CRUCIAL VIEWING

Sam Fuller's UNDERWORLD USA (Classic Revival)
Doc Films – Monday, 7pm
Harking back to his days churning out crime paperbacks, Sam Fuller's cinematic oeuvre grew more lurid as the years wore on. UNDERWORLD USA is one of his pulpiest triangulations, following a small-time hood's (Cliff Robertson, recently SPIDER-MAN's uncle) undercover vendetta against his father's murderers, now kingpins of various mob industries. The requisite love interest, surrogate mother, psychotic heavy, determined fed, and overweight crime lord are all accounted for, but they pale in comparison to the planned opening sequence Fuller describes in his autobiography: "attractive women, scantily clad and positioned to form a map of the United States" speechify for a Union of Prostitutes until the orator gets her head blown off. Despite having trolled the underworld for decades, Fuller was rarely this dark; the grouchy idealism of PARK ROW and grouchy morality of his Korean war films is replaced with deep-seated pessimism and an uncharacteristic lack of faith in the American Way. One of the few remaining Fuller titles unavailable on DVD, UNDERWORLD USA is also one of his finest, so don't get all scared by the snow and pass this screening up. (1961, 99 min, 35mm). MK
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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IMAMURA: Week 6 (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
Shohei Imamura cemented his international reputation with THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA (1983, 128 min, 35mm; Saturday, 3pm), which won the top prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. It was also something of an olive branch to Japanese cinema, which he had so famously rebelled against in his films until then. Remaking a Kabuki-style drama from 1958, Imamura acknowledged the social significance of classical-era filmmaking while adding his own brand of naturalism (or “messiness,” to use his own term). The film is set in a mountain village in the mid 19th century where poverty has forced the townspeople to adopt an unusual practice: Everyone over the age of 70 must be thrown off a mountain by an heir. The story focuses on the relationship between noble widow Tatsuhei (Ken Ogata, Imamura’s sociopath from VENGEANCE IS MINE) and his caring mother, who is now past 69. In a brilliant counterpoint to the family drama, Imamura adds darkly comic subplots about a promiscuous widow, bestiality and the like: It’s a characteristic reminder that human virtue must emerge out of baser instincts, but new to Imamura is the benignity with which he portrays the baser elements. Implying that every member of a community contributes to its overall character, Imamura moves toward the Fordian scope of his masterful last films. Also playing this week is EIJANAIKA (1981, 151 min, 35mm widescreen; Sunday, 2:30 pm & Tuesday, 6:30pm), another 19th century period piece. The film chronicles several main characters in the period after the fall of a major shogunate; it subverts nearly every expectation of the historical epic by focusing on the particulars—the dirty rituals and negotiations—of everyday life. By portraying the chaos of the time, Imamura finds historical grounding for his cynical view of Japanese society and also for his lifelong subject: the terrifying and yet exhilarating impulses of people with nothing left to lose. The film takes its title from the Eijanaika riot of 1866—a spontaneous, violent uprising of the poor. The Siskel Center program translates it as “Why Not,” but a more exact English equivalent would be “What the Hell?”. BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (New Foreign)
Music Box – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
For a realist antidote to the recent spate of American pregnancy comedies, look no further than Cristian Mungiu's Romanian prizewinner, which relays with excruciating patience the horrific consequences of illegal abortions. This being a Cannes-feted indictment of health care (or lack thereof) under Ceauescu, comparisons with THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU are inevitable, but where the former played its bleakness for morbid laughs worthy of Samuel Beckett, 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS is infused with the harrowing urgency its countdown title suggests. Detailing the indignities endured by a young woman (Anamaria Marinca) in order to secure an illegal abortion for her procrastinating friend, what this shares with LAZARESCU is the agony of inaction; each step towards the operation is accompanied by endless rounds of bargaining and compromise, culminating in a far-flung detour to a dinner party. At once a sly political appropriation of the old horror maxim of keeping the monster offscreen and a master class in viewer identification, Mungiu estranges both his protagonist and the audience from the plot at this crucial juncture, allowing Oleg Mutu's roving camera to linger on Marinca's face as her mind, like ours, reels with the worst-case-scenarios that could be unfolding beyond the frame. (2007, 113 min, 35mm). MK
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED

Fritz Lang's SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (Classic Revival)
LaSalle Bank Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Fritz Lang's fourth noir with Joan Bennett (after MAN HUNT, SCARLET STREET, and THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW) follows GASLIGHT's model of newlywed panic ("This is not the time to think of danger...this is my wedding day" she utters early on), with Bennett discovering the gruesome hobby practiced by too-good-to-be-true husband Michael Redgrave. The then-fashionable Freudian mumbo jumbo that bogs down the plot proves to be a double-edged sword, as Lang capitalizes on the dream imagery to indulge in some of the most evocative cinematography of his formidable career, courtesy of the master Stanley Cortez (MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER). After failing to match the success of SCARLET STREET, SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR became the second and last film to the bear the name of Lang and Bennett's startup Diana Productions, sinking the venture only two films in. (1948, 99 min, 35mm). MK
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Venue Information here.
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Howard Hawks' TWENTIETH CENTURY (Classic Revival)
Music Box (Matinee Series) – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am
Howard Hawks is usually credited with having a hand in the invention and/or popularization of the screwball comedy, but more important, within his own oeuvre, is the fact that he shepherded the "genre" from TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934) to a burnished modernity six years later in HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940). Whereas HIS GIRL, with its subtle but nonetheless present heart of darkness (corruption, obsession, madness, murder), seems very much of its and our time, TWENTIETH CENTURY, by comparison, has a foot—like the New York-Chicago passenger train that it's named after—in the nineteenth: in blackout sketches and quack entrepreneurial optimism. Far from making TWENTIETH CENTURY a relic, however, this quality of being out of time makes its every rediscovery a pleasure: viewing it lets us breathe an air more foreign and surprising than HIS GIRL's, which has, by so becoming so definitively the "face" of sophisticated screwball, turned invisible, entered into our language. TWENTIETH's popeyed frenzy is clear and brittle by comparison: Carole Lombard and John Barrymore spar with operatic desperation, not urbane restraint. Since Hawks's comedies tend to get revived with a certain regularity, it's difficult to imagine that there are many fans left who know this side of his work mainly from BRINGING UP BABY (1938) and HIS GIRL, but in case there are any holdouts, here is a golden opportunity. (91 min, 35mm). JD
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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DAMON PACKARD: Week 2 (Underground)
NWesternAve – Tuesday, 7:30pm
The next two weeks of NWA's ongoing Damon Packard series include shorter works, centered around a mid-length piece. This week the centerpiece is UNTITLED STAR WARS MOCKUMENTARY (2003), which exercises Packard's obsessions with the construction of Hollywood product, surface narratives and behind-the-scenes narratives, and the relentless re-editing of previous work (a need he shares, to a degree, with George Lucas). This one stays off the usual themes of paranoia and madness, and instead is just plain fun. Also on the program is the early, showy splatter short DAWN OF AN EVIL MILLENNIUM (1988), and the embellished portrait of grindhouse expert and son of Rambo, SAGE STALLONE: PORTRAIT OF A MADMAN (2004). (90 min TRT, DVD Projection). JM
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Venue info at NWesternAve.com.
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Robert Rossen's THE HUSTLER (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday & Wednesday, 6pm
The unusual epic that earns every minute of its running time, THE HUSTLER (1961, 35mm, 134 min) has all the earmarks of a modern American classic—including a certain amount of myopia and pornographic grandstanding—but the confluence of talents at work yields such a powerful, canny, contradictory, and even vulnerable construction that it is difficult (and perhaps unnecessary) to resist. Here Robert Rosen returns to his hobbyhorse, debating the merits of talent and ambition in the American landscape (gift? curse?), and more or less to the territory of his over-praised BODY AND SOUL (1947), but with the benefit of maturity, a healthy dose of fatalism, a minimal and Mephistophelean take on the rise/fall/rise/retire sports-hero plot, and the fabulous photography of erstwhile G. W. Pabst, Marcel Carné, and George Franju collaborator Eugene Shuftan, whose widescreen work here is easily the equal of his accomplishments in the European art canon (he shot EYES WITHOUT A FACE just the previous year!), flattening the allegorical hysteria of Rosen's four leads into what has popularly been called existentialism, but may in retrospect be Marienbadesque rigor mortis. There's nothing "fast and loose" about THE HUSTLER, but if it looks more and more like a cold marble monument and less like an edgy (if never less than prestigious and glamorous) experiment, we aren't any poorer for this transformation, and classic studio auteurism could do a lot worse than to have this standing on (or near) its grave. JD
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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ALSO PLAYING AT DOC FILMS
Of particular interest this week is Jacques Tourneur’s NIGHTFALL (1957, 78 min, 35mm; Thursday, 7pm), which screened last year at the Siskel Film Center but is difficult to find elsewhere. An unusually light film noir, starring the likeable Aldo Ray as a wrong man on the run and Anne Bancroft in a role that would normally be a femme fatale but in this case turns out to be a caring, trustworthy gal. It’s not one of Tourneur’s best works, but characteristic of his iconoclast perspective and light touch. Also of interest is the Japan Foundation Midwest Film Festival, which will screen five films in three days, and all for free! None of these are auteur films (at least, none of their directors are written about in the West), but the subject should prove illuminating: HANGING GARDEN (2005, 114 min, 35mm; Saturday, 6:30pm) is a transgressive melodrama about prostitution and familial hypocrisy; and the recent Facets hit LINDA LINDA LINDA (2005, 114 min, 35mm; Saturday, 9pm) is a bright comedy about an all-girl rock band. Also screening: another pair of silent films by Ernst Lubitsch, THE DOLL and ONE ARABIAN NIGHT (1919/1920, 75/60 min, DVD projection/16mm; Sunday, 7pm); M. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (1953, 86 min, 35mm; Tuesday, 7pm), Jacques Tati’s first film as his beloved character, M. Hulot, and a characteristic work of calm, inspired sight gags; Pedro Almodovar’s LAW OF DESIRE (1987, 102 min, 35mm; Wednesday, 7 & 9:15pm), which derives from the director’s outlandish, willfully offensive early period (which remains, to some tastes, his best); and—speaking of outlandish and willfully offensive—THE SCAVENGERS (1969, 94 min, 35mm; Thursday, 9pm), a “sex Western” detailing the adventures of horny, law-breaking Confederate soldiers. BS
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Full details at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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THIS WEEK AT BLOCK (Classic & Contemporary Revival)
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UGETSU – Friday, 8pm
For most Western moviegoers, UGETSU is the best-known film by Kenji Mizoguchi, as its awesome tracking shots (which connect past and present, fantasy and reality, in single movements) are regularly presented in introductory film courses as exemplifying the form. This ubiquity has brought some cinephiles to underrate it in recent years (much as they underrate the similarly masterful and over-taught CITIZEN KANE), but its power remains undiminished. Adapting a pair of popular ghost stories from the 19th century, Mizoguchi created a personal statement on some of his favorite subjects: greed, spiritual transcendence, and women’s capacity for selflessness. Formally, it is indeed close to flawless—besides the aforementioned tracking shots, the film’s mise-en-scene demonstrates limitless imagination in evoking the feudal era—so if you haven’t seen this on a big screen, you owe it to yourself to go. (1953, 93 min, 35mm). BS
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Sergei Urusevsky's I AM CUBA – Wednesday, 8pm
Those who remember the emotional power of the final scene of Mikhail Kalatozov's THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957), with its appeal to both cinematographic excess and a subtle but didactic communism, are best positioned to understand the logic of I AM CUBA, which (with the help of funding from both Cuba and the Soviet Union) extends that morally instructive strategy, integrating Sergei Urusevsky's endless, hyper-engineered tracking shots depicting a pre-revolution Cuba with the consistent use of extreme wide-angle photography on infrared film stock. The latter element brings an unforgettably blistering, otherworldly contrast between land, sky, water and fire; even the clouds (for which the filmmakers, filming for 14 months, reputedly painstakingly waited for days on end) are singular. Lost to Western history until its revival at Telluride in 1992, I AM CUBA is presently appreciated in America primarily for these formal visual qualities, with its content frequently derided as "agitprop"; but anyone from revolutionary- bookstore fixtures to former armchair Marxists are likely to experience this passionate film as more than a glamorous curiosity. (1964, 141 min, 35mm). MC
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Lee Chang-Dong’s OASIS – Thursday, 8pm
Lee Chang-Dong’s OASIS is one of the riskiest gambles in contemporary melodrama, striving to find real emotional catharsis in material easily susceptible to sentimentality or facile politicization--the romance between a mentally ill ex-con and a woman with severe cerebral palsy. Cannily plotted, the film gradually builds familiarity with the characters, allowing them to operate on their own terms after an introductory stretch of uncomfortable moments. (The ex-con’s disability, though never explicitly identified, is unpredictable enough to register with those with first-hand experience with the mentally ill. Or, as layman Michael Atkinson wrote in the Village Voice, “[I]t's apparent that Jong-du is simply one of those people: He stands too close to strangers, never says the right thing, and can't help defiling social norms…”) After its lovers become three-dimensional human beings and no longer embodiments of their respective disabilities, OASIS becomes as funny, romantic, and heartbreaking as any great movie about “normal” characters. Many critics have noted, with implicit head-scratching, that writer-director Lee went on to become South Korea’s Minister of Culture under the reformist government elected in 2003. In retrospect, his career move seems foreshadowed by the film: Few other recent filmmakers have dared to present love as a social necessity. (2002, 132 min, 35mm). BS
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
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TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE (New Documentary)
Music Box – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
If someone is keeping a secret list of documentaries to populate the HOW IN THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN? canon that will be neccessary to explain the impossibly f'ed circumstances that created the most presumptuous and dishonorable war in American history to the rightfully bewildered students of the Class of 2020, please include this doc alongside THE CONTROL ROOM, GUNNER PALACE and BATTLEGROUND. Maybe the most devastating documentary of the Iraq war to surface yet, TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE exhibits all of the same clear and thorough argumentation skills Alex Gibney demonstrated in his previous hit, ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM with none of its comic irony; the plucky tone of ENRON is appropriately replaced in TAXI with a quiet and satisfying rage. TAXI tells the story of Dilawar, an innocent Afghani taxi driver who was turned in as a terrorist by other Afghans (in exchange for money) and died in American Custody only five days into his detainment at the prison in Bagram. His corpse displayed multiple catastrophic injuries, included legs so badly beaten they would have needed to be amputated had he survived. The film, as every review out there will warn you, is in moments very hard to watch as it contains graphic footage of torture in process and skin-crawling descriptions of the many psychological tactics used to coerce unreliable confessions from detainees. Rather than solely indicting the soldiers responsible Gibney uses Dilawar's story to explore the systematic attempts by the very highest levels of military authority to create a "fog of ambiguity" around acceptable and unacceptable coercion tactics practiced on detainees. Interviews from people involved in Dilawar's story and not, including soldiers from Bagram and Justice Department Official John Yoo slowly illuminate a broader policy of mixed signals designed to keep White House noses clean and a few regular army "bad apples" taking the blame. CL
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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MORE NOTABLE SCREENINGS

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CINE-LIST: February 8 – 14, 2008

EDITOR / Darnell Witt
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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS / Michael King, Ben Sachs
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ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS / Michael Castelle, Jeremy M. Davies, Christy LeMaster, Josh Mabe

> Editorial Statement --> Contact