CRUCIAL VIEWING

PANDORA'S BOX (Classic Revival - Live Accompaniment)
Block Cinema – Friday, 8pm
Henri Langlois once said, "There is no Garbo, there is no Deitrich, there is only Louise Brooks!" G.W. Pabst's 1929 masterpiece gave Brooks her most famous role as the hypererotic Lulu and placed her at the center of what might be the most complex deployment of female sexuality in the silent era. Walking a delicate line between complicity and critique of prevailing social norms, the film casts Lulu neither as agent nor victim, but opens fascinating questions about the exchange of bodies as commodities and the perceived threat of female sexuality. A scandal upon release, the incredible maturity of Pandora's Box testifies to the vibrant sense of possibility possessed by cinema at the close of the silent era – a utopian spark that would be all but crushed by the coming of sound. Live original musical accompaniment by Chicago jazz guitar virtuoso Andreas Kapsalis and his band. More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
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Nicholas Ray's THE TRUE STORY OF JESSE JAMES (Classic Revival)
LaSalle Bank Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Although director Ray's vision was significantly compromised by studio interference, this rarely-revived 1957 western is nonetheless worth catching for its beautiful CinemaScope cinematography, emphasis on historical accuracy, and excellent cast including Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter (who would later play Jesus for Ray in KING OF KINGS), Agnes Moorhead, and John Carradine. Nicholas Ray films aren't screened often enough, and they always benefit from being seen on the big screen, where his brilliant framing and use of color can be best appreciated. (1957, 92 min, 16mm). Venue Information.
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NAT TURNER: A Troublesome Property (Comtemporary Documentary)
Dusable Museum of African American History – Sunday, 2pm
In this 2003 documentary produced for television, the great Charles Burnett explores the many portrayals of rebel slave Nat Turner, juxtaposing historians' commentary with a title role played by seven different actors, reinforcing the ways in which historiography can fracture as much as it reconciles. Jonathan Rosenbaum gives the work 4 stars, and honors it with a special feature article in this week's Reader. (60 min, video). Burnett is also the writer of BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS, screening this week at Doc and described below; and his work will be a focus of the Film Center's excellent African American Autuers series in March. More info about this screening at www.dusablemuseum.org.
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BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS (Revival - Director in Person)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Tuesday, 7pm
Lauded in Thom Andersen’s opus LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF as one of the few authentic depictions of that city, BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS is also one of the only poetic depictions of poor, working-class America in the movies. Director Billy Woodberry implicitly defies depictions of African-Americans in mainstream cinema by linking African-American concerns to those of the working-class. Written by the great Charles Burnett (TO SLEEP WITH ANGER, KILLER OF SHEEP); like his own work, this is very rarely screened. Woodberry will be present to introduce the film. (1984, 80 min, 16mm). More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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Godard's TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (Revival)
Music Box – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
Completed the same year as political masterpieces LA CHINOISE and WEEKEND, Godard's TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (1967)--hailed by J. Hoberman as "One of the top ten films of the top ten films of the 20th century"--is the latest of the legendary director's major works to receive a major restoration and North American revival. From the Detroit Film Theatre's recent showing: "Godard was at the height of his directorial powers when he created this brilliantly inventive, kaleidoscopic portrait of one Juliette Janson (Marina Vlady), a housewife from the Paris suburbs who turns tricks once a month to pay for her habit of buying the trendiest new outfits. Godard's dizzyingly deft and wryly subversive camera ingeniously captures the essence of much of its 1960s era: urban sprawl, youthful unrest, the marketing of war (and movies), prostitution at every level of society and a deep cultural angst that sometimes manifested itself in startling cinematic collisions of the commercial and the avant-garde—such as this very film." (95 min, 35mm). Also read Jonathan Rosenbaum's glowing review in this week's Reader. More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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STILL PLAYING:

Jodorowsky's EL TOPO (Cult Revival)
Music Box – Friday & Saturday, midnight
A quintessential midnight movie, Jodorowsky's highly stylized and (ostensibly) allegorical Western is mishmash of religious and mythological themes that's as violent, misogynistic, and laughably ridiculous as it is beautiful, mystifying, and endearingly bizarre. "I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs," the director famously said; it's not hard to understand why the film attracted devoted late-night audiences in New York for months in the early 1970s and gained fans like John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (1971, 125 min). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED

Margarethe von Trotta's ROSA LUXEMBURG (Special Event)
Platypus Affiliated Society / School of the Art Institute – Friday, 4:15pm
The Platypus Affiliated Society, a Marxist journal and discussion group, presents a screening of von Trotta's portrait of the fiery Marxist radical Rosa Luxemburg, which will be followed by a reading from and discussion of Luxemburg's pamphlet "The Crisis of German Social Democracy" (1915), a pacifist critique of her fellow socialists' support of the nationalist war effort. Food and refreshments will be served, and admission is free. (1986, 122min, DVD). Location: 112 S. Michigan Avenue, room 1307 (13th floor). Read Luxemburg's pamphlet here.
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ALWAYS SUNSET ON THIRD STREET (New Foreign)
Japan Information Center (161 E Chicago Ave) – Friday, 6:30pm
The movie that swept last year’s Japanese film awards receives its Chicago premiere with this free screening. ALWAYS is an ensemble drama set in 1958 Tokyo by way of Woody Allen’s RADIO DAYS, with characters like an aspiring writer who runs a candy shop and local doctor who still mourns his wife a decade after her death. Cynics have decried the film as cloying and manipulative; more sensitive viewers have praised director Takashi Yamazaki’s wistfulness and sense of character. Either way, it’s already a staple of pop culture in Japan, where a sequel is currently in the works (2005, 133 min, 35mm widescreen).
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UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ANIMATION SCREENING SERIES
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Friday, 7:30pm
In anticipation of the CMS Graduate Student Conference on Animation in March 2007, U of C's Film Studies Center presents a final program of acclaimed contemporary animated shorts rarely screened outside the festival circuit. Highlights include 3 works by Nina Paley, such as the handpainted 70mm PANDORAMA. (Various formats). Read the full program at filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
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CHICAGO'S OWN: At Home and Beyond (Experimental / Independent)
Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
Chi Filmmakers' series of intimate portraits and documents by Chicago artists investigates locations as disparate as Humboldt Park, Vienna, and post-Soviet Lithuania, exploring universal themes of space, time, and memory. Artists represented include Stashu Kybartas, Chi-Jang Yin, Adele Friedman, Paul Lloyd Sargent, and Milan Bobysud, some of whom will be present to answer questions following the screening. The screening is Fred Camper's Critics Choice in the Reader this week – read his passionate review here. Full program description and additional info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
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Henri-Georges Clouzot's WAGES OF FEAR (Classic Revival)
Music Box – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am
A longtime favorite of American art house crowds, WAGES OF FEAR explores what is essentially noir territory--a vaguely represented class struggle, characters in dangerous circumstances that are as much a product of society as a malevolent force--but invests it with a tone more fatally bleak than nervously despairing. Like the atomic bomb Mike Hammer chases across Los Angeles in KISS ME DEADLY, the explosives-laden trucks the film's protagonists must drive across a relentless jungle give their adventure a sense of apocalyptic foreboding. (1943, 148 min, 35mm). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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CATHERINE SULLIVAN (Experimental / Artist Lecture)
Gallery 400 (UIC) - Tuesday, 5pm
Filmmaker and new University of Chicago faculty member Catherine Sullivan will give a talk on her work, which "integrates performance and theater with film, video and photography. She refers to her conceptually and formally dynamic work as 'second order drama.' In using extremes of performance techniques Sullivan exposes the conventions and processes inherent in dramaturgical activity by way of diverse cultural references." Venue Information.
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Straub / Huillet's MOSES AND AARON (Underground)
NWesternAve - Tuesday, 9pm
Jean-Maire Straub and Daniele Huillet's films have always been created from written or musical texts, and this film, like their magnificent CHRONICLE OF MAGDALENA BACH, is of the latter sort. Using Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone opera, they compliment and highlight the rigor and severity of his work and their own. Fascinating for its minimalism, MOSES and AARON is a radical attempt to purge a movie of everything but its text. (1975, 105 min, DVD). More info at NWesternAve.com.
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A HOME-MADE OPTICS: Films and Videos of Leighton Pierce (Experimental)
Conversations at the Edge / Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
Iowa-based artist Leighton Pierce will be appearing in person for screening of his recent works. From the CATE program: "Since the 1980s, the films and videos of Iowa-based artist Leighton Pierce have painted a lush portrait of Midwestern life. Tonight’s program compiles his rich domestic observations: a gurgling backyard fountain in GLASS (1998); the repetitive clatter of children’s feet on the porch in THE BACK STEPS (2001); and the plucking of a solitary, stretched length of twine in 50 FEET OF STRING (1995). Also: WOOD (2000) and PUPPY-GO-ROUND (1996)." (90 min total). More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org. The screening is co-presented by U of C's Experimental Film Club, which will be presenting an additional program of Pierce's work the following evening (to be covered in next week's CINE-LIST).
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Sergio Leone's FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (Classic Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Thursday, 8pm
The second installment in the director's "Man With No Name" trilogy of spaghetti westerns finds Clint Eastwood joining forces with his bounty hunter adversary (Lee Van Cleef) to hunt a homicidal killer, but as always with Leone, sights, sounds, and spectacle take precedence over story. Featuring a legendary score by Ennio Morricone and enough hyperbolic violence to cause the New York Times reviewer to grumble, upon its release: "the fact that this film is constructed to endorse the exercise of murderers, to emphasize killer bravado and generate glee in frantic manifestations of death is, to my mind, a sharp indictment of it as so-called entertainment in this day." (1965, 126 minutes, 35mm). More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
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COMMUNE (New Documentary)
Facets Cinematheque - Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
The Black Bear Ranch, located on an abandoned gold mine in rural California, is one of the few remaining communes founded during the back-to-the-land movement's golden era; director Jonathan Berman takes a nostalgic journey through the past and present of this countercultural cooperative. From the Facets description: "COMMUNE is the first documentary to look at communal living, exploring the choices that define our personal lives and how they create forces that reverberate throughout our national and global identities." (2005, 78 mins, 35mm). More info at www.facets.org.
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DARKON (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
Taking live-action role-playing as subject matter for a documentary is almost too easy--LARPing, as it's called, is essentially Dungeons & Dragons for grownups with fake weapons instead of dice. But TREKKIES this isn’t: first time documentarians Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel demonstrate an uncommon generosity toward the heroes of their backyard epic, recognizing that while it’s fun to watch grownups pounding on each other with big foam swords, art emerges when you care who’s left standing. Like any epic, the very loftiest sentiments are extracted from the make believe war at the heart of the film (real-life disappointments, power struggles, good vs. evil, justice, revolution, you name it); the fact that these warriors have to go back to work the next day makes the fate of DARKON seem that much graver. (2005, 90 min, Beta SP). More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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THIS WEEK AT DOC FILMS (University of Chicago)
Noteworthy revivals at Doc this week: the inescapable SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952, 103 min, 35mm); Hitchcock's crowd-pleasing thriller NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959, 136 min, 35mm), a spirited nightmare lauded by Dave Kehr as one of the most entertaining movies ever made; Maurice Tourneur's SHIP OF LOST SOULS (1929, 97 min, 35mm) featuring a young Marlene Dietrich; and Marcel Pagnol's take on adultery, THE BAKER’S WIFE (1938, 124 min, 35mm). Rounding out the week is a pair of exemplary uses of CinemaScope that both exhibit a personal strain of righteous anger: Frank Tashlin’s WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER (1957, 93 min, 35mm) and Gaspar Noé’s IRREVERSIBLE (2001, 95 min, 35mm). More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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FEBRUARY RETROSPECTIVES AT THE FILM CENTER
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
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- - - AFRICAN AMERICAN AUTEURS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Film Center continues its excellent series on notable African American filmmakers with two short features by Spencer Williams, one of the most successful directors of "race films." These early sound films targeted at black audiences now survive as some of the best records of post-Depression, pre-World War II black culture. Like many race films, 1941's THE BLOOD OF JESUS and 1944's GO DOWN, DEATH! present an odd mix of pulpiness and moralizing--crusading against social ills while simultaneously exploiting them. This screening will be accompanied by a lecture from film scholar Jacqueline Stewart. MORE INFO
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- - - CINEMA CROATIA - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This week's selection, THE MELON ROUTE (2006, 89 min, 35mm) is a drama about illegal immigration at the Bosnian-Croatian border. MORE INFO
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- - - FILMS BY JOHNNIE TO - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This year's HONG KONG! festival celebrates prolific Hong Kong action director Johnnie To, whose under-appreciated films are fascinating, reference-filled explorations of the genre. This week's features are THROW DOWN (2004, 95 min) and the critically acclaimed BREAKING NEWS (2004, 90 min). MORE INFO
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- - - MATTHEW BARNEY: CREMASTER AND BEYOND - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Upheld as a masterpiece by the New York art establishment despite being reviled by many critics, Matthew Barney's CREMASTER 3 is undoubtedly his most spectacular and accomplished work, if perhaps his most self-indulgent, overblown, and pretentious. This epic sexual allegory, aptly summarized by Slant Magazine as a "three-hour tour through Barney's Art Deco cock," draws heavily on Celtic, Masonic, and American mythology, employing rigid Kubrick-esque cinematography in a display of modern masculinity in all its tumescent glory. Insightful praise can be found in the aforementioned Slant Review; Fred Camper's capsule for the Reader provides a level-headed contrasting viewpoint. MORE INFO
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- - - WERNER HERZOG: VISIONARY AT LARGE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Actor Klaus Kinski is an integral part of German director Werner Herzog's mythic status--the five films the two made together between 1972 and 1987 are legendary for their production difficulties and the almost fatally tense relationship between the two. This week, the Film Center presents their first and last collaborations as part its Herzog retrospective: the frequently screened AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972, 100 min) and woefully underappreciated COBRA VERDE (1988, 111 min). Both films star as Kinski as a bastion of European colonialism going mad and megalomaniacal in the distant wilderness (the Amazon in AGUIRRE, Africa in COBRA VERDE). MORE INFO
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STILL PLAYING:

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's CLIMATES (New Foreign)
Music Box – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
After the success of 2003's UZAK (DISTANT), Ceylan returns to direct and star alongside his real-life wife in this beautifully photographed account of a relationship in decline. Moving from the beaches of eastern Turkey to the snowy north, CLIMATES (2006, Turkey / France, 101 min) takes up considerations of modernization and masculinity in crisis through the lens of the personal, subtly interjecting astute commentary on contemporary Turkish society into its moving portrait of a fading romance. More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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THE LIVES OF OTHERS (New Foreign)
Landmark Century Centre – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
A thriller about the workings of East Germany’s secret police near the end of the Cold War, this debut feature from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck swept the German Film Awards last year, and in the vein of THE EDUKATORS and SLUMMING, marks yet another offering from the developing subgenre of highly watchable, socially perceptive dramas made by young East German directors. (2006, 137 min). The film was also Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Critics Choice" pick last week. Read his review here.
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ALSO PLAYING

*Recommended by the Chicago Reader

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Contributors: Erika Balsom, Kalvin Henely, Jason Hyde, Mike King, Ben Sachs, Ignatius Vishnevetsky, Ethan White, Darnell Witt

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