:: FRIDAY, MARCH 17 - THURSDAY, MARCH 23 ::

🇪🇺 THE CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY’S TECHNICOLOR WEEKEND AT THE GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

The Chicago Film Society pays tribute to one of cinema’s most beautiful innovations with seven programs of films shot in the majestic Technicolor process. In addition to the five features reviewed below, the weekend also includes a 1950s Technicolor reissue of Victor Fleming’s (and many other people’s) 1939 classic THE WIZARD OF OZ (101 min, 35mm) on Friday at 6pm and a Technicolor Shorts Program (Total Approx. 90 min, 35mm) on Saturday at 3pm, all at the Gene Siskel Film Center. More information on the series can be found here.

Warren Beatty's BULWORTH (US)
Friday, 8:30pm
Warren Beatty originally pitched BULWORTH as the story of a depressed man who hires an assassin to murder him so his family can collect his life insurance policy, but then falls in love. 20th Century Fox went forward with the project and assisted Beatty in development. As writers such as Aaron Sorkin were hired to polish and refine the script, class and race politics came to the forefront. The finished product is about a broke and corrupt Democratic Senator (played by Beatty) who takes out a life insurance policy and hires an assassin for himself. Once a left-leaning political figure, bureaucracy has made Jay Bulworth more politically conservative over the years, and now his re-election campaign suffers. After a night of drinking and smoking marijuana, the politician begins rapping about his new position on issues such as universal healthcare, foreign policy, and the fossil fuel industry. These reckless actions resurrect Bulworth’s popularity and spur his romance with a young black activist, Nina (Halle Barry). As he gains popularity, our hero lives in fear of when his assassin will strike, now that things are going so well. The film is scored by the immortal Ennio Morricone and photographed by the legendary Vittorio Storaro, but their work never distracts from the story. In the past few decades, there have been very few studio films that operate on this level of satire. Also, most major studios are highly unlikely to engage in class politics in their product; they are even less likely to do so through the kind of irreverent humor Beatty’s film holds. From the first pitch at the studio to its release, the world experienced five years of the Clinton administration and the birth of NAFTA; by the time it was released, Beatty had acted in only two in the preceding decade. Critics  in publications such as Entertainment Weekly criticized the film as his vanity project, stating that Beatty’s star power had dwindled and the younger generation he seemed to want to speak to didn’t know who he was. Others wrote off the film as a white Hollywood liberal trying to make a political statement on race, refusing to engage in the obvious class politics laid bare throughout the film. As Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle noted in his review, “It’s doubtful that any other Hollywood power could have put a story like this on the screen—or would want to.” Aside from his Hollywood stardom and pretty-boy charm, Beatty has always been a political animal. Before the formation of New Hollywood, it’s reported he began researching his masterpiece, REDS (1981), a film sympathetic to the Russian Bolshevik revolution through the eyes of John Reed and Louise Bryant. As an artist, placing politics front and center was nothing new for Beatty. Whether he’s empathizing with Bolsheviks or rapping about consequences of the Establishment on disenfranchised groups, Beatty’s work ripens with age. (1998, 108 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]
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Phil Karlson’s GUNMAN’S WALK (US)
Saturday, 5:30pm
Tab Hunter stars as Ed Hackett, the out-of-control, sociopathic eldest son of a rancher (Van Helflin) who holds himself above the laws of polite society just taking root in a region recently settled by force. When Ed is accused of murdering a Native American hired to help the Hacketts on a horse drive, his family must decide whether to protect their own or go along with the rules of others. Davy (James Darren), Ed's younger brother, not only stands against him but falls in love with the dead man's sister, which only exacerbates the violent reckoning to come. The attitude towards Native Americans, even as the story awkwardly attempts to give them dignity, will be a hard sell to a contemporary audience and the morality play of the sins of the father passed down to and paid by his sons is heavy-handed, but it will all no doubt look handsome on the big screen, as its Cinemascope and Technicolor format was intended to. If repeated shouts of “Half-breed!” and the like are not your thing, my advice is to stay away. (1958, 95 min, 35mm) [Dmitry Samarov]
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Peter R. Hunt’s ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (UK)
Saturday, 8pm
“This never happened to the other fellow.” With that bemused line delivered directly to the audience, George Lazenby, the first person to play “Bond. James Bond.” after Sean Connery, acknowledges our loss while signaling that this Bond film is going to be different in more ways than one. While the Bond franchise seemed to anticipate the coming domination of superhero fantasy films, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE offered a tantalizing, sadly unrealized alternative to films hellbent on hitting above high C for every note of every scene. SECRET SERVICE is the most human film of the entire Bond franchise, one in which emotions are shown, courage is not taken for granted, and death is a much more personal affair. To jump Lazenby into the world of 007, an entirely illogical fight scene opens the film. Bond thwarts a woman’s suicide attempt on a Corsican beach only to be immediately attacked by two men—stalwart Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum’s cheeky pre-emptive attack on Lazenby, whose only previous acting experience was in a few commercials. During the long first act, Bond meets Tracy (Diana Rigg), the woman he rescued, at a casino, gets attacked again, quickly beds her, and eventually ends up at the home of Draco, (Gabriele Ferzetti), a powerful crime boss and Tracy’s father who wants Bond to tame his troubled daughter by marrying her. This goofy plot twist gets even goofier when Bond agrees to the romance, leading to a very un-Bondlike scene of the pair walking along a foliage-draped path to the strains of Louis Armstrong singing “We Have All the Time in the World.” It might not be love, but Tracy and Bond get engaged, freeing him to start the action film proper as he returns to work, only to be pulled off his pursuit of power-mad Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas) by “M” (Bernard Lee). Bond promptly resigns, meaning that all of the resources of MI6, including his license to kill, are no longer available to him; if Bond pursues Blofeld, he’ll have to do it without the guilt-free gross of body bags or the gadgetry that was so easy for the FLINT movies and the Get Smart TV series to lampoon. His pursuit takes him to an exclusive allergy clinic high in the Swiss Alps, where Blofeld’s ridiculous plan to take over the world unspools as a mere clothesline on which to hang some incredibly beautiful scenes and thrilling action sequences in the snow-swept mountains. A car chase through the Christmas festivities of the mountain villages provides an ingenious way to sample the local culture while relying simply on the hazards of slippery roads to foil the bad guys. In addition, you’re not likely to see better skiing than the stand-ins for Bond and Tracy as they flee from Blofeld’s armed henchmen. One lengthy shot of one of Blofeld’s men falling over a cliff to the ground below emphasizes the peril and death that the cartoon violence of most action films tries to gloss over. Diana Rigg was the perfect choice for Tracy, bringing her considerable acting chops and Mrs. Peel athleticism to a role that allowed her far more creative latitude than the average Bond girl got in the early years of the franchise. The romance that becomes real between her character and Bond gives this film the depth needed to make its tragic conclusion sting. I also liked Telly Savalas, who plays Blofeld like a street scrapper whose yearning for respectability warped him into a hater of everyone and everything. Lazenby quickly settles into his portrayal, bringing wit and humanity to the unenviable task of ensuring the 007 franchise’s survival after the departure of its major asset and proving that nobody, not even Sean Connery, is indispensable. (1969, 142 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Douglas Sirk's INTERLUDE  (US)
Sunday, 3pm
One of Douglas Sirk’s final feature films, INTERLUDE is an expressionistic exploration of desire. The German born director had delved deep into themes of taboo relationships, extramarital love, and societal norms. Universal Studios allowed Sirk to shoot the film in Germany (his homeland) and premiered in Los Angeles. The film adapts James M. Cain’s story of A Modern Cinderella/The Root of His Evil, which was originally adapted for the screen as WHEN TOMORROW COMES (1939). The film revolves around an affair between Helen Banning (June Allyson), a young American, and a famous conductor, Tonio Fischer (Rossano Brazzi), who is married to the mentally ill Reni (Marianne Koch). Helen could begin a relationship with the straight-laced American doctor Morley Dwyer but hesitates throughout. As with many of his films, Sirk masterfully bends the “family-friendly” melodrama to his will, giving sympathies to characters’ desires and criticism to societal structures. Helen desires the sinful man and rejects an All-American good boy. By othering Fischer as “this is just what men are like here,” Sirk pulls off a depiction of human behavior and nontraditional ideas many other studio directors would not have gotten away with at the time. Shot in magnificent Technicolor and CinemaScope by William Daniels and scored by Frank Skinner, Sirk paints elegance and refinement with each frame. Much like the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who took major inspiration from Sirk), the work appeals directly to the emotions of the viewer, whether it’s through the use of Wagner, the popping color of design, or movement of the camera. INTERLUDE’s emotional power through music and decadent set pieces anticipates Visconti’s DEATH IN VENICE (1972) in its brilliant use of German Romantic music. As a late period film, INTERLUDE affects the emotions of the viewer through its design and challenges social norms within the mind. (1957, 90 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]
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Frank Tashlin's ARTISTS AND MODELS (US)
Sunday, 5:30pm
Three ARTISTS (Frank Tashlin, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin) and countless MODELS of what 20th (and 21st) century art could be. Controlled and spastic, intelligent and popular—we'd call it a "synthesis" if it didn't predate the elements it combines so fluidly; ARTISTS AND MODELS is the original, Pop before Pop, more avant-garde than the avant-garde, a masterpiece of modernism, post-modernism, and everything that comes after it, as durable as Shakespeare and just as silly and rich with ideas. Advertising colors and wild noises, suave Martin running amok and idiot Lewis charming the ladies. Martin is the talentless painter and Lewis is his hapless roommate, who describes fantastic adventure plots in his sleep. Their upstairs neighbors are a pair of pretty girls who also happen to make superhero stories for a living. A brash, complicated, bizarre, loud, intellectually rigorous, totally brainless movie about art and commerce, friendship, sexual inadequacy, and everything in between, with comic books, cartoon Communists, Rivettian codes, REAR WINDOW parodies, singing, dancing, and Shirley MacLaine. Or, to put it simply: the pinnacle of human expression, a movie against which all other movies should be measured. (1955, 109 min, 35mm) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

🇪🇺 THE CHICAGO EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL AT THE GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

The Gene Siskel Film Center’s 26th annual showcase of new films from the European Union continues this week and runs through the end of March. Below are reviews of select films with showtimes through Thursday. Check back next week for further coverage of the festival. More information and a complete schedule can be found here.

Adéla Komrzý and Tomas Bojar’s ART TALENT SHOW (Czech Republic/Documentary)
Saturday, 1:45pm
It’s clear right away that Adéla Komrzý and Tomas Bojar’s perceptive consideration of the several-day long entrance exam at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague is similar to Frederick Wiseman’s cogitations of storied institutions. It becomes even more so when shots of a janitor cleaning the schools’ halls punctuate the low-stakes “action” of the subject at hand, this being one of Wiseman’s signature devices; the effect is similar, helping to underscore, however gently, the fundamental inanity of the hierarchical dynamics and virulent self-seriousness respective to any hallowed hall. But in Wiseman’s films—even though they’re often touted for their painstaking objectivity via a so-called “fly-on-the-wall” approach—one still feels his presence, so distinct is the singularly dispassionate method. That isn’t the case here—the objectivity is stark, with nothing in the way of authorial markers. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and, even in spite of the blatant similarities to Wiseman’s films, ART TALENT SHOW achieves something on its own merit. As it pertains to the arduous admission process, Komrzý and Bojar’s inquest is oddly enthralling in its depictions of the sometimes ridiculous, sometimes ideologically vivid exercises. If there could be said to be a privileged viewpoint in the film, it’s that of the instructors, who guide the prospective students through several levels of increasingly ambitious tasks. The aspirants are young and idealistic, sometimes in a way that comes off superficially. But just as some of the applicants’ art and engagement with the exercises (e.g. a vibrator, spray painted silver; a written exam, painted orange rather than filled out) are frivolous, so, too, are some of the instructors’ attitudes overly strident. They frequently make fun of the work, laughing over what they appear to perceive as having little or no depth. In the final round, prospects talk one on one with instructors and are faced with unanswerable questions about the value of art; the instructors impart upon the aspiring students their relative insignificance in the world to get a sense, I imagine, for a kind of distinguishable passion that prevails over prudence. Still, the film’s even-handedness allows for both sides to seem uniquely congruent. Two eclectically dressed new media instructors, for example, relate to the prospective students with regards to explorations of gender and sexuality. Another two instructors who seem particularly flippant betray a sense of their own insecurity, discussing their own struggle with getting into the school (it often takes several tries), reminding one of the volatility and disappointment often inherent to careers in the arts. The film is compellingly shot, with a keen eye toward the interesting compositions to be found within the institution itself. A front-desk administrator for whom contemporary art is an entirely different language is artfully depicted in the de facto frame created by her window. In a way we are a little like her—attitude notwithstanding—looking out onto these people and this process, objective spectators of these highly subjective undertakings. (2022, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Véronique Jadin’s EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH (Belgium)
Saturday, 8:30pm
As France takes to the streets to protect their retirement age and the CEO of Starbucks is called to testify about the company’s illegal anti-union actions, it's safe to say that we’re living in a time where art about labor is more relevant than it has been in a long while. Thankfully we have people like writer-director Véronique Jadin to realize that sometimes what we need isn’t a weepy melodrama or a call to arms but a comedy to get us through another awful work day. On its face, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH is a comedy of errors. Wageslave Inès has spent over a decade at her cleaning supply company office job getting passed up for promotions and raises by far less competent—and downright despicable—men. It's only after the new intern, Melody, boosts Inès’s confidence that the uptight, middle aged woman finally asks for her raise. But instead of getting it she gets a corpse on her hands. After accidentally killing their boss, the women have to figure out how to not get caught in the small office filled with bumbling men. And in deliciously dark comedic fashion, things only get more and more out of hand. More blood. More bodies. More liberation for Inès. What makes EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH different from, say, OFFICE SPACE (besides the body count) is Jadin’s take on work culture from the perspective of women. This is absolutely an unapologetic female revenge fantasy. And while there is frank, nuanced, and difficult discussion of sexual assault, the movie never plays it for laughs or cheap sentiment—it reveals a baseline reality of gendered differences in the workplace and the world. Still, though, it does manage to keep a lightness that allows for the occasional guffaw without you feeling guilty. Not unlike Abel Ferrara’s brutal MS .45 (1981), by the end of the film you find yourself rooting for the heroine as she finds herself doing the things a lot of people wish they could do but don't. But that's exactly why we have films like EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH, because sometimes you have to have the vicarious thrills and laughs because you know damn well you're not gonna be disposing your asshole coworkers body in a vat of acid any time soon. But it really would feel nice to do it, wouldn't it? (2021, 78 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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George Chiper and Monica Stan’s IMMACULATE (Romania)
Monday, 6:15pm
From the opening sequence in an isolation chamber-like intake interview, where a squirming young woman is interrogated about how she got hooked on heroin, the camera of IMMACULATE rarely strays more than a few feet away from her side. Daria (Ana Dumitrascu) is like a fearful bird, her big eyes darting about, unable to gauge whether the hands and faces that often invade her personal space are friend or foe. Unlike so many dramatic portrayals of addiction and rehab, George Chiper and Monica Stan’s debut feature confines itself strictly to their heroine’s visceral experiences. Like Laszlo Nemec’s SON OF SAUL (2015) and  Laura Wendel’s PLAYGROUND (2021), the result of this up-close, almost solipsistic focus is an unsettling and claustrophobic sensation for the viewer. I felt as if I was locked up in rehab with Daria. Not only is there rarely anything visible outside the walls of the facility, but there’s no full picture of the dimensions of the rooms in the facility. This effectively communicates how all-consuming addiction and the process spent ridding oneself of it can be. The bland beige tones of the walls, the patients’ pajamas, and diffuse lighting add up to an atmosphere of muted, narcotized boredom. Whether Daria and her fellow addicts are abusing one another or truly making friends or entering into romantic relationships, the overall goal is to break up the tedium of their days. It’s not a pleasant or especially enlightening experience, and I was left wondering whether Daria’s weeks of confinement did any therapeutic good. I doubt it was the filmmakers’ intent to make either Daria or the viewers feel better in the end but to simply lock us inside. They certainly succeed in that. (2022, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
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Michal Blaško’s VICTIM (Slovakia)
Tuesday, 6:15pm
Usually the word “formulaic” is used as a pejorative when talking about scriptwriting. But some of the best scripts have exactly this quality, feeling almost mathematically fine-tuned to whatever their purpose is. Michal Blaško’s first feature VICTIM is one such film, setting up an ethical bind for its characters using dimensions of race, class, and gender to elicit maximum tension and social commentary. Irina (Vita Smachelyuk) is a single mother living as a Ukrainian migrant in the Czech Republic, working a dehumanizing job cleaning a single-room-occupancy apartment building populated mostly by other immigrants. When her son Igor (Gleb Kuchuk) ends up hospitalized while Irina is back in Ukraine attempting to gather paperwork, she rushes home to where it seems that her son was attacked at their apartment by three Roma teenagers. When the true cause of his injuries is revealed, however, a nationalist media frenzy has already been set in motion and Irina must decide between potential deportation if she reveals her son lied to the police, or falling in behind the increasingly racist movement of support behind Igor. While Irina is not actively racist herself, she knows that she’ll be undermining her and her son’s precarious social position by taking any kind of official stance against the virulent hate she benefits from, especially when she’s invited to speak at an “anti-crime” rally that’s clearly drawing the interest of neo-Nazis. As Slovakia’s submission for the foreign language Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards, the film is timely in how it dramatizes the further-flung conflicts sprung by the war in Ukraine. The war zone exists as a phantom threat, waiting for Irina if her carefully crafted alibis fall through. This would be an easier conflict to handle for the depraved, but Irina is a good person, working to help others in situations as difficult as her own. Saving herself would actively undermine this work, and VICTIM’s moral drama rests on this: pitting the poverty and violence of war against the spiritual death of staking your life on the demonization of others. This is the stuff of the most urgent dramas of the soul, and Blaško gamely adapts the stylings of the Dardenne brothers and Asghar Faradi to the current realities of Eastern Europe. But a slightly less obvious comparison might be the US-based Safdie brothers, deft as they are at setting up house-of-cards machines of anxiety where people are forced to leverage social power for their own survival. Regardless of the lineage, viewers should look forward to more precise critique from Blaško in the future. (2022, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Alfred Hitchcock's FAMILY PLOT (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Alfred Hitchcock's final film is also one of his lightest: Hitchcock himself said he wanted it to feel like Ernst Lubitch directing a mystery thriller. But like most of the master's lightest films (RICH AND STRANGE, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY), the surface tone masks a rather serious investigation of the artist's favorite subjects. The parallel narrative construction moves between two different married couples and, by extension, opposing ways of life. The wealthy criminals (William Devane and Karen Black) are cunning and immoral; the working-class couple (Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris) that discovers their kidnapping scheme is a sweeter, slightly naive pair, classic Hitchcockian figures of blind chance. The director clearly loves them all; both couples illustrate the quotidian joys and tribulations of marriage that were a constant source of creative inspiration (and comic relief) in his work. It isn't noted often enough what an inspired chronicler of marriage Hitchcock was: Indeed, few directors have portrayed the unspoken understanding between spouses as adroitly as he did. And the intricate structure of FAMILY PLOT, based on a system of pairs and opposites, only confirms this. The film is an ideal final testament for Hitchcock, not only in its crystallization of the marriage theme but in the off-handed joy with which it plays with the mechanics of suspense. Screening as part of the Scored by John Williams series. (1976, 121 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Sofia Coppola's SOMEWHERE (US)

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

One of the more divisive movies of 2010, SOMEWHERE is equally a crowd pleaser and a bore. Along with GREENBERG, it's also the second major American indie of that year that asked audiences to deal with an unlikeable main character. Sofia Coppola, born into fame, shows us what celebrity looks and feels like from the other side. It's a rare movie in that it has all the allure of a celebrity-dom storyline and bloodline but all the hum-drumness of the experience of daily life. While celebrity actor Johnny Marco's (Stephen Dorff playing himself) daily routine is privileged, spoiled, and idle, it is experienced with the same matter-of-factness as the average person's: he picks up/drops off his daughter, he watches her ice-skate, he smokes cigarettes, he gets a mold made of his face for a movie, they go on vacation, etc. In an unpopular feat, Coppola subversively turns the weight given to the lives of the rich and famous into something as light and trifling as a feather. Screening as part of the Sofia Coppola March Matinees. (2010, 97 min, 35mm) [Kalvin Henley]

Steven Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (US/UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm

A bearded man, covered in grime, hauls material into a workspace. He labors, meticulously, on what appears to be a sculpture. The endeavor has clearly taken over his life as well as his surroundings, much to the chagrin of his family, who simply don’t understand the forces at play behind his compulsion. Without context this might be describing a scene from a film about an artist, intended to depict passion for their craft. But this isn’t from that kind of film—it’s from Steven Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, a big-budget sci-fi saga centered on the plight of a blue-collar worker in Indiana who witnesses an unexplained phenomenon and becomes obsessed with pursuing the visions that follow. That includes constructing a giant model of the northeastern Wyoming landmark Devil’s Tower in his living room, which he continues after his wife and three kids leave when he starts hauling in dirt for the model through their kitchen window. And he’s not the only one attempting to articulate a persistent forethought; Jillian (Melinda Dillon), a single mother whose toddler son is later taken by the mysterious lights in the sky, draws the same image, over and over again. Before seeing this film for the first time several years ago, I hadn’t quite figured out Spielberg, often touted as a purveyor of popular entertainment. Obviously I’d seen and liked many of his films, especially as a kid, but I had a tendency toward dismissing him as I got older because I thought it possible that ubiquity and nostalgia made them seem more special than they really are. Then I saw CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and suddenly it all made sense, the ‘whys’ of my inquiry becoming ‘why nots.’ Richard Dreyfuss stars as Roy, the electrician whose life is turned upside down by an image, the image he sees of something theretofore inexplicable to him, a UFO flying overhead. He is Spielberg, an obsessive dreamer with a predilection for meticulous expression, and we, the viewers, are him, enthralled by the beauty and possibility of such obsession, one Roy becomes more and more desperate to realize. This propels the course of the film, amidst which the technicalities around the visitors’ arrival occur; this part is epitomized by Francois Truffaut as the scientist Lacombe, who’s in charge of investigating the extraterrestrial activity. (There’s a certain irony to the French director playing a scientist and the electrician being the one whose blind faith and desperation to pursue a vision leads him, only semi-metaphorically, to the mountain, but as is evidenced in Spielberg’s most recent film, THE FABLEMANS, a mix of art and science—represented by his mother and father, respectively—are what have long motivated him.) Both parts of the film, the existential and the expository, the preposterous and the proasic, meld perfectly, each propelling the other forward to a wondrous denouement. “I believe that the success of [the film] comes from Steven’s very special gift for giving plausibility to the extraordinary,” Truffaut remarked. “If you analyze [it], you will find that Spielberg has taken care in shooting all the scenes of everyday life to give them a slightly fantastic aspect, while also, as a form of balance, giving the most everyday possible quality to the scenes of fantasy.” Special effects, once an art even if now just a surrogate for imagination, are, of course, instrumental here, and Douglas Trumbull and Carlo Rambaldi’s impeccable fulfillment of Spielberg’s vision bring it fully to life, the film itself a fruit of obsessive labor. Screening as part of the Scored by John Williams series. (1977, 138 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (France)

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

Fewer and further between than they once were, any screening of MARIENBAD is an always-welcome opportunity to revisit the site of the master provocateur Alain Robbe-Grillet's great denting of international popular culture. There is, of course, another Alain involved, director/collaborator Resnais; and if MARIENBAD is in many ways an inappropriate public face for posterity to have welded onto both these giants' oeuvres, it remains an object lesson in Robbe-Grillet's particular notions about the uses of cinema (seen mainly as a field of play for semi-ironic explorations of the seduction and/or exploitation of distant, unattainable objects of desire), in Resnais' then-ongoing exploration of chilly mise-en-scène and disjunctive chronology, and, strangely enough, in the mechanics of chic, which saw this inscrutable and forthrightly odd formal experiment take on a faddish cool that lingered and drew resentment for years (c.f. Pauline Kael). Leaving aside the frightening wealth of talent contributed by the Alains, however, Sacha Vierny's photography alone (which even on video tends to elicit gasps of astonishment from the uninitiated) means that every screening of MARIENBAD must be cherished. Screening as part of Doc’s Sunday series, “Delphine Seyrig, More Than a Muse.” (1961, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Jeremy Davies]

John Landis’ THE BLUES BROTHERS (US)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

The unofficial "official movie of Chicago." Originally released in 1980, THE BLUES BROTHERS is the only other thing piped into Chicagoland homes as much as fluoridated water. There is something so charming about this movie that, no matter that it’s screened locally every 3 months on average and everyone, at some point, owned a copy on physical media, the theater will always fill up when it's programmed. For those of you unlucky souls that have yet to catch this (or perhaps you lucky souls that get to see it for the very first time!), let me set out the adventure. After serving three years in prison, Jake Blues (John Belushi) reunites with his blood brother Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) to reform their old band so they can raise enough money to save the orphanage that took them in as children. There’s Point A for you. To get to Point Z involves some lying, some cheating, a handful of rednecks and Nazis, and a whole lot of cops. It's an anarchic road movie-cum-musical that's also a love letter to blues, jump, and R&B, and the city of Chicago itself. The list of musicians who perform in the film is staggering: Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Chaka Khan, Carolyn Franklin, and Pinetop Perkins. I choose to give Aretha Franklin her own mention because she not only steals the film the moment she appears, but because this movie paved the way for her career comeback. Even the Blues Brothers Band has half of Booker T and the MGs and various other blues/R&B sidemen with far-than-better-than average pedigrees. And this pool of talent doesn't even count the supporting cast, which features everyone from John Candy to Steven goddamn Spielberg. Everything about this movie is cranked to 10 and somehow nothing suffers from that. The delightful anarchy of THE BLUES BROTHERS taps into the rebel inside everyone—this is a punk rock movie for people who would never actually consider themselves punk. Or even fans of punk. But here we have a glib disdain for any kind of authority except a sacred morality of goodness. The Blues Brothers are “on a mission from God” to save an orphanage, and they won't let anyone get in the way. They crash 103 cars (mostly cop cars) making this film, a world record at the time (and now held by Chicago filmmakers the Wachowskis for MATRIX RELOADED). There's an anticapitalist/anti-consumerist lens in the film's wanton destruction of a mall—so much so that John Landis was jokingly upset that George Romero got his “anti-mall” film, DAWN OF THE DEAD, into theaters before he could release this one. The Blues Brothers also take a couple jabs at hillbilly type as well as neo-fascists, nearly killing an entire parade of "Illinois Nazis." Again, so very punk. But most importantly, THE BLUES BROTHERS is a musical about the power of music itself. Music isn't just a means of communication—it's the end all, be all of communication. So many musicals use music to advance the plot; the plot of THE BLUES BROTHERS is used to advance the music. Everything leads to The Big Concert, where the band needs to put on a show so big that they can save the orphanage. It’s an admittedly hacky trope that somehow feels honest and heartfelt. On top of the sentimentality, this film makes the City of Chicago a character in its own right. New York may have multiple great directors, like Martin Scorsese and Abel Ferrara, to give their town a cinematic soul, but Chicago needs only one movie to capture its essence fully, and that movie is THE BLUES BROTHERS. Asking me how many times I've seen this film is like asking me how many shots of Malort I've had. Co-presented by the Second City Film School. (1980, 133 min, 35mm) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Julia Ducournau's TITANE (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Julia Ducournau’s TITANE is difficult to summarize without revealing too much of the wild and twisted plot. It centers on Alexia (Agatha Rousselle), a woman with a deep predilection for cars and violence and who's had a titanium plate in her skull since a vehicular accident in childhood. Did the accident awaken her perversions? Or did the piece of metal implanted in her head do it? The film cares not to say. One thing that is certain is that many of Alexia's motivations seem to come from someplace deep within herself. She expresses them in an animalistic fashion, focusing on her baser urges and her will to survive. Much like Ducournau's first film, RAW (2016), TITANE takes body horror to a shocking extreme, and the brutalities it depicts again tie into the animal side of human nature. Body horror isn't relegated to violence; it also explores the ideas of the body as status symbol and personal prison. There comes a point in the film where Alexia finds herself living with fire captain Vincent (Vincent Lindon), and their relationship takes on a father-daughter dynamic. The interactions between these two are surprisingly touching, offsetting the film’s more gnarly moments. Like the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys, Alexia and Vincent find solidarity and comfort from a lonely world in each other’s presence. Visceral and thought-provoking, TITANE demonstrates Ducournau’s ability to weave a story that is batshit crazy yet grounded in fully realized characters. Screening as part of SAIC professor Daniel R. Quiles’ Gore Capitalism lecture series. (2021, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

David Cronenberg's SCANNERS (Canada)

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

His last straight genre film before his artistic breakthrough, VIDEODROME (1983), SCANNERS is remarkable today for the various ways in which it foreshadows David Cronenberg's mature work. Ostensibly about a worldwide conspiracy involving people with violent telekinetic powers (the "Scanners" of the title), the movie largely takes place in dark, neutral interiors such as office buildings and lecture halls. The decision is a triumph of low-budget filmmaking, far-reaching in its implications: playing up the familiarity of his mise-en-scene, Cronenberg suggests an unexplainable horror behind our most banal routines—much like in the novels of Don DeLillo or the plays of Harold Pinter. Of course, SCANNERS isn't lacking for the gruesome effects on which Cronenberg made his name: the film's exploding head may be the image most popularly associated with him. Screening as part of Doc’s Thursday II series, “Skin Under Skin: A Retrospective of David Cronenberg.” (1981, 103 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

John Fawcett’s GINGER SNAPS (Canada)

The Brewed (2843 N. Milwaukee Ave.) – Monday, 9pm

The werewolf has long been thematically connected to puberty and coming-of-age stories. This is most felt in the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, but modern cinema has made use of the allegory, as seen in such tonally diverse films as TEEN WOLF and THE COMPANY OF WOLVES. John Fawcett’s horror film GINGER SNAPS sits between those two films; it’s at once a teen comedy about what happens when your sister becomes a werewolf and a dark and moving examination of puberty, sexuality, and female bonds. Antisocial sisters Ginger and Brigette Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins) are incredibly close; they act out their own violent deaths much to the dismay of their parents. They obsess over death, vowing to escape their dull suburban existence or commit suicide together at 16. Their macabre bond is shaken, however, after Ginger gets her first period and is attacked by a werewolf. Ginger begins to change–into both a hideous creature and a self-possessed teenager interested in sex and boys. Simultaneously, Brigette gets increasingly concerned, worried both about the monster her sister is becoming and the ways in which Ginger is rejecting their withdrawn lifestyle. While part horror-comedy, GINGER SNAPS doesn’t stray from the violent, real-world consequences of Ginger’s transformation, complete with disturbing practical special effects. Isabelle and Perkins’ off-kilter yet sincere performances drive the film, keeping the core relationship at the heart of this wild teen tale. In its dreary suburban setting, GINGER SNAPS aptly balances a grounded reality with fantastical horror elements. It’s a cult horror film that endures because of its dark humor and serious feminist themes, intelligently observing how simultaneously funny, horrifying, and empowering it is to grow up. (2000, 108 min, Unconfirmed Format) [Megan Fariello]

Michael Morris' TO LESLIE (US)

FACETS Cinema – Friday, Saturday and Sunday; See Venue website for showtimes

Winning $190,000 in a lottery might seem like the luckiest break most people could have. When combined with a serious addiction, however, heartache and ruin are likely to follow. This is the premise of director Michael Morris’ affecting film TO LESLIE. Andrea Riseborough gives a stunning and complex performance as a West Texas single mom whose sudden windfall evaporates in six short years in a haze of booze and drugs. Her fed-up and deeply hurt son and relatives refuse to take her in off the streets, and her return to the hometown where she bought her winning lottery ticket is greeted with vengeful cruelty. The characters created by screenwriter Ryan Binaco are brought believably fleshed out by the talents of Allison Janney, Marc Maron, Andre Royo, Stephen Root, and a raft of skillful supporting actors who create an entire world that is so specific yet so relatable. Morris favors Riseborough with several close-ups during moments when Leslie is faced with confusing decisions, and you can practically hear the thoughts in her head, so completely does Riseborough breathe life into her. There is a bit too much short-handing and tidying up at the end, but I can’t say I was sorry to experience some much-needed uplift. Leslie didn’t start out having a plan for the money she won, but in the end, losing everything helped her forge a life worth living. (2022, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Colm Bairéad’s THE QUIET GIRL (Ireland)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

I was a quiet child. Out of some combination of shyness, sullenness, and the preference for private experience, I preferred keeping to myself. Other formerly (or currently!) introverted viewers should be able to find some part of themselves reflected in THE QUIET GIRL, which speaks the language of childhood reticence. While I grew up in a loving family, the same cannot be said for nine-year-old Cáit (ethereal newcomer Catherine Clinch), who is ignored and belittled by both her parents and her gaggle of siblings. With another child on the way, her parents send her to live with a pair of middle-aged cousins on their farm. Cáit finds herself under the guardianship of Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), whose compassionate, patient, and attentive care seems alien compared to how the girl is treated by her callous mother. Cáit’s new, more nurturing environment is delineated by production designer Emma Lowney and cinematographer Kate McCullough through the use of warm yellows, soft sunlight, and the emerald green of the nearby woods, evoking an almost magical bucolic haven unlike the dimly-lit interiors of Cáit’s family home. Although she’s showered with affection she’s never felt before, Cáit can’t quite shake her melancholy, especially after she discovers a secret her caretaker has been concealing from her. THE QUIET GIRL contains few surprises, and its alignment with Cáit’s point of view dictates its modest scope and affect. Still, Bairéad finds virtue in simplicity, tenderness, and pain in placid images. His understated style and narrative minimalism lead to a finale that is all the more potent for being relatively emotionally eruptive, as reservoirs of unspoken feelings come crashing, gently but emphatically, to the surface. (2022, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

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

⚫ 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 now playing at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, known as we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video, which has a runtime of approximately 48 min, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March 2024. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Jacquelyn Mills’s 2022 Canadian film GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE (103 min, DCP Digital) begins this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

“Recording Revolutions: An Evening with Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting Grantee Eli Hiller” takes place on Thursday at 6pm. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Vasilis Katsoupis’ 2023 film INSIDE (105 min, DCP Digital) and Lola Quivoron’s 2023 French film RODEO (107 min, DCP Digital) begin this week. See Venue website for showtimes. Note that there’s a free screening of RODEO for Music Box Members on Sunday at 4:15pm with Quivoron in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. 

Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and Conrad Vernon’s SHREK 2 (93 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at midnight. Hosted by Ramona Slick.

A new HD remaster of Fabrice du Welz’s 2004 horror film CALVAIRE (88 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday and Saturday at midnight.

Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult classic THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight. Every screening has a shadowcast of the film (actors acting in front of the screen during the film) performed by Midnight Madness.

Davy Chou’s 2022 Korean film RETURN TO SEOUL screens Friday, 2pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11:15am; and Sunday, 9:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on this Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here. 

CINE-LIST: March 17 - March 23, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Kyle Cubr, Jeremy M. Davies, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Kalvin Henley, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Raphael Jose Martinez, Joe Rubin, Dmitry Samarov, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky