVIEW (1968), CAMPAIGN (1968), GAY FOR A DAY (1976), IT'S THIS WAY AT DEEL FORD (1980), HEY GIRLS (1990), and RITA ON THE ROPES (2002).

Ken Jacobs’ STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH (US/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 11am

Ken Jacobs is one of the country’s leading experimental filmmakers, and STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH is his magnum opus, a seven-hour collage film that he began in 1957 and didn’t complete until almost half a century later. Subtitled “American Failure,” STAR SPANGLED considers the legacies of white supremacy, militarism, conformism, and corporate power in US culture as represented in movies and on television; the passages of appropriated footage come from such sources as Nixon’s “Checkers” speech and other Republican political ads, cartoons from the 1930s that freely employ racist caricatures, an appalling educational film about whites on safari in Africa, and a fascinating episode of the newsmagazine show Conquest about behavioral scientists who isolate baby monkeys from their mothers and observe how they form attachments to inanimate objects. Jacobs punctuates these materials with cynical (but sometimes illuminating) intertitles about history and religion as well as footage he shot of his friends Jack Smith and Jerry Sims cavorting around in the late ‘50s. Both tactics represent forms of resistance to the American status quo: speaking out and spreading information on the one hand; dropping out and goofing off on the other. These two forms of resistance come together in the final section of STAR SPANGLED, which consists largely of footage Jacobs shot at New York protests against George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. In one moving moment, Jacobs stops to consider a young protestor who looks remarkably similar to the young Jack Smith—in a flash, the political becomes personal and the present becomes the past. The whole film becomes especially poignant whenever Jacobs considers American history, including chapters he’s lived through, from the vantage point of the Bush II regime. Compared with Bush and Cheney’s outright lies and contempt for everyone but the super-rich, the Eisenhower-era stuff, with its appeals to moral rectitude and “the American way,” seems almost quaint. That’s not to say the parade of mid-century conservatism doesn’t become exhausting after several hours—it all does, but that’s the point. The title, with its evocation of patriotism literally wearing you down, fairly sums up the film’s overall effect; however, there are moments of levity interwoven throughout, not just in the beatnik clowning of Jacobs’ friends, but in the ironies he elicits from the found footage he selects. There’s even something comforting about parts of STAR SPANGLED, namely the warm nostalgia that colors Jacobs’ allusions to Depression-era culture. Screening as part of the Settle In series. (2004, 440 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Ivan Passer's CUTTER'S WAY (US)

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

Though it was released in 1981, CUTTER’S WAY feels like one of the last great American films of the 1970s, exemplifying the washed-out, cynical vibe that defines so much New Hollywood cinema. It deserves to be regarded as a classic and probably would be if its director, Ivan Passer, was better known. Yet Passer’s reputation is nothing to sneeze at; indeed, it informs the distinctive sensibility of CUTTER’S WAY. The cowriter on all four of Milos Forman’s Czech features, Passer also directed one of the better films of the Czech New Wave, INTIMATE LIGHTING (1965). He defected from Czechoslovakia with Forman in 1969; both came to the United States, where Passer soon directed one of the most subversive American comedies of its era, BORN TO WIN (1971). A picaresque tale of a go-getting junkie’s efforts to score heroin, BORN TO WIN applies the skeptical humor of Passer’s Czech films to the American success ethic; that skepticism is even more pronounced in CUTTER’S WAY, though the latter film is less humorous. Jeff Bridges stars as Richard Bone, an Ivy League graduate who’s done nothing with his life since college, save for bedding numerous women in his hometown of Santa Barbara, California. One night after a sexual conquest, Bone’s car breaks down; he’s taken into custody the following morning when police discover the corpse of a 17-year-old girl next to where he left the stalled car. Enter Alexander Cutter (John Heard, in a career-best performance), Bone’s reckless, alcoholic best friend and Vietnam veteran. Lacking anything better to do, Cutter pledges to solve the girl’s murder and clear Bone’s name. The ensuing investigation provides the film’s narrative core, but what makes CUTTER’S WAY special is its pervasive, defeatist mood. Cutter and Bone are both walking failed promises, and the film generates its melancholy air from the fact that the two men are acutely aware of this. Cutter’s self-destructive binges communicate a Hemingwayesque pathos, while Bone’s quieter path to ruin suggests something out of John Cheever. The film inspires comparisons with literature with its verbose dialogue, which the cast delivers beautifully. Lisa Eichhorn merits special mention as Cutter’s long-suffering wife Mo, the one thing holding her man’s life together despite being an alcoholic herself, but everyone in CUTTER’S WAY is remarkable, down to the bit players. Jordan Cronenweth’s cinematography is also top-notch, evoking the expressionistic look of classic film noir without slavishly imitating it. Preceded by Kendrick W. Williams' 1955 short film UNCOMMON VALOR (10 min, 35mm). (1981, 109 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Francis Ford Coppola’s ONE FROM THE HEART: REPRISE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

After a calamitous response upon its initial release, ONE FROM THE HEART, a dazzling mashup of New Hollywood drama and Golden Age musical aesthetics, is back once again to win over the hearts and minds of a new generation of perhaps kinder-hearted filmgoers. Director Francis Ford Coppola—forever remangling and reinterpreting his own vast filmography—has returned to his phantasmagorical love story with a new cut of this once-maligned work, trimming fourteen minutes off of the original runtime to concoct a new version, fully restored in stunning 4K. Though Coppola can’t do anything to excise some of the more fundamental structural flaws of his work, he’s still succeeded in creating a tighter, more compact vision for what he dreamed the future of Hollywood could be. The scope of ONE FROM THE HEART is something to astound: Coppola and his merry band of collaborators, rather than traveling to Las Vegas to film this musical tale, built an entire Sin City simulacrum inside of their own studio, to the point where the walls of the sound stages are visible in certain shots. Coppola’s cinematic aspirations here are the worlds of pure self-reflexive artifice, dreamlike structures fully cognizant of their own artificiality. As a work judged on pure visuals, there’s not much else like it, with waves of neon color devouring the frame and Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography feeling more like a dancer than a camera. Yet even with such passion thrown on screen, the emotional heart of Coppola’s story of a relationship in turmoil lacks that extra oomph. Perhaps this is due to the nature of ONE FROM THE HEART’s musical elements, providing atmospheric shape rather than internal substance, with Tom Waits’ songs—haunting as they are—merely suffusing the scenes with texture rather than filling them up entirely. As rich and intense as the worlds of Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr’s respective infidelities can be, there can be a perhaps intentional emotional distance from these characters whose lives are so suffused with music, yet music never pours out of their very souls. It certainly leaves you wanting (though much of the boggish melodrama from the original cut is excised here), but there’s still so much within Coppola’s forgotten world that’s enough to satisfy the hungriest cinephiles, ready to feast upon a world of brightly-lit temptation and spectacle. (1981, 93 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Kaye]

George Sherman’s THE GOLDEN HORDE (US)

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

THE GOLDEN HORDE displays all the virtues of a superior George Sherman picture: it’s bold, brisk, fitfully grand, and comfortable with its own silliness. David Farrar, best known today for the Powell & Pressburger films BLACK NARCISSUS (1947) and THE SMALL BACK ROOM (1949), stars as Sir Guy of Devon, a British Knight who comes to Central Asia while on his travels in the early 13th century. In his daring-do, he seduces Princess Shalimar of Samarkand (Ann Blyth) and saves her people from the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan. If you’re looking for historical accuracy with regards to this time and place, I highly recommend Ardak Amirkulov’s Kazakh masterpiece THE FALL OF OTRAR (1990), but if you’re in the mood for a low-rent western with garish medieval trappings, look no further. Sir Guy and his compatriots may as well be cowboys and Samarkand a military fort besieged by Indians, yet within the generic storytelling there are agreeable passages of action and phony exoticism. This was one of Universal Pictures’ Technicolor spectacles of the early 1950s (so seeing it on celluloid is sure to be a treat), and much of the romantic, outside view of medieval Asia is expressed through the loud costumes and sets. The obvious unreality of it all has a way of acting on the imagination as more realistic depictions of faraway places often cannot. In any case, it should be instructive to see what was considered a harmless adventure story over 70 years ago. Screening as part of the A Brief Intro to George Sherman series. (1951, 77 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s PICTURES OF GHOSTS (Brazil)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s PICTURES OF GHOSTS defies categorization inasmuch as where it may technically be a certain kind of film—a hybrid between a more conventional form of documentary and the elusive essay film—it nevertheless proceeds like something else altogether, not any certain type of film but rather just a film, borne from the desire to create something personal and thus free of constrictive labeling. In three parts, Mendonça Filho explores his hometown of Recife, the coastal capital of the state of Pernambuco in Brazil, and its connection to cinema, both as it relates to him personally and from a historical perspective. The first part looks at the apartment where he grew up, where he discovered cinema, and where he shot early amateur films and even later some of his professional ones. Sixty percent of the film is composed of archival material, yet some of it feels indistinguishable from what was presumably shot specifically for the film. (I say presumably because of the indistinguishability.) While this combination of material is a common formula for documentaries, the editing here feels especially natural, helping to capture what Mendonça Filho is evoking in the film at large, looking at images and cinema as ghostly ephemera whose souls linger where a physical presence may have disappeared. The second and third parts focus on this explicitly as Mendonça Filho explores the legacy of theatrical exhibition in Recife, showcasing closed or demolished theaters from the past and those still standing. The melancholy that pervades the film is owed to the absences, and the archival material makes what’s now gone feel again alive but to mournful effect. According to PICTURES OF GHOSTS, the masters of cinema are really people like Alexandre Moura, a longtime projectionist who passed away in the early aughts; we see old footage of him as he takes off his shirt to combat the oppressive heat and as he laments getting tired of the music from THE GODFATHER after hearing it for four months straight. It’s clear Mendonça Filho loved him, and we come to love him, too. I don’t believe cinema is dead, but there’s no denying some of it—such as Moura, whose demise is part and parcel with the death of a certain bit of cinema—has left us. The old photographs, footage, and reminiscences of the former and still-remaining theaters illustrate that past for us, creating a proxy world where the spirits still live; the third part, focused on cinemas that have been converted to churches, alludes both to cinema as a kind of religion and emphasizes the aforementioned ghostliness. The strange divergence at the very end, which evokes Jim Jarmusch's NIGHT ON EARTH, nicely ties together this singular hybridistic work. (2023, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Mike Figgis’ TIMECODE (US)

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

As the central conceit of TIMECODE begins to unravel in its opening minutes, you start to wonder, “Why hasn’t anyone tried this again?” The “this” here refers to Mike Figgis’ daunting formalist experiment; for the entirety of the film, the frame is divided up into four separate smaller screens, each telling distinct, yet interconnecting stories. Not only that, but each of the four frames has been filmed in one, unbroken take over a 93-minute span, with the mechanics of coordinating such an effort beginning to boggle the mind. Though directors have certainly pushed the boundaries of breaking narrative and stylistic structures, it’s awfully rare—at least outside of a museum gallery context—to see an American film that plays with deconstructing the literal frame of a movie in this fashion. And then about twenty-or-so minutes in, you realize that attempting to actually follow along with the narrative of TIMECODE is about as disorienting an exercise as they come. Even with Figgis’ sound mix attempting to cue you as to which of the four frames your focus should be on, the all-consuming pollution of sound and image is artistically overbearing in a way that is excitingly daring and fantastically frustrating in equal measure. It doesn’t help that the narrative that’s being captured—a largely improvised series of scenes between actors and directors and their real-time interpersonal dramas at a film and TV production office—doesn’t really carry too much narrative thrill to it anyhow. As with any cinematic experiment, the viewer’s mileage may vary on how entertaining of an experience they find it, but the swing being taken is undeniable, tackling a reconstruction of the cinematic viewing experience that may never be seen on such a large-scale palette again. Screening as part of the Computer Vision: Experiments in Digital Cinema series. (2000, 93 mins, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Rogério Sganzerla’s THE RED LIGHT BANDIT (Brazil)

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

To fully analyze director/screenwriter Rogério Sganzerla’s THE RED LIGHT BANDIT, one would have to be a psychiatrist, preferably a Jungian or Freudian. Rarely have I seen a film that proceeds so completely and successfully as a dream—the kind I have experienced as an extended story with which I entertain my sleeping self during particularly dull times of my life—and yet channels the zeitgeist of its time. Sganzerla’s dream interprets the story of João Acácio Pereira da Costa, a notorious criminal operating in São Paulo at the time the film was conceived, and the police working to end his burglaries, sexual assaults, and murders. Pereira da Costa, who grew up in the slums of São Paulo, became something of a folk hero in Brazil, though his reputation as a Robin Hood who stole from the rich did not usually extend to giving to the poor. Nonetheless, Sganzerla, who was only 21 when he made this film, is clearly aligned with his bandit, likely because he, too, saw himself as an outsider. He has been grouped with the Cinema Marginal movement in Brazil as a filmmaker who was more experimental and even more critical of Brazilian society than those of the Cinema Novo movement, which Sganzerla lightly mocks in THE RED LIGHT BANDIT even as he pulls influences from them and other sources. Paulo Villaça, who strongly resembles Pereira da Costa, plays Jorge, the title bandit who is often referred to as “Light.” His nemesis, a police officer named Cabeção (Luiz Linhares) and nicknamed “Big Head,” always seems to be one step behind Light, though Sganzerla doesn’t make him seem that much of a fool—rather Light is much more clever. Light has relationships with many women of many types, but it is his liaison with a hooker named Janete Jane (Helena Ignez) that proves his undoing, in a clear bow to Godard’s crime films—indeed the look (though extremely low-budget) and especially the energy of THE RED LIGHT BANDIT is very reminiscent of BREATHLESS (1960). J.B. da Silva (Pagano Sobrinho), the crime boss who drinks (what else?) J.B. scotch, will remind people of a certain inhabitant of the Oval Office and clearly signals the government crackdown on dissent that would occur the year the film was released. Throughout THE RED LIGHT BANDIT, voiceovers by a man and a woman, as well as an electronic ticker on a building, add commentary on the commercialization of crime and the folkloric clichés that the rest of the world has used to sentimentalize Brazil and that Brazil has used to cloud its own violent present. The film’s denouement ends on just such a cliché, as Light’s demise quotes directly from Marcel Camus’ lyrical Brazilian masterpiece, BLACK ORPHEUS (1959). At a time when student protests were rocking Brazil and other countries, THE RED LIGHT BANDIT is juvenilia that skillfully captures the passion of youth. Screening as part of the Antropofagia: Reinventing Class and Race in Brazilian Cinema series.  (1968, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Werner Herzog's STROSZEK (West Germany)

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

In his review of STROSZEK in 1977, Roger Ebert declared Werner Herzog the most interesting director alive and working. A David Lynch favorite, many consider Herzog’s fifth feature his most accessible narrative fiction. A tragicomedy, the film remains known for being the last film Ian Curtis of Joy Division watched before taking his life, a shadow that haunts a film more fun than it's given credit for. Since the early days of the medium, German artists have maintained a fascination with America; auteurs such as Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder (to name a few) emigrated to begin making pictures for Hollywood in the former half of the twentieth century. In the German New Wave (in the latter half of the century), Wim Wenders most famously portrayed America through THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977) and PARIS, TEXAS (1984). Although AMERICAN FRIEND was released the same year as STROSZEK, Herzog’s film asks what it means to be American when you don’t know the rules. The film begins in Berlin. An alcoholic German musician, Bruno (played by Bruno S.), finishes serving time in prison. He soon falls in love with a prostitute named Eva (played by Eva Mattes). Harassed by her former pimps, Eva and Bruno leave for America with their neighbor Scheitz (played by Clemens Scheitz). After touring New York City, they settle down in Wisconsin and purchase a mobile home they can’t afford. As the bills begin to pile up, Eva returns to prostitution to supplement her income as a waitress. Eventually, she runs off to Vancouver with truckers and the bank repossesses the mobile home. In the remainder of the film, Scheitz and Stroszek fail to rob a bank and our hero spends the last of his dough on coin-operated animal exhibits, including the famous dancing chicken. In the final moments, he takes his life on a chairlift, and a shot echoes through the mountains. Herzog finds the most interesting faces to put in his films. It comes as no surprise he has spent most of his later years in documentary. Fiction or not, his subjects take precedent. The choice of casting non-actors grounds the picture in reality, providing an atmosphere rarely captured on film. The mechanic featured in the film (played by Clayton Szalpinski) was an actual Wisconsin mechanic who assisted Herzog with his car. And prior to their work together, Bruno S. had no acting training or experience whatsoever. Seeing him in a 1970 documentary about street musicians, where the man showed off his self-taught skills on piano, accordion, glockenspiel, and handbells, Herzog immediately contacted Bruno S. to cast him in the lead of THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER (1974). STROSZEK was written specifically for Bruno S. The film was shot by Thomas Mauch, who previously worked on AGUIRRE: WRATH OF GOD (1972) and EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL (1970); in a world of absurd characters, the systemic structures of Europe and America appear the most ridiculous and convoluted. While technically an American movie, STROSZEK doesn’t end like one. Desperate for money, American film characters often turn to crime and bring suffering to others. Herzog ends the film with Bruno committing violence against himself. In a film that has a shot of our hero holding a turkey in one hand and a rifle in the other, two societies reveal themselves to be odd and violent. By the end of the film, it becomes difficult to tell which society imposes more violence, post-war West Germany or the United States. To paraphrase Gene Siskel, these zany characters end up making the American middle class look like they’re the ones who belong in a zoo. Screening as part of the Conquistador of the Useless: The Films of Werner Herzog series. (1977, 115 mins, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (US)

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

There’s little to say about John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and its prescience with regard to Trump. The proof is in the pudding: how a sane person could watch this and not feel stabs of recognition at what’s happening therein and thereout, and the uncanny connection between the two, is beyond me. Ironically there’s little actual sanity involved in the film—the sane are made to believe they’re crazy, and the crazy fancy themselves sane, with neither temperament fully dominating the other. But isn’t that the human condition, and hasn’t that been what’s gotten us in this mess? (Gestures broadly to everything, literally everything.) THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE rattles and rouses in equal measure as it centers on the circumstances that turned one Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) into an automaton of evil, unknowingly becoming the tool of communist infiltrators after his platoon is captured during the Korean War. Upon his return he’s awarded the Medal of Honor—it’s unknown at this point what had really happened back in Korea—and his imperious mother (played by the inimitable Angela Lansbury) and knob-headed but nevertheless McCarthy-esque senator stepfather attempt to leverage his newfound glory, which he rebuffs and subsequently flees from. Meanwhile some of the men from his platoon, shown at the beginning of the film drinking and cavorting with women while Shaw castigates them, begin experiencing terrifying nightmares that feature the men in a room full of elderly ladies participating in a flower club; the scene alternates between the women and a room full of men, some of whom are from Russia, some of whom are from China, and all of whom are communists, the effect of the transitions emphasizing the apparent brainwashing taking place. Once Major Bennett Marco—played by Frank Sinatra, whose salary was a third of the film’s overall budget—begins to what’s happened, that the men were brainwashed and Shaw in particular may have been turned into a sleeper agent planted to destabilize the government, he puts into motion an effort to get close to Shaw in order to reveal the communists’ insidious plot. But the real baddies, the people pulling the strings, are not who you might think, at least not entirely. Based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Richard Condon, the film doesn’t just tell a story, but rather something about our collective selves. Initially connected to Cold War paranoia, the film has proven to extend beyond its specificity, coming to epitomize the power of paranoia over the threat of a foreboding ‘other’ on democracy, routinely typified as people on the left side of the political spectrum by their conservative counterparts. But as THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and current times prove, the call to undermine democracy may actually be coming from inside the house. In general it’s just a sublimely odd film, made by Frankheimer with almost total control. There’s a portent, collage-like feel in the use of techniques such as depth of field and dissolves, which have elicited comparisons to Orson Welles. There’s also a Kubrickian, proto-DR. STRANGELOVE effect in its disquieting mix of comedy and lunacy, aptly representing that fine line of sanity and society’s perception of it, upon which we all walk. Harvey and Lansbury’s performances are phenomenal; together with PSYCHO, the film represents the apotheosis of mommy issues on screen. There’s perhaps a feminist reading to it, among myriad other interpretations the film has garnered over the years, as Lansbury’s character can only achieve the power she so covets by way of the men in her life. That sickening frustration of oppression speaks to something the opposite of paranoia, that recognition of a certainty one is powerless to change. As they say, doing the same thing over and over again only to expect a different result is the definition of insanity. Considering that’s what many hope to do, change something that’s proving more and more immovable as our country descends further into paranoid indignation against imaginary perils, a dual experience of insanity, one real and the other imparted by circumstances further and further outside of our control, may threaten to undo us all. And there may be little else to say about that as well. Screening as part of the Mommy Issues: Freudian Relationships in Film series. (1962, 126 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Philip Kaufman's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (US)

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

Perhaps the most adapted of any 20th century science fiction novel, Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers has found a cinematic home no less than eight times, with directors as diverse as Don Siegel and Abel Ferrara. However, no screen-interpretation of the novel has been more directly political than Phillip Kaufman's 1978 version. Set in San Francisco, Donald Sutherland plays a health inspector who becomes unwittingly involved in an alien plot to replace all humans with physically identical, though emotionally void, beings. The only way to prevent oneself from being "snatched" by the alien force is to avoid thinking or expressing any emotion. The allusions to anti-communist and anti-conformist rhetoric are less than subtle but, thanks greatly to Michael Chapman's icy cinematography and tremendous performances by Sutherland and supporting players Jeff Goldblum and Brooke Adams, Kaufman's INVASION is a haunting and striking proclamation about our desire for individuality. Screening as part of the Mirroring series. (1978, 108 min, Digital Projection) [Joe Rubin]

Chantal Akerman's GOLDEN EIGHTIES (Belgium/France/Switzerland)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 4pm and 7pm

Chantal Akerman’s upbeat musical may be her least characteristic film prior to A COUCH IN NEW YORK (1996), though it’s still extremely personal. The meticulous framing and camera movements reflect her exacting visual sensibility, and the emphasis on romantic disappointment is in keeping with such films as JE TU IL ELLE and TOUTE UNE NUIT. This takes place almost entirely in the basement level of a shopping mall, where a beauty salon sits next to a family-run clothing store. (Shot on a claustrophobic, neon-and-fluorescent-lit soundstage, the film certainly captures how cave-like and weirdly ominous malls could be in the 1980s.) The family’s son, Robert, is an unrepentant ladies’ man who’s carrying on with Lili, the salon owner; when his father tells him he needs to settle down, he proposes on a whim to the salon manager, Mado, who has long loved him from afar. Meanwhile, Robert’s mother (Delphine Seyrig, Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman) reconnects with an American (John Berry, the blacklisted director of HE RAN ALL THE WAY) who fell in love with her when stationed in Europe during World War II. The various connections and misconnections play out in exquisite geometric patterns—Akerman takes obvious delight in assembling the characters as though moving pieces on a chessboard—and they spark some pretty good songs to boot. Akerman wrote the script with four other writers: critic and scenarist Pascal Bonitzer, American screenwriter Henry Bean, Jean Gruault (who collaborated with François Truffaut and Alain Resnais), and Leora Barish. Despite the number of fingers in the pie, the story doesn’t feel disjointed; in fact it moves as smoothly as any classic Hollywood musical. The film deserves to be seen with Akerman’s documentary LES ANNÉES 80 (1983), which details the casting of the film and some of the director’s working methods. It works well on its own too, but the lack of jarring juxtapositions may be surprising to viewers who know Akerman only through her more experimental efforts. Screening as part of the Revising the Musical series. (1986, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Andrzej Żuławski's POSSESSION (France/Germany)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm

Originally hacked down for American release to a schlocky—and downright absurd—ninety-minutes, POSSESSION has been restored to Zulawski's original cut, showing in a new 4K digital restoration. The added footage doesn't necessarily make the infamous tentacled-monster sex thing any less nuts, because it still is a shocking sight to behold. But its purpose is more nuanced and creepy when the film really goes off the rails. Drawing from his own divorce, Zulawski's film follows the collapse of Mark and Anna's marriage and the impossibility of Mark ever fully knowing, or possessing, his wife in love. Largely set in an apartment near the Berlin Wall, Mark is confronted with divorce and descends into severe depression. He emerges in a near-psychotic state intending to reclaim Anna and their son. He soon becomes aware of Anna's lover, but after confronting him, both men realize Anna is seeing someone—or something—else. Zulawski keeps the camera in almost constant motion, pushing in and pulling back during confrontations between Mark and Anna as their fights escalate to bloody moments that are somehow both expected and completely terrifying. In one scene, Anna grinds meat as Mark maniacally berates her. The noise of the kitchen rises with the tension and Anna, tired of the diatribe, takes an electric knife to her neck. Paired with scenes of their individual genuine tenderness toward their son, POSSESSION is filled with mirrors. Mark meets his son's school teacher, a benevolent doppelganger for his wife, and a double of Mark appears with Anna at the end. Even the setting is exploited for an otherworldly nothingness and an exactness in East and West Germany, itself perversely mirrored. The unrestrained acting—Anna thrashing hysterically could describe many scenes—adds to a heightened reality where Anna's possession is not demonic, but love can be. Screening again as part of the Mirroring series. (1981, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]

Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST (UK/US/Poland)

Various Cinemas – See Venue websites for showtimes
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm

The term “the zone of interest,” the designation the Nazis applied to the Auschwitz extermination camp and adjacent areas, might as well apply to the robust activity surrounding this ultimate human evil by artists and the larger cultural community. The late British writer Martin Amis used the term for his 2014 novel, and now we have director/screenwriter Jonathan Glazer’s very loose adaptation of Amis’ book as a major motion picture. Whereas Amis focused on personal relationships between pseudonymous and fictional versions of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig, and an SS officer, Glazer chose an observational approach to the historical Höss family, imagining what living in a villa directly abutting Auschwitz might have been like for them and those who worked for them. Filmed at Auschwitz primarily in an accurate reconstruction of the villa the Höss family occupied, Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal eschewed conventional shooting techniques. They instead operated static, hidden cameras that could be manipulated remotely, and used natural light whenever possible. They also had no interest in giving us the usual horror show. Instead, Glazer leaned on Johnnie Burn’s sound design of gunfire, screams, and dogs, and only what camp structures could be seen from the Höss villa, to evoke the Holocaust. For example, the Höss family is hosting a children’s party in the vast garden of which Hedwig is so proud. As the children play, a cloud of steam moves in a line across the top of the camp wall—yet another train transporting victims to the slaughter. What Glazer concentrated on what he thought mattered to Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller)—career success and the good life—and if they had to live near and work in a human abattoir, well, that was the price of admission. Höss was reportedly a cold-blooded, hands-on killer early in his career, but Christian Friedel didn’t play this side of his character. Here, Rudolf seems like a loving father who reads to his daughters at night, is a good companion to his wife, and is well regarded by his fellow SS officers. His deeper depravity comes though chillingly during a late-night phone call with Hedwig. He eagerly shares his excitement that the deportation of up to 700,000 Hungarian Jews for extermination and slave selection will bear the name Operation Höss. Sandra Hüller as Hedwig projects a prosaic personality motivated by greed and social position. She seems like a Mother Courage pushing heedlessly through every circumstance to get what she wants, and is convinced that their living arrangement is doing nothing to harm her “strong, healthy, happy” children, despite the film’s ample evidence to the contrary. Little is known about the real Hedwig Höss, so this depiction seems like another example of demonizing mothers for fun and profit and the only questionable choice in an almost flawless movie. The remarkable score by Mica Levi is a haunting mélange of electronic and choral music. Glazer uses her score sparingly, however, in attempts to foreground the murdered at moments when we may be lulled by the mundane screen action. (I highly recommend you watch through the credits to listen to her audaciously beautiful score in its fullness.) In the end, a final, puzzling scene takes place largely in the present. I’ll leave its meaning to your own interpretation, but the familiar bourgeois lives Glazer has shown offers us a chance to reflect on our own unknowing callousness in the face of the suffering others endure for our convenience. (2023, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Amy Heckerling’s CLUELESS (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Sunday, 11am

There’s magic to be found in CLUELESS’ ability to transcend eras. It’s arguably not just the best cinematic version of Emma but among the greatest of any Jane Austen adaptation. Set and released in 1995, it’s also a perfect time capsule of mid-'90s American pop culture; in fact, the film’s fashions and slang have since become stand-in icons for the decade as a whole. Amy Heckerling (FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH) sets her Emma in Beverly Hills, and reflected the niche upper-class culture she saw there, which continues to influence American pop culture at large. With '90s fashion trending, CLUELESS is still present, though I’d argue its looming influence never waned, even when that decade fell out of favor. It’s one of the most '90s films ever made, but it never felt dated. Heckerling's sharp script keeps the film as fresh as ever, with smart one-liners that are funny as well as completely character driven; it’s an endlessly quotable film—“Ugh, as if!”—but it never feels excessive. Ambitious high school match-maker Cher (a dazzling Alicia Silverstone) is so positive in her goal to set up everyone around her, that she fails to recognize not only their needs but also her own desires. Her sweetness and willingness to help others make her easily lovable, though the film does take her journey to self-reflection seriously, not letting her off the hook for her mistakes. Silverstone's spectacular center performance is supported by a great overall cast, including Brittany Murphy as Cher’s latest makeover project, Paul Rudd as her disaffected college-aged stepbrother, and Dan Hedaya as her overprotective but loving father. A teen movie, too, CLUELESS features the traditional tropes: a party scene, classroom shenanigans, and multiple fashion and makeover montages. Cher’s outfits are unrivaled in terms of memorable film wardrobes, particularly because Heckerling makes fashion a key plot point, emphasizing its importance to the characters themselves. In addition to its iconic fashions, CLUELESS boasts a killer '90s soundtrack—including Beastie Boys and Counting Crows. It balances everything it does with such precision, and the result is one of the great effortlessly enjoyable films that will continue to delight viewers new and old. (1995, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Darren Stein's JAWBREAKER (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Monday, 7pm

JAWBREAKER is perhaps the most memorable of the slew of dark teen comedies that came in the late nineties/early aughts—it is inarguably the most visually striking. These films, including DROP DEAD GORGEOUS and SUGAR & SPICE, twisted the teen comedy in the spirit of HEATHERS; here director Darren Stein combines it with a distinct ‘90s sneer and surprising melancholy. The Flawless Four (Rose McGowan, Rebecca Gayheart, Julie Benz, and Charlotte Ayanna) are the most popular girls in school. After a birthday prank goes terribly wrong, the clique find they’ve accidentally murdered the sweetest of their group, Liz (Ayanna). Their apathetic leader, Courtney (a charmingly villainous McGowan) jumps into action, devising a disturbing story of how Liz died as a cover up. Foxy (Benz) falls in line, but Julie (Gayheart) has a crisis of morality. Even more worrisome is Fern (Judy Greer), a high school nobody who discovers their secret. To placate Fern, they turn her into one of them, teaching her the ropes; it’s a classic high school makeover story juxtaposed against a shocking murder. Like HEATHERS, the politics of high school, popularity, and rumors are darkly explored, with a focus on façade: as Courtney mentions, “it’s all about details.” And the visual details of JAWBREAKER are immaculate—with credit to cinematographer Amy Vincent. Set to the band Imperial Teen’s song “Yoo Hoo,” the Flawless Four’s slow-motion walk through the high school halls post Liz’s death is beyond iconic. The use of the color in the film stands out, all bright and girlish. But it’s not primarily pastels; rather, these are harsh neon greens and bold blues and reds of the Flawless Four’s costumes and makeup—mimicking the jawbreaker candy at the center of their crime. These characters radiate, quite literally, against the dullness of the background and everyone else around them, with a hypnotizing but dangerous glow; JAWBREAKER’s most impressive aspect is how its story is skillfully told in shifting colors. (1999, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Jonathan Demme's STOP MAKING SENSE (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, Midnight

In nearly every shot, STOP MAKING SENSE makes the case that Jonathan Demme was the greatest director of musical performance in American cinema. It isn't difficult to convey the joy of making music, but Demme's attention to the interplay between musicians (and, in some inspired moments, between the musicians and their crew) conveys the imagination, hard work, and camaraderie behind any good song.  And, needless to say, the songs here are very, very good. By this point (the performances are culled from three concerts from 1983), Talking Heads were the headiest American band to achieve their degree of success, and they made the most of it, doubling their line-up to include back-up singers and a few instrumentalists from the golden years of George Clinton's Funkadelic. It's never openly acknowledged that the five new members are Black and the Heads are white; the sheer creativity of the music, which fuses everything from soul to traditional African rhythms to then-advanced electronic effects, is fully utopian in its spirit. (1984, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Phạm Thiên Ân’s INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL (Vietnam/France/Singapore/Spain)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

When Thiên (Lê Phong Vũ), a Saigon resident in his 20s, learns that Hahn, his sister-in-law, has been killed in an accident, he makes the journey with Dao (Nguyễn Thịnh), Hahn’s 5-year-old son, to the rural village where they were raised for her funeral and burial among family. Thus begins the physical and spiritual journey of Phạm Thiên Ân’s namesake character in the atmospheric drama INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL. This film won the Caméra d’Or as the best debut feature at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. It’s not surprising that YELLOW COCOON SHELL captured the hearts of the Cannes judges; Phạm channels other Cannes award winners: the long-take, slow cinema of Tsai Ming-liang and the sound design of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s rural meditations, his ghostly visitations, and especially the discursive documentary style of his MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON (2000). Phạm’s film moves slowly from the worldly city life in which Thiên is immersed to the countryside where Hahn’s family, devout Catholics, catalyze his spiritual quest wrapped in an effort to find his long-absent brother. Phạm subtly move us from Thiên’s egocentrism, particularly with regard to his former fiancée (Nguyễn Thị Trúc Quỳnh), whose choice to become a nun really has nothing to do with him. Humbled, he listens intently to people he meets as he traces his brother’s whereabouts, learning about the war from a veteran who has him touch a bullet scar at his ribs. This scene calls to mind the biblical story of Thomas touching the scars of Jesus to convince himself of the reality of resurrection. Thiên learns from an old woman’s experience of the soul when she died briefly. Finally, he finds his brother’s home and sees the yellow cocoon shells of a silk farmer in his backyard, a practice that requires the death of the larvae before they can transform into moths. Much about YELLOW COCOON SHELL is derivative and on the nose when it comes to symbolism, and the long takes of mundane action seem designed, not always successfully, to slow us down and put us into a meditative state. While the film betrays the inexperience of its director, there is tremendous beauty in the images he creates. With time, Phạm could take his place alongside the filmmakers he so admires. (2023, 179 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Hayao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (Japan/Animation)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 6pm and Wednesday, 8:30pm

The anticipation of seeing a new film directed by Hayao Miyazaki is two-fold: there is a set expectation of whimsy, magic, and complex thematic exploration inherent in his work, but this is tied to the mystery of not knowing how specifically these traits will play themselves out. So it is with his (seemingly) final film, THE BOY AND THE HERON, a film rooted in familiar themes that Miyazaki has been dwelling on for decades of artistry. As with many of his works, Miyazaki provides another story of a youthful protagonist; here, the teenage Mahito—buried within heavy emotional armor to navigate the grief of losing his mother in a hospital fire the year before—finds himself navigating an unknown mystical world that sits somewhere between the afterlife and his own subconscious, after he's lured there by a deliriously antagonistic gray heron. The fantastical elements of Miyazaki immediately float to the surface, from new imaginative creatures like the Warawara—adorable floating balls that ascend to the heavens to be born as humans—to the bizarre amass of pelicans and parakeets that threaten to swallow up any frame they inhabit. Mahito‘s quest to find closure for his mother’s death results in a journey, ever joyous and sumptuous to watch, that ponders the nature of a world built upon loss, destruction, and chaos. Without spoiling too much, the film leaves us on something of an abrupt note, left to ponder the work of an undisputed master of cinema who was unafraid to bare his mortality before us, letting us sit in the knowledge that to live with the chaos of grief is still a beautiful life in and of itself; to know that there is no escaping pain, and there is something beautiful to carry on towards. Maybe a book your mother left behind for you, maybe a new, unknown journey waiting on the other side of a doorway. (2023, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Architecture & Design Film Festival
The Chicago edition of the Architecture & Design Film Festival takes place Wednesday through Sunday, February 4 at the Chicago Architecture Center (111 E. Wacker Dr. More info here.

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Rhayne Vermette’s 2021 debut feature STE. ANNE (80 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 7pm. Vermette in person for a post-screening conversation with guest curator Inney Prakash, founder of the Prismatic Ground film festival.

"Architecture is a Child of the Sea": Short Films from Prismatic Ground screens Thursday at 7pm, with Vermette again in person for a post-screening discussion with Prakash and Block Museum Curator of Cinema and Media Arts Michael Metzger. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station and will run day and night through mid-March. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Harry O. Hoyt’s 1925 film THE LOST WORLD (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm, as part of the Dinosaurs Plus! on Film series. More info here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago)
Leslie Buchbinder’s 2023 3D documentary WESTERMANN: MEMORIAL TO THE IDEA OF MAN IF HE WAS AN IDEA (86 min, 3D DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 11:30am and 5pm. Between the two screenings the Smart Museum of Art will open up its study room for a special collections viewing of work from its H. C. Westermann Study Collection, one of the most significant public collections of artwork and archival material related to Westermann’s life and work. Westermann’s sculptures, sketch books, prints, drawings, photographs, and studio materials will be on display. Advance registration required. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
The 2023 National Theatre Live production of Spirited Away: Live on Stage (175 min, Digital Projection), directed by John Caird, screens Saturday and Sunday at 11am.

Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 film ELYSIUM (109 min, 35mm) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Cli-Fi Lecture Series.

The Annual Festival of Films from Iran begins Thursday, 6:15pm, with a screening of Ehsan Khoshbakht’s 2023 essay film CELLULOID UNDERGROUND (80 min, DCP Digital). More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Latino Cultural Center
Matías Bize’s 2022 film THE PUNISHMENT (85 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the Reel Film Club, in partnership with the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago (31 W. Ohio St.), where the screening takes place. At 6pm there’s a reception with empanadas and wine, and after the film there will be a post-screening discussion. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Andrew Haigh’s 2023 film ALL OF US STRANGERS (105 min, DCP Digital) and İlker Çatak’s 2023 German film THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE (98 min, DCP Digital) continue screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Shinichirô Watanabe and Tensai Okamura’s 2001 film COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE screens Friday at midnight.

Martin Scorsese’s 2010 film SHUTTER ISLAND (138 min, 35mm) screens Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am, as part of the Hitchcock and Friends series.

James Robert Baker’s 1984 underground film BLONDE DEATH (93 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 10:15pm. Introduced by Joe Ziemba and Annie Choi of Bleeding Skull.

Mike Cheslik’s 2022 film HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (108 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 8:45pm. Filmmakers in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find more information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its larger screening and workshop schedule, here.

🎞️ ONLINE SCREENINGS/EVENTS

⚫ VDB TV
As VDB welcomes the Eiko & Koma and Eiko Otake collections, they are presenting a three-month series of programs that highlight representative works from them. Eiko Otake with Wen Hui: No Rule is Our Rule (2021, 73 min) screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: January 26 - February 1, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Ben Kaye, Raphael Jose Martinez, Joe Rubin, Brian Welesko