The Cinerama-like Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of CivilizationAfter Henry Darger and Charles Fourier (2001, 19 min.), originally made for an installation, and Now Let Us Praise Famous Leftists (2000, 4 min.) are provocative and cantankerous conceptual works employing computer animation. They’re both ripe for explication, so it’s fortunate that former Chicagoan (and Reader staffer) Paul Chan will be on hand to discuss them. But the most valuable work here is Baghdad in No Particular OrderPart I (51 min.), shot in that city in late 2002 and early 2003a freewheeling, inquisitive portrait of some of the people whose lives we’re supposed to be improving, with particular emphasis on their art and music. As visual constructions, all three videos are highly original. (JR) Read more
I approached this 2002 documentary with a keen desire to learn more about its subject, American experimental composer and saxophonist John Zorn, and came away only partially satisfied. German filmmaker Claudia Heuermann, who supplies autobiographical narration, is clearly a passionate Zorn fan and even lets some of his ideas about structure influence the titled sections, but she makes no effort to situate Zorn in relation to other avant-garde composers and musicians, instead using him as a stand-in for experimental music in general. This kind of hagiography does neither Zorn nor the audience any favors, but enough of his ideas and musical range (encompassing punk, free jazz, klezmer, Japanese noise bands, and film scores) come across to keep this lively and interesting; I especially enjoyed his reflections on all he learned from Carl Stalling’s music in the Road Runner cartoons. 82 min. (JR) Read more
Doubtless this tale of spirit possession in Georgetown packs a punch, but so does wood alcohol, wrote Reader critic Don Druker in an earlier review of this. I wouldn’t be quite so dismissive: as a key visual source for Mel Gibson’s depiction of evil in The Passion of the Christ, as well as an early indication of how seriously pulp can be taken when religious faith is involved, this 1973 horror thriller is highly instructive as well as unnerving. William Friedkin, directing William Peter Blatty’s adaptation of his own novel, aims for the jugular, privileging sensation over sense and such showbiz standbys as vomit and obscenity over plodding exposition. This is the original release version, which runs 121 minutes; with Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Linda Blair, and Lee J. Cobb. R. (JR) Read more
Based on a French lieutenant’s account of his 1942 escape from a gestapo fortress in Lyon, this stately yet uncommonly gripping 1956 feature is my choice as the greatest achievement of Robert Bresson, one of the cinema’s foremost artists. (It’s rivaled only by his more corrosive and metaphysical 1970 film Au hasard Balthazar, playing next week.) The best of all prison-escape movies, it reconstructs the very notion of freedom through offscreen sounds and defines salvation in terms of painstakingly patient and meticulous effort. Bresson himself spent part of the war in an internment camp and subsequently lived through the German occupation of France, experiences that inform his magisterial grasp of what the concentrated use of sound and image can reveal about souls in hiding. Essential viewing. In French with subtitles. 101 min. Music Box. Read more
After giving prostitution the full Disney treatment in Pretty Woman, director Garry Marshall recommends mild doses of sadomasochism and bondage-discipline to the middle-class. As both a liberal project and a light tease, this carries a certain charm, though the star dominatrix here, Dana Delany, is so soft and malleable that one winds up feeling that the movie has backed away from its own agenda. The first and best part has its hero, Paul Mercurio, taking off for a therapeutic island named Eden, something halfway between summer camp and kinky theme park, where wisecracking undercover cops Rosie O’Donnell and Dan Aykroydfurnished with arch and awkward dialogue by Deborah Amelon and Bob Brunnerare trying to track down some central-casting villains (one of them played by the model Iman). Then Delany and Mercurio fly away to Louisiana, and the movie flies away with them. The source material, incidentally, is an Anne Rice novel. (JR) Read more
A Dutch film in English by Ian Kerkhof which sounds like an experimental docudrama on the subject of serial killers, to be shown with a short documentary from the U.S. by George Hickenlooper ( Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse) on the same subject (though only one measly serial killer in this case), Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade. Read more
Six short films by American film studentsEva Ilona Brzeski, Chris Macgowan, Lesllie McCleave, Daven Gee, Mark Yardas, and Debrah LeMattre. Read more
A presentation of the work of graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass, perhaps best known for his credit sequences designed for Otto Preminger films, his Oscar-winning short film Why Man Creates, and his s-f feature Phase IV. Bass himself will host the event. Music Box, 7:00) Read more
After achieving the nadir of the series with the misleadingly named Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and then offering a second false promise with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1992), the Star Trek brigade return with yet another big-screen adventure (1994). Cast members from the 60s TV series and Star Trek: The Next Generation (including an uncredited Whoopi Goldberg) join captains Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and James T. Kirk (William Shatner) in the 24th century, where we find them pondering their mortality (or their immortality) in separate scenes. A lot of time is spent tweaking and indulging Trekkie nostalgia and recycling favorite motifs (while boring everybody else), so that an Aw, shit! from a robot character is clearly meant to resonate with something like the emotional complexity of Shall We Gather at the River in a John Ford picture, but at least the special effects and outer space vistas are more handsome than usual. Directed by David Carson from a script by Ronald D. Moore, Brannon Braga, and producer Rick Berman. With Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Malcolm McDowell, James Doohan, and Walter Koenig. (JR) Read more
Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s Icelandic feature about a boy coming of age during the 60sgrowing up on American movies and TV shows in Reykjavik, then discovering nature and traditional Icelandic culture at a relative’s farm. To be shown with a short film from Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto, Drop. Read more
Mijke de Jong’s Dutch feature is a love story set in present-day Amsterdam between a woman who lives on a barge and hangs out with musicians, junkies, and illegal aliens, and a small-time lawyer who disapproves of her friends. To be shown with a short film from France, Michel Peterli’s Rue Vavin. Read more
Marie is a petty thief, Joe her law-abiding lover; both dream of becoming music stars, and they have to leave their Swiss coastal town after Marie shoots a man during an abortive robbery, hoping to escape to America. A Swiss feature directed by Tania Stocklin. Read more
A program of eight short films from France: Didier Flamand’s The Screw, Yvon Marciano’s Emile Muller, Jean-Louis Milesi’s It Happens in Ecuador, Remy Burkel’s Ayrton the Bug, Kram and Plor’s FoudamourThe Promised Moon, Laurence Maynard’s The Mobius Strip, Philippe Robert and Jean-Claude Thibaut’s The Wings of the Shadow, and Vincent Mayrand’s Deus ex machina. Read more
A 1994 collection of short narrative films by Mani Kaul (The Cloud Door), Ken Russell (The Insatiable Mrs. Kirsch), and Susan Seidelman (The Dutch Master), each a little under a half-hour long. The two I’ve seen in this batch are both recommended, especially Kaul’s enchanting, beautiful, and provocative fairy tale. Russell’s characteristically over-the-top sketch, which concerns a vacationing tourist’s crazed erotic imaginings about a woman staying at the same hotela good example of Russell enjoying a healthy laugh at the expense of his own puritanical hysteria. The combined length is 79 min. (JR) Read more
This shorts program was originally compiled for a personal appearance by director Jim Jarmusch at last December’s Movieside Film Festival but proved so popular that the organizers have scheduled an encore screening. It’s indicative of Jarmusch’s singular taste that all but two of these items — Sara Driver’s energetic documentary The Bowery (1994) and Hype Williams’s equally energetic music video I Got ‘Cha Money (1999) — are in black and white. The others, in chronological order of release, are Buster Keaton’s wonderful The High Sign (1920); Max Fleischer’s wild surrealist cartoon Bimbo’s Initiation (1931); Carl Dreyer’s spooky public-service short on auto safety, They Caught the Ferry (1948, in Danish with subtitles); Orlando Jiminez Leal and Saba Cabrera’s celebration of Havana street life, P.M. (1961); Anthony Balch’s strange experimental film with William S. Burroughs, Towers Open Fire (1963); Jem Cohen’s reflective video about a Manhattan crowd after a street parade, Little Flags (2000); and Jarmusch’s leisurely Int. Trailer. Night. (2002), which follows Chloe Sevigny in a trailer during ten minutes between takes on an urban movie location. (JR)
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