It’s hard to imagine a more uncharacteristic David Mamet project: an adaptation of a genteel Terence Rattigan play from the mid-1940s about family affection and loyalty (previously adapted for a 1948 film directed by Anthony Asquith), which is based in turn on the 1910 trial of English naval cadet George Archer-Shee for a minor theftan event that became a national scandal due to the intransigence of both the government and the boy’s father. But this may be the most accomplished Mamet movie since House of Games, not only because he works so fruitfully with his excellent cast (Nigel Hawthorne, Jeremy Northam, Rebecca Pidgeon, Gemma Jones, Guy Edwards, and Matthew Pidgeon), but also because he offers a sturdy object lesson in how to attack period material of this kind without self-serving irony or condescension. 110 min. (JR) Read more
Czech filmmaker Gustav Machaty’s erotic 1929 silent feature is less impressive than his subsequent and most famous film, Ecstasy (1933), but it remains a striking mannerist work with affecting poetic touches. Chronicling a Prague playboy’s one-night stand with a provincial stationmaster’s daughter and the aftermath when she becomes pregnant, the film is somewhat dated in its conventional morality, yet its camera work is fluid and free, and overall the film vibrates with sensuality. (Credited as scene designer is Alexander Hackenschmied, who years later collaborated with Maya Deren on her early films under the name Alexander Hammid.) Machaty, a former assistant to Griffith and Stroheim, never fulfilled the promise of his early work and wound up making classy commercials for European TV, but he’s still a key figure in early Czech cinema, and the richer sections of this picture show why. (JR) Read more
Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s passionate 1975 account of the nonviolent efforts of Gerrard Winstanley (Miles Halliwell) to form a commune in Surrey, England, in 1649 is a quixotic yet hardy attempt to change the way we think about history. Made independently between the late 60s and early 70s and shot in black and white, the film strives for a period verisimilitude so uncompromising and multifaceted that the filmmakers made strenuous efforts to use species of birds, cows, and pigs similar to those that populated 17th-century Surrey. The style is deliberately patterned after silent cinema (Brownlow’s specialty as a film historian), though the script is partly derived from a contemporary novel about Winstanley, David Caute’s Comrade Jacob. Refusing to make facile links between Winstanley’s religious sect, the Diggers, and the English hippies of the 70s, Brownlow and Mollo regard the past with the same sort of awe that SF writers and directors commonly show regarding the future, and the results, while frequently dedramatized, are hauntingly mysterious and often beautiful. This may not be sufficiently achieved to deserve the label masterpiece, but it’s stayed with me longer than most period masterpieces have; in some ways, despite its meager budget, its only peer is Stanley Kubrick’s similarly underrated Barry Lyndon, made during the same period. Read more
This speculative 1966 feature by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo exemplifies English independent filmmaking at its most resourceful and intransigent. Paralleling Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which imagined what North America might have become had Hitler won, the film portrays what England might have been like in 1944 had it been invaded and occupied by Germany four years earlier. Fanatically dedicated to period detail and refusing to fall back on stock footage, Brownlow started the film in 1956 at age 18, some time before enlisting military scholar Mollo as a full collaborator and a full decade before the film was finally released. Their decision to use real English fascists and proto-Nazis to express the views of their 1944 counterparts on Jews and euthanasia led to the film’s most interesting sequence being suppressed in the 60s, and it took Brownlow over 30 years to regain the rights to the film so he could restore it, making this the Chicago premiere of the film’s full and original version. As narrative it can be dry and unemphatic (most of the actors are nonprofessionals), but as speculation it’s highly convincing and endlessly fascinating. The beautiful black-and-white cinematography is by Peter Suschitzky, who went on to work for John Boorman, Ken Russell, George Lucas, Tim Burton, and most recently David Cronenberg. Read more
A striking first feature (1998) from Kyrgyzstanin fact, the first independent feature ever made in that countryabout everyday life in a rural village, including the pastimes of little boys. The young hero discovers that he’s adopted, following a local tradition of large families giving babies to childless couples. The beautiful cinematography is mainly in black and white, but every shift to color feels like a small miracle, and filmmaker Aktan Abdikalikov is equally adept at building his nuanced sound track piece by piece. (JR) Read more
An interesting, offbeat 1997 French road movie by Manuel Poirier, about a Spanish lady-killer (Sergi Lopez) and a Russian immigrant (Sacha Bourdo) traveling and quarreling their way through Brittany. A rambling but ultimately rather affecting comedy-drama by a talented filmmaker who’s almost completely unknown here, this has a deft feel for lower-middle-class life in rural France that registered strongly on its home front. (JR) Read more
Another Russian gangster film, you may groan at first, as I did at the onset of this 1997 feature by writer-director Alexei Balabanov (who made the remarkable 1995 short Trofilm). But the further this movie develops, the better it gets — not only as a hard-edged look at Russian life today but also as a finely nuanced psychological study. Starring Sergei Bodrov Jr. (Prisoner of the Mountains), this follows the ups and downs of a young man who returns to Saint Petersburg after leaving the army and discovers that his brother is a hit man. In Russian with subtitles. 99 min. (JR) Read more
Mel Gibson plays a state’s witness in hiding who runs into his college girlfriend (Goldie Hawn), now a prominent lawyer, who thought he died in the 60s. They wind up fleeing cross-country together from two murderous corrupt DEA agents (Bill Duke and David Carradine), who are using the government’s computer technology to track them down. John Badham directed this romantic comedy-adventure romp from a script by David Seltzer, Louis Venosta, and Eric Lerner; it isn’t exactly art but it works pretty well as entertainmentat least until the overproduced and undernourished conclusion, where formulaic predictability sets in, along with certain gaps in logic and continuity (e.g., escaping from the deadly killers, the couple write them a note explaining where they’re going). Hawn and Gibson work well together, and both are encouraged to show a lot of leg; with Stephen Tobolowsky and Joan Severance, who manages to shine in a small part despite some far-fetched dialogue. (JR) Read more
Based on the 20 minutes I sampled on video, this low-budget, sub-Tarantino crime caper from Canada is worth your time only if your expectations are down, dirty, mean, and lowin a word, modest. Michael Bafaro directed the script by Ivan Tylor; with Ben Ratner, John Cassini, Frank Cassini, Freddy Andreiuci, and Lori Triolo. (JR) Read more
A better-than-average Quentin Tarantino imitation, this 1999 feature crosscuts the overlapping adventures of a teenage supermarket cashier (Sarah Polley) who’s filling in for a British coworker and trying to take over a little of his drug business to score some rent money, the coworker (Desmond Askew) partying in Las Vegas, and a couple of TV actors (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr) caught up in a drug sting. The LA-underground characters, situations, and ambience keep this lively, even if most of the Tarantino-esque narrative rewinds seem forced and dutiful. Doug Liman (Swingers) shot and directed the script by first-timer (and coproducer) John August; others in the cast include Katie Holmes, Taye Diggs, William Fichtner, Nathan Bexton, and Timothy Olyphant. 100 min. (JR) Read more
Larisa Oleynik plays a popular teenage girl forbidden to date until her shrewish older sister (Julia Stiles) finds a boyfriend; so she and her potential beau (Andrew Keegan) set about finding sis a match. Actually, this isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds; Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith’s script has its witty moments, and some of the secondary characterssuch as Larry Miller as the father and Daryl Chill Mitchell as an irritable teacherare every bit as quirky as the leads. Gil Junger directed this 1999 Disney comedy derived from The Taming of the Shrew; though the connections are fairly loose, this is arguably closer to Shakespeare in its overall sense of character and even in its sprightly use of music than Shakespeare in Love. Others in the cast include Heath Ledger, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, and David Krumholtz. 97 min. (JR) Read more
I haven’t seen Disney’s Doug, the Saturday-morning animated TV series about young teens, but judging from this feature-length spin-off, it combines ugly color combinations and crude animation with engaging characters and plot situations that speak to adolescents. The plot in this case is a goofy reworking of E.T. in which the Lucky Duck Lake monster becomes the kids’ secret pal and nasty adults try to rub it out. Uncharacteristically pithy at less than 80 minutes, the movie makes room for a romantic subplot that has its own charms, culminating in the memorable line, Skeeter Valentine, dance me! Directed by Maurice Joyce from a script by Ken Scarborough. (JR) Read more
Homegirls: New Work by Chicago Women and Girls
Three of the nine works on this program are by friends, so I’m glad I like them as much as I do. Sohrab Shahid Saless: Far From Home, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa’s highly personal tribute and invaluable introduction to the seminal filmmaker who worked in Iran and Germany and died last summer in Chicago, mixes clips, commentary, and interviews to create a poetic, bittersweet statement about loss and exile. Vanalyne Green’s Saddle Sores: A Blue Western, about contracting herpes from a Wyoming cowboy, includes many film clips, photographs, printed titles, country-and-western favorites, conversations with friends, and confessions. It’s every bit as jokey and analytical as Green’s earlier video A Spy in the House That Ruth Built, about her sexual attraction to baseball players; but here the narration is much more self-accusing as it explores how she romanticized cowboys and let herself get herpes, and then had to deal with the shame–which makes the relentlessly bantering tone a lot more unsettling and challenging. Ann Marie Fleming’s Tiresias offers a short, hilarious version of Ovid with animated stick figures. I also liked Paula Froehle’s experimental Fever, which interrelates sound, text, and images in original and arresting ways, and Anne Northrup’s narrative And Everything Nice, a psychologically acute portrayal of a little girl’s alienation from her parents at the time of Watergate, exceptionally well acted by Jessica Carleton. Read more
En route to Savannah for his big-scale wedding, a phony New Yorker (Ben Affleck) encounters a ditsy life force (Sandra Bullock); they have several picaresque adventures together, and he reaches Savannah less phony. At least that’s the way this tiresome romantic comedy, directed by Bronwen Hughes from a Marc Lawrence script, is supposed to play; I found it pretty phony all the way through, and not even the presence of Blythe Danner as the fiancee’s mother helps much. With Maura Tierney, Steve Zahn, and Ronny Cox. 105 min. (JR) Read more
A touching first feature (1997) by Jesse Peretz about the relationship between a young couple (Natasha Gregson Wagner and Giovanni Ribisi) living together in a small fishing village on the Louisiana bayou. She’s a local and he’s there on holiday, where he joins her estranged father (Robert John Burke) in a faltering business venture to catch eels. The plot is somewhat amorphous and not entirely helped by some symbolism involving a rat, but the overall feel of the location is perfectly caught, the poetic and atmospheric interludes punctuating the story are nicely handled, and the acting is first-rate. Adapted by Peretz and David Ryan from a story by Ian McEwan. Music Box, Saturday and Sunday, March 13 and 14. — Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
