CRUCIAL VIEWING
QUIET CITY (Contemporary Independent)
Film Row Cinema at Columbia College (1104 S. Wabash) – Monday, 7pm
At his website (www.moviecityindie.com), Ray Pride has been singing the praises of the new film by Aaron Katz (DANCE PARTY USA) for months now, and it even won over the New York critics when it premiered at Manhattan‘s IFC Center last summer. Here’s a chance to see QUIET CITY for free before its eventual Chicago premiere. This low-budget romance about early-20s drifters has been compared to everything from Andrew Bujalski’s films to Richard Linklater’s BEFORE SUNRISE, but others have hailed Katz as a true original. Amy Taubin suggested as much in her controversial essay on young American filmmakers in the November/December issue of Film Comment, saying the film had “a lyric beauty rarely associated with digital cinematography,” and adding, “Katz’s sound design is as expressive as both his cityscape images and his ambient-light close-ups of characters lost in their own heads or engaged in tentative tête-à-têtes.” (2007, 78 min, DVD projection). BS
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Google Map.
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IMAMURA: Week 5 (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
The Film Center continues to present this invaluable touring retrospective devoted to the late director Shohei Imamura, arguably the most important postwar Japanese filmmaker. As with many of the other titles in this series, this week’s two films are extremely hard to come by in the United States; even those with only passing interest in this major artist are strongly encouraged to attend. INTENTIONS OF MURDER (1964, 150 min, 35mm widescreen; Saturday, 3pm & Monday, 6:30pm) is said to be one of the most ambitious films of Imamura’s first period, whose experiments with narrative form and underlying political radicalism were as important for Japanese cinema in the 1960s as Jean-Luc Godard’s were for Western cinema at the same time. As in THE INSECT WOMAN (made the previous year), Imamura charts the chronic exploitation of a woman of the lower class, using a variety of distancing devices that make her story seem indicative (and indicting) of the national culture, if not the whole of humanity in extreme conditions. “[U]pon an initial viewing Imamura's film seems unwieldy, cluttered and unfocused, with a plethora of flashbacks, narrative dead ends and dream sequences permeating its lengthy running time…” wrote Jasper Sharp for Japanese film resource Midnight Eye; but he adds that “upon further analysis it is a faultlessly constructed model of sophistication, which uses its messy appearance to suggest that beneath the ordered chaos of modernity with all of its artificial constraints, it is characters such as [heroine] Sadako that provide the beating heart that enables society to continue.” Also playing is LIGHTS OF NIGHT (1958, 52 min, 35mm widescreen; Saturday, 5:45pm), an early assigned project compared by some critics to the work of Frank Tashlin and (by Jonathan Rosenbaum) to Woody Allen’s cult classic WHAT’S UP TIGER LILY? This is the only out-and-out comedy of Imamura’s filmography, and it should be fascinating to see how he applied his volatility and wild imagination to the genre. BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ANIMATION SCREENING SERIES
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Friday, 3pm
This afternoon, U of C grad student Sarah Keller will be presenting a program of rare silent films by Germaine Dulac, a master of many film styles (from pre-Surrealism to French Impressionism) and one of the first woman filmmakers to acheive widespread critical recognition. The films are: DISQUE (1928, 6 min, 16mm), ARABESQUES (1928, 7 min, 16mm), THÈMES ET VARIATIONS (1928, 9 min, 16mm), and L'INVITATION AU VOYAGE (1927, 39 min, DVD). From the program: "The first three are experiments with what Dulac called integral cinema--non-narrative, imagistic, poetic films; the last is loosely based on a poem by Charles Baudelaire. All are delightful and certain to warm the cockles of your cold wintery heart." The screening will be followed by a discussion, led by the Dept. of Cinema and Media Studies.
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More info at filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
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Shorts by TATE BUNKER (Experimental)
Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
This weekend Chi Filmakers presents the first ever Chicago screening of work by Tate Bunker, a young experimental filmmaker who recently won a cinematography award at Paris Film Festival and has been named "Best Milwaukee Filmmaker" two years in a row by the Milwaukee International Film Festival. From the program: "Bunker's improvisational creative techniques, lush images, and fluid editing have won him acclaim for both his experimental shorts and feature narrative work." The screening will include a number of short works, including STARLITE (2006, 18 min), about a, "...scientist with the insurmountable desire and a singular quest of reaching the stars is making a rocket to soar high into his lover's arms above," A BETTER LIFE (2005, 8 min), which, "...explores human conditioning as it applies to memory, perception, and idiosyncrasies that may confuse and distort the rituals of our daily lives," and THE PRACTICE OF ARCHERY (1999, 8 min), "inspired by Eugen Herrigel’s book Zen in the Art of Archery, the archer loses her bow and must use her unconsciousness to power her arrows." Q&A with the director to follow the screening.
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More info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
xx John Ford's THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING (Classic Revival)
LaSalle Bank Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Although the young John Ford was a far more versitale director than the wild west elder statesman he became (as evidenced by the recent "Ford at Fox" DVD doorstop), certain genres--say, gangster comedies and mistaken identity capers--nevertheless seemed outside his range. But Ford tried his hand at both with this 1935 oddity, yet another entry in the string of pictures Edward G. Robinson made to spoof the tough-guy image he earned on LITTLE CAESAR. Robinson burns the candle at both ends as a pair of doppelgangers, one a milquetoast file clerk and the other an underworld kingpin. Considerably darker than its hokey brethren, the film unwittingly endorses criminal behavior, as the meek Robinson is only able to save the day and win the girl (Jean Arthur) by adopting the gangster's amorality. That tonal confusion may just be what you get when you ask a couple of Frank Capra collaborators (Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin) to adapt a story by W.R. Burnett, author of the source material for hardboiled hits from LITTLE CAESER to THE ASPHALT JUNGLE. (1935, 93 min, 35mm). MK
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Venue Information here.
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David Cronenberg's THE FLY (Revival)
Music Box – Friday & Saturday, midnight
Having just directed a message picture with an Oscar-nominated performance by Viggo Mortensen, David Cronenberg may have finally shed that "former midnight film director" moniker. But a movie like EASTERN PROMISES is a much richer experience for those who followed Cronenberg's evolution and saw the big themes all along, when he was putting them to use in the subversion of horror films instead of the subversion of prestigous ones. This midnight showing of THE FLY is a fine reminder of how much Cronenberg has always been in control of his ideas and form -- and, more importantly, what a great shock artist he is. Couching what would have been a thankless project in unexpected intimacy and existential mystery, Cronenberg takes audiences out of their comfort zones from literally the first shot. The jarring effect of the movie's depth, along with its recognition of deep-seated fears we have of our own bodies, led some critics to read it as an AIDS metaphor; indeed, it ranks with the best work of Derek Jarman and Todd Haynes as one of the finest films on the subject. Regardless of one's interpretation, this was when David Cronenberg first started to touch a larger audience and introduce it to his worldview. For those of us who have since been converted, where are the midnight revivals of SHIVERS and RABID? (1986, 95 min, 35mm). BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
xx W. C. Fields' THE BANK DICK (Classic Revival)
Music Box (Matinee Series) – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am
It's hard to say who was better served by their transition to film: W. C. Fields or the Marx Brothers. The Marxes' brand of fast, endlessly associative, protean humor certainly seems the better suited to cinema, but Fields was so completely the author of his own persona, so grounded in his every misanthropic nuance, that he is, in the end, the less exploitable figure, purer in his onscreen achievements (whether in his own films or staggering through something like Cukor's DAVID COPPERFIELD) than the Marxes proved to be. To put it another way, Fields would be the auteur of this (perhaps unfair) comparison, and nowhere is this more evident in his well-nigh universally acknowledged chef d'oeuvre THE BANK DICK (1940, 72 min, 35mm), where—much as in the Marxes' DUCK SOUP—everything that should have been working in his movies to this point does work, with all the elements of the Great Man's shtick marshaled in the service of a comedy that somehow, and in a far more repressive climate than SOUP, managed to elude the watchdogs of Hollywood taste and restraint. Whereas SOUP's particular place at the pinnacle of the Marx canon may be attributable in large part to Leo McCarey, Fields had always been at his own helm, and THE BANK DICK is basically his show: he is its star, writer, and force majeure, and is mercifully left more or less to his own devices. Aside from his early shorts, THE BANK DICK is the best place to bask in the unalloyed pungency of Fields' one-man war on mediocrity. JD
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Damon Packard's REFLECTIONS OF EVIL (Underground)
NWesternAve – Tuesday, 8:30pm
A series of films and videos by Hollywood-indoctrinated, stolen-footage-appropriator, paranoia-encouraging, underground-filmmaking madman Damon Packard kicks off with a screening of his longest and best known film, REFLECTIONS OF EVIL. While it's pointless to summarize the plot–just come expecting some ape crazy fun–Brian Frye makes a decent go of it: "Replete with face-twisting special effects, pyrotechnics, slo-mo girls in nighties, gallons of fake vomit, mountains of supermarket pastries and sugar cereal, a 'creature' made out of old walkie-talkies, '70s movie references and Packard himself endlessly tramping through LA, Reflections of Evil is the casino buffet of underground films: eight meals in one." (138m, DVD projection). JM
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Venue info at NWesternAve.com.
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Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday & Wednesday, 6pm
Ever since it exploded onto the international art film scene in the mid-60s, PERSONA has continued to keep audiences guessing and discussing. Both a simple story about an emotionally traumatized actress and her nurse and a complex meditation on the nature of cinema, Bergman himself cited it as the work where he went "as far as he could go" as a film artist. After a stunning avant-garde prologue, the film moves fluidly between realistic and dream-like passages, culminating in some space where the two converge. For all the different cinematic forms on display, its most memorable sequences are arguably two highly theatrical monologues delivered by the nurse (Bibi Andersson, in her greatest performance)--frank considerations of sex and psychology that marked a new triumph over film censorship. Readers who aren't familiar with the legacy of criticism devoted to this hallmark work are encouraged to check out Susan Sontag's essay, anthologized in her collection Styles of Radical Will. (1966, 83 min, 35mm). BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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On Tuesday, DOC completes its five-film series dedicated to Jacques Demy with the recently restored DONKEY SKIN (1970, 90 min, 35mm; 7pm), a thematically beguiling fairy tale with music by the great Michel Legrand (UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN). Though this has been officially available on DVD for a couple years now, the big screen is the ideal place to appreciate Demy’s magical, colorful style. Harder to procure for home viewing (and no less enthralling) is Samuel Fuller’s VERBOTEN! (1959, 93 min, 16mm; Monday, 7pm), a characteristically in-your-face movie about the U.S. occupation of post-WWII Germany. Combining romantic melodrama with complex political issues, the film daringly asks American viewers to consider the plight of German citizens in the wake of the Nazis defeat. (It also anticipates the paranoia of Lars von Trier’s ZENTROPA in its subplot about the formation of neo-Nazi groups in resistance to the American military presence.) Also playing, in this strong week of programming, is MATADOR (1986, 110 min, 35mm; Wednesday, 7 & 9:30pm), one of Pedro Almodovar’s stronger early features, a black comedy about oddball characters sexually attracted to death; MADAME DUBARRY (1919, 113 min, 16mm; Sunday, 7pm), a rare German silent film by Ernst Lubitsch about a love triangle in the court of Louis XV; and Jack Smith’s legendary FLAMING CREATURES (1963, 45 min, 16mm; Thursday, 9pm)--which is either a supreme masterpiece of American avant-garde filmmaking or a strange pageant of sexual paradise, depending on one’s point of view; DOC has paired it, intriguingly, with Stanley Kubrick’s THE KILLING (1956, 85 min, 35mm; Thursday, 7pm), a film whose mastery and sexual hang-ups emerged more gradually over the course of its director’s rich, unpredictable career. BS
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Full details at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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THIS WEEK AT BLOCK (Classic & Contemporary Revival)
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Block Cinema begins its series of key works from Akira Kurosawa intensely popular 1950s and 1960s works with RASHOMON (1952, 87 min, 35mm; Friday, 8pm), and its an appropriate historical touchstone for all of the Asian film series the theater's running this season: along with Teinosuke Kinugasa's 1953 GATE OF HELL, it raised international awareness not only of Japanese cinema, but Asian filmmaking in general.
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On Wednesday, the Block Museum's ongoing exhibition Imaging By Numbers: A Historical View of the Computer Print will expand into its movie theater with IMAGING BY NUMBERS: AN EVENING OF EARLY COMPUTER ANIMATION (8pm), a program devoted to early shorts created entirely with computers.
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The series on contemporary South Korean cinema will continue with TAKE CARE OF MY CAT (2001, 112 min, 35mm; Thursday, 7pm), the debut film by Jeong Jae-Sun, the only female director featured in the series. IV
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
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Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS / ANTOINE AND COLLETTE (Revival)
Music Box– Check Reader Movies for showtimes
The New Wave happened half a century ago. At this point, we're two decades farther away from it than its directors were from the Silent Era; it's almost as hard to believe that the 50 year gulf that separates us is the same size as the one that separated them from the birth of the feature film. Cinema matures so quickly; is it ironic or inevitable that Francois the Kid's THE 400 BLOWS (1959, 99 min, 35mm), with its tongue firmly stuck out, has become a college assignment, a perennial revival clogging up film schedules? But then again, most people first read poetry in a textbook; whatever higher education has done to rob it of its vagabond wiles, there's still something dangerous about the film, a mucky inkwell stain no amount of academic scrutiny is gonna be able to wash out. Jean-Pierre Leaud, with his slight frame, a face like a silent comedian and a voice like a violin, only needs to run his fingers through his hair to remind you why he remains one of the most fascinating, infuriating, beautiful presences in cinema. The greatest of the five films he ended up making with Truffaut as protagonist Antoine Doinel (the first being the THE 400 BLOWS), the roughly half-hour ANTOINE AND COLLETTE (1962, 29 min, 35mm; originally part of one of the anthology films that were a common feature of the New Wave's early years) finds the now 18-year-old Doinel living on his own, getting a job and falling in love. Like all of Truffaut's films centering on young people, it isn't so much about youth as the memory of youth. The director, who turned 30 the year he made it and was already a father of two, seems to be trying to recapture the moments that disappeared without his noticing. It's a reminder that though you're only 18 for a year, the memory will stick with you until you die. The Music Box will be screening the two together as a double feature. IV
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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NANKING (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
"I have rarely, if ever seen a documentary reconstruction of a historical event that is so rich in first-hand (and well-preserved) photographic material." This compliment by Time writer Richard Schickel is one of many being handed to this 2007 doc about "the rape of Nanking," a little-discussed atrocity of World War Two. Japanese military entered what was then the capital city of China and killed over 200,000 citizens and systematically raped 20,000 women or more. Many who suffered the tragedy could do little but keep record of the horrendous events in writing and heart-wrenching photographs. A lucky few were able to protect themselves from much of the violence by creating and aggressively protecting a small safe zone, the description of which affords the movie its only hope. NANKING is a compelling document of the type of face to face horrific violence that we often shy away from exploring in these days of modern antiseptic war. (2007, 95 min, 35mm). CL
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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MORE FROM THE FILM CENTER
Showtimes Noted Below
Two of the Film Center's February series gets underway
this week. First up in the Hong Kong series is KUNG FU
FIGHTER (2007, 99 min, 35mm; Friday, 7:45pm & Sunday, 5pm), an action spoof in the
vein of Stephen Chow's similarly titled international
blockbuster. Kicking off the Cinema Croatia series is
ALL FOR FREE (2006, 94 min, 35mm; Sunday, 3pm & Thursday, 8:15pm), a modest allegory
recognized by Variety as "a well-concealed metaphor
for Bosnia's whole disoriented post-war generation."
Conversations at the Edge hosts a retrospective of
land-use artists eteam!, whose latest stunt involves
creating an international airport in the middle of
nowhere (90 min; Thursday, 6pm). Also on tap are grab bag of special
presentations, all featuring the filmmakers in person:
the locally produced FAMILY VALUES (2006, 125 min,
DVCAM; Tueday, 6pm), winner of the Audience Award at the Film
Center's Black Harvest Festival, a members-only sneak
preview Bob Balaban's HBO production BERNARD AND
DORIS (2007, 102 min, 35mm; Sunday, 7pm), and CHEAT YOU FAIR (2007,
90 min, DigiBeta; Saturday, 8pm), the latest documentary on Chicago's
gone-but-not-forgotten Maxwell Street Market.
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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MORE NOTABLE SCREENINGS
Music Box
Honeydripper, The Rape of Europa,
The Kids are Alright, Senator Obama Goes to Africa. Midnight: Ridley Scott's Legend
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Landmark Century Centre
Atonement, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, No Country for Old Men, Persepolis, There Will Be Blood
Facets Cinémathèque
Daughters of Wisdom, Liquid Vinyl |
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