Clean, Shaven (1993), the debut feature of independent filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan, follows a schizophrenic back to his hometown, where he hopes to see his daughter. After a disappointing second feature (1998’s Claire Dolan), Kerrigan returns with his best work to date, at least in terms of narrative drive and suspense. It focuses on a man (Damian Lewis), who may or may not be schizophrenic, searching the New York Port Authority bus terminal and its immediate vicinity for his six-year-old daughter, who’s allegedly been abducted but may not even exist. When he eventually befriends a desperate young woman (Amy Ryan) with a six-year-old girl, our uncertainty naturally escalates. R, 90 min. (JR) Read more
Two fascinating 16-millimeter experimental films, both involving history. El dia que me quieras (1997, 30 min.), which translates as The Day You’ll Love Me, is by Argentinean-American Leandro Katz and mixes color with black and white in a poetic meditation on the famous 1967 photograph of Che Guevara’s corpse surrounded by his Bolivian captors. Its investigation is threaded through an extended contemporary interview with the photographer, Freddy Alborta, and a Jorge Luis Borges text adapted and read by Katz. Ernie Gehr’s Eureka (1974, 30 min.) unpacks and illuminates footage of San Francisco’s Market Street taken about a century ago. (JR) Read more
After her husband falls to his death in Berlin, a propulsion engineer (Jodie Foster) takes a commercial flight back to the U.S. with her six-year-old daughter and awakes from a nap to find that the girl is missing and no one on board remembers seeing her. This thriller is effective if you can accept thatas with some of John Dickson Carr’s locked-room mysteriesthe trickiness counts more than any plausibility. There’s also some pointed if unstressed social commentary, and pitting Foster’s engineer, with her knowledge of planes, against everyone else makes for some lively moments. Robert Schwentke directed a script by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray; with Peter Sarsgaard and Sean Bean. PG-13, 98 min. (JR) Read more
Made for the BBC, this travelogue of America’s southern backwoods is both blessed and cursed by its fascination with the colorfullively alt-country sounds and fancy word spinners like novelist Harry Crews. As a native of the deep south, I was pleased but also troubled by the locals’ eagerness to put on a folksy act for director Andrew Douglas; the camera makes awed touristic pans of the various locales, and guides offer an uncredited swipe from Faulkner’s The Wild Palms and charge $100 a day to rent a 1970 Chevy. This plays like a documentary but also credits a writer, Steve Haisman. 84 min. (JR) Read more
Alas, the thing most illuminated here is how blotchy digital video can look in the wrong hands. Actor Liev Schreiber makes his writing and directing debut with this adaptation of a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, about a young American Jew (Elijah Wood) traveling to a remote Ukrainian village in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Alternately mawkish and strident, with lots of fades to white and dog reaction shots, this can be recommended only for its good intentions. With Eugene Hutz and Boris Leskin. In English and subtitled Ukrainian. PG-13, 104 min. (JR) Read more
American teens in a depressed mining town form a secret club based on the twin tenets of pacifism and gun ownership; predictably, they wind up in a shootout with police. This Danish allegory (in English) was directed by Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) but written and produced by Lars von Trier (Dogville), whose hypocrisy and facile anti-Americanism are much in evidence. Vinterberg and von Trier may consider themselves pacifists, but they don’t seem to mind using violence to attract an audience. Well acted and directed, yet outlandish in some details, this 2004 feature is basically watchable tripe. 101 min. (JR) Read more
The directorial debut of Wong Kar-wai (1989), described as a reconfiguring of Mean Streets in terms of the Hong Kong underworld. By most accounts a far cry from Wong’s second feature, Days of Being Wild (my own favorite), but it’s probably still worth seeing. In Cantonese with subtitles. 102 min. (JR) Read more
Though he avoids platitudes, David Cronenberg is a troubled moralist who lingers over cherished mythologies to find their dark residue: this masterpiece, an art film deftly masquerading as a thriller, seems to celebrate small-town pastoralism and critique big-city violence, but this position turns out to be double-edged. Josh Olson adapted his script from a graphic novel, yet the story develops with a subtlety that’s entirely cinematic; two contrasting sex scenes between the hero (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife (Maria Bello), added by Cronenberg, are especially masterful. With Ed Harris, William Hurt, and Ashton Holmes. R, 96 min. River East 21. Read more
A lot of talent and energy have gone into this adaptation of David Auburn’s play about the charged relationship between a troubled young woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her father (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant but mad mathematician. As in many Miramax pictures, the source material has undergone some sentimental softening, though Hope Davis, as the heroine’s sister, does a swell job of making sanity seem obnoxious. It’s set and partly filmed around the University of Chicago, and John Madden directs the actors with sensitivity. Auburn and Rebecca Miller collaborated on the script. With Jake Gyllenhaal. PG-13, 99 min. (JR) Read more
Peter Falk stars as a Jewish carpet salesman whose wife (Olympia Dukakis) has just left him; accompanied by his middle-aged son (Paul Reiser, who also wrote and produced), he leaves for what proves to be an extended trip to upstate New York in autumn. Falk throws himself into the part and almost single-handedly enables this comedy drama to transcend some of its sitcom limitations. Raymond De Felitta directed; with Elizabeth Perkins. PG-13, 96 min. (JR) Read more
Credited to a collective of 19 individuals–including filmmaker Barbara Kopple–this record of testimony given during the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit is more document than documentary, but it may be the most important account we have of America’s tragic encounter with Vietnam. The hearings, organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, allowed combat veterans to report, with honesty and unforced eloquence, their observations, experiences, and war crimes (and those crimes’ relation to government policy). Deeply upsetting and long unavailable, this remains essential viewing. 96 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Gene Siskel Film Center. Read more
Phil Karlson’s noirish 1955 docudrama about organized crime is authentically seedy, shot in Alabama with adept use of many locals and an unusual candor about racist violence. Phenix City lawyer Albert Patterson (John McIntire) vows to clean up the corrupt gambling town as state attorney general, but he’s assassinated before he can take office, leaving his son (Richard Kiley) to pursue a local mobster (Edward Andrews, who makes a wonderful villain). The corrosive script was coauthored by Daniel Mainwaring (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), a kind of specialist in 50s paranoia, and though the movie’s politics are liberal, its moral outrage is so intense you may come out of it wanting to join a lynch mob. 100 min. Also on the program: Crime Control (1941), a Robert Benchley short directed by Leslie Roush. Sat 9/17, 8 PM, LaSalle Bank Cinema. Read more
Andrew Niccol, who wrote The Truman Show and directed Gattaca and Simone, works both sides of the street with this outspoken satire about a Ukrainian arms merchant (Nicolas Cage, who also produced). The movie aims for the action-adventure market with its sex and violence, but the adroit script also exposes the rationalizations and outright denials of international armament dealers. It’s unstable but effective, mixing harsh truths and entertaining lies. With Ethan Hawke, Bridget Moynahan, Jared Leto, and Ian Holm. R, 122 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Ford City, Gardens 7-13, Golf Glen, Lake, Lawndale, Norridge, River East 21, 62nd & Western, Village North, Webster Place. Read more
The original title of this Flemish police proceduralThe Alzheimer Caserefers to the fact that its vengeful hit man, like the hero of Memento, suffers from periodic bouts of amnesia and struggles to plan his moves in relation to them. This may sound gimmicky, but director Erik Van Looy skillfully profiles both the assassin (Jan Decleir, suggesting a tougher, over-the-hill version of Michel Piccoli) and the Antwerp detectives investigating his crimes. Van Looy and Carl Joos adapted a novel by Jef Geeraerts to produce this violent, sleazy story (2003). In Dutch and French with subtitles. R, 120 min. (JR) Read more
When in doubt, go for the fart jokes. Better yet, team the ultimate nerd (Eugene Levy, as a dental equipment salesman) with the ultimate hardass (Samuel L. Jackson, as a grouchy federal agent). Have them meet accidentally, take turns calling the other my bitch, and go after some killers. The only characters in this formulaic crime comedy that I halfway liked were a couple of barely glimpsed wives, but the two leads keep it going through sheer determination. Les Mayfield (Flubber) directed. PG-13, 84 min. (JR) Read more
