Children On The Island

Yoshitaka Asama’s film unfolds during the spring of 1928, when a replacement teacher takes over at a small primary school on Shodo Island in Japan’s Inland Sea. With Yuko Tanaka and Tetsuya Takeda. Read more

Call Me

An erotic thriller that proceeds from the premise of what happens when a woman doesn’t hang up on an obscene phone call, which indirectly leads to her witnessing a police drug murder. Scripted by associate producer Karyn Kay and directed by Sollace Mitchell, both making their debuts here, this Hitchcockian exercise has its share of problemsan indifferently scripted and acted boyfriend (Sam Freed), some stock villains, occasional dawdling in the action and direction. But many of the Hitchcockian ideassexual obsession, female desire, point-of-view shots, and ambiguous identitiesare good ones, a lot more interesting than the standard De Palma rip-offs, and the New York locations and milieu are nicely handled. Kay’s background as a feminist film critic seems to stand her in good stead here, and one wishes that she’d had a hand in the direction as well; Mitchell’s work is earnest but uneven, lacking the drive often found in the script. Patricia Charbonneau is rather good as the ambivalent heroine, and a lengthy phone-sex sequence involving 360-degree pans manages to get pretty steamy as well as suspenseful. With Patti D’Arbanville, Stephen McHattie, and Boyd Gaines. (JR) Read more

The Burnt City

Antoni Ribas’s 1976 La ciutat cremada, a film shot in the Catalan language the year after Franco’s death, represented a big step forward for regional Spanish cinema. Depicting the rise of Catalan nationalism from the viewpoint of a left-wing militant, the film covers events from the loss of Cuba in 1898 to the anarchist uprising of 1909. With Angela Molina. (JR) Read more

The Bitter Tea Of General Yen

Frank Capra’s very atypical drama about an American missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) taken prisoner by a Chinese warlord (Nils Asther) is not only his masterpiece but also one of the great love stories to come out of Hollywood in the 30ssubtle, delicate, moody, mystical, and passionate. Joseph Walker shot it through filters and with textured shadows that suggest Sternberg; Edward Paramore wrote the script, adapted from a story by Grace Zaring Stone. Oddly enough, this perverse and beautiful film was chosen to open Radio City Music Hall in 1933; it was not one of Capra’s commercial successes, but it beats the rest of his oeuvre by miles, and both Stanwyck and Asther are extraordinary. With Walter Connolly and Lucien Littlefield. 89 min. (JR) Read more

Assault Of The Killer Bimbos

It sounds like the killer tomatoes in days of yore have turned into flying women, although who knows? Maybe screenwriter Ted Nicolau and director Anita Rosenberg have something else in mind. With Christina Whitaker, Elizabeth Kaitan, Tammara Souza, Jamie Bozian, Griffin O’Neal, and Nick Cassavetes. Read more

American Pop

This may not be Ralph Bakshi’s best known animated feature, but it is conceivably his best. An ambitious history of popular American music that traces its story through key characters of four generations, it can be criticized from multiple angles, but its energetic graphics and bold conceptions place it several cuts above most of Bakshi’s earlier efforts (1981). (JR) Read more

Adieu Philippine

Jacques Rozier is perhaps the least known of the most talented French New Wave directors, if only because his output is so limitedabout one feature per decade. His subject is teenagers, and his method owes a lot to cinema verite. This first feature, made toward the beginning of the 1960s, is also probably his best; it concerns a young TV worker who is dating two 18-year-old girlfriends and can’t choose between them. Rozier’s graceful style is a mixture of sweetness and light, devoid of pretension and open to youthful energies. Recommended. (JR) Read more

El sur

On the surface, despite the presence of a different fictional source (a story by Adelaida Garcia Morales) and scriptwriter (Jose Luis Lopez Linares), Victor Erice’s second feature seems to bring back some of the haunting obsessions of his first, the wonderful Spirit of the Beehive (1973): the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the magical spell exerted by movies over childhood, and a little girl’s preoccupation with her father and the past. But as English critic Tim Pulleine has observed, a reference to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt in El sur (South, 1983) points to an elaborate system of doubling and duplication that underlies the film’s structure as a whole, operating on the level of shots and sequences as well as themes (north and south, father and daughter, real and imaginary). Although this subtle spellbinder ends somewhat abruptly, reportedly because the film’s budget ran out, it seems to form a nearly perfect whole as it is: a brooding tale about an intense father-daughter relationship and the unknowable past, mysterious and resonant, with the poetic ambience of a story by Faulkner. Omero Antonutti (Padre padrone) plays the father; Sonsoles Aranguren is the daughter. (Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday and Saturday, April 29 and 30, 7:00 and 9:00; Sunday, May 1, 5:30 and 7:30; and Monday through Thursday, May 2 through 5, 7:00 and 9:00; 281-4114) Read more

Nine Letters to Berta

Made the year after Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution (1965), Basilio Martin Patino’s touching first feature, set mainly in the university town of Salamanca, Spain, echoes and parallels that film in many respects, although here the loss of religious faith plays the role of a betrayed Marxism. Cast in the form of nine letters written to a young woman met by the hero (Emilio Gutierrez Caba) during his only trip abroad, the film has a loose, episodic structure built around various chapter headings (“The Family Rosary,” “One Sunday Afternoon,” “A World of Happiness,” etc), and like many of the other youthful and sensitive European movies of this period, the impact of the French New Wave is salutary in the fresh use of film language: fast editing, slurred motion, and a freezing and unfreezing of certain images that makes them reverberate like pictures pasted into a scrapbook. Delicately acted and directed with a keen affection for the characters, this is surely one of the best Spanish films of the Franco period. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Thursday, April 28, 8:00, 443-3737) Read more

Lady in White

Ray Bradbury appears to be the presiding influence over this nostalgic fantasy-thriller about childhood and ghosts, written, directed, produced, and scored by Frank LaLoggia (Fear No Evil). Set in a small town in the early 60s, the plot centers on an apparition of a little girl seen by the ten-year-old hero (Lukas Haas) while locked in his school’s cloakroom during Halloween. Although the results are a bit overextended, the film is still something of a rarity nowadays: an evocative, poetic horror film without a trace of gore (and in this respect, closer to a Val Lewton film of the 40s like The Curse of the Cat People than any contemporary models). The Italian-American family detail is nicely handled, and much of Russell Carpenter’s photography is exquisite. With Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, and Katherine Helmond. (Chestnut Station, Golf Mill, Woodfield, River Oaks, Orland Square, Lincoln Village, Ford City, Deerbrook, Yorktown, Chicago Ridge, Evanston, Hillside Mall, Norridge) Read more

Charleen

Fans of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1985) will undoubtedly recall the character Charleen Swansea, the filmmaker’s friend and former teacher, and will be pleased to discover that McElwee devoted an entire feature to this memorable woman back in 1977. An unorthodox fifth-grade teacher, small publisher, and poet who at one point was a protege of Ezra Pound, Charleen is an exuberant and outspoken southern eccentric, and McElwee’s affectionate portrait (which, unlike Sherman’s March, doesn’t do double duty as a portrait of the filmmaker) gives her plenty of opportunities to show her special qualities–which she takes full advantage of. Much of the film focuses on her inspired methods of teaching poetry and the difficulties of her relationship with a man who’s much younger than her. Larger than life and bursting with energy and intelligence, Charleen makes a fascinating film subject and indirectly gives us a glimpse of certain southern virtues that most accounts of the south gloss over. McElwee will be present at the screening. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, April 23, 6:00, 443-3737) Read more

Festival of Animation

This varied collection of shorts represents a certain improvement over the International Tournee of Animation in terms of overall quality. An organization based in La Jolla called Mellow Madness has put it together, and after many successful years on the west coast is taking the show on the road, in competition with the International Tournee. A greater interest in the hallucinatory describes part of the different emphasis, although the selection is no less international: films from Hungary, Canada, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain, the USSR, and the U.S. are included, and the styles vary from the near-abstract (Sara Penny’s lovely Furies, about two undulating cats) to the political and notational (Jonathan Amitay’s Oh, Dad) to School of Chuck Jones minimalism (Andrew Stanton’s Somewhere in the Arctic) to jeering punk (Christopher Simon’s Hello Dad, I’m in Jail) to top-heavy narrative (Eunice McCauley’s Special Delivery and Andrew Stanton’s A Story, the latter a nightmarish version of TV kiddie-show muck). Some of the cartoons here suffer only because they’ve already had so much exposure. (Seriously, fellas, isn’t it about time to give Bambi Meets Godzilla an extended rest?) Otherwise, the overall level of quality is unusually high, and for sheer, unadulterated weirdness, Sing Beast Sing–by the auteur of Bambi Meets Godzilla, Marv Newland–is a standout. Read more

Life in Shadows

An interesting early example of reflexive, film-drenched cinema, this 1948 Spanish feature by Lorenzo Llobet Garcia, the only one ever made by its director, shows the life of a man dominated by film — beginning with his parents at a carnival exposition of Lumiere films, continuing through his activities as a film buff, critic, and newsreel cameraman, and concluding as he embarks on his own autobiographical first feature. Along the way, we are treated to chunks of Spanish history as well as personal film history: the hero falls in love with his future wife at a screening of Romeo and Juliet and years later, after her death, experiences a trauma at a screening of Rebecca. The only limitation of this single-minded chronicle is that it lacks both the obsessiveness of its subject and the ironic distance that might make it more meaningful. But as an outline of a sensibility that would come into its own with the French New Wave a decade later, Vida en sombras remains an intriguing and isolated document. Spanish film critic Roman Gubern will appear after the screening. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Sunday, April 10, 4:00, 443-3737) Read more

The South

Victor Erice’s second feature (1983), based on a story by Adelaida Garcia Morales, seems to bring back some of the haunting obsessions of his first, the wonderful The Spirit of the Beehive (1973): the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, the magical spell movies exert over childhood, and a little girl’s preoccupation with her father and the past. This subtle spellbinder ends somewhat abruptly, reportedly because the film’s budget ran out, but it seems to form a nearly perfect whole as it is: a brooding tale with the poetic ambience of a Faulkner story about an intense father-daughter relationship and a mysterious and resonant past. English critic Tim Pulleine has observed that a reference to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt points to an elaborate system of duplication underlying the film’s structure, seen in shots and sequences as well as themes (north and south, father and daughter, real and imaginary). Omero Antonutti (Padre padrone) plays the father, Sonsoles Aranguren the daughter. (JR) Read more

The Stars Are Singing

Anna Maria Alberghetti plays a Polish refugee who illegally enters the U.S. and becomes an operatic recording star in this 1952 musical, which also features Rosemary Clooney singing her hit Come on-a My House and the ever-reliable Fred Clark. Reportedly the first film ever released in VistaVision; directed by Norman Taurog. Read more