Buster Keaton is a bachelor who stands to inherit a fortune if he finds himself a bride by seven o’clock in this 1925 silent feature, which Dave Kehr has described as a cubist comedy . . . based on a principle of geometric progression from the number seven. Adapted from a stage-bound play by David Belasco, it takes off into the stratosphere only at the climax, but that outlandish chase sequence alone is well worth the price of admission. 56 min. (JR) Read more
An intriguing curiosity, this is Keith Sanborn’s subtitled, black-and-white, letterboxed video version of a postsituationist 1973 French film by Rene Vieneta redubbed and possibly recut version of a color Hong Kong martial arts movie, The Crush. Given the film-to-video and color-to-black-and-white transfers, this is surely as much an appropriation of someone else’s material as the French original is. Broadly speaking, Vienet’s work can be described as the What’s Up, Tiger Lily? of French post-Marxist high theorywhich is sometimes an outright and deliberate hoot, sometimes apparently serious, and sometimes too ambiguous in tone to be labeled one or the other. (JR) Read more
The main question raised by this profoundly dreadful comedy-drama from Australiaa sentimental and obvious story about a production of Mozart’s opera Cosi fan tutte presented in a mental asylumis why Miramax wanted to produce as well as distribute it in the first place. Apart from fulfilling their overall agenda of keeping art out of arthousesa mission equally served by their acquiring and then shelving major works like the color version of Jacques Tati’s Jour de fete three years agoit’s hard to see what possible cultural or commercial function this formulaic piece of claptrap could have. Louis Nowra adapted his own play and Mark Joffe directed; with Ben Mendelson, Barry Collins, Toni Colette, and Rachel Griffiths. (JR) Read more
Not to be confused with films of the same title by Nagisa Oshima and Laurence Harvey, this expertly contrived and ultimately shocking 1995 psychological thriller is still probably the best feature by New Wave filmmaker Claude Chabrol since Just Before Nightfall (1971). It’s a mysterious, haunting tale about a sullen if dutiful maid (Sandrine Bonnaire), a postal worker who becomes her best friend (Isabelle Huppert), and a likable bourgeois family that the two women are fated to despise. Adapted from Ruth Rendell’s novel A Judgment in Stone and coscripted by psychoanalyst Caroline Eliacheff, this film unfolds with the rigor of a dream. With Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Virginie Ledoyen, and Valentin Merlet. In French with subtitles. 112 min. (JR) Read more
Through a misunderstanding, a New York beautician (Fran Drescher) gets hired by the dictator (Timothy Dalton) of a mythical eastern European country to tutor his four childrenand guess what? She winds up teaching him the joys of love and democracy. As silly and as obvious as it sounds (and is), Ken Kwapis’s rendition of a Todd Graff script reeking of The King and I and The Sound of Music manages to be sweet and likable, largely because Kwapis directs the actors well and treats the sub-Lubitsch material as if he actually believed in it. With Ian McNeice, Lisa Jakub, and Michael Lerner. PG, 105 min. (JR) Read more
I haven’t seen it in at least 30 years, but if fond memories are anything to go by, this first feature (1938) in Mark Donskoi’s once-celebrated Gorky trilogy is richly textured in its depiction of rustic family life and remains a juicy humanist classiceven if it comes from one of the worst periods of socialist realism. (JR) Read more
Also known as Pasolini: An Italian Crime, Marco Tullio Giordana’s absorbing 1995 Italian docudrama-cum-documentary relies heavily on the techniques of JFK to explore the possibility of a right-wing conspiracy behind the violent death of poet, filmmaker, novelist, and essayist Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975. The evidence revealed, though far from conclusive, is certainly compelling, and it led to the case being reopened. With Carlo De Filippi, Nicoletta Braschi, and Tony Bertolli. (JR) Read more
A bunch of city slickers (including cowriter-actor Eugene Levy, cowriter-director-actor Christopher Guest, and actors Fred Willard, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Matt Keeslar, and Lewis Arquette) have a good time ribbing middle-American yokels. The specific targets are residents of Blaine, Missouri, who are preparing a musical pageant to celebrate their town’s 150th anniversary, and the ammunition consists mainly of overwhelming condescensionwhat cornball hicks these pathetic people are, unlike the suave people playing them (most worked on This Is Spinal Tap, which set its sights somewhat higher). This 1997 comedy may be amusing if you feel a pressing need to feel superior to somebody, but the aim is too broad and scattershot to add up to much beyond an acknowledgment of small-town desperationsomething Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis did much better back in the 20s and 30s. R, 84 min. (JR) Read more
Though not entirely satisfying, Manthia Diawara’s 1995 video documentary about the great innovative French anthropological filmmaker Jean Rouch–which intermittently attempts to practice a “reverse anthropology” on Rouch himself–is an invaluable introduction to one of the greatest living filmmakers. Diawara, a critic and film professor at New York University who hails from Mali, has known Rouch for years and struggles admirably to balance the filmmaker’s unquestionable achievements (including his role as a precursor of and guru to the French New Wave) with his paternalism toward Africans–an attitude that was still progressive 20, 30, and 40 years ago, when most of Rouch’s masterpieces were made, but is harder to rationalize today. Diawara fails to resolve the conflict, but at least he articulates it as honestly as possible. On the same program–which will be introduced by Chicago documentary filmmaker Judy Hoffman, who has worked with Rouch–is a rare early short film by Rouch, In the Land of the Black Magi (1947), codirected by Pierre Ponty and Jean Sauvy. And if you want to see what Rouch in his prime can do as a filmmaker, check out his Jaguar (1967) at Chicago Filmmakers next Friday, same time, same place. Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, Friday, January 31, 8:00, 773-384-5533. Read more
George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977) with a few minor restorations of bits deleted from the original and an upgrading of certain effects (more beasties in the background, better sound). Almost a decade after its original release, Dave Kehr wrote, George Lucas’s science fiction adventure is an exhilarating update of Flash Gordon, very much in the same half-jokey, half-earnest mood, but backed by special effects that, for once, really work and are intelligently integrated with the story. It’s easy to see what he means, but I still prefer the homey and homemade Flash Gordon serials, which for all their 30s racism lack the antiseptic genocidal fervor and new age pretensions of Lucas’s giddy celebration of warfare. (It’s also, as Kehr suggested, very knowing about its supposed dumbness, and a triumph of market research.) But if you want to see the movie that made mild diversion for ten-year-old boys the model of commercial filmmaking, ruling out nuanced characterization and emotions that last longer than 20 seconds, this is where to look. With Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, and the voice of James Earl Jones. PG, 121 min. (JR) Read more
A delightful, sexy farce featuring the same lead actors as A Fish Called Wanda–John Cleese (who wrote the script with Iain Johnstone), Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin–in a very different story, this one entertaining various revenge fantasies against Rupert Murdoch. The Murdoch-like tycoon (played by Kline), who runs a company called Octopus, sends one of his bureaucrats (Cleese) to an English zoo to make its operations more profitable or else close it down. The horrified staff of animal lovers plots various forms of revolt, while the tycoon’s crass and unappreciated son (Kline again) and an ambitious new Octopus employee (Curtis) come up with schemes of their own. Combining the gentle with the vulgar as only the English can, this lively comedy is bursting with character and energy, and directors Robert Young and Fred Schepisi–the latter completed the movie–do a fine job of keeping it all rollicking. Burham Plaza, Ford City, Lincoln Village, 900 N. Michigan, Webster Place, Golf Glen, North Riverside, Old Orchard. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
Just as she’s about to start a job with room service at a luxury hotel in Paris, a young woman (Virginie Ledoyen) tells her boyfriend that she’s pregnant and wants to keep their child. They quarrel but arrange to meet an hour later, and the film then follows her first hour at work in real time. This segment of Benoit Jacquot’s compelling 1995 feature, written with Jerome Beaujour, is a stunning demonstration of moral and existential suspense in relation to duration, much like Agnes Varda’s 1962 Cleo From 5 to 7. Later the excitement dissipates somewhat, and when the film abandons real time to make room for an epilogue it becomes ordinary. But until then it’s an essential piece of filmmaking–not simply as a stylistic exercise but as a fascinating look at a hotel in operation. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, January 24 through 30.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
The title characters are a dog and a dolphin that become friends; their respective keepers, Steve Guttenberg and Kathleen Quinlan, both single parents, become friends too. Written by Tom Benedek, this family entertainment was directed by George Millersometimes known as George Miller the Bad (Robinson Crusoe, The Man From Snowy River) to distinguish him from George Miller the Good (the director of Lorenzo’s Oil and producer of Babe). (JR) Read more
A broad, hit-and-miss Australian youth comedy, set in the title hotel in Niagara Smalls. Some of it looks like a TV commercial, and the characters’ motivations could have been generated by a computer, but the castRay Barrett, Julia Blake, Simon Bossell, Saffron Burrows, Pippa Grandison, and Aden Youngis attractive and energetic. Written and directed by Craig Rosenberg. (JR) Read more
I suspect that Jon Robin Baitz’s play, about a Holocaust survivor who’s become a stubbornly idealistic publisher of books about the Holocaust and an inflexible father, worked very effectively onstage. But despite a compelling opening, as a movie it loses focus and purpose as it proceeds. Whether this is due to miscalculations on the part of either Baitz (adapting his own work) or Daniel Sullivan (a stage director turning to film for the first time), or to meddling on the part of the distributor I can’t say, but in its present form it sheds more heat than light. The cast is good, but like me they seem to have trouble figuring out why they’ve been summoned. With Ron Rifkin, Timothy Hutton, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Tony Goldwyn. (JR) Read more