This edition of Cine-File covers the three-week period December 20, 2013 to January 9, 2014. Late-announced screenings, last-minute additions, and updates to schedules at various venues will not be reflected here. Be sure to check venue websites for the most up-to-date information during this period.
Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended listings include all three weeks. More Screenings are listed individually by week.
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Aleksandr Sokurov's FAUST (Contemporary European)
Music Box Theatre - Opens Friday, December 20; Check Venue website for showtimes
All the world's made up of filthy flesh in Sokurov's latest, a version of the Faust story about as far from the political allegory of Marlowe, the metaphysical eroticism of Goethe, and the uncanny magicianry of Svankmajer as can be imagined. Sokurov's best work, 1990's SECOND CIRCLE and 2004's THE SUN, wear on their sleeves Sokurov's allegiance to the legacy of his mentor, Andrei Tarkovsky, and like Tarkovsky, Sokurov has developed an aesthetic of earthiness that finds in the very meatiness of the world a way to uncover the worth of existence, the incalculable value of continuing to be within a world that despite its horrors and pains is suffused in wonder. Tarkovsky's films showed that the experience of beauty comes at the moment we recognize that the world has always been identical to poetry, that our prosaic ways of life are but the ways we defend ourselves against the otherwise overwhelming onslaught of harmony that would otherwise destroy us with its intensity. Sokurov's career, to a large extent, has been dominated by this idea, and he has explored myriad ways of breaking free from its crushing conclusions. In FAUST, perhaps all at once his most Tarkovskian feature and the one that works hardest to undermine his master's work, Sokurov's powers are at their height. The film concludes a series of works about evil (others explore Hitler, Lenin, and Hirohito) with stunning stylistic aplomb. Serpentine hand-held camerawork moves effortlessly through a despair-infested 19th century hamlet while the walls bleed wine and the sky farts comets. Here, the devil has an asshole that stinks enough to make a grown man retch. The film's first real shot (after an embarrassing animated aerial view of Faust's town that's better left forgotten) begins with a giant close up of a corpse's decaying penis as Faust and his assistant Wagner attempt fruitlessly to find within the dead man's body some residue of his now departed soul. The implication seems clear: the world might be a place of glory, but it's a glory that's apparent only as it dwindles, a wonder discovered only when it's dead. For Faust, the exploration of the world is driven by a priapic desire; he recognizes that what's most amazing about life is that it, in contrast to everything else, can die, and he pursues that point of division with erotic urgency. Suffused with a sickly, gangrenous color scheme and shot through weirdly distorting lenses, FAUST has all the appearance of a zombie film: seemingly lifeless human forms lurch and scrap through a land of menace, denuded of the casual trappings of joy. Mephistopheles himself, reimagined as a predatory usurer, strips naked early in the film to reveal a grotesquely corrupted and disfigured body--misshapen, nightmarish, and impossible. In Tarkovsky's SOLARIS, itself in part a meditation on Faustian themes, a retired astronaut warns the protagonist that 'knowledge is truthful only if it's based in morality,' stressing that science leads to destruction when followed blindly. What we think we know is just illusion if its basis isn't virtuous. Sokurov's film can be seen as an elaboration on this point, but unlike SOLARIS's alien world, the grubby land of FAUST is incomprehensible not because it's fundamentally alien but because its people are irredeemably fallen. Faust himself, driven by his lusts to damnation, is symptomatic of a pervasive evil apparent in every frame, in every character. The end of the world, FAUST says, isn't nigh: it happened, and mere knowledge is loosed upon the world. (2011, 134 min, DCP Digital Projection) KB
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Blake Edwards' THE PARTY (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, December 21, 3pm and Thursday, December 26, 6pm
Despite the slapstick, the sight gags, and the character humor, this is really a film about modernism and architecture — a runner up to that other mid-century comedic masterpiece about modernism and architecture, Jacques Tati's PLAYTIME. Peter Sellers, in perhaps his sweetest role, is Hrundi V. Bakshi, an over-zealous actor from India imported to play in a Hollywood-shot British imperialist period epic. He proceeds to... no, I won't spoil it. This is prologue, though. He's then accidentally invited to a swank party at a studio exec's lavish home. He arrives, and immediately loses his shoe in a decorative water feature. Strike one for architecture! Throughout the remainder of the film, it's an unannounced battle between Bakshi and the building. Bakshi is constantly blocked in the frame by structural and decorative elements of the house, obscured, fragmented, hidden. Bakshi unknowingly, innocently, begins to take revenge. The battle of wills between the shy, awkward, pure-at-heart Eastern romantic and the brash, constraining, hard-edged 1960's American Modernism can only lead to chaos. And it does. And it's freaking hilarious. (1968, 99 min, 35mm) PF
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
David Lean's DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Thursday, December 26, 3pm and Saturday, December 28, 7:30pm
For many years my mom insisted that the Universal Studios tour used to include a walk through the Varykino "ice-palace" from DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, an apocryphal assertion I haven't been able to corroborate. If I had to guess I'd say she made the whole thing up, perhaps triggered by years of unpleasant piano lessons as a teenager when she was forced to learn to play "Lara's Theme" by Maurice Jarre. If it once balanced on the knife's edge of kitsch, somewhere between soapy romance and ambiguous Cold War commentary, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO has improved with age. Lean's superlative storytelling skills, which balance a marvelous sense of sweep and scope against a fine-honed depiction of personal cruelty, are aided and abetted by his gift for choosing just the right cast. Only Lean could cast an Egyptian as a Russian doctor and make it work. And then there's the editing, with some of the most exhilarating scene transitions in his filmography (such as the famous clank/streetcar edit singled out by Spielberg). Though Lean's latter films are studded with brilliant moments, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is his last great film. (1965, 192 min, 35mm) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Frank Zappa and Tony Palmer's 200 MOTELS (Experimental/Rock Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Saturday and Sunday, December 28 and 29, 11:30am
Whatever possessed the Music Box to schedule 200 MOTELS as a post-Christmas, Brunch-with-the-Mothers matinee, rather than a midnight attraction, defies human understanding--but then, so does this movie and I don't doubt that Zappa would have approved of this programming decision. Shot at Pinewood Studios in under a week on 2-inch videotape, with an endless array of in-camera effects, distortions, and disturbances, 200 MOTELS would eventually be blown up to 35mm and punched up with Vidtronics processing. (Zappa and Palmer beat Jacques Tati's similar tape-to-film experiment PARADE to cinemas by three years, but their achievements should be bracketed together as unruly dispatches in video democracy.) To say that it looks and sounds like no other movie would be an understatement; 200 MOTELS is a cinematic leper's colony, disfigured and mad. Comparisons to the early video art and computer animation of, say, Ed Emshwiller and John Whitney are minimally illuminating; if there's a psychedelia without exaltation, without wonder, without visionary dimensions, it's found in 200 MOTELS. "If there is more that can be done with videotape," observed Roger Ebert in his 1971 review, "I do not want to be there when they do it." What he's reacting to here--the ugly wit, the adolescent fixations, the animalistic, anti-intellectual rawness of the innovation--remains disarming today. So many films, whether 8 1/2 or THE LAST WALTZ, work overtime to assert that a commercial artist's privilege and success constitute a special kind of agony--the price of fame, unknown to those little people. 200 MOTELS is unique among road movies and rock movies in presenting the elephantine indignities of a Mothers of Invention tour as something accessible and recognizable to any resident of Centerville, USA. This is simultaneously incoherent and awesome, ugly and corrosively funny. With the Mothers of Invention, Ringo Starr of The Beatles, Keith Moon of The Who, and Theodore Bikel of countless bargain bin Yiddish LPs. (1971, 98 min, 35mm) KAW
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More info at www.musicboxthreatre.com.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Jacques Demy's THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (French Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Opens Friday, December 27; Check Venue website for showtimes
Jacques Demy is a cinematic alchemist. Ever present in his body of work is an uncanny ability to transform or combine standard, even banal, elements of various genres into 'gold'--or, rather, something so luminous and rarefied that it can only be Demy who's created it. THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is arguably the best of his films, and almost certainly the first film of his to so fully bend genre and style convention. Demy was both inspired by and considered to be a member of the French New Wave, and along with several of his peers, had an unabashed love for Hollywood studio musicals of the era. Demy's most 'New Wave-ish' films preceded THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG; LOLA (1960) and BAY OF ANGELS (1962) were shot in black and white, and dealt more straightforwardly with themes inherent to the movement. Both hinted at Demy's progression, but THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, when viewed in the context of his first three features, certainly stands out. (It's also his first film in color.) In an essay about the film for the Reader, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum admitted that he originally considered it to be a commercial sellout, comparing it to other "corny pretenders" allegedly borne of the New Wave but merely ascribing the label where it didn't belong. Demy's vision, especially in his later films, is understandably confounding, as he uses elements that, when mixed, shouldn't create gold. Virtually undefinable, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is neither just a musical nor entirely an opera. The film's narrative is completely conveyed through song, with a jazzy score by longtime Demy collaborator Michel Legrand providing the music against which the sung dialogue is set. It's about a young couple, Guy and Genevieve; she's the too-young daughter of an overbearing mother who owns an umbrella shop in Cherbourg, he's a mechanic who hasn't yet served his time with the French military. Their courtship is shown in the first part of the film, titled "Departure." Naturally, he's drafted to fight in the Algerian War and soon thereafter Genevieve learns she is pregnant. In this part, titled "Absence," Genevieve's mother compels her to consider the overtures of a well-to-do jeweler while Genevieve wonders if her and Guy's love is waning. (It was common among the New Wave filmmakers to reference other movies and characters in their own films, and here Demy references himself. The jeweler, Roland Cassard, was a suitor of Lola's in LOLA, and Lola herself returns in Demy's 1969 film MODEL SHOP.) Genevieve soon gives in to Roland, who accepts that she is pregnant with another man's child. In the third and final part, "Return," Guy is back from the war and spiraling out of control, likely due to Genevieve's desertion. The ending is bittersweet and surprisingly cynical, two hallmarks of Demy's romantic pragmatism. It has this in common with his previous films, and somewhat separates it from his 1967 film THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, in which all is happy in the end despite Demy's overall tone of deceptively joyful endurance. This and THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT are noted for their use of color, but the color schemes in each are distinct. In the latter, the fluffier of the two, sunny pastels and bright whites obscure any hint of grimy realism. In THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, which is more operatic in tone and structure, Demy utilizes bolder, more primary colors. This further allows for hints at the film's fateful bitterness. All that glitters is gold in Demy's world, but his is a gold that illuminates the screen while implying its own artifice. (1964, 91 min, DCP Digital Projection; New Digital Restoration) KS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Preston Sturges' THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (American Revival)
Northwest Chicago Film Society (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) - Sunday, December 22, 7:30pm
Critics of Preston Sturges' gradual canonization can find lots of ammunition in THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK: released in 1944, as World War II was winding down (and taking Sturges' career with it), the spirit of despair which had so memorably raised its head and been dismissed three years earlier in SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS here flowers into so pervasive a misanthropy that when Hilter and Mussolini show up, they serve as comic relief. Not only is there no room at the inn for mooncalves Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton, there's no room in the nation--and the fact that Akim Tamiroff and Brian Donleavy are the tutelary deities of this deconstructed Nativity, reprising their roles as big-time crooks The Boss and McGinty (from 1940's THE GREAT MCGINTY), just speaks further to the intrinsic corruption of the world of bumbling, close-minded old men, guileless 4Fs, and callow, manipulative good-time girls that Sturges posits is waiting for the (literally) nameless Boys in Uniform, should they ever make it home. The comedy here is mainly located in Sturges' usual sinuous dialogue and just-as-usual blustering slapstick--crescendoing during the "miraculous" ending, whose frenzy owes more to Chuck Jones than Lubitsch or Hawks. On the other hand, true-believers: Despair! Akim Tamiroff! Sturges dialogue! Chuck Jones! Is the miracle of MIRACLE the most outrageous metatextual intervention since THE LAST LAUGH? Say nay if you must, but Sturges was his own genre, and whether he makes you chortle aloud or stare in disbelief, you are either way more than getting your money's worth. (1944, 98 min, 35mm Archival Print) JD
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More info at www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org.
Carol Reed's ODD MAN OUT (British Revival)
Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) - Wednesday, January 8, 1 and 7:30pm (Free Admission)
It seems improbable at this late date that Carol Reed should still need rescuing from his own accomplishments with erstwhile screenwriter Graham Greene--namely, THE FALLEN IDOL (1948), THE THIRD MAN (1949), and OUR MAN IN HAVANA (1959)--but due in part to the undeniable deliciousness of this trio, and the fact that they are the only Reed films to generally see revival, the rest of his oeuvre typically gets dismissed on the strength of lukewarm reviews and career summaries that highlight the unevenness of his overall output. As such, it is all the more imperative to treasure the occasional screening of that ugly duckling of Reed's visible corpus, 1947's ODD MAN OUT: a work of unvarnished Catholic pessimism about the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, and almost as discomfiting a mixture of religious allegory, poetic realism, and hardboiled thriller as Frank Borzage's loopy STRANGE CARGO (1940)--albeit never crossing the line into outright fantasy, and with a profoundly hopeless cosmology, by comparison. "I know no other film which conveys such utter despair," wrote documentary editor and novelist Dai Vaughan in his excellent BFI monograph on ODD MAN, and it's true that there are few films--with or without allegorical baggage--to treat their protagonists (in this case, James Mason, though often subsumed by the rest of Reed's superb ensemble) with so casual a fatalism. This odd and portentous hybrid will never go down as easy as the Greenes, but that's all the more reason to pay attention and give it, and Reed, their due. (1947, 115 min, 35mm) JD
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More info at www.northbrook.info/events/film.
Luchino Visconti's THE LEOPARD (Italian Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Saturday, December 28, 3pm and Thursday, January 2, 7pm
THE LEOPARD is the most beloved film by Luchino Visconti, who remains one of cinema's most immersive chroniclers of past eras. His exquisite mise-en-scene (aided here by voluptuous Technirama, Technicolor's in-house version of CinemaScope) never fails to suggest living, breathing worlds; and his fluid camerawork, a major influence on both Michael Cimino and Olivier Assayas, creates the unique, sweet-and-sour flavor of nostalgia seen at an impossible distance. The film is an epic about an aristocratic family's final period of prominence; it takes place during the 19th century revolution that would come to remake Italy entirely. Burt Lancaster, in what he considered his finest performance, plays the family's patriarch, a tragic hero who must learn to cede his political authority in order to adapt for the coming era. Roger Ebert, in his Great Movies review of THE LEOPARD clearly agreed with Lancaster. He wrote, "An actor who always brought a certain formality to his work, who made his own way as an independent before that was fashionable, he embodies the prince as a man who has a great love for a way of life he understands must come to an end." This transition is dramatized in the film's audacious final third, which alone makes for crucial big-screen viewing. To quote Ebert again: "The film ends with a ballroom sequence lasting 45 minutes... Critic Dave Kehr called it "one of the most moving meditations on individual mortality in the history of cinema.' Visconti, Lancaster and Rotunno collaborate to resolve all of the themes of the movie in this long sequence in which almost none of the dialogue involves what is really happening. The ball is a last glorious celebration of the dying age; Visconti cast members of noble old Sicilian families as the guests, and in their faces, we see a history that cannot be acted, only embodied. The orchestra plays Verdi. The young people dance on and on, and the older people watch carefully and gauge the futures market in romances and liaisons." (1963, 186 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
David Lean's THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (British Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Thursday, December 26, 7pm and Friday, December 27, 3pm
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is the original David Lean blockbuster; if not the quintessential Lean movie it certainly embodies the themes and structures that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career. The overwhelming Britishness that is always at the heart of a Lean film is excitingly challenged by the presence of two outsider characters: a rugged, cynical American soldier (William Holden, in a superb performance which ranks alongside his turns in SUNSET BOULEVARD and NETWORK) and a rigid, taciturn Japanese commander (Sessue Hayakawa, using silence more eloquently than dialog). The trifecta helps the film maintain a perfect balance; sprawling yet tightly-told, obsessed with character shading as much as with the lush brutality of the jungle locale, beautifully captured by Jack Hildyard in CinemaScope. It's a damn good action picture that's also as existential as RUNAWAY TRAIN. (1957, 161 min, DCP Digital Projection) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Francis Ford Coppola's THE GODFATHER (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Sunday, December 29, 2pm
It's tough (or impossible) to summarize the impact THE GODFATHER has had. So, instead, only three points. Gordon Willis's brilliant cinematography--Rembrandt by way of Manhattan--made it acceptable for studio-made color films to be as shadowy and moody as the black & white noirs had been earlier. Where would classic paranoiac thrillers be without that added palette? Its flowing, epic structure, courtesy of Mario Puzo's screenplay and Coppola's subtle, no-nonsense direction, remains a model of classic storytelling. And finally, because of its amazing critical and commercial success, gangster movies have been continuously in vogue ever since. Utterly disgraceful then that, according to a New York Times article, the original negatives "were so torn up and dirty that they could no longer be run through standard film laboratory printing equipment, and so the only option became a digital, rather than a photochemical, restoration." Luckily Robert A. Harris, working with Willis and Coppola, stepped in to save the day. (1972, 175 min, DCP Digital Projection) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Hiroshi Teshigahara's ANTONIO GAUDI (Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center -- Friday-Thursday, December 20-26 (no shows Dec. 24 and 25), Check Venue website for showtimes
By now nearly a timeworn tradition, the Siskel's late-December run of Hiroshi Teshigahara's meditative and enigmatic ANTONIO GAUDI annually attracts a respectable and respectful crowd, with its fair share of SAIC architecture students done with finals and therefore blazed. In this film--devoid as it is of narration until the very end--every visual texture possesses its own subtle, droning sound: a particular class of curvature will produce an otherworldly gong-like shimmering; a long shot of Barcelona is accompanied by a low rumble. Anything involving intricate metalwork is, sonically, inexplicably menacing. Unless one is already ultra-familiar with Gaudi's oeuvre the viewer generally has no idea what they are looking at, where it is, or when it was constructed, and are thus transported to experiencing the cryptic persuasiveness of man-made structures before an age of writing and reading: to a time in which there may not have ostensibly been an explanatory narrative (or even a subtitle) for every surface. (1985, 72 min, 35mm) MC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Jeremiah S. Checik's CHRISTMAS VACATION (American Revival)
Logan Theatre - Friday, Saturday, and Monday, 10:30pm
It may seem odd to compare the first (and by far the best) of John Hughes' Christmas themed screenplays to REMEMBER THE NIGHT, but here goes. In Mitchell Leisen's holiday classic (penned by Preston Sturges) there's a pivotal scene where Lee, the thief played by Barbara Stanwyck, has just discovered that her hopes for a tearful Christmas reunion with her estranged family are utterly misguided. She's desperate, completely broken up. Then John, played by Fred MacMurray, who has taken it upon himself to escort Lee on this cockeyed errand, makes a decision; as casually as he can, tells her that she's welcome to spend Christmas with his own family. She cries, "Gee!" and collapses into his arms. But rather than linger on this sentimental moment, Leisen immediately dissolves to a close up of a painting of John's cross-eyed grandfather. This dissolve to the wacky painting immediately wipes away any whiff of heavy-handedness; in effect, comedy has been used as a tool to "sober up" the movie. Hughes does exactly the same thing in CHRISTMAS VACATION. Clark has locked himself in the attic, watching in vain as his family drives away for a holiday excursion without him. Stuck where he is, what can he do but dig out an old 8mm projector and watch some home movies from his childhood? As he rediscovers the tender scenes of yesteryear and Ray Charles croons "That Spirit of Christmas" on the soundtrack, something remarkable happens. A movie which up until now has been silly, vulgar, and sarcastic suddenly becomes downright, unapologetically sentimental. For a moment. But then the family returns and Beverly pulls down the attic door that Clark happens to be sitting on ...wham-o. CHRISTMAS VACATION also captures to a tee that hothouse, semi-claustrophobic atmosphere caused when too many relatives take up residence together during the holidays. "Can I refill your eggnog for you? Get you something to eat? Drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you for dead?" (1989, 97 min, Unconfirmed Format) RC
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More info at www.thelogantheatre.com.
Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre and The Patio - Friday-Tuesday, December 20-24 at the MB, Check Venue website for showtimes; Saturday, December 21, 1 and 5pm at The Patio (Free Admission at the Patio)
Like Steven Spielberg today, Frank Capra was associated more with reassuring, patriotic sentiment than with actually making movies; but just beneath the Americana, his films contain a near-schizophrenic mix of idealism and resentment. In this quality, as well as his tendency to drag charismatic heroes through grueling tests of faith, it wouldn't be a stretch to compare Capra with Lars von Trier. There's plenty to merit the comparison in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE alone: The film is a two-hour tour of an honest man's failure and bottled-up resentment, softened only intermittently by scenes of domestic contentment. Even before the nightmarish Pottersville episode (shot in foreboding shadows more reminiscent of film noir than Americana), Bedford Falls is shown as vulnerable to the plagues of recession, family dysfunction, and alcoholism. All of these weigh heavy on the soul of George Bailey, a small-town Everyman given tragic complexity by James Stewart, who considered the performance his best. Drawing on the unacknowledged rage within ordinary people he would later exploit for Alfred Hitchcock, Stewart renders Bailey as complicated as Capra himself—a child and ultimate victim of the American Dream. Ironically, it's because the film's despair feels so authentic that its iconic ending feels as cathartic as it does: After being saved from his suicide attempt (which frames the entire film, it should be noted), Stewart is returned to the simple pleasures of family and friends, made to seem a warm oasis in a great metaphysical void. Showing as a double-bill at the Music Box only with Michael Curtiz's 1954 film WHITE CHRISTMAS (120 min, DCP Digital Projection). Tickets available individually or as a double feature. (1946, 130 min, DCP Digital Projection) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com and www.patiotheater.net.
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MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
December 20 to December 26
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Kerry Candaele's 2013 documentary FOLLOWING THE NINTH: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BEETHOVEN'S FINAL SYMPHONY (78 min, DCP Digital Projection) begins a two-week run; Wong Kar-wai's 2013 film THE GRANDMASTER (108 min, US Edit, DCP Digital Projection) screens on Friday and Saturday at 7:45pm and Sunday at 4:45pm; Pedro Almodóvar's 2013 film I'M SO EXCITED (90 min, DCP Digital Projection) screens for a week (no shows on Tuesday and Wednesday); and Blake Edwards' great 1964 Peter Sellers comedy A SHOT IN THE DARK (101 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 5pm and Monday at 7:45pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Mark Mori's 2012 documentary BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL (101 min) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am; Michael Curtiz's 1954 classic WHITE CHRISTMAS (120 min, DCP Digital Projection) plays as a double feature with IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE through Thursday only (see Also Recommended above); and John Sturges' 1963 film THE GREAT ESCAPE (172 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Wednesday at 6pm.
Facets Cinémathèque screens Neil LaBute's 2013 film SOME VELVET MORNING (83 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week (no shows on Tuesday and Wednesday).
Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) hosts an Open Screening and Holiday Party on Saturday at 7:30pm. Take a film to screen (20 minutes max; DVD, Blu-Ray, or Digital File; Family friendly work only), take some potluck food, or just go to watch. Free admission; $2 suggested donation if empty-handed.
The Chicago Public Library - Bezazian Branch (1226 W. Ainslie St.) screens Michael Apted and Paul Almond's 2012 documentary 56 UP (144 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at 2pm. Free admission.
Also at the Logan Theatre this week: Bob Clark's 1983 film A CHRISTMAS STORY (94 min, Unconfirmed Format) is on Saturday and Sunday at 12:30pm; and Jalmari Helander's 2010 film RARE EXPORTS (84 min) is on Thursday at 10:30pm.
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MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
December 17 to January 2
The Northwest Chicago Film Society (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) presents Allen Baron's stark late noir BLAST OF SILENCE (1961, 77 min, 35mm) on Sunday at 7:30pm.
At the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Julian Jones' 2013 documentary INSIDE THE MIND OF LEONARDO (85 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Friday at 6pm and Saturday at 3pm [note that other previously scheduled screenings have been cancelled due to a change in plans by the distributor]; Will Slocombe's 2013 film COLD TURKY (84 min, DCP Digital Projection) plays for a week (no shows on Tuesday and Wednesday); Kerry Candaele's 2013 documentary FOLLOWING THE NINTH: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BEETHOVEN'S FINAL SYMPHONY (78 min, DCP Digital Projection) continues its two-week run; Wong Kar-wai's 2013 film THE GRANDMASTER (108 min, US Edit, DCP Digital Projection) screens on Friday at 7:45pm, Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 4:45pm; and two films from special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen screen: Don Chaffey's 1963 JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (104 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 3pm and Thursday at 6pm and Nathan Juran's 1958 THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (88 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 5pm and Monday at 6pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film MOULIN ROUGE! (127 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Tuesday at 9:30pm; Sergio Leone's 1966 western THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (161 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Friday at 7:30pm and Wednesday at 3pm; Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film THE GODFATHER PART II (200 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Sunday at 6pm; Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film SEVEN SAMURAI (207 min, 35mm) is on Monday at 3pm and Wednesday at 7pm; Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film APOCALYPSE NOW (153 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Monday at 7pm and Tuesday at 3pm; John Sturges' 1963 film THE GREAT ESCAPE (172 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Thursday at 3pm; Abel Ferrara's 1981 film MS. 45 (Unconfirmed Running Time, DCP Digital Projection; new digital transfer of the uncut version) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight; and Quentin Dupieux's 2013 film WRONG COPS (Unconfirmed Running Time, DCP Digital Projection) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Facets Cinémathèque screens Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal's 2010 drama STRANGER THINGS (77 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week (no shows on Wednesday); and Neil LaBute's 2013 film SOME VELVET MORNING (83 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday and Sunday at 1pm.
Chatham 14 (210 W 87th St.) screens João Viana's 2013 drama from Guinea-Bissau THE BATTLE OF TABATO (78 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Thursday at 7pm.
The Whistler (2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents the Odd Obsession Foreign Film Series on Saturday at 7pm, followed by Impala Sound Champion DJs. Film title unconfirmed at press time.
Logan Theatre
Check Venue website for scheduled screenings
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MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
January 3 - January 9
The Museum of Contemporary Art presents, in cooperation with Chicago Film Archives, the shorts program City to See on Tuesday at 6pm. Screening are Harry Mantel's MARINA CITY WAITRESS (1970s), Margaret Conneely's CHICAGO TO SEE IN '63 (1962), 158 W ERIE (1971), Roger Hammond's ROOFTOP ROAD (1977; faded print), Lawrence Janiak's HALE HOUSE (1965), Gordon Weisenborn's CHICAGO MURAL: MIDWEST METROPOLIS (c. 1960), and Tom Palazzolo's TATTOOED LADY OF RIVERVIEW (1967). Approx. 82 min total; all 16mm. Free for Illinois residents or with museum admission.
At the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Laura Colella's 2012 drama BREAKFAST WITH CURTIS (84 min, DCP Digital Projection) have five screenings; Frederick Wiseman's 2013 documentary AT BERKELEY (244 min, DCP Digital Projection) also has five screenings [with additional shows on Wednesdays next week through February 5]; Joseph Levy's 2012 documentary SPINNING PLATES (93 min, DCP Digital Projection) begins a two-week run; Katrina Parks' 2013 documentary THE HARVEY GIRLS: OPPORTUNITY BOUND (57 min, HDCam Video) is on Saturday at 3pm, with Producer/editor Thaddeus Homan in person; Dheeraj Akolkar's 2012 documentary LIV & INGMAR (89 min, DCP Digital Projection), on Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman, has five screenings; and Eric Steel's 2013 documentary KISS THE WATER (80 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Saturday at 5pm and Monday at 6pm.
At the Music Box Theatre this week: Paolo Sorrentino's 2013 film THE GREAT BEAUTY (142 min, DCP Digital Projection), Wladyslaw Pasikowski's 2012 film AFTERMATH (107 min, DCP Digital Projection), and Sundance Film Festival Short Films (93 min total, DCP Digital Projection) all open; Frank Oz's 1984 film MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN (94 min, 35mm) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am; and Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy BLAZING SADDLES (93 min, 35mm) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Facets Cinémathèque
Check Venue website for scheduled screenings
Logan Theatre
Check Venue website for scheduled screenings
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
The Museum of Contemporary Art continues Chicago Works: Lilli Carré through April 15, 2014. The show includes a video work by Carré.
The Museum of Contemporary Art continues City Self through April 13. The show includes Sarah Morris's 2011 film Chicago.
UPDATES/CLOSURES
The Portage Theatre remains closed for the foreseeable future.
The Patio Theater has discontinued its regular programming and seems to only be hosting irregular special events. Note that the Northwest Chicago Film Society screenings for the remainder of 2013 have moved to Sundays at the Gene Siskel Film Center (11:30am or 7:30pm - check the NWCFS website for details).
