The 13th Annual European Union Film Festival opens Friday, March 5 and runs through Thursday, April 1 at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State St.).

Below are reviews of selected films playing during week one (Friday, March 5 through Thursday, March 11).

Ian FitzGibbon’s A FILM WITH ME IN IT (Ireland)
Saturday, 9:30pm and Monday, 6pm
A FILM WITH ME IN IT begins as an understated character comedy but slowly reveals itself to be a sinister and unpredictable piece of work. As funhouse narratives go, it’s one of the most satisfying since Takashi Miike’s AUDITION or Spike Jonze’s ADAPTATION, and fans of either film should rush to this without reading any plot summaries beforehand. (A nice thing about seeing movies at festivals is being able to discover them unprejudiced—a condition A FILM rewards in spades.) Writer Mark Doherty stars as a version of himself, an out-of-work actor in the middle of an unlucky streak; popular comic Dylan Moran plays his best friend, an alcoholic writer who’s equally misfortunate. Both men are veterans of BBC comedy—Doherty worked on Armando Ianucci’s “Time Trumpet,” Moran’s starred in the series “Black Books” and a number of stand-up specials—and their performances have a well-read sensibility reminiscent of the Ealing Studio comedies or Bruce Robinson’s WITHNAIL AND I. Director Ian FitzGibbon helms the film unobtrusively (also in the BBC tradition), which grants a steady momentum through the plot twists where a more stylized approach may have bogged them down. Working in HD allows FitzGibbon to better let the material speak for itself, though the medium creates some fine lighting effects during the night scenes. (Think Vermeer painting a Halloween tableau.) It’s worth mentioning, because A FILM WITH ME IN IT is the kind of entertainment that succeeds largely on seamless craftsmanship. And succeed it does. (2008, 87 min, 35mm) – Ben Sachs

Gianni Di Gregorio’s MID-AUGUST LUNCH (Italy)
Saturday, 5:45pm
MID-AUGUST LUNCH is only screening once during the EUFF and, really, it wouldn’t expect anything more. This unassuming, slight comedy concerns a handful of lonely Romans who are too old or too broke to go anywhere nice for their August vacation. Since everyone else has gone to the coast to escape the heat, the streets of Rome are desolate, so when a lone extra walks onto the scene your eye catches him immediately: what is he doing here? Unemployed Gianni (Gianni Di Gregorio) and his elderly mother, under threat of eviction, play host to the elderly mother and aunt of their landlord and the elderly mother of Gianni’s doctor. A domestic circus ensues. There are dietary restrictions and pills to be taken, and there is only one TV, one fan: if this were a lesser movie, Gianni would be a curmudgeon whose heart is warmed by the antics of his houseguests. But no such crass transformation takes place. Gianni is warm and considerate throughout, and if his guests seem a little giddy it’s only because they don’t usually drink wine or spend so much time with other people. The camera lingers with Gianni and his mother’s quiet conversations, over the uncorking of a bottle, on smoke winding its way out of cigarettes: it behaves like another happenstance guest at the title meal, noticing what we have time for when no one else is watching or waiting. (2008, 75 min, 35mm) – Josephine Ferorelli

Adrian Sitaru’s HOOKED (Romania)
Saturday, 7:30pm and Thursday, 8:15pm
It was perhaps inevitable that the “objective” long-take style of Puiu, Mungiu, and Porumboiu would provoke an antithetical reaction in the next generation of Romanian filmmakers, and HOOKED is an example of such an approach. The actors are as invested in the material as we’ve come to expect from recent Romanian cinema, but director and co-writer Adrian Sitaru is not content to follow them like a documentarian. Nearly every shot of his film is from some character’s perspective, and the restless editing ensures that no one perspective has the last word. The story, as others have pointed out, is a variation on Polanski’s KNIFE IN THE WATER, in which an argumentative couple on holiday is tested by the arrival of a mysterious stranger. What’s different is that the couple is adulterous, the stranger is a prostitute, and the suspense never reaches life-and-death extremes. Sitaru is more fascinated by the shifting allegiances in everyday conversation, maneuvers we generally prefer not to acknowledge. (The film’s title translates literally as “Sport Fishing”—i.e., catching fish just to throw them back—which comes closer to describing the interactions.) The central conceit of hand-held shots of realistic bickering at first suggests POV internet porn or a Duplass Brothers movie; but, thankfully, Sitaru is more insidious than either. Ultimately, the shifting perspectives of HOOKED (which constantly reveal intimate moments to be viewable from another angle) return to the Romanian New Wave’s great theme: living with the legacy of a police state. If Sitaru’s observations aren’t as fresh as his predecessors, his cast keeps things engaging throughout, particularly Maria Dinulescu (the enterprising high schooler in CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’) as the prostitute. (2007, 80 min, 35mm) – Ben Sachs

Andis Miziss’ THE HUNT (Latvia)
Saturday, 5:45pm and Wednesday, 8:15pm
Essentially an accomplished student film, in which a smartly-placed camera ponders subjects like coincidence, repetitive behavior, and freak occurrences so as to avoid more finicky ones, like psychology and volition. That said, Andis Miziss’ first feature contains a number of exceptional moments that promise more fully realized work down the road. A “home” for unwed pregnant women that operates on a moving train; a group of children imitating their hunter father by mounting stuffed-animal heads on the attic walls; a wiry, Albini-esque presence manning an empty bar while the mirror ball still runs: These sights evoke the recent surrealism of Gyorgy Palfi (HUKKLE, TAXIDERMIA) or Zoltan Kamondi (DOLINA) in tone if not in logic. Like these Hungarian contemporaries, Miziss seems capable of making a Brothers Grimm atmosphere out of any location; unfortunately, he devotes much of THE HUNT to prosaic stuff like a philandering architect and a cop with a guilty conscience. It’s still engaging on the whole, with some lovely night photography and dolly shots that allow your imagination to expand on the mysteries of Miziss’ woodsy locations when his screenwriters do not. (2009, 71 min, HDCAM video) – Ben Sachs

Zdenek Tyc’s EL PASO (Czech Republic)
Monday, 8pm and Wednesday, 6pm
“El Paso” is how you announce a highway robbery in Romani, and EL PASO is the chronicle of a Roma family, Vera Horvathova and her children, getting robbed by the Czech government, one civil service at a time. It’s also a thorough shake-down of gadjos who purport to want to help the Horvaths. Social workers, journalists, and pro-bono lawyers are all revealed to have ambivalent, compromised motives. Vera on the other hand is a pillar of strength, and her children are sweet and similar: the integrity of the storytelling suffers for this intermix of laparoscopy and soft-focus, although the blow is softened by natural performances all around. The writing is at its smartest when it strays from a social justice agenda to follow its characters into the local bar, or when it lets a couple bond over how guilty they feel for quitting Vera’s case, but more often it vacillates between over- and under-explication, setting off clichéd narrative chain reactions and then blinking for the duration of difficult resolutions. The opening shots of EL PASO are vivid and breathless, and they promise a pace and tone the movie doesn’t sustain. Recurring use of footage from the security cameras in the Horvaths’ housing project succeeds in conjuring the ghost of totalitarianism, but otherwise cinematographers Jiri Berka and Patrik Hoznauer tend to play it straight and narrow. For all the qualifiers, though, this is a movie with good intentions and good moments held together by honest acting. (2009, 100 min, 35mm) - Josephine Ferorelli

In our year-end coverage of 2009, we failed to mention one film that provoked some of the lengthiest conversation among our writers—THE BOX, Richard Kelly’s first studio feature. While several of us at Cine-File championed Kelly’s last film, SOUTHLAND TALES (2007-8), his latest did not elicit so much as a blurb here during its brief Chicago run. It did, however, provoke an extended email exchange between myself and fellow contributor Mike King, which touched on everything from Kelly’s contentious filmography to our own place in U.S. pop culture. Below is an edited version of our exchange. – Ben Sachs

*****

Ben,
Just walked out of Mr. Kelly’s latest and I have to know what you think…. Are you still on board with this guy?

For my money, I’d say THE BOX elaborates on all of Kelly’s worst impulses while exhibiting little of the heady, if misguided, ambition that made SOUTHLAND TALES at least an interesting failure. The new one is only fascinating in that he seems to be shooting for popular cinema yet misses the mark so widely, and that Warner Brothers actually gave it a theatrical release instead of sending it straight to DVD. There is, however, idle entertainment to be found in some ominous shots of a Steenbeck and the ebbs of Cameron Diaz’s fake southern accent…

Let me know what you think,
– Mike

Mike,
I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you by saying I enjoyed THE BOX a whole lot. I won’t defend it as a warped reflection of American culture a la SOUTHLAND TALES—though the third-act revelation that its American characters have been doomed by their lack of altruism had a certain resonance after a week of masochistically following the Copenhagen talks and what seems like their inevitable railroading by corporate interests. I wouldn’t call the movie profound, either—but then, I’ve always found Kelly’s metaphysics risible and his sense of sympathy as adolescent as it is sincere. (Still, I’ve got to admire Kelly’s audacity of interpreting No Exit as a predecessor to The Twilight Zone, a conflation of high and low culture as brazenly weird as anything in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.) I can only be honest with my immediate response to the film: I was entertained.

I don’t want to use that term pejoratively; the movie entertained me more than most others this year. I should note that I saw THE BOX with a couple of my bandmates, comic book fanatics who have taught me to appreciate the work of contemporary comics writers. I doubt I’d appreciate Kelly’s movies as much as I do if it weren’t for their influence: I think no other filmmaker is more aligned with the tone, imagination, and overall moral grounding of recent comics than he is; and I think the disconnect many of Kelly’s detractors feel from his work has something to do with an unfamiliarity with writers like Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, and Brian K. Vaughn.

There’s a key difference between these writers—who continue to write for mainstream superhero series even after writing more experimental fare—and someone like Alan Moore, a self-conscious postmodernist who uses comic conventions, in part, to critique them. There is no overt sense of critique in Morrison, Ellis, and Vaughn, who began writing in the wake of Moore’s success. Their work seems to exist in a middle territory interested neither in perpetuating old myths nor tearing them down. They seem to genuinely love comics and want to leave their fantasies intact. Their process of revision is in acknowledging the ways comics interact with the individual imaginations of those who read them: The cultural fantasies are expanded by commingling with more personal fantasies or, in many cases, full-blown leaps into the surreal. (A high-point for this sort of thing: Morrison’s indescribable, Burroughs-esque The F.I.L.T.H.) In letting so much personal observation into comics, these writers often graze the reality of contemporary politics, yet it would be a mistake to think of their work as allegory. The ventures into real life serve mainly to expand the territory of the fantasy.

I think this is where the problems begin in serious discussions of Kelly. No matter how personal they get, they are not about real life. As in the comics authors I keep mentioning, the authorial stamp is in the imagination with which the tales are spun out. I admit that it was tough for me to appreciate this kind of authorship. It seemed to deny morality, verisimilitude, or anything we associate with grown-up art. But I came to make my peace with modern comics anyway. Presuming they aren’t boring or far-right in their implications (and I can’t get into Frank Miller for both of these reasons), I’ve learned to loosen up and appreciate the details.

And I’m consistently satisfied with Kelly’s details, no less in THE BOX than either of his other movies: The canny imitation of early-Spielberg cinematography in the name of something far weirder than anything Spielberg’s ever imagined; the fetishization of 70s NASA technology; the dashes of odd humor (as in the scene where James Marsden’s put on the hot seat at the wedding rehearsal and then fumbles his way out of it); the old B-movie pleasure of seeing normal-looking actors play out the dignity of small men and women; the Bunuelian detail of a middle-class Virginia audience attending a production of No Exit at the local opera house (!); the smooth tracking shots (always the ace up Kelly’s sleeve) that can turn any scene into a waking dream. Then there’s the shot of Cameron Diaz espied through a window, “Bell Bottom Blues” overwhelming the soundtrack, dancing comfortably for the first time since receiving a prosthetic foot—such a prosaic image of a man’s happiness, but all the more touching for it.

I’m impressed that Kelly threw so many narrative curveballs into a major studio feature—if for no other reason than to keep things interesting. But flitting around the absurdities is a rather personal response to a universal question: What is the foundation of a moral life? It’s an abstract question, brought into focus by the abstract nature of Kelly’s prodigious imagination.

Stay in touch,
– Ben

Ben,
I’m happy to hear you got so much out of THE BOX, though I still can’t say I’m on board. Comics—new or old, mainstream or not—are one of my many blind spots, so while I can’t appreciate Kelly (or anyone else) through that prism, I suspect you may be on to something there. I’m hardly interested in convincing you not to like something you clearly dug, so I’ll stick to a few observations:

An appreciative catalogue of minor details is a common feature of the positive notices of THE BOX that I’ve encountered. That’s all well and good, but what surprises me is they all seem to ignore great swaths of the movie: the central gamble, the sub-BODY SNATCHERS hoo-ha that follows in its wake, and the sister’s wedding—all of which are afforded far more screen time. You take the middle-class couple attending No Exit as a Bunuelian touch. Maybe, but would you say the same for the husband (who we’re told can barely make ends meet) tooling around in a Corvette or the wife acting like a total stranger at her sister’s wedding? Sure, I’m nitpicking, but I wonder if you aren’t cherry-picking. For me, the haphazard accumulation of inconsistencies looks less like Bunuel than something not-so-hot. But as with SOUTHLAND TALES, what surprises me most about THE BOX might be the nature of my own negative reaction. Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead complaining about contradictions or irrelevant digressions—hell, those are attributes I cherish in the films of Guy Maddin—but for some reason, I couldn’t get into this at all.

Much of this has to do with all the footnotes that emerge once Cameron Diaz pushes the button. A million bucks and a lifetime of guilt (the agreed-upon consequence) suddenly turns into zombies, nosebleeds, and a deaf/blind son. I suppose one could argue it’s a critique of how powerful entities (banks, countries, whatever) fuck people around, rewriting the rules long after the dotted line’s been signed; perhaps it’s a prime example of the “authorial stamp” in the comics you described. But couldn’t it also be sloppy writing?

Funny you should mention Kelly in the context of comic-style escapist entertainment (which I don’t think he necessarily considers his films). The closest I’ve gotten to that kind of stuff is the TV show Lost, which I assume you wouldn’t place on par with the authors you mentioned (nor would I try to convince you it is). Nevertheless, it has been good preparation for Kelly’s recent work in that it’s been an incredibly frustrating narrative experience: Here is another sci-fi mystery that takes its ability to address Big Questions far too seriously, unveils man after man behind the curtain, and delves into character details that seem Significant but never add up to much. With Lost, the disconnects are often rooted in external factors: A character will get killed because the actor playing her got a DUI, and suddenly all that time we’ve spent pondering her significance becomes irrelevant. Kelly’s last two have similar symptoms, but it’s his own Big Questions that get away from him rather than his characters. In fact, when an editor did get between him and his vision on DONNIE DARKO, I’d say it resulted in a far better film. I suspect the same editor could’ve carved something better and more enigmatic out of THE BOX.
– Mike

Dear Mike,
I don’t know how seriously Kelly takes his own ponderings. (This would be a good question to ask him, if we ever get the chance!) A lot in his movies suggests that he doesn’t—the silly musical numbers in his first two films, for instance—and I find his work more enjoyable when I follow that hunch.

I haven’t seen a minute of Lost; but then, I haven’t seen any of the ambitious series that are supposed to convert old-school cinephiles like us to television. I often get the sense I’m sitting out on a big part of The Culture; at the same time, the 30-odd hours I’d spend catching up with The Wire could also afford 10 Frederick Wiseman films (or nearly 100 Hal Roach shorts, for that matter). I guess I just like my high culture high and my low culture low. When it comes to popular literature (an increasingly tenuous concept in our dark age of Jodi Picoult), I’d sooner consult the latest Vertigo Comics slate than the New York Times bestseller list; and when it comes to TV, I’m more interested in Adult Swim than HBO. I think I’ve developed this persuasion through my tenure in subcultures born around art cinema and underground rock. And since I find these cultures so valuable and life-affirming, I’ve tried, off and on, to exchange with other subcultures similar to my own. I don’t think I’ll ever find common ground with the gaming community, but I’m fascinated by comic book collectors, hip-hop DJs, and social service advocates. I think we’ve got a lot in common.

Kelly seems interested in uniting different subcultures, too—namely, sci-fi nerds and the cine-poetry descendants of Max Ophuls. The results shouldn’t work—and for a lot of people, they plainly don’t—but I’m consistently disarmed by the attempt. Much more than, say, Christopher Nolan’s (who strikes me as wanting to please too many people at once) or Sam Raimi’s (a more winning director, but so in love with low culture as to occasionally come off as loutish).

I agree with your sentiments about Kelly’s storytelling. He’s like a child in that he gets so wrapped up in his own imagination that he loses sight of how to bring his ideas together. I often felt watching THE BOX that he wrote the entire thing in one or two sittings, then refused to amend it because that would tarnish the spirit that allowed him to write it at all. No, this isn’t a model of “good” writing, but I find the results far more entertaining than the typical Hollywood sci-fi or suspense that Kelly was expected to deliver. (Incidentally, SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE was written by Park Chanwook and his team over a whirlwind two or three days, and that may explain why it’s my favorite of Park’s films.) It’s not a question of quality so much as a difference in kind: Where the logical inconsistencies of a BOURNE movie (or SYRIANA, which strikes me as its fatuous, Big Question-asking equivalent) seem the result of wanting to seem mature while obliging the staples of the action genre, Kelly’s inconsistencies seem like the by-product of an id running on all cylinders. So, while the BODY SNATCHERS business seems to come out of nowhere and lead nowhere, it does allow for some remarkable set pieces: the De Palma-esque use of the Virginia State Library, Frank Langella’s late admission of his own vulnerability (a tricky scene that this great actor pulls off with touching integrity), and, best of all, the motel pool turned into an alien teleportal. Ignatius [Vishnevetsky, another Cine-File contributor] singled out this image as the essence of Kelly’s imagination—something so mundane becoming the locus of all sorts of weird premises.

I find all this encouraging. Even when talented postmodernists like De Palma, the Coen Brothers, and Guy Maddin (who I’m not all that crazy about, sorry) are at their best, I get a feeling that their work is always in response to other images—images whose influence on the culture is so pervasive that a new artist’s only obligation is to recombine them in interesting ways. Kelly, for better or for worse, is taking inspiration from other fantasies to spin off into his own.
– Ben

Ben,
What’s curious about Kelly is that even as his films have become bogged down with rabbit-hole exposition, they remain incomprehensible. The supernatural goings-on in THE BOX are no clearer to me than in DONNIE DARKO, despite the fact that Kelly devotes significantly more screen time to explaining them. I’m not sure if the confusion is intentional or not—as you say, THE BOX feels as if written in one night (though I’m not sure whether his id is running on all cylinders; that phrase is tailor-made for Guy Maddin)—but it is consistent with SOUTHLAND TALES, though in that film the ADD storytelling seems more germane. At any rate, I’ve got no problem with publishing first drafts: My beef is with all the exposition. You brought up the BOURNE films in a different context, but what I like about them is their inversion of the action movie formula. There’s almost no exposition until the end, when it is most irrelevant. I didn’t go for THE BOX’s big set pieces like you did, because even they were intruded upon by characters’ attempt to provide context for them. It’s remarkable that Kelly can have so much exposition and not really explain anything, but I still find it a drag to endure.

For me, the crucial break in Kelly’s work occurred when he made the supernatural elements of his films diegetic, which coincided with a shift from eerily anticipating national anxieties to trying to address them directly. The ambiguity of DONNIE DARKO seems to have granted him more confidence to let the odd moments (like those you catalogued in THE BOX) speak for themselves and not require an explanation. But if nothing else, you and other critics have convinced me that Kelly is a filmmaker who routinely inspires smart writing from smart people, which is more than I can say about most directors.

If you’re thinking of taking the plunge into TV, I’d hardly recommend Lost. I mainly got into it because I felt a similar urge to check in with The Culture, and a curiosity about how non-comic TV works, not having ever watched any myself. To that end, it’s served its purpose admirably—something I can shoot the shit about with near strangers, like the local sports team. It’s also a lot of fun in a FLASH GORDON kind of way. I’m with you in that I’m more interested in Adult Swim than HBO. In fact, my favorite moment in any Kelly film—the SUV porn-commercial that occurs early in SOUTHLAND TALES—seems straight out of Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job!. Still, I think you’d be better off with the 100 Hal Roach shorts, since you seem like the type to actually do it.
– Mike

CINE-FILE’S BEST OF 2009 LISTS

Our contributors (active, dormant, and former) were invited to submit any kind of list or lists they chose. Here’s what we got.

*****

JULIAN ANTOS

Newer:

24 CITY (Jia Zhang-ke, 2008) Gene Siskel Film Center
IMPORT/EXPORT (Ulrich Seidl, 2007) Facets
JULIA (Erick Zonca, 2008)
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Tomas Alfredson, 2008) Gene Siskel Film Center
YOU, THE LIVING (Roy Andersson, 2007) Facets

Older:

BIGGER THAN LIFE (Nicholas Ray, 1956) Gene Siskel Film Center/Music Box
THE BOWERY (Raoul Walsh, 1933) Bank of America Cinema
BRIGHTON ROCK (John Boulting, 1947) Gene Siskel Film Center
THE CRAZIES (George A. Romero, 1973) Doc Films
CROSSROADS (Bruce Conner, 1976) Gene Siskel Film Center
DAY OF WRATH (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943) Gene Siskel Film Center/Doc Films
PRIVILEGE (Peter Watkins, 1967) Doc Films
QUEEN OF SHEBA MEETS THE ATOM MAN (Ron Rice, 1982) Doc Films
LA RONDE (Max Ophuls, 1950) Gene Siskel Film Center
THE TALL T (Budd Boetticher, 1957) Bank of America Cinema

**********

BETH CAPPER

Best of 2009 (in theaters)

1. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNDERNEATH (Jane Arden, 1972) BFI, London
2. GAEA GIRLS (Kim Longinotto, 2000) Nightingale
3. D’EST (Chantal Akerman, 1993) University of Chicago Film Studies Center
4. JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (Chantal Akerman, 1975) Gene Siskel Film Center
5. SOFT FICTION (Chick Strand, 1979) Conversations at the Edge series at Gene Siskel Film Center
6. SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW (Jesse Mclean, 2009) various venues
7. THE BEACHES OF AGNES (Agnes Varda, 2009) Music Box Theatre
8. TREELESS MOUNTAIN (So Yong Kim, 2008) Gene Siskel Film Center
9. CROSSROADS (Bruce Conner, 1976) Conversations at the Edge series at Gene Siskel Film Center
10. BERNADETTE (Duncan Campbell, 2008) Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival

**********

ROB CHRISTOPHER

The actual year a movie was “made” is in many ways becoming less and less relevant. Theatrical distribution can be glacial. Just look at Francois Ozon’s ANGEL: It was completed in 2007 but won’t get a proper US release until 2010. On the other hand, online streaming can mean that films unseen for decades are suddenly watchable with the click of a mouse. Any movie you see for the first time is a new movie. So I’m steadfastly refusing to limit my “best of” list to movies that happened to be made in 2009. Here are the movies I watched for the first time this year that I loved the most:

BIGGER THAN LIFE (Nicholas Ray, 1956)
BILLY BUDD (Peter Ustinov, 1962)
CHE (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)
THE CLASS (Laurent Cantet, 2008)
DAYTIME DRINKING (Young-Seok Noh, 2008)
FEAR ME NOT (Kristian Levring, 2008)
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)
THE HEADLESS WOMAN (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF (Thom Andersen, 2003)
MOON (Duncan Jones, 2009)
MOTHER (Joon-ho Bong, 2009)
THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA (Sophie Fiennes, 2006)
POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009)
THE ROAD (John Hillcoat, 2009)

**********

KALVIN HENELY (Our Los Angeles correspondent)

Top 10 Movies Released in 2009:

THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)
SPREAD (David MacKenzie, 2009)
TWO LOVERS (James Gray, 2009)
STAR TREK (J. J. Abrams, 2009)
MOTHER (Bong Joon Ho, 2009)
PONYO (Hayao Miyazaki, 2009)
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)
PUBLIC ENEMIES (Michael Mann, 2009)
GOODBYE SOLO (Ramin Bahrani, 2009)

Favorite movies that weren’t yet released this year:

NE CHANGE RIEN (Pedro Costa, 2009)
TRASH HUMPERS (Harmonie Korine, 2009)
UN LAC (Phillipe Grandrieux, 2009)

Favorite theatrical rereleases:

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
THE SALVATION HUNTERS (Josef von Sternberg, 1925)
THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN (Yvonne Rainer, 1985)

**********

MIKE KING (Our Madison, Wisconsin correspondent)

Top 5 recent features that, for whatever reason, have not yet made it to Chicago:

1. OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST (Miguel Gomes, 2008)
2. EXTRAORDINARY STORIES (Mariano Llinás, 2008)
3. NE CHANGE RIEN (Pedro Costa, 2009)
4. SWEETGRASS (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2009)
5. EVERYONE ELSE (Maren Ade, 2009)

**********

JOSH MABE

My top ten favorite cinematic hosts and their offerings that were new-to-my-eyes in Chicago, 2009 (in no good order and with a few silly notes):

1. Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival:
NOTHING IS OVER NOTHING (Jonathan Schwartz, 2008) - the best new film-on-film I saw this year
WHEN WORLDS COLLUDE (Fred Worden, 2008) - almost as brilliantly skull-cracking as his other video masterpiece EVERYDAY BAD DREAM
ALTERNITY (Van McElwee, 2008)
THE PARABLE OF THE TULIP PAINTER AND THE FLY (Charlotte Pryce, 2008)

2 and 3. The Nightingale & White Light Cinema:
UTAH (Kyle Canterbury, 2009) - such a gorgeous video; a masterpiece and a look in a new direction for a great young artist
WHITE HEART (Daniel Barnett, 1975) - belligerent and beautiful

4. Doc Films:
SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD, SECTION 4 (Stan Brakhage, 1970) - the best old film-on-film I saw this year; all the sections were brilliant, of course, but Section 4 really did something amazing

5. Chicago Underground Film Festival:
TRYPPS #6 (MALOBI) (Ben Russell, 2009)
HONORABLE MENTION & THE CITIZENS (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2009)

6. Conversations at the Edge:
SUMMER SOLSTICE (Hollis Frampton, 1974)

7. Chicago Filmmakers:
DIALOGUES (Owen Land, 2009) - confusing and a little sad; but probably also great… maybe
LIGHT SPEED (Karen Johannesen, 2007)

8 and 9. University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center & The Experimental
Film Club:
NO SIR, ORISON! (Owen Land, 1975)

10. Bank of America Cinema:
VERBOTEN! (Sam Fuller, 1958)

**********

DOUG McLAREN

2009 was a busy, frightful year for me. Between starting a new job, becoming addicted to bubblegum and garbage (cinematically speaking, at least), and an uncanny ability to forget about screenings until their showtimes, I managed to see few films this year. A tragedy, when one considers the great number of excellent films to have been screened in Chicago this past year. As such, I’m splitting my list in two - what I wish I saw and what I did see.

THE YEAR THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN:

SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)
SUMMER HOURS (Olivier Assayas, 2008)
CHE (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)
D’EST (Chantal Akerman, 1993)
JULIA (Erick Zonca, 2008)
PRIVILEGE (Peter Watkins, 1967)
LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY (Ben Russell, 2009)
LORNA’S SILENCE (Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2008)
MOON (Duncan Jones, 2009)
DIALOGUES (Owen Land, 2009)
JE T’AIME, JE T’AIME (Alain Resnais, 1968)
THE KEEP (Michael Mann, 1983)
THE HUMAN CONDITION (Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-61)
WENDY & LUCY (Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
BIGGER THAN LIFE (Nicholas Ray, 1956)

THE YEAR THAT WAS:

PIE PELLICANE JESU DOMINAE* (Bruce McClure, 2009)
ANTICHRIST (Lars Von Trier, 2009)
THE HURT LOCKER (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)
I LOVE YOU, MAN (John Hamburg, 2009)
ADVENTURELAND (Greg Mottola, 2009)
UNDERWORLD USA (Samuel Fuller, 1961)
THE TIME MACHINE (Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, 2009)
PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (Albert Lewin, 1951)
BERNADETTE (Duncan Campbell, 2008)
LIGHT SPEED (Karen Johannesen, 2007)
CHROMATIC COCKTAIL (Kerry Laitala, 2009)

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LIAM NEFF

Top 5 Newish 2009

YOU, THE LIVING (Roy Andersson, 2007)
ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier, 2009)
LORNA’S SILENCE (Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2008)
LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY (Ben Russell, 2009)
LA DANSE (Frederick Wiseman, 2009)

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JOE RUBIN

TOP 10 NEW RELEASES:

A SERIOUS MAN (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009)
THE BEACHES OF AGNES (Agnes Varda, 2009)
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)
IMPORT/EXPORT (Ulrich Seidl, 2007)
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
LA DANCE (Frederick Wiseman, 2009)
THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)
PRECIOUS (Lee Daniels, 2009)
SPREAD (David Mackenzie, 2009)
TWO LOVERS (James Gray, 2008)

TOP 10 REP SCREENINGS (compiled based on rarity and quality, but more so rarity):

THE CRAZIES (George Romero, 1973) Doc Films
DAY OF WRATH (Carl Dryer, 1927) Doc Films
JOHNNY GUITAR (Nicholas Ray, 1954) Music Box
MARNIE (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964) Music Box
MESSIAH OF EVIL (Willard Huyck/Gloria Katz, 1973) Doc Films
PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (Frank Perry, 1972) Doc Films
PRIVILEGE (Peter Watkins, 1967) Doc Films
SING A SONG OF SEX (Nagisa Oshima, 1967) Gene Siskel Film Center
SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (Fritz Lang, 1947) Gene Siskel Film Center
TEOREMA (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968) Gene Siskel Film Center

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BEN SACHS

Best New Chicago Releases of 2009

Domestic:

1. SPREAD (David Mackenzie, 2009)
2. THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)
3. TWO LOVERS (James Gray, 2008)
4. LA DANSE (Frederick Wiseman, 2009)
5. CHE / THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE / THE INFORMANT! (tie) (Steven Soderbergh, 2008-2009)
6. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
7. LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY (Ben Russell, 2009)
8. CHELSEA ON THE ROCKS (Abel Ferrara, 2008)
9. CORALINE (Henry Selick, 2009)
10. THE MERRY GENTLEMAN (Michael Keaton, 2009)

Foreign:

1. SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)
2. SING A SONG OF SEX [a.k.a. A TREATISE ON JAPANESE BAWDY SONGS] (Nagisa Oshima, 1967)
3. SERBIS (Brillante Mendoza, 2008)
4. BURMA VJ (Anders Ostergaard, 2008)
5. THE HEADLESS WOMAN (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
6. SUMMER HOURS (Olivier Assayas, 2008) and LORNA’S SILENCE (Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2008) (tie)
7. SPARROW (Johnnie To, 2008)
8. IMPORT/EXPORT (Ulrich Seidl, 2007)
9. PONYO (Hayao Miyazaki, 2008)
10. YOU, THE LIVING (Roy Andersson, 2007)

As this first decade of the century closes, I’m shocked when I realize how rapidly digital technology became omnipresent in our lives. This goes well beyond reliance on computers, which evolved, in my lifetime, from luxury to commonplace item to virtual necessity—to an ever-present wall of text messages, mp3 players, public TV screens and up-to-the-minute headlines. Living in a modern city, few things feel as exotic now as an hour of uninterrupted thought: The noise was always there, but every day there are new diversions to contend with, many of them purchased under the impression they’d make life simpler. These aren’t novel observations, but I wonder if we’ve done anything to really counter the wave of distraction. Thanks to Facebook and web forums, the nonstop progress of the Information Age shapes even our most personal concept of ourselves.

In this climate, I find the movies to be a form of resistance as much as an art. The cinema is one of the few places left where you’re told to turn off your cell phone, making even the lousiest movie a satisfying experience if seen in a theater. But movies are also refuge from the pace of the digital age (with the exception of those that contribute to it, of course), allowing us to simply observe life without the obligation to assimilate it as information. It’s for this reason that most of the movies listed here are either slow-paced or old-fashioned.

I don’t want to come across as praising movies because they’re good for you. Cinema remains the most valuable of modern media because its first obligation is to astonish, and every film on these lists succeeded in that regard. (Analyses comparing movies to TV shows and, increasingly, web videos are invariably denigrating.) While most of my favorites employed longer takes, often it was so that their subjects could regain mystery and wonder. This was certainly true of the films by Reygadas, Russell, Tarantino, Andersson, and Wiseman (probably the greatest living practitioner of this approach), all of which rewarded the patient spectator with fully realized environments to explore. The Jarmusch and the Seidl likened the spectator’s curiosity to political awareness, but no film made the connection as heartbreakingly real as BURMA VJ. On one level an important document of life under dictatorship, Ostergaard’s film was also a vital argument for the responsibility of images in the 21st century—and not only images made out of necessity (the webcasts made in secret by Burmese reporters), but also those made in solemn reflection (Ostergaard’s finished product, beautiful, sincere, and addressed to the viewer’s humanity).

SPREAD and TWO LOVERS (and THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, to a lesser extent) managed to evoke the 50s melodrama in their own idiom, deepening modern experience with a sense of buried tradition. But these movies—directed by two of the greatest English-language filmmakers working today—operated with such vitality that it was easy to overlook their sense of history. For Mackenzie and Gray every emotion, no matter how shameful or immature, can seem valuable if presented with the vibrancy of how it felt on first articulation. (This is also true of the new films by Assayas and the Dardennes, among the greatest French-language filmmakers working today.) If I rank SPREAD higher than any other release of 2009 it’s because of Mackenzie’s particular alchemy as a filmmaker, his ability to detect the complexity of human behavior in the most genre-bound or seemingly pornographic material, his balance of psychological insight and the visually beautiful.

As always, Chicago was host to many valuable experimental and revival screenings (thanks in part to the labors of my colleagues at this site). Special mention should be paid to Doc Films’ Taiwanese New Wave series and Bank of America’s revival of the unavailable I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, but no series gave me more to reflect on than the touring Nagisa Oshima retrospective that came to the Film Center at the beginning of the year. Oshima remains controversial in his willingness to breach images of racism, sexism and brutality in the service of confronting national taboos: Indeed, SING A SONG OF SEX provoked the most heated post-film discussions of anything I saw this year. Our historical distance from the Vietnam War and our cultural distance from Japanese prejudice may have weakened the movie’s impact as allegory for U.S. audiences, but its stunning reach of the culture (from politics to advertising to architecture) was unrivaled by any other release of 2009.

Did the movies still offer a form of escape? Of course they did. PONYO and SPARROW were some of the most entertaining movies I’ve ever seen, and THE HEADLESS WOMAN and CHELSEA ON THE ROCKS were satisfyingly escapist in the sheer singularity of their auteurs. But even these films gave shape to contemporary experience (Tellingly, all four are to some extent about vanishing cultures), and at their best elevated it to a level of beauty untouched by progress. This was an exceptional year for moviegoing.

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IGNATIUS VISHNEVETSKY

Top 20:

Local screenings, theatrical releases, and national runs of new films, not counting screenings at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival.

1. TWO LOVERS (James Gray, 2008)
2. PUBLIC ENEMIES (Michael Mann, 2009)
3. SPREAD (David Mackenzie, 2009)
4. SPARROW (Johnnie To, 2008)
5. NIGHTWATCHING (Peter Greenaway, 2007)
6. ARMORED (Nimrod Antal, 2009)
7. GOODBYE SOLO (Ramin Bahrani, 2009)
8. THE INFORMANT! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)
9. 24 CITY (Jia Zhang-ke, 2008)
10. MUNYURANGABO (Lee Isaac Chung, 2007)

11. THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)
12. THE INTERNATIONAL (Tom Tykwer, 2009)
13. FIGHTING (Dito Montiel, 2009)
14. CHELSEA ON THE ROCKS (Abel Ferrara, 2008)
15. SUMMER HOURS (Olivier Assayas, 2008)
16. INVICTUS (Clint Eastwood, 2009)
17. TOKYO SONATA (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)
18. THE FRONTIER OF DAWN (Philippe Garrel, 2008)
19. THE MERRY GENTLEMAN (Michael Keaton, 2008)
20. DUPLICITY (Tony Gilroy, 2009)

[Editor’s note: below is a significantly longer review of Frederick Wiseman’s new film for the week of 11/20/09 from contributor Ben Sachs]

Frederick Wiseman’s LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET (Documentary)
Music Box – Check Reader Movies for showtimes

America’s greatest living filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman, is also the most misunderstood. Often perceived, even by admirers, as formless or “objective,” he is in fact a canny formalist, the U.S. filmmaker closest in orientation to Jacques Rivette. Like Rivette, Wiseman favors long, drawn-out scenes interspersed with short sequences of mundane activity, adjusting the pace of movies so they approach that of daily life. In doing so, he’s opened up the moviegoing experience to encompass all experience: Coming out of a Wiseman documentary, life itself seems a great, ongoing film. When I interviewed Wiseman in 2003, he said the artist who’d influenced him most was Samuel Beckett—a surprise for anyone who thinks he’s simply a chronicler of institutions. Wiseman’s films are well known for refusing to provide any context for their images; this often has the Beckett-like effect of implying an inherent unknowability of human behavior. Little has been written about Wiseman’s distancing effects, which require the viewer’s intelligence for their impact (As in Warhol’s films, casual behavior seems increasingly unnatural the longer we look at it); but this is an understandable mistake when so many movies employ a visual shorthand, encouraging viewers not to watch closely at all.

In spite of receiving a relatively wide release for a Wiseman film (LA DANSE plays for a full week at the Music Box, whereas his last, STATE LEGISLATURE, screened only once at Chicago Filmmakers), LA DANSE may not convert many newcomers to his greatness. Its subject matter suggests a dry, tony appreciation of high culture—along the lines of the Phil Grabsky movies that get NPR licking its chops—and the minimal ad campaign hasn’t done much to challenge this notion. Wiseman satisfies these expectations in the first ten minutes of LA DANSE, with some perfectly framed images of group rehearsals that dutifully evoke Claude Renoir. After that, however, it becomes as unsettled as anything else he’s made. No dance is shown developed from inception to performance; Wiseman cuts between multiple groups in rehearsal (and rarely in chronological order), emphasizing the overall character of the Opera Ballet’s work. Interspersed as well are scenes in the administrative offices that recall the capitalist bent of Altman’s THE COMPANY and some singular images that belong to Wiseman alone—a baguette-cutting machine in the ballet’s cafeteria, an old brass pot used by a costume-shop seamstress as a dying kiln.

By the middle of the film, the accumulation of detail threatens to amount to little more than a demystification of seemingly immaculate art. (One should note, however, the sympathetic attention paid to skilled laborers employed at the Opera Ballet—a subtly radical statement about art’s egalitarian nature that brings to mind another recent documentary, Ben Niles’ extraordinary NOTE BY NOTE.) But, as in a Rivette film, something shifts in the final hour, giving this rich movie another, unexpected, dimension. Wiseman inserts a candid remark from the company’s artistic director: “The retirement age here is 40, but that’s 25 years before the nation grants retirement pay.” The imagination considers for a moment the disappointment a dancer must feel upon leaving the ballet, resigned for the next three decades to subsist at a second-choice day job. Wiseman interrupts this thought to return to a dance in rehearsal, more bittersweet than any we’ve yet seen in the film because we’re fully aware of the transience of its beauty. Everything in LA DANSE has a cosmic tinge to it now; the choreography revels in its own movement because it knows it cannot be preserved. We are in Samuel Beckett territory.

The film continues in this vein up through the wordless climax, one of the most audacious sequences in Wiseman’s career. It would be unfair to hint at its content; let it be said that it conveys the great mystery of culture—how it materialized out of the functions of civilization, how it’s been preserved over centuries, even millennia—with a minimum of shots and not a trace of self-importance. As to be expected with this most workman-like of directors, there isn’t an air of reverence about the film, either—but that’s not to say it isn’t one of the most beautiful released this year. Wiseman deserves to be ranked with Ford, Ozu, and Godard as one of the effortless great frame-composers in cinema. Nearly every image of his work illustrates (in perfect harmony, with only the essential details) relationships between individual, environment, and action. In LA DANSE, Wiseman applies his skill to the abstract, the immemorial, without ever sacrificing his ability to see the world as if for the first time. (2009, 159 min, BlueRay projection) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

FACE is a €3.9 million home movie. Tsai Ming-Liang intended to call the film SALOME; maybe somewhere along the way he realized he couldn’t make the film he set out for, so what he edited together instead are sketches, scenes seemingly in rehearsal, odd ideas, musical numbers and bits of slapstick. You end up thinking of the final subtitle (of many) Godard gives his KING LEAR — “A STUDY.” It begins with fully formed ideas — the first image of the film is one of Tsai’s greatest inventions, and the last shot is a great bit of slow comedy — as concrete as the front and back covers of a sketchbook. In between, as in a sketchbook, are jotted notes, pencil and ink drawings, and, of course, blank pages. The only difference is that, when paging through a sketchbook, we skip the blanks, while Tsai holds each in front of us for the same duration as the most detailed drawings.

Police work, taken as a whole, is boredom. Every now and then you make an arrest, but mostly there’s a lot of planning, bureaucracy, paperwork, procrastination. So maybe what Corneliu Porumboiu intends with POLICE, ADJECTIVE is to put all other films that’d dare to call themselves “procedurals” to shame; this is “police work” in the same sense that Pialat’s VAN GOGH is “art.” You remove the insecurity that drives a filmmaker to want to be “exciting,” and what you’re left with is a bunch of dour policemen shooting the shit and standing on street corners for hours at a time.

But there is, however, a peculiar excitement to Porumboiu’s film. What has been cut out, besides the usual business of crime or arrests, is the division between the subjects and the audience. There is an odd sensation to the film, as if we’re looking at the same things the characters are looking at and are experiencing the world the same way. Nearly every scene is constructed around this principle: before Dragos Bucur’s Cristi launches into his now-infamous dissection of the lyrics to Mirabela Dauer’s “Nu Te Parasesc Iubire,” the song is heard all the way through twice; when he reports that nothing happened during his stake-out, it’s only after we spend a good fifteen minutes watching that nothing happen; the ridiculousness of his boss asking his secretary to fetch a dictionary in the climax becomes even more obvious when we have to wait for several minutes for her to come back so that the conversation can be resumed.

A theater manager awaits the end of the Q&A for EYE OF THE STORM on Sunday night.

Bob Downey, the Chicago International Film Festival’s official photographer, snaps into action.  Downey takes about 500 pictures a day during the festival.

The best film I’ve seen at the festival so far is THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, and you can read my review at The Auteurs.

Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira is certainly not slowing down with age. His new film, made at 100 years old, is flat-out great. ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLOND HAIR GIRL (2009, 63 min) might call to mind the novels of Henry James or, more appropriately, the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. It is set present-day, but has a decidedly late 19th/early 20th century sensibility. It’s not surprising, then, to find that it’s based on a short story by Oliveira’s fellow countryman Eça de Queirós—Portugal’s famed writer who was indeed a 19th century author.

Oliveira has kept his film in tune with its short story origins—it clocks in at just over an hour and is a model of efficiency and minimalism both in its storytelling and its style. The narrative is about an accountant, Macário, working for his uncle who falls under the spell of a beautiful young woman, Luísa, living across from his office. There is an introduction; a courtship; proposal; falling out with his uncle; financial ruin; financial success; financial ruin again; and, finally, signs of a happy outcome.

Oliveira collapses time—creating ellipses in the story—through abrupt edits and transitional devices (such as a shot of the nighttime city followed by the same shot of the city at dawn, but more than a day has transpired). The brevity of the film and Oliveira’s briskness give the film an energy, breathlessness, and, seemingly, inevitability. But he has tricks in store. As with many of his films, Oliveira revels in his storytelling and in the construction of narrative (the framing device here is our protagonist reciting his tale to a stranger on a train). Oliveira continues to demonstrate that he is one of our most literary of filmmakers.

But don’t confuse “literary” with page-bound or non-visual—he’s far from that. ECCENTRICITIES is also a stunningly beautiful film even as Oliveira’s style is quite minimal. It is this minimalism that gives the film much of its power—Oliveira relies on subtlety in his imagery, allowing small details to come to the fore. An early shot has Luísa at the window of her home as Macário watches her. She pulls down a translucent shade, partially obscuring her from view, and then pulls across a drape, leaving only a thin shadow of herself. As she disappears from Macário’s view, one feels that this shot has some importance. It is not till the end of the film that we realize that there may be some deliberate foreshadowing on Oliveira’s part.

ECCENTRICITIES’ sense of romantic longing and its tale of a quest for a mysterious woman calls to mind Oliveira’s much younger Iberian compatriot, the Spanish filmmaker José Luis Guerin—specifically his great film IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA. As Oliveira’s career winds down (though, by the looks of things he may continue on in perpetuity—he’s got another film in pre-production!), it’s good to know that there are perhaps a handful of worthy followers on the scene. (Patrick Friel)

ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLOND HAIR GIRL screens twice more in the festival: Tuesday, October 13 at 3:15pm and Wednesday, October 14 at 6;30pm

CINE-FILE’s coverage of the 45th Chicago International Film Festival will start Friday, October 9th and run the duration of the festival. We’ll be posting it here at the CINE-FILE / Blog, updated daily.

You can follow our updates via Twitter through @cinefile.

A number of our regular writers will are also covering the festival for other sites, including Rob Christopher (for The Chicagoist) and myself (for The Auteurs Notebook, though I’ll also be posting here daily).