CRUCIAL VIEWING
John Carpenter’s THE THING (Classic Revival)
Music Box – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
Horror used to be political, yet today's horror films, while undoubtedly more graphic and violent than many of those that inspired them, are thematically conservative in comparison to the horrors John Carpenter has made throughout his career. Carpenter infused all of his work with biting social and political dimensions and his 1982 film THE THING is no exception. Based on the original John W. Campbell, Jr. novella (read it here) and Christian Nyby’s (and Howard Hawks) 1951 film THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, this is arguably Carpenter's masterpiece. Metaphorically similar to the INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS films, it is set in the icy wilderness of Antarctica, where a group of researchers find themselves stranded with an organism that assumes human form and attacks them one by one. It’s only a matter of time to see which destroys the group faster: the "thing" or their own paranoia. Terrifying, brilliant, and tense all the way through, THE THING is horror at its very best. (1982, 109 min, 35mm) BC
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Watch the G.I. Joe “version” here.
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Satyajit Ray’s PATHER PANCHALI & Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES (Revival)
Doc Films (U. of Chicago) – Friday, 7 & 9:30pm (Pather) / Saturday, 7 & 9pm (Modern)
Doc Films rounds out their typically exceptional summer calendar with two indisputable masterpieces of the medium: Satyajit Ray's PATHER PANCHALI and Chaplin's MODERN TIMES. If you haven't seen these films projected (or, heaven forbid, you haven't seen them at all), this would be the perfect way to spend your weekend: Few films are so sympathetic to the disadvantaged while remaining so unconcerned with piety. Both seem to grow organically out of the experience of being poor, attuned to the liveliness and sense of community that blossom in poverty's wake. Chaplin, of course, is the greater entertainer of the two filmmakers, but the directness with which he communicated with an audience—any audience, regardless of economic or educational background—reveals a radical inclusiveness behind his art. MODERN TIMES also contains some of Chaplin's best sight gags (and sound gags—one sequence has the Tramp singing in gibberish), many of which are stunning in his balletic coordination. (1936, 87 min, 35mm) BS
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Perhaps the most acclaimed Bengali film, Satyajit Ray's first film PATHER PANCHALI has acquired an additional mythic status due to the difficulties of its production. The story of a Brahmin family living in intense poverty, PATHER PANCHALI ("Song of the Little Road") was shot over the course of five years with a cast of non-actors, a crew with almost no film experience, and with Ray in an almost constant struggle to find funding. The film follows the family's children, sister Durga and little brother Apu, who live out the episodes of their childhood in wide-eyed innocence. Together they chase after the candyman, or imitate the extravagances of a traveling theater company. The film's atmosphere becomes increasingly claustrophobic however, and much of this is owed to the cinematography of first-timer Subrata Mitra. As the family struggles to find income, the jungle creeps in on all sides into their decaying rural manor. The images are bleak but profoundly beautiful. Despite his struggles, Ray was desperate not to compromise the film: For the exhilarating sequence when Apu and Durga discover the train, perhaps the film's most famous image, Ray believed he could only shoot in a week-long sliver of spring when the region's white flax flowers were in bloom. PANCHALI has been a cited as a considerable influence by later directors such as Terrence Malick, Abbas Kiarostami and Wes Anderson—(Remember the overhead shot of a baby swinging in its cradle in THE DARJEELING LIMITED? Ripped straight out of Satyajit Ray). A classic story of loss and renewal in bitter circumstances, PATHER PANCHALI remains a landmark of international (and for the matter, independently produced) cinema. (1955, 115 min, archival 35mm print) LN
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
John Boulting's BRIGHTON ROCK (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
The first thing that stands out about BRIGHTON ROCK are its sets: dirty windows that throw light in geometric shapes, wallpaper that resembles a cavern wall, mirrors that seem to foretell danger. The people seem like sets, too. Richard Attenborough’s cocked hat throws a shadow over his face. Every figure looms in the frame like a hundred-foot living statue. Here are Graham Greene's small sinners re-imagined gigantic. Attenborough, at his most vicious, plays a variation on Paul Muni's Tony Camonte (the film was originally released in the US as YOUNG SCARFACE). A small-time crook who has a rival murdered to protect his pathetic racket, he drags an innocent witness and the rest of his gang into his abyss. (1947, 92 min, new 35mm print) IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
THE GARDEN (Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Chicago's combination of flat prairie landscape and fast-track derelict housing demolition provides fertile ground for hundreds of small urban community gardens, but the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, at 14 acres just blocks from the locations of the 1992 riots, is one of the nation's largest. A compelling 2008 municipal potboiler, THE GARDEN follows the local outrage, political machinations, and grass-roots activism that developed when South Central Farm's communitarian sovereignty was overthrown in a behind-closed-doors sale by the city to the former property owner in 2003. Shooting hundreds of hours over the course of four years, director Scott Hamilton Kennedy pieces together a surprisingly comprehensible narrative, with a variety of heroes, villains, and outright scoundrels—and then tops it off in true postmodern L.A. fashion when, in the twilight of a fundraising ultimatum, an all-star cast of activist celebs (including Daryl Hannah, Dennis Kucinich, and Rage Against the Machine) show up to call public attention to the cause. When Kennedy presented THE GARDEN in person at Doc Films last October, the savvy audience was quick to bring up the political challenges of maintaining their own community farms on city-owned land; it's hard to think of a recent documentary that manages to stay relevant to the zeitgeist in both Lincoln Park and Washington Park. The film also provides a deeply needed spiritual counterpoint to the pessimistic dietary horror genre (e.g. FOOD INC., in theaters now), pointing out that with a little help from your Alderman, there's never been a better time to drop out of the industrial agriculture supply chain...until winter, at least. (2008, 80 min, 35mm) MC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
REVANCHE (New Austrian)
Music Box – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Director Gotz Spielmann's 2008 drama has had a great impact in some circles—most notably, it inspired Janus Films to buy a new film for distribution for the first (and hopefully not last) time in decades. The buzz has hinted at revelation; and if the movie fails to have that effect on its audience, at least it regards redemption as serious subject matter and not the stuff of familiar Hollywood uplift. The movie begins as a sort-of Austrian cousin to Sidney Lumet's recent BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, taking a mature approach to criminal behavior—more reminiscent of classic Method School drama than cop-movie sensationalism. The main character, Alex, is a dour ex-con who plots a robbery with his Russian prostitute girlfriend. The goal is to get away with enough money so they can reinvent themselves as normal people. Spielmann charts an unlikely path of reinvention where, against popular expectation, the tone of the film becomes more muted as the emotional stakes get higher. This is serious, albeit accessible filmmaking of a particular middlebrow tradition (exemplified most famously by the films Janus distributed in the 1950s), marked by thoughtful writing and deeply committed performances. Ursula Strauss, a veteran of Barbara Albert's films (FREE RADICALS and FALLING), is especially impressive as the lovelorn wife of a small-town police officer. Her work here is some of the best to screen in Chicago in the past year. (2008, 121 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
George Sidney's VIVA LAS VEGAS (Classic Revival)
Facets Cinémathèque – Saturday, Midnight
VIVA LAS VEGAS is the purest of the Elvis movies. Gone is the gleeful vulgarity of the Norman Taurog-directed Elvises, or the unsure scrappiness of the ones handed to lesser (Gene Nelson) or less-interested (Raoul Walsh, Phil Karlson) directors. What remains is color, shape and movement. Las Vegas is reduced to garish form; it resembles the colorful plastics of Alain Resnais’ LE CHANT DU STYRENE—a city built by Oskar Fischinger and not Bugsy Siegel. The movie is without taste, but not tasteless. The image of Ann-Margaret’s ass in black tights is so shameless in its admiration that it might as well be of a Michelangelo or one of Picasso’s late statues. Presley’s goofy performance of the title song (watch) is what AN AMERICAN IN PARIS would’ve looked like if Vincente Minnelli didn't know the meaning of the word "art." Susan Doll, an Elvis expert, TCM blogger, and Facets employee, will be presenting the film. (1964, 85 min, DVD projection) IV
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More info at www.facets.org.
Michael Keaton's THE MERRY GENTLEMAN (Contemporary Revival)
Beverly Arts Center – Saturday, 7:30pm
Michael Keaton has gone from being an under-appreciated actor to being an under-appreciated director. THE MERRY GENTLEMAN could be a grayer (but more lightweight) James Gray (in palette, in feeling), or maybe a crime film by Shinji Aoyama, with the sort of indefinite ending that marked many Japanese films from the early 2000s. This careful movie is all Brooksian drama, every shot drawing out its beginning and end, every take a deliberation on the dialogue. There is something subversive about filling a Cinemascope frame with people so completely ordinary—a little frumpy, neither attractive nor well-spoken, who sound heavy-handed when they try to say what they think is important and spend most of the time in winding, half-mumbled conversations, as if talk is just a way to stave off death, which here comes quickly and uncruelly. So there's the Glaswegian who seems to attract ill-fitting men: two cops and a killer. One her husband, one a suitor, and the third completely mysterious in his intentions (Keaton, all stares, no glances). There are people who aren't bad but never do good and people who may very well be bad but are full of the promise of good deeds; actually, there's no real difference between the two. You find yourself thinking of the violent husband, whose profession of newfound faith sounds so hollow, and the inarticulate (or poorly self-articulating) characters, sometimes just humiliating to watch, whose silences and pauses become so heavy that this movie ("an actor's film," they'll say) seems like an attack on the idea of conversation. Or maybe conversion. (2007, 93 min, DVD projection) IV
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More info at www.beverlyartcenter.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS:
The Silent Film Society of Chicago’s annual summer festival continues at the Portage Theater on Friday (8pm) with the Harold Lloyd comedy GIRL SHY (1924) and a Lloyd short, BACK INTO THE WOODS. Jay Warren provides live organ accompaniment.
The Bank of America Cinema screens Frank Capra’s little known 1930 feature LADIES OF LEISURE on Saturday at 8pm. Barbara Stanwyck stars.
Facets Cinémathèque plays the Belgian/French comedy RUMBA for a week.
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) concludes its Outdoor Summer Series with the 1949 British comedy KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS on Wednesday at dusk (DVD projection).
The Chicago Outdoor Film Festival (Grant Park) screens the Alfred Hitchcock classic PSYCHO on Tuesday at dusk.
Chicago Filmmakers presents two recent documentaries on the subject of gay marriage: IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH (2007) and IN MY FATHER'S CHURCH (2004). Screening on Saturday and Sunday at 8pm.
The Film Center kicks off the Black Harvest International Festival of Film and Video with seven different programs this week, which include several local productions and many visiting filmmakers. Highlighting week one is an advance screening of the documentary THE NINE LIVES OF MARION BARRY on Sunday at 5pm.
The Music Box continues with UNMISTAKEN CHILD and DEAD SNOW this week, which is also the second midnight film on Friday and Saturday (see THE THING above). The Saturday and Sunday matinee is the infectious 1933 musical FOOTLIGHT PARADE.
The Chicago International Film Festival’s Wednesday series at the Chicago Cultural Center continues this week with the 2007 Argentinean film THE OTHER (El Otro) at 6:30pm (DVD projection). |