An hour-long documentary by Chicago artist David E. Simpson and former Minneapolis journalist Billy Golfusan account of Golfus’s experiences after he suffered a severe head injury in a motor-scooter accident almost a decade earlier that’s also an irreverent polemic about the plight of the disabled, particularly the demoralizing negativity expressed by the culture at large and the bureaucratic nightmares they’re forced to endure to receive the government benefits they’re legally entitled to. Not always as sharply pointed as it might have been, either as filmmaking or as argument, this is still an invaluable introduction to a neglected and potent subject, informative as well as provocative. (JR) Read more
After personally thanking all the members of his cast and crew inside the film’s various sets, Sacha Guitry plunges into the most ferocious, and possibly the most subversive, masterpiece of his career (1951). The great Michel Simon plays a middle-aged village gardener who despises his alcoholic wife (who despises him in turn). After learning on the radio about an ace defense lawyer famous for getting murderers acquitted, he goes to see the lawyer, claiming to have already killed his wife, and learns from the lawyer’s questions and comments precisely how he should commit the crime to escape sentencing; meanwhile, his wife is hatching a murder plot of her own. Shot in just 11 daysin deference to Simon, who demanded that each of his scenes be filmed only oncethis caustic social satire lasts 96 minutes, and not one of them is wasted; with Germaine Reuver and Jean Debucourt. (JR) Read more
The husband-and-wife team of writer-director Charles Shyer and writer-producer Nancy Meyersimpresarios of the cute and smarmy (Baby Boom, the Father of the Bride remake)cast Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte as reporters on rival Chicago papers, both after the same dangerous story, in a rather anemic and forgettable $50-million action comedy. Clearly the models are Charade, North by Northwest, and the Tracy-Hepburn sparring matches, but Roberts and Nolte seem to go together like oil and water, and the convoluted conspiracy-crime plot keeps them a lot more occupied than us. As a romp, this is more labored than light, though it’s mildly watchable if all you’re looking for is distraction. With Saul Rubinek, Robert Loggia, and James Rebhorn. (JR) Read more
A fascinating 1993 compilation by Claude Chabrol of material from French newsreels and related ephemera between 1940 and 1944, during the German occupationmainly propaganda in the form of news items and public service features, but also a few movie trailers and one startling animated short. It’s all edited by Chabrol with a keen, ironic eye, with a few English voice-overs to help point out the lies and omissions, and adds up to an irreplaceable view of what living in Vichy France was like. (JR) Read more
Marcel L’Herbier, director of this silent 1921 melodrama, is one of the key figures in the French experimental narrative cinema of the 20s. This film, about the maltreatment of a cabaret performer and her subsequent revenge, is one of his best-known works, though it’s far from his best (cf. L’argent, L’inhumaine). Still, it’s certainly an interesting introduction to his work. (JR) Read more
To my mind, this is one of Robert Aldrich’s worst films, but clearly not everyone agrees. Dave Kehr has described it as an accomplished black comedy, albeit a little rough around the edges, whose many moments of virtuoso filmmaking . . . very nearly make up for its faults. I see this raunchy 1977 adaptation of a Joseph Wambaugh novel about police shenanigans as homophobic, heavy-handed, and glib, a sort of Animal House celebrating police corruptionbut maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the editing and camera movements. The lead actors include Charles Durning, Louis Gossett Jr., Randy Quaid, Burt Young, and James Woods. (JR) Read more
An investigation of love, family life, and friendship starring Lou Castel, Jean-Pierre Leaud, and Johanna Ter Steege, this autobiographical black-and-white feature (1993) is one of the first by the highly influential Philippe Garrel to be shown in these parts, though he’s made about two dozen films by nowsome experimental, all highly personal. (A spiritual son of Jean-Luc Godard, steeped in the moods and textures of silent cinema, Garrel can also be regarded as the spiritual father of Leos Carax.) Relatively indifferent to lucid storytelling as it’s generally understood, this revolves around the restless moods of a professional actor (Castel) undergoing some sort of midlife crisis and periodically breaking away from his wife, teenage son, and infant daughter to have affairs with younger women. Its beauties and strengths rest almost entirely in the poetry of its images and rhythms and its stabbing emotions rather than its narrative flow. The breathtaking cinematography is by Raoul Coutard, who shot most of Godard’s early features. (JR) Read more
Heralded by some as the triumphant comeback of Claude Chabrol, though I prefer to see it as one of his better second-degree effortsand considering how many of his features have never crossed the Atlantic, it’s hard to rank it more definitively than that. Much of this 1991 film is recounted piecemeal in flashbacks as the title heroine (Marie Trintignant), a young wife recently abandoned by her husband for infidelity, recalls her past to an older woman (Stephane Audran). As is often the case with Chabrol, moral ambiguity is just the other side of mise en scene, and the storytelling is pretty fluid. (JR) Read more
Three errors in seven words, and sad proof that a New York underground survives today less as a reality than as an advertising slogan. First, apart from Eugene Salandra’s mildly charming animated Faerie Film (1993), set in Greenwich Village, and the locations of a few postproduction facilities, these six shorts appear to have practically nothing to do with New York. Second, underground used to mean blissfully free and actively hostile toward institutions of all kinds, while these workswith the possible exception of Peter Sarkisian’s striking, aggressive Detritus (sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in high-contrast black and white with scary effects, shot in New Mexico)are basically student films, indebted to institutions for their production as well as most of their ideas, made largely to please professors. And third, if this is truly the best of what’s availablesomething I can’t believethen God save us all from the worst. The other titles are: Mike King’s Doper, a rather dull documentary about a casual dope dealer and his friends; Joshua Wintringham’s Pleasant Hill, USA, a documentary about a senseless killing in Ohio; Frank Sebastiano’s Spring Break, a light comedy about an ineffectual slob planning to kill a romantic rival; and Helen Stickler’s Queen Mercy, a meditation on exchanges in a porn parlor. Read more
When it comes to Irish grudge matches, it’s conceivable there hasn’t been so much comic bluster and roustabout blarney on-screen since John Ford’s The Quiet Man. The differences between this film and that, however, are as instructive as the similarities. The setting is an Irish lakeside village in the mid-20s; the antagonists this time are women, with Mia Farrow as the old-timer (and only nonwidow in the ruling oligarchy) who develops an immediate hostility to an American newcomer (the John Wayne part) played by Natasha Richardson, with Joan Plowright essaying a rough equivalent of Barry Fitzgerald. Adrian Dunbar and Jim Broadbent are among the costars, and everyone does a swell job. Scriptwriter Hugh Leonard has more than a few tricks up his sleeve, and John Irvin’s beautiful direction honors them all while doing everything you might hope he would with the location. There’s a lovely old-fashioned score by Carl Davis as well. See this. Old Orchard, Fine Arts. Read more
In his finest work, including this masterful 1938 noir, the remarkable French filmmaker Jean Gremillon (1901-1959), trained as a composer and musician, used mise en scene, script construction, editing, and dialogue delivery to explore the complex relationship between film and music. Raimu, one of the greatest French actors, plays the “strange” title hero, a respectable Toulon merchant who secretly operates as a fence for local thieves; after he murders a potential blackmailer, an innocent local shoemaker (Pierre Blanchar) is sent to prison for his crime. Seven years later the fall guy escapes, returns to Toulon to see his son, and, unaware of Victor’s guilt, persuades the merchant to shelter him, then becomes involved with his wife. None of the moral ambiguities of these and other complications are lost on Gremillon, who eschews the usual distinctions between heroes and villains to make this a troubling and offbeat melodrama. Shot both in Toulon and in Berlin’s UFA studio, this potent dissection of appearance and reality may be less impressive than Gremillon’s subsequent Lumiere d’ete (1943), which benefits from Jacques Prevert’s dialogue, but it’s brilliant filmmaking all the same. With Madeleine Renaud and Vivianne Romance; coscripted by Albert Valentin, Charles Spaak, and Marcel Achard. Read more
Some of the precise meanings of this Bill Forsyth comedy eluded me, but the vibes couldn’t have been nicer. What’s off-putting at first is that both the title and the man-through-the-ages format–Robin Williams playing no fewer than five fellows named Hector: a caveman, a Roman Empire slave, a medieval traveler, a Portuguese shipwreck survivor, and a divorced landlord in contemporary Manhattan–promise the worst kind of universalist banality; fortunately, it never materializes. The overall conceit may be arch, but as narrator Theresa Russell periodically points out, this is a story about stories; and this being a Forsyth movie, everything–even customary overactors like Williams, John Turturro, and Lorraine Bracco–is scaled down to human proportions. At the same time, the movie leaves you feeling there’s more here than meets the eye. Unfortunately, many publicists and reviewers are apparently so insulted by the fact that it confounds their ordinary reflexes that they’re treating it as a turkey; in fact it’s one of the few truly original and personal commercial movies to have appeared this year, and if you’re looking for something a little different you should rush to see it before it disappears. With Anna Galiena, Vincent D’Onofrio, Hector Elizondo, and Lindsay Crouse. Norridge, Webster Place, Edens, 900 N. Read more
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Hai Ninh’s 1974 Vietnamese propaganda feature, partly filmed during the U.S. bombing of Hanoi in 1972, is how strong and accomplished and beautiful it is, particularly given the almost impossible circumstances under which it was made. The simple but powerful story centers on a little girl wandering through the rubble of the city, looking for her parents until a soldier takes her under his wing. Told partially through flashbacks and incorporating everything from animation to documentary footage to studio rear projection, the film is remarkable not only for its sincerity and emotional directness, but for its accomplished visual style. And though it was clearly designed to boost morale, its anti-American feeling is remarkably mild given what we were doing to Vietnam at the time, especially compared to the anti-Vietnamese sentiments expressed in The Green Berets and The Deer Hunter; there’s even a sympathetic American character, a nurse shown caring for wounded Vietnamese. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Sunday, May 8, 5:30, 281-4114. Read more
A fascinating documentary (1992) that’s much easier to watch than you’d think. Filmmaker Frank Perry (David and Lisa, Mommie Dearest) charts his own determined fight against inoperable cancer, and the amazing thing is how cheerful it makes him. Part of his philosophy (and the film’s) is that state of mind influences state of body, which means that he tries out all sorts of alternative healing methods, many of which seem to work; perhaps even more important is the attitude he takes toward his search and his joyful sense of discovery. The film is as interesting for what it leaves out as for what it includes (we learn nothing about his family or his closest friends, apart from his cameraman and sound person), but what it includes seems like very strong medicine. Music Box, Saturday and Sunday, May 7 and 8. Read more
A rather ho-hum if watchable neo-noir, though it’s been treated in some quarters as something special. Given the competition, I suppose in some way it is; but don’t expect to remember it too vividly for long. Nicolas Cage winds up in a small town in Wyoming looking for an oil-rigging job and gets mistaken for a hit man (Dennis Hopper) hired by a bar owner (J.T. Walsh) to bump off his wife (Lara Flynn Boyle). You can figure out the rest. Directed by John Dahl and written by Dahl and his brother Rick (1993, 98 min.). (JR) Read more
