A first-rate 1994 documentary by Swiss filmmaker Richard Dindo about the Latin American revolutionary. It briefly covers the decade he spent in Cuba (1956-’66) but concentrates mainly on his final months as a guerrilla leader in Bolivia before he was executed by the CIA-supported Bolivian army. Depending largely on excerpts from Guevara’s Bolivian diary that are read offscreen by filmmaker Robert Kramer, as well as separate narration spoken by Judith Burnett, Dindo follows Guevara’s progress through Bolivian locations in the present, speaking to many of the people he encountered (most memorably a young woman who delivered his last meal). What emerges is neither sentimental nor rhetorical but an authentic work of history, with all the moving ideals, disappointments, contradictions, and mysteries of Guevara and his mission. Note: the sound track of this film was appropriated by James Benning in his experimental feature Utopia. (JR) Read more
Only half an hour long, this is the greatest film ever made about the concentration camps (1956). Directed by Alain Resnais from a script by camp survivor Jean Cayrol (who subsequently scripted Muriel), it’s a perfect riposte to the eyewash of a New Yorker writer a few years back that Resnais, like Bergman, is noted for his metaphysical touch. If there’s a less metaphysical movie on the subject of the camps I haven’t seen it. Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 Shoah is so indebted to this film that it never could have been conceived, much less made, without Resnais’ example, and Schindler’s List is a cartoon alongside it. In French with subtitles. (JR) Read more
Edmund Purdom, a last-minute replacement for Marlon Brando, plays a soul-searching physician in ancient Egypt in this slow-moving 1954 blockbuster from Fox. Loosely based on Mika Waltari’s novel, the film tends to illustrate the limitations of most early CinemaScope features. Michael Curtiz directed; with Jean Simmons, Gene Tierney, Michael Wilding, Bella Darvi, Peter Ustinov, and Victor Mature (a fixture of early ‘Scope pictures). (JR) Read more
An enjoyable, lively, informal three-part history of American movies, more than three hours long, conducted by Martin Scorsese (writer Michael Henry played a substantial role in putting it together). One of the film’s many virtues is that not all the names and titles cited are obvious ones. Part one deals with the struggle between business and creativity, offers a survey of early American cinema called The Director as Storyteller, and takes a look at three genresthe western, the gangster film, and the musical. Part two deals with film language and studio directors who smuggled subversive ideas into their work. Part three carries the smuggling theme into the McCarthy era, then winds up with a discussion of the director as iconoclast that includes a discussion of Orson Welles, among others. Any of the parts can be viewed in isolation; together they add up to a rich survey of the subject by a genuine aficionado. (JR) Read more
This 1995 film is the only feature by Hal Hartley that has the same degree of formal playfulness as his overlooked short films — perhaps because it was made as if it were three separate shorts. All three recount the same story, but they’re set in different cities (New York, Berlin, and Tokyo) and told mainly in different languages, and the characters change race, gender, and ethnicity. Though it lacks some of the charms of Hartley’s Trust and The Unbelievable Truth and even announces the likelihood of its failure as an experiment, this is in some ways my favorite Hartley picture — because it takes the most risks and gives the mind the most to do. The actors include Martin Donovan, Parker Posey, Dwight Ewell, Geno Lechner, Elina Lowensohn, Miho Nikaidoh, Kumiko Ishizuka, and Hartley himself; the whole thing unfolds in an economical 85 minutes. (JR) Read more
From the producers of Ghostbusters comes this 1996 comic fantasy combining live action and animation, featuring Michael Jordan and the major Looney Tunes characters (Bugs Bunny is the only one who gets costar status, but they’re all in evidence). Simpler and cruder than Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of story and technique, this is still a great deal of fun, confirming that Jordan is every bit as mythological a creature as Daffy Duck or Yosemite Sam. I was especially warmed by Daffy’s interjection “We’re the exclusive property of Warner Brothers, Inc.,” not to mention his acknowledgment that neither he nor his furry friends get royalties for appearing on lunch boxes. Joe Pytka directed; with Wayne Knight and Theresa Randle. PG, 87 min. (JR) Read more
I’m not sure how thoroughly this stylish gangster comedy works, but as a surreal and imaginative fusion of Hollywood crime pictures and Las Vegas nightclub shtick, there’s nothing else quite like it. Written and directed by Larry Bishop (son of Joey), who also appears in the movie, it recounts the jockeying for position and power that occurs when a big-time mob boss (Richard Dreyfuss) is about to be sprung from a mental institution. The castEllen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne, Jeff Goldblum, Diane Lane, Gregory Hines, Kyle MacLachlan, and Burt Reynoldsseem to enjoy their being almost as stylized as the sets. (JR) Read more
A tragicomic 1991 feature by Flora Gomes, set and filmed in Guinea-Bissau, in Crioulo and Portuguese, about the secret love of a young girl who’s secretly loved by someone else. I haven’t seen this film, but Gomes’s earlier Mortu nega and subsequent Po di sangui are both beautiful and hypnotic features. 95 min. (JR) Read more
This exciting existentialist road movie by Monte Hellman, with a sharp script by Rudolph Wurlitzer and Will Corry has my favorite Warren Oates performance and looks even better now than it did in 1971, though it was pretty interesting back then as well. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are the drivers of a supercharged ’55 Chevy, and Oates is the owner of a new GTO (these nameless characters are in fact identified only by the cars they drive). They meet and agree to race from New Mexico to the east coast, though side interests periodically distract them, including various hitchhikers, among them Laurie Bird. (Oates hilariously assumes a new identity every time he picks up a new passenger, rather like the amorphous narrator in Wurlitzer’s novel Nog.) The unsettling thing about this movie is that it starts off as a narrative but gradually grows into something much more abstract; that’s what’s beautiful about it as well. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday, November 1, 7:00 and 9:00; Saturday and Sunday, November 2 and 3, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00; and Monday through Thursday, November 4 through 7, 7:00 and 9:00; 773-281-4114. Read more
A gripping, stylish, unpredictable, and provocative 1995 thriller from Spain by Mariano Barroso, who will be present to introduce and discuss the film. An ambitious petty criminal (Javier Bardem) infiltrates the theater world of Madrid by persuading a celebrated film director that he’s his illegitimate and long-abandoned son, meanwhile planning with his two roommates to rob him blind. With Federico Lupi and Silvia Munt. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, November 2, 8:15, and Sunday, November 3, 6:15, 312-443-3737. Read more
As we go to press, I’ve seen about a third of the 30-odd programs being shown by the Chicago International Film Festival over its final weekend (not counting Hugo winners and audience choices), only three of which I’d place in the category of must-see: Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, showing Sunday at Pipers Alley; Alex van Warmerdam’s The Dress, Saturday at the Three Penny and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Goodbye South, Goodbye, Saturday at the Music Box. The latter two movies haven’t been picked up, and even if they get distributors chances are they won’t reappear for another year.
I can add a few less urgent recommendations. William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953) was, oddly enough, a favorite film of Carl Dreyer; when the Danish government paid tribute to its greatest filmmaker by inviting him to program an art cinema in Copenhagen, he gave this black and white comedy, which won Audrey Hepburn an Oscar, the longest run. Keith Gordon’s Mother Night (also scheduled to open soon) is a flawed rendering of one of Kurt Vonnegut’s better early novels, but for my money better than most Merchant-Ivory adaptations, especially during its first half.
Thief and Heat (1995) are both effective Michael Mann thrillers–especially Thief, which is said to be showing in a newly restored “director’s cut”–and Wyler’s Funny Girl (1968), for all its schmaltz, has the undeniable benefit of Barbra Streisand in her early prime. Read more
Leslie Thornton’s remarkable, mind-boggling experimental feature-length cycle of short films which she’s been working on and releasing in episodes since 1981 is a postapocalyptic narrative about two children feeling their way through the refuse of late-20th-century consumer culture; the films employ a wide array of found footage as well as peculiar, unpredictable, and often funny performances from two “found” actors. Apart from one startling and beautiful color shot in the penultimate episode, Whirling, the whole cycle is in black and white. (Episodes that have been added since an earlier version of the cycle showed in Chicago six years ago include Introduction to the So-Called Duck Factory and The Problem So Far.) Highly idiosyncratic and deeply creepy, this series as a whole – which includes passages in both film and video, sometimes shown concurrently – represents the most exciting recent work in the American avant-garde, a saga that raises questions about everything while making everything seem very strange. Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division, Friday, October 18, 8:00, 773-384-5533.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Photo still. Read more
This first feature has been described as school of Cassavetes, because it stars Gena Rowlands and the filmmaker in question is John Cassavetes’s son Nick. But the best that can be said for this fair-to-middling soap opera about a widow (Rowlands) getting a second lease on life is that, apart from being actor-oriented, it isn’t a copy of John Cassavetes’s work at all. It’s something much more conventional and sentimentaldecent enough, I suppose, on its own terms, but not the radical rethinking of art and human personality one associates with Cassavetes pere. With Marisa Tomei, Gerard Depardieu (even hammier than usual), and Jake Lloyd; Helen Caldwell collaborated on the script. (JR) Read more
Reviewers who called this sincere if highly familiar look at aimless lives in Brooklyn (1996, 94 min.)a first feature written, directed by, and starring Steve Buscemisuperior to John Cassavetes, whom Buscemi has described as a major influence, have done a radical disservice to the modest virtues of this picture, as well as misconstrued Cassavetes’s own multifaceted achievement (which had more to do with close scripting than most people imagine). The title refers to a bar where most of the characters hang out, and though the film occasionally conveys some of the sweetness of early Cassavetes it has none of the mystery: these characters are enjoyable types but not a lot more. Certainly the cast has fun: Anthony LaPaglia, Elizabeth Bracco, Mark Boone Jr., Chloe Sevigny, Daniel Baldwin, and Carol Kane. (JR) Read more
Like Spike Lee’s much better Do the Right Thing, this 1996 feature about a group of black males from east Los Angeles who travel by bus to the Million Man March tries to present a cross section of contemporary black attitudes, juggling them with intelligence. Here the director is more self-conscious about his didactic aims, which limits him in some respects, but there’s an engaging roughness about his visual approach that keeps this movie footloose and inventive. Written by Reggie Rock Blythewood; with Richard Belzer, DeAundre Bonds, Andre Braugher, Ossie Davis (especially impressive), Charles S. Dutton, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, and Gabriel Casseus. 120 min. (JR) Read more
