Due to the holidays, this edition covers a three-week period. Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended covers all three weeks, so pay attention to the dates listed. More Screenings and Events is split into three groupings, by week. Some venues didn’t have complete information by our deadline, so be sure to check websites for added or held-over screenings.
CRUCIAL VIEWING (December 16 – January 5)
[Screenings listed in roughly chronological order]
Near Dead: Films by Michael Wawzenek (New Experimental)
Nightingale Cinema (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) – Friday, December 16, 7pm
The longest piece in this program, RISINGS (2012, 20 min), is at once delicate and stirring. Shot on the streets of Thailand, the work consists of three static, carefully composed long takes (reminiscent of those in Abbas Kiarostami’s FIVE) that observe crowd behavior. The first of these shots is a ground-level view of a group of young girls watching a dance performance in the street; the choreography occupies the upper left-hand corner of the screen, the girls occupy the center, and various passersby flit across the right-hand side. Wawzenek achieves a lovely balance here between stasis and movement, spectacle and tedium, and the shot reaches a sense of climax when the girls eventually take the stage to perform their own dance. The second shot fixes on a large room that may be a cafeteria or bus station. A westerner sits idly on the left side of the screen, failing to interact with any of the locals. Here the tension is between the local and the exotic—what may be mundane to most of the people in the room seems strange when considered from the foreigner’s point of view. The third shot of RISINGS ties together the themes and images of the first two, as Wawzenek’s camera observes a group of western women taking part in an outdoor public ritual. The crowd lights and then releases paper lanterns, which rise to the sky like a giant flock of birds. The activity in the bottom half of the frame decelerates as the top half fills with floating lanterns; one perceives a sense of wonderment that unites east and west. RISINGS could be deemed Cagean in its fascination with duration and stillness, and, not surprisingly, another short in this program, 4’33’’4:3 (2015, 5 min), is directly inspired by Cage. Also on the program are three short works that evoke feelings of transience and off-the-cuff awe—BREAKBONE FEVER (2013, 7 min), BLUE ISLAND (2014, 7 min), and BE (W)HERE (2015, 6 min)—and a live 16mm projector performance piece, NEAR DEAD. (2012-2016, approx 60 min total, 16mm and Digital Projection) BS
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More info at http://nightingalecinema.org.
Remi Chaye’s LONG WAY NORTH (New French Animation)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday-Thursday, December 16-29, Check Venue website for showtimes
This delightful French/Danish co-production, the directorial debut of one Remi Chaye, sneaks into the Gene Siskel Film Center just in the nick of time to claim the title of best new animated film to play Chicago in 2016. LONG WAY NORTH is a rollicking adventure story that centers on Sasha (voiced by Christa Theret and Chloe Dunn), a 15-year-old girl in 19th century Russia who defies the wishes of her aristocratic parents and sets out for the North Pole to look for her grandfather, an explorer who went missing there while on an expedition during the previous year. At stake is the grandfather’s reputation since his ship, the Davai, was supposed to be “unsinkable” and his ill-fated mission has branded him a laughingstock and a failure. While the story is alternately poignant and thrilling, and likely to give young viewers a genuine and welcome dose of grrrl power, the real star of the show here is the beautiful hand-drawn animation; Chaye got his start in filmmaking as one of the layout artists on Jean-François Laguionie’s THE ISLAND OF BLACK M’OR (2004), which LONG WAY NORTH resembles both in its conception as an almost Herzogian young-adult adventure on the high seas as well as in its early comic-book style of illustration, where clean lines and broad, clearly separated planes of color create bold and indelible graphic images. LONG WAY NORTH will screen at the Siskel in both its original French-language version with English subtitles and in an English-dubbed version. Check the venue’s website for detailed information on the showtimes of each version. (2015, 81 min, DCP Digital) MGS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Pablo Larrain’s NERUDA (New Chilean)
Music Box Theatre – Opens December 30; Check Venue website for showtimes
In a year where Pablo Larrain is best known to American audiences for his film JACKIE, NERUDA slides in at the end of 2016 with a bang. Following the political life and exile of famed poet Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), the film is an atypical biopic. In the late 1940s, Pablo Neruda is a Senator in the Chilean political machine who is discovered to be a communist and forced to go on the lam. Chased by the son of a well-known Chilean police detective (Gael García Bernal), what follows is an amalgamation and deconstruction of historical facts plus a romanticized narrative from the viewpoint of Neruda. Larrain’s film seeks to blur the lines of the past and humanizes the poet in profound manner. What’s most striking about the film is the dual-tiered plot lines, one following the titular character and the other Bernal’s character and the way in which they both manage to coexist despite their obvious differences. The film’s verisimilitude brings Neruda’s legacy to the forefront: will he be remembered as the master wordsmith he was or as the Red political figure who fled his country as an outcast? In the end, NERUDA is a film that delves into the backstory of one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, encapsulating not only his impact on the common people but also his effect on Chile’s political climate in the 1940s. (2016, 107 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Mervyn LeRoy's GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, December 31 and January 1, 11:30am
"We're in the money," rejoices Ginger Rogers as she bustles through the signature tune of Depression era classic GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, mere moments before the performance is halted by creditors who've come to shut down the whole shebang. It's a moment where the realities of life intrude (obnoxiously) on escapism, something that the film offers up in spades, even as it very consciously defines these flights of fancy by the national crisis that provokes them. Though heaps of credit for this pre-code spectacle rightly go to Busby Berkeley and his inimitable brand of musical delirium, more than a modicum of thanks is owed to Mervyn LeRoy, who succeeds admirably in the task of making the space between Berkeley numbers seem so much more than just downtime. Plucky showgirls scheming and seducing rich suitors is a surefire combination for hilarity, and LeRoy wisely keeps a blinding pace; a calculated move, because fun as the plot may be, Berkeley's contributions are still the main event. And goodness, what an event! "The Shadow Waltz" synchronizes violinists and their electric instruments in a perspective-shattering dance in the dark, while the innuendo laden "Pettin' in the Park" almost dares the Production Code into existence (and allows Billy Barty to make a claim for the title of creepiest child in cinema). But the real gold lies in the final number, the haunting ballad of displaced veterans, "Remember My Forgotten Man." Joan Blondell kicks off this song from the curbside, followed by a harrowing solo from Edna Moten Barnett, and after visions of breadlines and downtrodden soldiers drift through the frame, Blondell brings it all home in a show stopping number so enveloping that there's scarcely time to wonder how such mindless escapism became uncompromising social commentary. (1933, 97 min, 35mm) TJ
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora's THY FATHER'S CHAIR (New Documentary)
Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, January 4, 7:30pm
This amusing, exceptionally well-crafted documentary takes as its subject a pair of aging Orthodox Jewish twins with hoarding tendencies. Having spent their lives perusing religious texts, the brothers, lost in the wake of their parents' deaths, have let their ancestral apartment become a junkyard. Finally, they are forced to call in a team of professional cleaners, led by dogged but compassionate Hanan, who finds it difficult to wrest away even an old magazine smeared with cat feces. It's fun to watch the diverse crew communicate with the twins and to listen to the (subtitled) New York language. The brothers are impossible but likable and, in a sense, childlike. With its chiaroscuro compositions, THY FATHER'S CHAIR is a sterling example of observational film, playing like an homage to two late greats, Chantal Akerman and Albert Maysles. With its dotty subjects and gone-to-the-cats milieu, it recalls Maysles' classic GREY GARDENS (co-directed with his brother David). Like that film's Edith and Edie, Avraham and Shraga live almost out of time. Reading an unearthed Megillah scroll aloud, Shagra suddenly begins intoning in much the way it was probably done 2,000 years ago. The film is dedicated to Akerman, evidently inspired by her observational camera and themes of self-enclosure. Co-director Tibaldi has said his goal was "to find the subjectivity in the situation. I always wanted the camera to peer through the eyes of the characters." Notice how subtly, almost invisibly, the camera embodies point of view. At one point we gaze with Avraham at a chair newly visible in the corner. This, he later says, was his father's chair. He must find out if he is allowed to sit in it, and if so, if he even wants to. There's a universal human metaphor here, for what's to be held onto and what's to be let go, which finds its resolution in a quietly moving final image of acceptance and peace. This is a special screening by the True/False Film Festival, featuring a warm-up set by a live band, Mar Caribe, beginning at 7pm, and a post-film conversation with co-director Tibaldi. Preceding the film will be Nathan Truesdell's 6-minute short BALLOONFEST. (2015, 74 min, DCP Digital) SP
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Charles Burnett's NAT TURNER: A TROUBLESOME PROPERTY (Experimental TV Documentary)
Black World Cinema and South Side Projections at Studio Movie Grill-Chatham (210 W. 87th St.) – Thursday, January 5, 7pm
Earlier this year, the only thing that seemed a surer bet than the coronation of President Hillary Clinton was the raft of industry recognition awaiting Nate Parker's THE BIRTH OF A NATION. Acquired out of Sundance for a record $17.5 million, THE BIRTH OF A NATION would single-handedly slay #OscarsSoWhite, vindicate Black Lives Matter, and supersede the most embarrassing landmark in the history of American film. And it may well have done so, had it not been directed, written, produced, and acted by an ambitious young man who, while not found guilty of rape by a jury of his peers, did and said just about everything to demonstrate his complicity in the patriarchy and its reign of sexual violence. The film itself, which proved to be a more studied reversal of Griffith than its detractors acknowledged, was ultimately judged too pedestrian to justify a trip to the parapets—even by some of the same critics who met it with hosannas in Park City. One reason that the film never gels as well as the Sundance audience psyched itself into believing it did is Parker's one-dimensional conception of his central figure, Nat Turner. Parker's Turner is the most prosaic of prophets, a man seized by visions but never gripped by madness—a rational messiah who plans a slave rebellion with all the visionary abandon of a corporate executive deciding where to site a suburban department store. This unilluminating interpretation of Turner is deliberately at odds with the earliest accounts of the man's life, which come down to us from the white attorney Thomas Gray, who interviewed Turner in his jail cell after the rebellion had been put down. This Turner recalled ears of corn bleeding (an image included, but not contextualized, in Parker's film) and rated this judgment from Gray: “He is a complete fanatic, or plays his part most admirably.” Gray's beastly prophet is the jumping-off point in Charles Burnett's extraordinary essay film NAT TURNER: A TROUBLESOME PROPERTY. Produced for public television, and eventually aired there in somewhat truncated form, Burnett's documentary remains a startlingly radical enterprise. Burnett interrogates Gray's account, William Styron's 1967 novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, and a host of other historical sources, each of them bearing a particular and politicized inflection. There is nothing accidental about this fluidity; Turner's story invites, and is enlarged by, contestation. The brilliance of the film—and its value as a teaching tool—comes from its insight that historiography is no mere pedagogue's method, but our essential means of reclaiming and understanding Turner's contradictions. As Alfre Woodward's narration explains, "after his death, [Turner's] words will become the property of others, as his body was during his life." This is his fate, his legacy, his promise. At the film's conclusion, Burnett turns the camera on himself, effectively reinforcing the lesson that all historical accounts emanate from a place of subjectivity and political utility. The very form of the thing—the competing talking heads, the re-enactments, the voiceover—reveals itself to be an active grammar; by deconstructing itself, NAT TURNER: A TROUBLESOME PROPERTY emphasizes the troublesome air of authoritative gentility that wafts through so many TV documentaries. The most invisible and unprovocative kind of storytelling serves only to obscure the teller. (2003, 60 min, DVD Projection) KAW
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More info at www.southsideprojections.org and http://blackworldcinema.net/blog.
Alan J. Pakula’s ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Thursday, January 5, 7pm
The paranoid work of art makes terrible demands on us. The world, it says, is built with you in mind, and malevolently so, with a double existence to everything, a public face, which exists to fool you—exactly you—and a private one, which isn't really private at all, but known widely to everyone but you, the dupe and victim of deception. It is the scary flip-side to Dziga Vertov’s kino-eye, a cinema that could reveal the world as it really was, erased of all ideology and mystification, that would let us take control of our lives and society and be our own masters. Paranoid cinema also tells us that the world as it is is different than the world as we believe it to be, but so we can better understand the degree to which we will never be free from the inescapability of the forces that have us in their thrall. Vertov and Alan J. Pakula, director of the high water mark of paranoid cinema, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, share few surface similarities in terms of style, but Vertov’s philosophy of technological vision, his theories of how cinema could show us reality, could have privileged access to the actual that we with our fleshy limitations could not have, and thus how movies could be tools for revealing that which pernicious forces wanted kept concealed, is a powerful tool for understanding Pakula’s magnificent and troubling works of the 70s and 80s. In this film, which chronicles the fall of Nixon’s regime after the Watergate burglary, Pakula constructs a web of dizzying shots that interfere not just with one another but even, crucially in the deeply moving final image, with themselves, producing dialectical frissons that, while horrifying Vertov with their fictionality, encompass more than almost any other filmmaker I can think of the ideal cinema he imagined. Spaces in Pakula’s hands turn ghastly, haunted. Performances fight each other for dominance—notably Hoffmann and Redford, each of whom seems unable to be in the same shot together without attempting to consume the other with capital-T Technique. Secrets become physical, hoarded, liabilities that weigh us down with their sad, precious inertia. Pakula brilliantly uses his zoom lens and split diopter to continually show a space and then disrupt that space, show us one projection of the world only to then undermine that projection. Like De Palma, whose debt to this filmmaker has yet to be sufficiently examined, Pakula capitalizes on various changing optical distortions to make his film a network of half-glimpsed secrets, of tantalizingly concealed truths always noticed just when they're being lost. Vertov wanted to use cinema to emancipate the world from its political and economic masters; Pakula’s film uses it to show how duped we've always already been by the forces of power. As Woodward and Bernstein trace the unraveling strands of the vast Presidential conspiracy they've stumbled across, their efforts are undone and neutralized not merely by the conspiracy’s members but by Pakula’s moving evocations of a Washington, DC that is horribly legible, deeply logical, but whose truths are inaccessible to us, and whose methods and intentions are directed at subverting and perverting everything we hold dear. (1976, 138 min, 35mm) KB
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED (December 16 – January 5)
[Screenings listed in roughly chronological order]
Jaco Van Dormael’s THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT (New Belgian)
Music Box Theatre – Opens December 16; Check Venue website for showtimes
God exists in human-manifestation form, and he lives in Brussels with his wife and daughter, Ea. In this modern take on the Bible, God is depicted in Old Testament form, primarily as a cynical, sadistic overseer of humanity who affects humanity via his personal computer. When Ea discovers her father’s secret, she reveals its truths to all (including the date upon which everyone will die) and runs away to become a modern day Jesus. Dormael’s film is darkly funny and one that explores Christianity from a 21st Century perspective, mainly through the scopes of disenfranchisement and sarcasm. What’s most amusing about the film’s tilt on modern faith is the depiction of God as a grumpy writer who relishes in tormenting others as opposed to the usual omniscient, benevolent figure seen in multiple religious works. Sequences featuring Ea recruiting her new apostles often showcase mankind’s inherent flaws but also raise interesting metaphysical questions. THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT is a cheeky take on what would happen if God lived in modern times and what sort of impact this would have on humanity if everyone were in on the revelations. (2015, 112 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Chan-wook Park’s THE HANDMAIDEN (New Korean)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday-Thursday, December 16-22; Check Venue website for showtimes
Widely known for his Revenge Trilogy, which includes the seminal OLDBOY, Chan-wook Park’s films have frequently employed the use of retribution. His latest work, although less violent than some of his previous outings, finds the Korean director swimming in familiar waters. In THE HANDMAIDEN, a swindler is hired by a Japanese heiress (set to inherit an exorbitant amount of priceless books) to be her handmaiden; but she is secretly planning to steal her employer’s fortune by having the heiress committed to an insane asylum through the help of her partner, who plans to marry her. The film is divided into three parts, with each part building upon the previous as new twists and wrinkles are exposed through perspective shifts. The resulting web is complex and mischievous. The love story is equal parts passionate and perverted. Love of all kinds is explored and Park does not shy away from sensual moments. From gorgeous cherry blossom trees to rolling fog over a river, the cinematography captures everything in a large depth of field. This added clarity helps to show off what's at stake (such as the heiress's gigantic estate) as well as to provide the audience with more screen real estate in which to catch clues. THE HANDMAIDEN finds Park in peak creative form thanks to its captivating source material, dynamic cast, and beautiful undertones. (2016, 144 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
WHITE/WONDERFUL Double Feature
Music Box Theatre – Friday, December 16 – Saturday, December 24, Various Days and Showtimes; Check Venue website for details
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Michael Curtiz's WHITE CHRISTMAS (American Revival)
Critics agree that Mark Sandrich's HOLIDAY INN (1942), the first musical comedy to feature Bing Crosby, an inn, and Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," is a better film than this partial remake. Yet it turns out that it's revivals of this Technicolor, VistaVision version that people look forward to this time of year. WHITE CHRISTMAS incorporates the history of its own title song, which, while it would go on to become perhaps history's largest-seller, actually seemed a flop at first. Music historians Dave Marsh and Steve Propes note, "What saved 'White Christmas' were requests made by GIs to Armed Forces Radio around the world. Soldiers away from home, many of them in the South Pacific or North Africa, uncertain of whether they'd ever again see family and friends, let alone a snowfall, responded passionately to Berlin's understated evocation of the mythic romance of Christmas Past." This history is folded into the opening scene: it's Christmas Eve, 1944, somewhere on a World War II battlefield, and Crosby sings the song to fellow troops amidst some very fake rubble, as bombs explode in the background. The movie's got Crosby and Danny Kaye as music-and-lyrics team Wallace and Davis, and Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney as sister act the Haynes. They're a treat to watch even just sitting around a railroad passenger car singing "Snow," bound for Pine Tree, Vermont, where the inn turns out to be run by ex-General Waverly (Dean Jagger). When people gather for a screening of this movie, I doubt they worry that it may not rank with Michael Curtiz's best work (CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, MILDRED PIERCE). They come to mark the change of years together. If there's a season for nestling in the warmth of nostalgia, it's this one. Plus, there's the camp appeal of Crosby and Kaye doing "Sisters." (1954, 120 min, DCP Digital) SP
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Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (American Revival)
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. (1946, 130 min, DCP Digital) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
John McTiernan's DIE HARD (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Monday, December 19, 4:30 and 9:30pm
Non-aficionados of narrative overanalysis are basically going to have to step off in the case of DIE HARD, which is inarguably a modern masterpiece of both structuralist and psychoanalytic semiosis. As an n-dimensional mythological lattice posing as an unpretentious, violent movie, DIE HARD simultaneously pits East Coast vs. West Coast, Eastern capitalism vs. Western capitalism, work vs. family, local vs. global, working class vs. upper class, white vs. black ad infinitum, all entirely immersed in the sacred moment of the pagan Winter Solstice. How, indeed, will John McClane (Bruce Willis) reassert values of patriarchy and Anglo supremacy during this longer-term period of acute economic and multicultural transformation? The answer is by defeating a band of indeterminately Euro monsters who erupt from his unconscious on Christmas Eve as he attempts to renegotiate the terms of his marriage in a building played by—in one of Hollywood's premier self-reflexive architectural cameos—20th Century Fox's brand new office tower. Additionally, the film is creatively suffused in a wide variety of explicit and implicit Christmas-related symbolism (our red-footed hero frequently sends explosive "presents" to lower floors, bond certificates float through the air like snow, etc.) However, the present-day evidence of the film's DVD commentary track suggests that director John McTiernan is almost completely unaware of what he has done, remaining entirely concerned with the implementation of shrill, irrelevant action set pieces. Showing as a double-bill with Joe Dante's 1984 film GREMLINS. (1988, 131 min, 35mm) MC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Richard Curtis' LOVE ACTUALLY (British Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, December 20, 4:45 and 9:30pm
Of the world of modern romantic comedies, so shaped by Richard Curtis' pen (BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY, NOTTING HILL, FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL), I once knew naught. This, despite my great affection for the rom-coms of the 30s and 40s. It took a connoisseur like my wife to clue me in. Upon first viewing LOVE ACTUALLY, Curtis' maiden attempt at wielding the camera, I was scandalized. "Curtis, you have no shame!" I cried. It took repeated administerings over several holiday seasons. Slowly, my amazement grew to fascination, and pretty soon I was clamoring for it as soon as December rolled around. Today, I believe it to be one of the age's great entertainments, a milestone in the canon of UK-US Christmas pop culture. It dawned on me that it was Curtis' utter lack of shame that constituted his greatness. He is completely sincere; he cannot be embarrassed. He achieves moments of real dramatic and psychological verisimilitude, then happily chucks them in favor of fantasy. I began to see the film as a modern, cheerily explicit, sexy equivalent of my cherished P.G. Wodehouse novels. Like Wodehouse, Curtis breezily choreographs a complex farandole of plot and subplot, stacking and spinning ten storylines at once. Even after umpteen viewings, one spots new connections, marvels at Curtis' conducting of the relationships and destinies of a bevy of Londoners, embodied by pleasing players like Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightly, Laura Linney and Bill Nighy. LOVE ACTUALLY is a film that even the vinegary David Thomson, in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, calls "a triumph." It will restore your faith in humanity. It's very funny, and it gets you in the mood. My wife reckons that the transcendent detail is the way the "enigmatic" Carl (Rodrigo Santoro) plays with Linney's hair as they dance. In response, I can only muse happily over how much I still have to learn. Showing as a double-bill with Jon Favreau’s ELF. (2003, 135 min, DCP Digital) SP
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Kelly Reichardt's CERTAIN WOMEN (New American)
Gene Siskel Film Center – December 23-29; Check Venue website for showtimes
Ever since America decided to nullify itself last month, the so-called bubble-dwellers have been endlessly lectured, cajoled, shamed, and tsk-tsked by a cadre of opportunist pundits hell-bent on prettifying white nationalism. Their weapon of choice has been a crooked cudgel of empathy—the daily drumbeat that cosmopolitan 'identity politics' is over, that coastal elites don't understand the economic anxiety of third-generation factory hands in our one-stoplight towns, and that liberals can never hope to come anywhere close to regaining power until they reckon with the white working class's long-standing cultural affinity with Vladimir Putin. Don't condescend to hard-working real Americans, don't denigrate xenophobia, don't badmouth sexual assault, don't mock Pizzagate conspiracy theorists. This quisling impulse arises from a deep unfamiliarity with the actual artistic output of the arugula set, frequently awash in sentimental examinations of the upheaval of fraying communities, the scourge of meth addiction, the plight of under-employed, middle-aged white men. Noted coastal elitist and great American filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, who teaches at hippie-dippie, clothing-optional Bard College, recently made a movie that speaks to rural America with more genuine empathy and curiosity than a thousand scolding op-eds. Would the legion of Trump voters recognize themselves in it? CERTAIN WOMEN, adapted by Reichardt from a trio of stories by Maile Meloy, is not simply a film randomly plopped down in Montana to score a tax rebate. Its whole rhythm and grammar arises organically from the setting and its pokier pace of life. (Remember those "Montana Moment" tourism adverts that plastered the CTA trains a few years back?) The first story, which might loosely be described as a true crime legal thriller starring Laura Dern, checks all its thematic boxes but does not translate Reichardt's aesthetic to down 'n' dirty genre mechanics as effectively as NIGHT MOVES. The second remains under-developed, with Michelle Williams as a walking McSweeney's caricature, dedicated to building a cabin exclusively from locally-sourced railroad ties. But the third story—an extended diner duet between Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone—belongs among Reichardt's best work. Somewhere along the way, the accumulation of daily rhythms—cleaning a horse stable, driving down a darkened interstate, waiting in an empty classroom, crossing a parking lot—builds to something much more powerful than the sum of its parts. It becomes an argument for a way of life, an act of inoculation and reclamation. A lesser work would be content with settling; this one levitates until it grazes solace. (2016, 107 min, DCP Digital) KAW
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
D.A. Pennebaker's DON'T LOOK BACK (Documentary Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, December 23, 7:45pm; Monday, December 26, 5:15pm; and Wednesday, December 28, 6pm
A driving force in the Direct Cinema movement, documentary director D.A. Pennebaker made his reputation with this 1967 film about Bob Dylan on the road in England. Taking place almost exclusively in hotel suites, green rooms, and the crowded back seats of taxis, we simply stand in the corner and watch. Since we don't see too much of the streets, its as if we jump from city to city, and one night is only differentiated from the others by the cast of characters and the choice of liquor. The Star holds court with soon-to-be ex-girlfriend Joan Baez, Alan Price (the Animals), and most iconically, a young Donovan, who is put firmly in his place as a lesser artist when Dylan's insecurity and arrogance manifest themselves on screen. The film takes us along for the ride as the camera rolls without much intervention, and we march towards a final concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Scenes play out slowly, and we often don't notice the tension building as Pennebaker's deft editing makes it seem like real time. It is a simple portrait of the artist at 23, and it gave the public a taste of life on the road with Dylan without shying away from his negative traits. Dylan now claims he was acting throughout the film, but eloquently sums up the Pennebaker approach to documenting when he tells a Time magazine reporter "The truth is just a plain picture." (1967, 96 min, DCP Digital) JH
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Steven Spielberg's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Monday-Thursday, December 26-29; Check Venue website for showtimes
A monument in the Cold War's conservative cinema of reassurance, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is today undeniably a fairy tale about the origin of the atomic bomb. While in reality, nuclear weapons were the intentional outcome of a race between America and Germany's large-scale militarization of the physical sciences, here they are represented not as a technological invention of bureaucratic rationalism but as an archaeological re-discovery, of the Old Testament's famously powerful Ark of the Covenant. Mild-mannered, crushworthy, U of C-educated anthropology professor Jones--teaching at a time when one was morally obligated to kill as many Nazis as possible in the course of one's fieldwork--teams up with his former advisor's daughter (now a hard-drinking expat Nepalese barmaid) to engage in battles of dubious detective-work and elaborately staged, violent fisticuffs with rival archaeologist Belloq, a variety of expendable German soldiers, and the seemingly re-indentured residents of Egypt. At stake is the primary fetish object of the Books of Joshua and Samuel, certainly the closest material embodiment of God in the Bible; however, like GHOSTBUSTERS--which also treated the Abrahamic religions as a mere historical elaboration on occult Mesopotamian ritual--RAIDERS romanticizes the agnostic and empirical logic of its hard-nosed protagonist, who eventually realizes that the only way to escape The Lord's wrath is to close one's eyes to His power. This reassurance returns conclusively in the coda, which seems to say: oh, the wrath of God, we'll never use that again; we're just filing it away with the fruits of America's other positivist projects in some Library of Babel-sized warehouse. (1981, 118 min, DCP Digital Projection; New Restoration) MC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Mel Stuart's WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (American Revival)
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) – Wednesday, December 28, 1 and 7:30pm (Free Admission)
Even though the lackluster Peter Ostrum (who played Charlie and thankfully retired from the acting business to become a veterinarian) covers the film in a slimy, sentimental goo, Mel Stuart's exceptional but uneven WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY still remains a visual and rather perverse delight. Get past the interminable "Cheer up Charlie" song and the flimsy ending and you're left with some gorgeous color cinematography and the pleasure of watching half a dozen pre-pubescent miscreants get their comeuppances while Gene Wilder acts bewildered. Most of the musical numbers are quite good too, and the classroom scenes with David Battley as an inept grade school teacher are worth the price of admission alone. (1971, 100 min, Unconfirmed Format) JA
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More info at www.northbrook.info/events/film.
Martin Scorsese X 3
Music Box Theatre – Friday-Thursday, December 30–January 5; Check Venue website for showtimes
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MEAN STREETS (American Revival)
The film that put Martin Scorsese on the map is one of the most fiercely personal works in American narrative cinema. Scorsese reportedly worked on the script while driving around Little Italy with co-writer Mardik Martin and reminiscing about the places where he grew up; the ample soundtrack is mostly made up of songs from the director’s own record collection. (Roughly half of the film’s budget went to clearing music rights, so important was it for Scorsese to set these moments to these particular songs that by this point were in his blood.) The first draft of the screenplay focused almost exclusively on the spiritual conflict of Charlie, Scorsese’s autobiographical stand-in; though the final draft would take a broader perspective, devoting much attention to Charlie’s efforts to help his troubled friend Johnny Boy, religious themes still predominate. Emphasizing their personal nature, Scorsese himself performs Charlie’s voice-over narration, a technique the director borrowed from Fellini’s I VITTELONI. That reference is not incidental or indulgent—cinephilia is as much a driving force here as Catholic guilt or autobiographical candor. Going to the cinema is source of comfort for the characters, and one senses in Johnny Boy’s acting out a wish to make life more like the movies. Moreover, one feels the influence of the French New Wave in MEAN STREETS’ spontaneity, as well as the influence of postwar Italian cinema in its deeply rooted sense of place. (In spite of its reputation as one of the quintessential New York movies, however, this was actually filmed largely in California, as the filmmakers couldn’t afford to shoot on location for very long—blame those pesky music rights, I guess.) Yet the intoxicating style is Scorsese’s own, rooted in a desire to transmit his feelings about each moment in the most visceral way possible. The rhythms of the rock and pop songs on the soundtrack feel like racing heartbeats, and each camera movement suggests the director whipping his head around to take in what’s going on. (1973, 112 min, 35mm) BS
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BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (American Revival)
French critic Nicole Brenez has described BRINGING OUT THE DEAD as Martin Scorsese’s response to the work of Abel Ferrara, another New York-based filmmaker whom Scorsese deeply admires. Like many of Ferrara’s films, DEAD portrays New York City as a stark battleground of good and evil and asks viewers to consider how they tolerate a society that enables so much suffering. The hero, Frank (Nicolas Cage, in a performance the actor considers one of his best), basically encounters suffering for a living: he’s a paramedic who’s addicted to his job and who seems to get dispatched to all the worst calls in the city. Roger Ebert described the setting as “an abyss of human misery” and noted that Scorsese “assembles the film as levels of an inferno,” following Frank over three consecutive 24-hour shifts as his calls go from bad to worse. Closer in spirit to one of Ferrara’s protagonists than one of Scorsese’s, Frank is not just flawed, but at times even crazy—he’s just not strong enough to endue the insanity of his work and remain unaffected. (Frank’s not-quite love interest, played by Patricia Arquette, is another member of the walking wounded, a recovering drug addict who sees a kindred spirit in him.) The filmmaking is a balancing act of realism and expressionism. Scorsese, Cage, and screenwriter Paul Schrader all rode with New York paramedics in preparation for DEAD, and the storytelling is inextricably tied to the geography of the city. At the same time, Robert Richardson’s cinematography favors bold colors, Scorsese’s uses of sped-up and slowed-down motion deliberately exaggerate states of being, and the music selections often abstract the onscreen action. It’s in aesthetic choices such as these that Scorsese’s approach most noticeably differs from Ferrara’s. Where Ferrara might view Frank’s descent with anger or despair, Scorsese still finds plenty of moments of exhilaration and hope. (1999, 121 min, 35mm) BS
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THE KING OF COMEDY (American Revival)
Note: Spoiler! - Robert De Niro is fine, and Sandra Bernhard is aces. But without Jerry Lewis there would be no KING OF COMEDY. The proof of it is the look on Jerry's face in his final scene. After Masha serenades him with the creepiest/loveliest rendition of "Come Rain or Come Shine" ever captured on celluloid, he gently convinces her to untie him. As the last bit of packing tape is about to come loose, he quickly breaks free, stands up, advances towards her. Her expression, all lustful anticipation, says, "He's about to ravish me." Instead he smacks her once, hard, and runs out of the room. When we see him next he's alone on a New York City street. He pauses in front of a shop window that's filled with televisions, all showing Rupert Pupkin as he delivers his monologue on Jerry's hijacked program. Then, the look on Jerry's face (which is the very last time we see him): the look of a man who realizes that he's just been beaten, that he's suddenly much closer to the end than the beginning, that in due time he will cease to have a place in the new order of things. We are now living in that new order, confirming that KING OF COMEDY is one of the most prescient satires of the 20th century. (1982, 109 min, DCP Digital) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Hiroshi Teshigahara's ANTONIO GAUDI (Documentary Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday-Thursday, December 30-January 5; 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.
Keichi Hara’s MISS HOKUSAI (New Japanese Animation)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday-Thursday, December 30-January 5; Check Venue website for showtimes
Watching an animated film depicting the lives of painters is bound to draw attention to both the limitations and imaginative possibilities of the medium of visual art, and MISS HOKUSAI does so with sensitive aplomb, subtle feminist critique, and skillful cinematic sweep. Adapted from an episodic manga series, MISS HOKUSAI weaves enough of the episodes together to give the narrative an arc, but leaves plenty of breathing room to take in the rich atmosphere of 1814 Edo (later Tokyo) and follow the mysterious, brooding title character, O-Ei, through scenes of frustrating opacity, as well as painful tenderness and vulnerability. Much of the film focuses on the relationship between O-Ei and her blind little sister, which tugs brutally at the heartstrings much like GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES, as well as the complex and unsentimental connection O-Ei has to her cynical and self-absorbed father, to whom she remains devoted until his death, yet also critical, distant, and often disappointed. Interspersed with these explorations are poetic and stunning visual depictions of contemporary Japanese society grappling with the ambivalent belief in ancient tradition and superstition, seen through O-Ei’s eyes, juxtaposed against engulfing modernity, brought to you by the production company behind GHOST IN THE SHELL. (2015, 93 min, DCP Digital) AE
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Showing in both the Japanese-language version with English subtitles and an English-dubbed version. Check the Siskel website for the showtimes of each.
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT (American Revival)
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) – Wednesday, January 4, 1 and 7:30pm (Free Admission)
For many—including Wilder himself—this was the director's finest hour, the film in which all the elements converged with grace, sass, and a tinge of tragic inevitability. It was inspired by a line that Wilder wrote in his notebook sometime in the 1940s and couldn't forget: "Movie about the guy who climbs into the warm bed left by two lovers." By the time the film was made (during the so-called "New Permissiveness" of the early 60s), the two lovers had multiplied into several men and countless mistresses and the warmth of the bed had turned musty. The guy, however, retained all the bittersweet sympathy of that initial premise. As incarnated by Jack Lemmon (in the most tolerable performance of his career), C.C. Baxter is the ultimate schlemiel, a resigned bachelor who lends his apartment to his insurance company superiors because he can't imagine any alternative to advancing in a job that kills him. Shirley MacLaine plays the disabused mistress who turns out to be the girl of his dreams, one of the great creations of the movies: her Fran Kubelik is a woman who seems ideal even in her faults—youthful, spontaneous, naive, sexy, resilient: exactly the type who could humanize an office drone like Baxter. The romance between them is so affecting (to say nothing of the dialogue, which pops as only Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's writing can) that it's easy to overlook what a superior piece of filmmaking THE APARTMENT is. Wilder remains underrated as a visual artist; and here, working in sparkling black-and-white 'Scope, he creates some remarkable effects, such as the unforgettable loneliness of the apartment itself and the modernist nightmare of the insurance company office (an image borrowed from King Vidor's THE CROWD), where rows of desks seem to extend into infinity. Wilder also employs small objects with an imaginative economy worth of Hitchcock. As he explained in Cameron Crowe's book-length interview Conversations with Wilder: "When Baxter sees himself in [Fran's broken compact] mirror, he adds up two and two. He gave it to the president of the insurance company [Fred MacMurray], the big shot at the office, now he knows what we know. And we see it in his face in the broken mirror. That was a very elegant way of pointing it out. Better than a third person telling him about the affair—that we did not want to do. This was better. This gave us everything, in one shot." (1960, 125 min, DCP Digital) BS
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More info at www.northbrook.info/events/film.
Rian Johnson’s LOOPER (American Crime-Drama Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, January 5, 10pm
in 2005, Rian Johnson established himself as a fiercely technical and knowledgeable director with the sleek and quick-witted BRICK. He’d later reaffirm these assessments with his work on several episodes of Breaking Bad, the highlight being the awe-inspiring ‘Ozymandias.’ In 2012’s LOOPER, Johnson strengthens his position as a modern day auteur in this trans-generational, multi-timelined gangster film. In a world set in the late 2000s where the mob decides to rid themselves of undesirables by sending future versions of people back to the past to have them ‘disposed of,’ an assassin (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes face-to-face with his future self (Bruce Willis) as a target for removal. Johnson’s film is a modern take on such pre-Code films as LITTLE CAESAR and SCARFACE where violence and crime are modestly glorified. The interweaving of multiple timelines and the effects they have on others recalls Shane Carruth’s PRIMER. The film strongly revolves around themes of fate and whether or not such a thing can be affected willingly. LOOPER seems to have established a divided fan base over the short few years of its existence, with one side lauding it as visionary and the other deriding it for being derivative. In this writer’s humble option, LOOPER is a luscious and fully-realized homage to the great gangster films of the 1930’s and one worthy of several revisitings to understand its nuanced complexities. (2012, 119 min, 35mm) KC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS (December 16-22)
The Terror in the Aisles Christmas Show is at the Brew & View at The Vic Theater (3145 N. Sheffield Ave.) on Sunday, with three films. At 5pm, it’s John Carpenter’s 1982 film THE THING (109 min); at 7pm, it’s Jack Sholder’s 1985 film A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE (87 min), with actor Mark Patton in person; and at 9pm, it’s John Carpenter’s 1988 film THEY LIVE (93 min). All Digital Projection. Doors open at 4pm.
The Chicago Underground Film Festival hosts Slamdance: Anarchy Film Program 2016 on Wednesday at 8pm at Arclight Cinemas (1500 N. Clybourn Ave.). This program of work from the Slamdance Film Festival includes films by Mila Zuo, Calvin Lee Reeder, Brian Lonano, Gabriel Sunday, Sean Kelley, Alice Waddington, The Double-Blind Experiments, Joanna Maria Wojcik, and Patrick Buhr.
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Sidney Poitier’s 1980 film STIR CRAZY (111 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Wednesday, December 21 at 1 and 7:30pm. Free admission. www.northbrook.info/events/film
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Sonia Kennebeck’s 2016 documentary NATIONAL BIRD (92 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 1991 French film DELICATESSEN (99 min, DCP Digital; New Restoration) screens on Friday at 8pm and Saturday at 5:45pm; Peter Brook’s 1971 film KING LEAR (137 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 3pm and Thursday at 6pm; and Peter Hall’s 1968 film A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (124 min, 35mm) is on Sunday at 3pm and Tuesday at 6pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Joe Dante’s 1984 film GREMLINS (106 min, DCP Digital) is on Monday at 7pm (showing as part of a double feature with DIE HARD; see Also Recommended above); and Jon Favreau’s 2003 film ELF (97 min, 35mm) is on Tuesday at 7:30pm (showing as part of a double feature with LOVE ACTUALLY; see Also Recommended above).
Facets Cinémathèque plays Musa Syeed’s 2016 film A STRAY (82 min, Digital Projection) for a week-long run. Syeed in person for Q&A at the 7pm Saturday, December 17 and 5pm Sunday, December 18 screenings; and for introductions at the 9pm Saturday, December 17 and 7pm Sunday, December 18 screenings; Also playing for a week-long run is Alexander Nevsky’s 2014 Russian film BLACK ROSE (91 min, Digital Projection).
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MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS (December 23-29)
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Rene Daalder’s 1986 film POPULATION: 1 (72 min, VHS Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm in the “Released and Abandoned” series. Free admission.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film RICHARD III (158 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 2pm and Tuesday at 6:30pm; and Roman Polanski’s 1971 film THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (140 min, DCP Digital; New Restoration) is on Monday at 2:30pm and Thursday at 6:30pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Norman Jewison’s 1971 musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (181 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 6pm; and Steven Spielberg’s 1984 film INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (118 min, Unconfirmed Format) and his 1989 film INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (127 min, Unconfirmed Format) both play Monday-Thursday (along with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK; see Also Recommended above).
Facets Cinémathèque plays Vincent Garenq’s 2016 French/German film IN HER NAME (105 min, Digital Projection) for a week-long run. No screenings Saturday and Sunday, December 24 and 25.
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MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS (December 30 - January 5)
The DuSable Museum (740 E. 56th Pl.) and South Side Projections screen Sam Pollard’s 2008 documentary ZORA NEALE HURSTON: JUMP AT THE SUN (84 min, DVD Projection) on Tuesday at 7pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Stefan Haupt’s 2012 Swiss documentary SAGRADA: THE MYSTERY OF CREATION (89 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 5:15pm, Monday at 3:30pm, Tuesday at 6pm, and Wednesday at 7:30pm; Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film HAMLET (242 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 2pm and Tuesday at 6pm; and Franco Zeffirelli’s 1967 film THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (122 min, DCP Digital) is on Monday at 2:30pm and Thursday at 6pm.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Benedikt Erlingsson’s 2013 Icelandic film OF HORSES AND MEN (81 min, Digital Projection) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and a program of Charles Chaplin’s Essanay Shorts (16mm) is on Wednesday at 7pm. Screening are THE TRAMP (1915), A WOMAN (1915), THE BANK (1915), and POLICE (1916).
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Sydney Pollack’s 1982 film TOOTSIE (116 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm as part of critic Mark Caro’s “Is It Still Funny?” series.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Adam Irving’s 2016 documentary OFF THE RAILS (89 min, Digital Projection) for a week-long run.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Olympia Centre (737 N. Michigan Ave. - entrance at 151 E. Chicago Ave.) presents Virginio Ferrari & Marco G. Ferrari: Spirit Level through April 6. The show features sculpture, 16mm film, video and installations by artists Virginio Ferrari and Marco G. Ferrari, including Marco Ferrari’s SPIRIT LEVEL (2015-16, 30 min) and CONTRAILS WITH BODY (2011-16, 3 min).
The Art Institute of Chicago has Andrea Fraser: May I Help You? on view through January 2. It features a rotation of five of the artist’s videos: MUSEUM HIGHLIGHTS: A GALLERY TALK (1989, 29 min), WELCOME TO THE WADSWORTH: A MUSEUM TOUR (1991, 25 min), MAY I HELP YOU? (1991, 19 min), INAUGURAL SPEECH (1997, 27 min), and OFFICIAL WELCOME (2003, 29 min).
The Art Institute of Chicago (Modern Wing Galleries) has Dara Birnbaum’s 1979 two-channel video KISS THE GIRLS: MAKE THEM CRY (6 min) currently on view.
Camille Henrot’s 2013 video GROSSE FATIGUE (14 min) is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago through December 18.
