📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Costa-Gavras’ MISSING (US/Mexico)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 2pm
A blunt critique of the Augusto Pinochet regime, MISSING was withheld from distribution in Chile until Pinochet left power in 1990. It was also withheld from distribution in the United States because of a lawsuit against the filmmaker Costa-Gavras by former US ambassador Nathaniel Davis and a few others, who claimed the film libeled them; the film wasn’t officially available here between 1987 and 2004. MISSING was banned in both countries for basically the same reason: it spells out the evil machinations of the US government and Chilean military in overthrowing Salvador Allende’s democratically elected socialist government in 1973 and subsequently torturing and murdering thousands of Allende’s supporters. For his courage in confronting an then-raging controversy head-on, Costa-Gavras received highest honors the 1982 Cannes Film Festival; he shared the Palme d’Or with the great Turkish dissident and filmmaker Yılmaz Güney (for his final feature, YOL), and Jack Lemmon, who starred, was awarded the prize for Best Actor. I don’t particularly like MISSING—it bugs me in the ways that most of Costa-Gavras’ movies bug me (for one thing, the chest-beating obviousness of it all doesn’t allow for that freedom of interpretation that can be the very stuff of art)—but does this really matter? Like the director’s earlier award-winner Z (1969), MISSING is an enduring example of how the tools of popular cinema can be used to raise awareness about pressing political concerns. Lemmon, doing an effective variation on his everyman persona, plays Ed Horman, the conservative father of left-wing American journalist Charlie Horman, who went to Chile and got disappeared by Pinochet’s thugs. A surrogate for the audience, Lemmon learns about the dictatorship’s atrocities and his own government’s support for them when he travels to Santiago in search of his son. The film plays like a mystery, as Lemmon uncovers more and more of the political reality in his mission to piece together the last days of his son’s life; there’s also some strong acting between Lemmon and the always great Sissy Spacek, who plays his daughter-in-law. In his essay about MISSING for the Criterion Collection, Michael Wood notes how Costa-Gavras slyly avoids making explicit reference to Pinochet or even what nation the story takes place in, explaining that “the point of the thinly disguised allusions is to avoid not the identification of the countries but too easy a limitation of the stories’ reach… if we have to figure out that this place is Santiago de Chile, we will have necessarily figured out that it could be someplace else.” It’s for this reason in particular that MISSING remains crucial viewing. Presented in collaboration with the Committee to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Coup in Chile and the Uri-Eichen Gallery, as part of their months-long exhibitions in memory of the coup. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Charlie Horman’s widow, Joyce Horman, alongside Janice Teruggi, sister of Frank Teruggi, another American victim of the coup. (1982, 122 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (UK/US)
Music Box Theatre – Monday, 4pm, Wednesday, 6:45pm and Thursday, 9:30pm
For many, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is not simply a masterpiece, but the apotheosis of moviegoing itself. In no other film is the experience of seeing images larger than oneself linked so directly to contemplating humanity's place in the universe. Kubrick achieves this (literally) awesome effect through a number of staggering devices: a narrative structure that begins at "the dawn of man" and ends with the final evolution of humankind; one-of-a-kind special effects, the result of years of scientific research, that forever changed visual representations of outer space; a singular irony that renders the most familiar human interaction beguiling; blasts of symphonic music that heighten the project of sensory overload. It isn't hyperbolic to assert, as film scholar Michel Chion has in his book Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey, that this could be the most expensive experimental film ever made; it's certainly the most abstract of all big-budget productions. As in most of Kubrick's films, the pervasive ambiguity—the product of every detail having been realized so thoroughly as to seem independent of an author—ensures a different experience from viewing to viewing. Much criticism has noted the shifting nature of "thinking" computer HAL-9000, the "star" of the movie's longest section, who can seem evil, pathetic, or divine depending on one's orientation to the film; less often discussed is the poker-faced second movement, largely set in the ultra-professional meeting rooms of an orbiting space station. Is this a satire of Cold War diplomacy (something like a drier follow-up to DR. STRANGELOVE)? An allegory about the limitations of scientific knowledge? Like the "Beyond the Infinite" sequence that makes up most of the film's final movement—an astonishing piece of abstract expressionist art every bit the equal of the Gyorgy Ligeti composition that accompanies it—one can never know concretely what it all means, nor would one ever want to. Note: These screenings are for Music Box Members only. (1968, 142 min, 70mm) [Ben Sachs]
Frank Lloyd’s WITHIN THE LAW (US/Silent)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 4pm and Saturday, 7pm
Every Chicago moviegoer ought to experience at least one silent film screening at Doc. There’s usually no musical accompaniment, and the audience, while not actively trying to be more quiet than usual, ends up creating this blissful sonic void in which to contemplate the film. Any movie is better in these conditions, so why not let it be WITHIN THE LAW, a good-enough vehicle for silent superstar Norma Talmadge? The third of five cinematic adaptations of a play by the long-forgotten Bayard Veiller, it trades in melodramatic conventions that probably seemed creaky even when it was released in 1923, and Frank Lloyd’s stage-bound aesthetic places these elements front and center. I’m sure it will be a beautiful experience at Doc—where else can you pay five bucks and get a taste of what it was like to go to the theater 110 years ago? Veiller’s first big hit, Within the Law (which premiered and flopped in Chicago) ran on Broadway for over 500 performances between 1912 and 1913, and Lloyd’s film gives a fair impression of why it must have been a big stage hit. Not only does it hinge on a big, expressive lead performance; all the characters are written so broadly as to encourage the sort of hamminess that’s usually a lot of fun to see live. Mary Turner (played by Talmadge in the Lloyd version) is a hard-working, upstanding department store employee who gets framed for shoplifting by a coworker. The store’s unfeeling owner decides to make an example of her and convinces the judge at her trial to pronounce the strictest sentence. When Mary gets out of prison three years later, she swears revenge on everyone who wronged her, albeit through purely legal means so as not to get in trouble with the law again. Teaming up with another woman she met in jail and a lovable con man straight out of Dickens, Mary accomplishes her mission and dishes out a lot of common sense along the way. In utter silence, the morality of WITHIN THE LAW may seem especially stark; the characterizations feel pre-Freudian in that everyone is shaped by their circumstances to be either all good or all bad. The grandstanding of the cast reinforces the Old Testament fortitude of Veller’s story, rendering each character a towering social type rather than a puny individual. Screening as part of the Programmers’ Picks series. (1923, 105 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Ira Sachs’ PASSAGES (France)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Befitting the film’s plot—something of a love triangle between two men, husbands Tomas (Franz Rogowski) and Martin (Ben Whishaw), and a young woman, Agethe (Adèle Exarchopoulos)—the compositions in Ira Sachs’ PASSAGES are angular, the characters’ bodies individual lines that connect and disconnect seemingly at random. Much like Jacques Tati elicits comedy from architecture, Sachs, in collaboration with cinematographer Josée Deshaies, here evokes love and all its contours from the relationship between these bodies and their surroundings (which, like Tati’s film, are also in Paris). The film’s opening scene shows Tomas at work as a director; it’s the last day of shooting, and he’s directing a scene during which an actor descends from some stairs into a crowd of people in a bar. The set is almost Fassbinderian, with dark red lighting, arched entryways and decadent detailing. (As we’ll later see, this isn’t the only element of the film that recalls the great, iconoclastic German director. In general Sachs’ films are infused with his own rapt cinephilia.) Tomas gives direction to an actor on how to walk down the stairwell, instructing him how to use his body within that particular space. When I spoke with Sachs, he noted how he and Deschaies aspired to make each sequence seem almost like a diorama, with the actors situated purposefully so that the arrangements and movement within them conveyed the characters’ emotions as much as the dialogue. The lines become tangled when the cast and crew go to celebrate at the end of the shoot; when his husband, Martin, declines to dance with him at the bar, Tomas instead dances with the beautiful, young school teacher Agathe. They converge first through dance, then through sex, and eventually through love, with Tomas’ marriage to Martin falling completely by the wayside. Tomas leaves Martin and moves in with Agathe, who’s soon pregnant; he becomes bored with this newfound domesticity and also jealous of Martin’s relationship with a handsome writer, sucking his ex-husband back into his orbit as a result. The three attempt a quasi-polyamorous relationship, the outcome of which I won’t reveal here but leaves not everyone satisfied. (DESIGN FOR LIVING, this is not. Rather, as Sachs tells me, it’s more akin to Pialat’s LOULOU.) That’s because Tomas is a classic enfant terrible, the embodiment of an artist completely absorbed in his own pathos. Rogowski is vibrant as usual but also kind of treacherous; Whishaw again plays a delicate martyr, quietly absorbing his husband’s emotional brutality. Exarchopoulos, meanwhile, conveys a quiet strength that mirrors the vigor of her desire. But, even though the film’s marketing hinges on just that quality, it isn’t so much sexy as it is sexual, depicting moments of passion in a realistic manner. A lengthy sex scene between Tomas and Martin is the cause of the film’s controversial NC-17 rating, for which there’s truly no justification—I’ve seen more graphic sex scenes on television. And the most interesting thing about that scene isn’t the sex itself, but the way it’s shot, entirely from behind with no access granted to the actors’ (and thus the characters’) faces during this intimate, complicated moment. It recalls another, earlier scene where the two have a difficult conversation at their country house, with Tomas in the foreground almost completely obscuring Martin who sits behind him on the bed. The composition gives meaning to their respective sequences in a way that either complements or supersedes the dialogue (or lack thereof). Another appreciable visual element of the film is the characters’ clothing, which reflect the personality of the person who’s wearing it. Thus, Tomas’ clothes are particularly flamboyant, as seen when he wears a sheer crop top to dinner with Agathe’s parents—a conveyance of both his general nonconformity and the disrespect he feels toward their bourgeois attitudes. The characterizing impact of everything outside what the actors are saying adds a certain dynamism that elevates the rather simple concept (give or take a few subversions regarding sexuality, which is never explicitly broached) of who’s sleeping with whom to why they’re doing so and who they’re becoming in the process. Sex is the triangle, but love is the void, a mystery among absolutes; a passage into which we enter. The 7pm and 9:30pm screenings on Friday followed by a post-screening Q&A with Sachs. (2023, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Listen to Cine-File co-managing editor Kat Sachs’ interview with filmmaker Ira Sachs here.
Wei Lo's FIST OF FURY (Hong Kong)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday and Thursday, 6pm
An action-packed anti-colonial war cry from a budding film studio, FIST OF FURY magnifies the steel-cut charisma of action star Bruce Lee, making him one of the greatest stars ever captured on celluloid. Speculated to be based on the life of Chin Woo Physical Training Centre’s founder Huo Yuanjia, the story follows a young martial arts master as he returns to his kung fu alma mater to find his most beloved teacher poisoned. The devastated Chen Zhen (Lee) swears to become a holy terror for the Japanese imperialists and avenge his tutor. Lee was already a known name in United States for his role as Kato on the TV show The Green Hornet (1966-'67) and had already starred in several Hong Kong films. By FIST, director Wei Lo had directed over forty and acted in over one hundred features. Still under British colonial rule and neighboring the People’s Republic of China (who would receive a visit from President Richard Nixon the same year of the film’s release), Hongkongers were still finding their identity as a nation in a postwar world. In the latter half of the 20th century, cinema would play a major role in that discovery. FIST is one of many films to express the frustration of a people whose connection to ancient tradition was being suppressed by colonial rule. While at times the film uses a swelling orchestra as if in an Italian melodrama and other times feels like a kung fu ballet scored by Schoenberg, it delivers a message of de-colonization through blood. Due to disagreements over the film’s racial politics, Lee and Lo parted ways as collaborators after this film. The actor would go on to shoot his infamous ENTER THE DRAGON (1973) and pass away before its release due to an allergic reaction to medication. There is no other action star like Bruce Lee. An actual competing martial artist, Lee’s stunt work doesn’t have as many cuts as other films in the genre. The camera holds on Lee for longer takes uninterrupted by cutaways, showing fuller movements. When a movie has longer takes, it’s on the performer to hold the audience’s attention. Whether it’s the star’s strapping presence or the brilliant stunt choreography, Lee seems to have his own gravitational pull during fight sequences, a master of the fictional universe. Dying at the age of thirty-two yet leaving behind some of the most beloved films of all time, the tragedy of Lee’s story is a reminder that beauty is fleeting yet cinema can preserve the essence bright stars once radiated. Screening as part of the Hong Kong Summer series. (1972, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Zeinabu irene Davis’ COMPENSATION (US)
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.) – Sunday, 1pm
Zeinabu irene Davis' Chicago-made COMPENSATION is a formally ambitious film that alternates between two stories set nine decades apart. Each one concerns the romance between a deaf woman and a hearing man, both of whom are African-American—making this one of the rare films to consider the experience of physically disabled minorities. Davis draws inspiration from silent cinema; the first story, set around 1910, is actually presented as a silent film, while the second, set in the 1990s, contains little spoken dialogue, with most of the communication conveyed through body language. “Both stories are dreamy, atmospheric reveries,” wrote Roger Ebert on the occasion of COMPENSATION’s premiere at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, adding that the film broaches the larger topic of “the changing nature of African-American lives during the [20th] century.” Part of the Screening Freedom: Film + Discussion Series. Followed by a catered discussion. (1999, 92 min, 16mm) [Ben Sachs]
George Miller's MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (Australia)
Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
There's no shortage of films set in a distant future gone horribly awry, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a dystopia as colorful and horrific as the gory Australia George Miller present in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. The third sequel to MAD MAX (1979) and an effective reboot of its franchise, FURY ROAD felt inescapable upon its release in 2015; it was on the radar of anyone who even mildly identified with nerd culture. After grossing $375 million at the box office and winning plenty of accolades, it still holds up as a raw, relentless depiction of an oppressive, post-apocalyptic world—and a blast from start to finish. Tom Hardy makes his debut here as Max Rockatansky, a role held in the late '70s and early '80s by Mel Gibson. While his brooding performance is captivating, Hardy's real function is to act as the eyes through which we meet Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron. In a wasteland ruled by cult-leader Immortan Joe and his militia of "war boys," Furiosa, Max, and a truck full of Joe's escaped wives must fight for bodily autonomy, basic human rights, and, as Furiosa replies to Max's question of intent, redemption. For fans of the original trilogy, this offers a new world that's true to the aesthetics of its predecessors but unlimited by '80s special effects; for first-timers, it delivers a unique action-adventure universe free of Marvel-style tropes and overbearing cameos. FURY ROAD feels too huge to be contained by any single screen, but with something of this magnitude, finding the biggest one you possibly can is paramount. Screening in the "Black & Chrome Edition" on Friday and in color on Saturday. Presented by Metal Movie Nights; the party kicks off with Metal Vinyl Weekend spinning records in the Music Box Lounge at 10pm. The Metal Movie Night pre-show of metal videos and classic trailers starts at 11:45pm. (2015, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Bates]
Tim Burton's PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St.) – Monday through Thursday, 4:15pm
By 1985, Paul Reubens' bow-tied TV man-child Pee-wee Herman had claimed a successful stage run, HBO series and specials, and sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall. The culmination of this popularity was PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. The premise of the BIG ADVENTURE is simple: Pee-wee's beloved bike, an awesome cherry-red cruiser, has disappeared and, bindle in hand, Pee-wee sets across the country to recover it, come what may. In store for Pee-wee are phantom adventures on the American highway, a trip to the Alamo, and the hazards of a thousand other oddball incidents, leading to a roaring, studio-crashing finale that rivals the best of Mel Brooks. PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE is of course the feature debut of Tim Burton, who is perhaps the perfect directorial match for Reubens' funhouse comedy, and the film offers the curious objects, candy colors, and spoiled suburban malaise that have since become the hallmarks of Burton's all-too successful career. Some of the comedy has become even more relevant and complex (and unintentionally ironic) as the years have gone by, such as when Dottie asks Pee-wee if he would like to take her to the movies: Pee-wee responds that there are things she doesn't know about him—"Things you wouldn't understand, things you couldn't understand... Things you shouldn't understand." The two do eventually end up at the movies together, but thankfully Dottie and the audience are spared a TAXI DRIVER moment. (1985, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Liam Neff]
Steve James’ A COMPASSIONATE SPY (US/Documentary)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St.) – Saturday, 10:45am and Sunday, 11am
A sort of companion piece to Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER, albeit unintentionally so, Steve James’ latest is an expressive documentary-fiction hybrid that focuses on a smaller player among the heavies at Los Alamos. There’s a local connection in that the player, Ted Hall, attended the University of Chicago, where he not only finished his Master’s and obtained a PhD in physics, but also met his wife, Joan, who features prominently in the film. Years prior to his time in Chicago, however, he had been the youngest physicist (at 18 years old) to work on the Manhattan Project. His role wasn’t insignificant; a prodigy who had been recruited to the project from Harvard, Hall worked directly on both the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. He confided to Joan about his work as well as his later decision to pass information about the weapons to Soviet Intelligence, this latter action spurred by his belief that it was no longer needed for its intended purpose (Germany was actively losing the war) and this of grave concern for the United States to have a monopoly on such information. (Klaus Fuchs is the spy most commonly identified amongst those working on the Manhattan Project, though it’s speculated that the Soviets used Fuchs’ information to verify what Hall had previously given them.) Joan describes the scenario of his revealing this to her while a reenactment of it unfolds on screen, the actors looking uncannily similar to their real-life counterparts. James, renowned for his sprawling documentaries about a variety of subjects, hasn’t worked in a mode like this before, having always favored unalloyed reality over any fictive representations of it. The method seems out of place at times, perhaps because James is so unfamiliar with this approach. In interviews he said he was inspired by the lack of photographs and other documentation around certain, intimate exchanges (though there is much in the way of archival assets utilized in the film, including clips from Michael Curtiz’s MISSION TO MOSCOW); in recreating them, however, they assume a mythos that’s better suited to narrative cinema in its totality. Take, for example, the introduction of a love triangle between Ted, Joan and his best friend Saville Sax, who served as a liaison between Hall and the Soviets. Sax is positioned as a lamentable figure who loses his girl to Hall and falls behind in every other way possible, achieving neither the occupational success or idyllic family life that Hall did. This perspective feels inconsequential compared to the film’s larger subject. Sax, however, figured as more of an average person next to Hall’s wunderkind spy, didn’t actually work on the bomb, raising questions of what it means to be great when having contributed to such devastation. This is well-trod territory in film, to be sure, but James is approaching it from a more modest perspective here—the film feels less like a totemic blockbuster than it does flipping through a photo album and finding out that Grandpa Ted had worked on the atomic bomb and, oh, had also been a spy for the Soviet Union. In something like OPPENHEIMER, the subject’s brilliance seems awesome and terrifying; A COMPASSIONATE SPY makes one think of all those on the fringes, grappling with their own moral compass and the impact their actions might have on their loved ones as well as society at large. It’s an altogether smaller world in James’ film, with Joan as our de facto guide through it. From her perspective, it’s a love story as well, the kind found in everyday life rather than the silver screen. Whatever questions one might consider on a grander scale when thinking about such a moral dilemma, James’ film endeavors you to ask of yourself. (2023, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Martin Scorsese's RAGING BULL (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St.) – Thursday, 7pm
Trapped in a hospital bed, Martin Scorsese was at death’s door. After years of pushing his body through intense working hours, prescription drug abuse, and sacrilegious amounts of cocaine, the then-35-year-old suffered internal bleeding, boarding brain hemorrhaging. Years prior, Robert De Niro was handed Raging Bull, the memoir of one-time middleweight champion boxer Jake LaMotta. Notorious for letting opponents pulverize his body into a numb chunk of meat to the point of exhaustion, LaMotta drank heavily, beat his wives, and racked up a charge for allowing the prostitution of a 14-year-old girl at his club. By the release of his book, he was an out-of-shape entertainer with brain damage working rundown night clubs to feed himself, reciting Shakespeare and cracking Don Rickles-esque crowd work. Seeing Jake’s potential as a character, De Niro pitched the story to Marty. Occupied by his promising follow-up to TAXI DRIVER (1976), Scorsese was deep into production planning for a nostalgic musical revue, NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977), convinced he'd secure his spot as one of the great American directors. Navigating a turbulent marriage and an affair with his lead actor, Liza Minelli, there was no time for others’ passion projects; besides, he had no interest in a sports movie, with little exposure to boxing growing up. DeNiro would persist over the next few years. When the musical was a critical and financial disaster, Scorsese could not believe it, having given his all. Pushing closer to the edge, Marty had a revolving door of girlfriends and drug habits. In 1978, he was taken to the emergency room for coughing up blood and collapsed at 109 pounds. Watching the tubes keeping him alive coming in and out of his body, he saw how far he’d fallen from the son of two garment workers in Little Italy, a boy who had fallen under the influence of a charismatic priest and at one point considered becoming a seminarian. He recounts, “I prayed. But if I prayed, it was just to get through those 10 days and nights. I felt [if I was saved] it was for some reason. And even if it wasn’t for a reason, I had to make good use of it.’” He realized his self-destructive tendencies could bring anguish to anyone in his orbit, including those he loved, just like LaMotta. Finally, the director was ready. De Niro and Scorsese began putting a draft together from LaMotta’s text, then they brought Paul Schrader to work on a draft. After Schrader handed in his work in under six weeks, Scorsese and DeNiro put their finishing touches on Schrader’s structure, adding their favorite scenes from the memoir. The studio’s first reaction was, “Why would you want to tell a story about a human cockroach?” The preproduction research for both director and actor serves as a template for contemporary filmmakers and actors. De Niro’s preparation for the role inspired an entire generation of actors looking to commit their entire body, a standard that has become its own acting school. Scorsese and designers attended boxing matches, studied boxing photography books for composition, consulted LaMotta and his former trainers for accuracy, and home movies for the family’s interpersonal relationships. Having lost a fight, De Niro’s Jake mutters, “I’ve done a lot of bad things, Joey. Maybe it’s coming back to me.” After dancing with death, Scorsese worked on RAGING BULL as if it were the last film he’d ever make. Borrowing from the great masters, he weaves the most graceful brutality of the latter 20th century put to celluloid. Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960) shower sequence served as template for Jake’s annihilation on the robes, followed by a shot of Ray’s glove taken from Samuel Fuller’s THE STEEL HELMET (1951). One of the first boxing films of the sound era to place the camera inside the ring, director of photography Michael Chapman (TAXI DRIVER, THE LAST WALTZ and AMERICAN BOY) and Scorsese play with frame rates within takes, flying the camera through the action, and relishing in all they have at their disposal. To add an extra layer to the period piece, the production chose black and white film stock. The great Thelma Schoonmaker cut the film; this was her first feature as editor. Together with the director, she elevated the work to a vicious level of grit violence. Famously, when asked how such a nice lady could edit such violent films (for Scorsese), she replied, “Ah, but they aren’t violent until I’ve edited them.” In all its barbarity and beauty, the film gives a naked depiction of humanity. It delivers a vision as complex as its subject. To call RAGING BULL one of the greatest movies of the 1980s is a misnomer. The level of experimentation and personal filmmaking could only fit in the realm of 1970s New Hollywood. Along with THE KING OF COMEDY (1982), LaMotta’s story received a greenlight during a golden age of American cinema, only to release during the postmortem of United Artists and the cinematic wasteland of studios. Artists’ work is often cited as therapeutic. RAGING BULL offers a new light, proving that it can also be the first step towards repentance of sins. As the film is viewed for a 4K restoration, we should keep in mind how much the director has accomplished over the years. In the decades since the film’s release, Scorsese has continued to uplift new voices in cinema through the World Cinema Project and educate through the Film Foundation. The now-80-year-old director has made it clear his penance for his early years is permanent. (1980, 129 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
Emma Seligman's SHIVA BABY (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St.) – Tuesday, 7pm [SOLD OUT] and Wednesday, 9:30pm
In her feature directorial debut, 25-year-old filmmaker Emma Seligman sets a trap for her heroine in her single-space, comedy-horror SHIVA BABY. Following Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a college senior without a clear path forward, to the events at a funeral service for someone she doesn’t know, filled with family, friends, and the random people you only see every few years at events like these, Seligman’s film is composed of situations that make you, and Danielle, squirm. It pushes your mind into a specific time and place in your own childhood, high school and college years, and post-grad aimlessness. After missing the service itself, Danielle arrives at a home congested by people she’d rather not interact with: her ex-girlfriend, her sugar daddy with his wife and baby, and distant acquaintances that pester her about her future. The result becomes a showcase for Sennott and the rest of Seligman’s cast, including Molly Gordon, Polly Draper, Dianna Agron, and Fred Melamed—a mix of staples and newcomers in the darkly comedic space. Comparisons are sure to be made to the Coen brothers’ A SERIOUS MAN, in terms of a familial Jewish story where everything that can go wrong certainly will, and the more recent UNCUT GEMS, the Safdie brothers’ tense, hilarious thriller, but SHIVA BABY remains wholly original, leaning on its condensed runtime, confined setting, and willingness to let awkwardness turn into terror. Seligman’s first film announces her and Sennott as a duo to watch, capable of creating a singular viewing experience, one that both reminds you of terrible times and causes you to laugh hysterically at surreal line readings. SHIVA BABY taps into tension with a clever touch, turning what sounds like a well-worn general idea into something overtly specific. It’ll raise your heart rate yet put on a smile on your face, one that’s forced and then warmly genuine. Seligman is a star. Sennott is a star. SHIVA BABY is a film full of stars in the making and those that deserve a little more spotlight. (2020, 77 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Frank]
Martha Coolidge's VALLEY GIRL (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St.) – Saturday, 3pm
Director Martha Coolidge has often been tapped for fare directed at teens and young adults, and VALLEY GIRL may be the reason. Recalling the 1982 Frank Zappa tune “Valley Girl” and aided by a sharp script by Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford, winning performances by a smart cast, and great location shooting in and around Los Angeles, Coolidge celebrates the timelessness of teen life and young love in a dead-on satire of Southern California culture in the 1980s. This update of Romeo and Juliet pits the bubblegum culture of the San Fernando Valley against the punk rock rebels of Hollywood High. Julie (Deborah Foreman), the leader of the popular girls of Valley High, is shopping at the mall with her best friends, Suzi (Michelle Meyrink), Stacey (Heidi Holicker), and Loryn (Elizabeth Daily), picking through plastic bracelets and mugging with kicky shoes and cotton jersey tops. Julie, who is dating superhot Tommy (Michael Bowen), complains that he takes her for granted, “like I’m an old chair. I definitely need something new.” Julie runs into Tommy going in the opposite direction on the mall escalator. A short argument ensues as Tommy reverses course on the moving staircase. When they both reach solid ground, Julie says, “I’m so totally not in love with you anymore,” and gives Tommy back his ID bracelet. The movement on opposite sides of the escalator is one of the careful set-ups Coolidge uses to suggest that Julie’s course is shifting away from the familiar. Julie’s rendezvous with destiny happens when punk rocker Randy (Nicholas Cage) and his friend Fred (Cameron Dye) crash a Valley party. The horror of the Valleyspeak teens for the “grody to the max” punks rules all but a curious Julie. In a scene stolen from Franco Zeffirelli’s ROMEO AND JULIET (1968), a person at the party steps out of Randy’s field of vision, revealing Julie in a romantic, Edwardian-style blouse standing alone in the middle of the room. VALLEY GIRL is perhaps best known as the film in which Nic Cage had his first starring role, but there is so much more to this humorous, sobering, and wise movie. There are a number of well-executed subplots. For example, boy-crazy Loryn is used and abused by Tommy, and we see that her promiscuity masks a deep insecurity. Elizabeth Daily is superb in this part of the naïve/wise teen who eventually understands why Julie rejected Tommy. Suzi finds herself competing for Skip (David Ensor), a boy she likes, with her widowed stepmother, Beth (Lee Purcell), who arranges a sexual rendezvous with the clueless lad. As Skip circles on his bike in front of Suzi’s house muttering “this is ridiculous” under his breath, his dilemma is perfectly communicated by the Sparks song “Eaten by the Monster of Love.” The entire soundtrack is full of ’80s gems from the likes of Modern English, Men at Work, the Psychedelic Furs, and the Plimsouls, and Josie Cotton offers a memorable onscreen performance during the climactic Valley High prom. If there is a lesson to be learned, it comes when Julie is pressured by her friends to dump Randy. Julie turns to her father (Frederic Forrest), a flowerchild from the ’60s, for advice. She wants to be with Randy, but she doesn’t want to have any problems. “Now there’s the rub,” her father says in perfect Shakespearean form. Subtly coaxing her away from the group-think of the Valley, he says, “Let me know when YOU decide.” Fer sure. Totally. (1983, 99 min, Newly Restored DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Christopher Nolan's OPPENHEIMER (US)
Music Box Theatre, AMC River East 21, ShowPlace ICON Theatre and the Logan Theatre, et al. – See Venue website for showtimes
Christopher Nolan’s mid-career masterpiece OPPENHEIMER embodies not just a welcome return to form but new possibilities for the filmmaker. After an unceremonious divorce from Warner Bros., Nolan's first picture with Universal Studios leapfrogs through various settings in 20th-century history as he traces the life and legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of Los Alamos Laboratory and chief scientist of the Manhattan Project. Frequent Nolan collaborators Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh, and Gary Oldman (in a surprise appearance) return with an entourage of A-list talent too long to list (but standouts include Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, and Robert Downey, Jr.). Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, fresh off Jordan Peele’s NOPE (2022), returns for his fourth Nolan collaboration and finds himself at home among grand vistas of the American Southwest, the idyllic campuses of Princeton and Berkeley, and claustrophobic Washington Senate hearings. Ludwig Göransson recorded the film’s score in a mere and frankly unbelievable five days. If there’s one reason to see OPPENHEIMER in 70mm, the score is reason enough. Nolan, for his part, turns in a career-best film that leans heavily on the style that has made him such a prominent contemporary filmmaker. To say he’s has always been obsessed with time and nonlinear narrative would be to understate the matter; even in OPPENHEIMER, based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s exhaustive biography, Nolan manages to shed the trappings of linear narrative in favor of an achronological structure that maintains tension throughout the film’s three-hour runtime. And tense it is. We all know what happens when the Trinity test goes off, but it’s this scene that’s perhaps the film’s most nerve-racking. Nolan follows Oppenheimer from young adulthood to his twilight years, highlighting some of the more well-known events of his life as well as events that have gone under the radar in pop culture. You know the “destroyer of worlds” line had to be in the film, but you’ll be hard-pressed to guess where it makes its first appearance, and you might even have a chuckle. As miasmic as the film is, it’s lit up with moments of levity, sometimes unexpected, which often come as a welcome respite—the film rarely leaves the chance to breathe or catch up until the credits roll. Nolan brings justice to the story of “the most important man who ever lived,” in his own words. The only question now is, where does he go from here? (2023, 180 min, 70mm and DCP Digital [at the Logan Theatre]) [George Iskander]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
âš« 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, called 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 minutes, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here.
âš« Chicago Filmmakers
Chicago Seen Volume 16, a shorts program featuring films from Chicago-based filmmakers and/or films about Chicago, screens Saturday at 7pm, followed by a post-screening conversation moderated by Grace K. Schuler. Featuring work by Aidan Karstadt, Andrew Paul Davis, M. Woods, George Ellzey Jr., Jejoon Park, Jesse Rothenberg and Zo Zosak, Josh Weissbach, Juli Del Prete and Nick Schoenbrodt. More info.
âš« Cinema/Chicago
Wang Chun-hong’s 2021 Taiwanese film FAR AWAY EYES (79 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Free admission. Find more info and register here.
âš« Comfort Film at Comfort Station
Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe De Liguoro’s 1911 film L’INFERNO (73 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 8pm, as part of the Silent Films on the Lawn series with a live musical score by Fetishist. Free admission. More info here.
âš« Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (160 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, and Saturday, 4pm, as part of the Some Dreamers of the Silver Screen: L.A.'67-'76 series. More info here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp’s 2022 documentary BOB WINE: THE PEOPLE’S PRESIDENT (121 min, DCP Digital) begins and D. Smith’s 2023 documentary KOKOMO CITY (73 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Lo Wei’s 1971 film THE BIG BOSS (100 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 8pm, and Sunday, 4pm, as part of the Hong Kong Summer series. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for films and showtimes.
Anthony Spinelli’s 1978 film SEXWORLD (90 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 9:30pm. Programmed and presented by the Front Row and Olivia Hunter Willke.
Park Chan-wook’s 2003 South Korean film OLDBOY (119 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) screens Wednesday at 10pm for its 20th anniversary. Followed by a post-screening, pre-recorded 12-minute conversation between director Park Chan-Wook and Nicolas Winding Refn. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
The Sideshow Gelato shop presents Sideshow Sinema!, during which they will screen films connected to the shop theme, every Thursday. More info here.
âš« Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
âš« Media Burn Archive
Join Media Burn for a virtual screening and discussion of Judy Hoffman’s HSA STRIKE ’75 (1976), IMBED THIS (2003) and A FAMILIAR WILDERNESS: NORTHWEST COAST SALMON FISHING (2002) on Thursday, 7pm, as part of their ongoing Virtual Talks with Video Activists series. Followed by a discussion with Hoffman. Free with registration. More info here.
🎞️ ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Shadi Abdel Salam’s THE ELOQUENT PEASANT and AL MOMIA (Egypt)
The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room – Available on-demand with registration here for 72 hours beginning at 7pm local time on Saturday; join for a live screening with commentary on Monday at 6pm CT
Screening virtually as part of Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room, Shadi Abdel Salam’s THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970, 21 min) and AL MOMIA (1969, 103 min), the latter also known as THE NIGHT OF COUNTING THE YEARS, are based on an ancient tale and a true story, respectively, though both are generally oriented round Ancient Egyptian culture. These are Salam’s only fiction films, and AL MOMIA, considered one of the greatest from Egypt, is his sole feature. The former, taken from an Ancient Egyptian story of the same name from around 1850 BCE (making it one of the longest such tales to have survived in its completeness), centers on a poor peasant seeking justice after a wealthier vassal steals both his donkeys and the goods he was hoping to trade for the sustenance of his family. The peasant goes to the high steward, imploring him to right this wrong; the steward is impressed with the eloquence of his plea and takes word of this discovery to the pharaoh, who requests that he document the peasant’s instinctive homilies. As such, the peasant’s demand for justice isn’t immediately satisfied, though he’s ultimately rewarded for his declamations. Salam’s filmmaking makes the story appear and feel timely, with many sequences set in the sprawling desert, stripping from it a sense of limited specificity. Careful symmetry and centeredness of many shots within the frame further dramatize the story’s details, making it seem like the stuff of what it is—ancient lore, in all its exacting glory. AL MOMIA, on the other hand, is about the stuff of real-life legend. In 1881 Egyptologists discovered the Royal Cache, a tomb containing over 50 Egyptian royal family members, including eleven pharaohs spanning the 17th through the 20th dynasties. It was also revealed that an Egyptian clan had been stealing from the cache and selling items of value on the black market. After the death of the clan’s leader, in this filmic adaptation, his two sons are brought in on the secret; one of the brothers outright rejects the conspiracy and is soon killed for his defection. The other brother begins to wander, seemingly in a daze from what has happened. He encounters the merchants with whom his family had been dealing, as well as the archaeologists monitoring the area after learning of an artifact from a not-as-yet-discovered tomb, the same that his clan has been raiding. Like his brother he begins questioning the clan’s operation, which he weighs against the guilt of abandoning his heritage, nefarious though it may be. The film was produced by Roberto Rosellini, for whom Salam designed the decor and costumes on his 1970 documentary MANKIND’S FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL and who inspired him to direct the film. Salam not only wrote the script for AL MOMIA but also designed the sets and costumes here as well. Though this film is based on fact, it nevertheless has the feel of a fable, making the two films an interesting combination of works, with distinct similarities and intriguing differences. What does the past mean to the present, they seem to ask. Much like the peasant implores for justice, the dead do as well, though it’s altogether more complicated in real life. [Kat Sachs]
CINE-LIST: August 11 - August 17, 2023
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Ray Ebarb, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, George Iskander, Lian Neff