The fairy-tale-kingdom musicals directed by Ernst Lubitsch during the Depression are supposedly inimitable, but this 1933 powder puff is a reasonable and entertaining facsimile. It’s based on a 1931 German comedy partly written by Billy Wilder, whose masquerade theme is already firmly in place. A princess posing as a manicurist (Janet Gaynor) falls for an army captain posing as a delicatessen worker (Henry Garat), and there’s a lot of ambiguity about who’s in charge. William Dieterle directed with a sufficiently light touch, and C. Aubrey Smith (Love Me Tonight) plays the flustered prime minister. 87 min. (JR) Read more
Directed by Frank Borzage, this mawkish, dated love story (1929) was released by Fox in both a silent and a sound version; for years both versions were considered lost, but a silent print turned up in the 90s. An uneducated farm girl (Janet Gaynor, lively as usual) fights with a utility man (Charles Farrell, boring as usual), then becomes romantically devoted to him after he returns from World War I in a wheelchair. The rustic sets appear to have been redressed from F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise; some of the turgid melodrama seems derived from D.W. Griffith, but not at his best. 86 min. (JR) Read more
Bret Wood, an enterprising film scholar and DVD producer, wrote and directed this illustrated video version of Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s 1886 medical catalog of sexual perversions, and it manages to revel in kinkiness while bypassing eroticism completely. Wood was interested in showing Krafft-Ebing’s scientific objectivity as well as his Victorian moralism, even when they’re in conflict (which is often). The director’s familiarity with silent cinema enhances the prudish pornographic footage, but when he starts cutting between separate perversions, I began to wonder if he was getting as bored with the material as I was. 102 min. (JR) Read more
A comprehensive notion of what turned American soldiers against the Vietnam war has taken some time to reach us, and this affecting documentary by David Zieger collects many potent testimonies evoking veterans’ activism from 1966 to ’71 (a period when the Pentagon recorded 503,926 “incidents of desertion”). Zieger interviews about a dozen vets from all branches of the service and finds that the war’s injustice, particularly the systematic killing of innocent civilians, was a galvanizing factor. (John Kerry was excluded as a possible distraction, but Jane Fonda speaks eloquently about her “Fuck the Army” tour of U.S. military bases with Donald Sutherland.) I expected to emerge depressed by how long these stories have gone untold, but the speakers’ courage and humanity are a shot in the arm. 84 min. Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more
Even as commercial moviemaking becomes more geared to teens and preteens, this crackerjack survey, the opening-night program of the 18th Onion City festival, shows how some contemporary experimental work approaches and interacts with the mainstream. Among the shorts screening are Soul Dancing (2004), a weird video by Japanese cult horror director Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005), a 35-millimeter ‘Scope reworking of a Sergio Leone western by Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky; Here (2005), in which Fred Worden shuffles images from Georges Melies and the Laurence Olivier Henry V; and Andy Warhol’s 1966 screen tests featuring Bob Dylan. Best of all is Roads of Kiarostami (2005, 32 min.), in which Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami introduces his black-and-white landscape photography but also includes a startling and topical finale in color. The program’s running time is 95 minutes. The festival continues Friday through Sunday, June 16 through 18, at Chicago Filmmakers; for more information see next week’s issue or visit www.chicagofilmmakers.org. Roads of Kiarostami is reviewed in Section 1. Thu 6/15, 8 PM, Gene Siskel Film Center. Read more
Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita) produced and cowrote this kick-ass 2004 thriller, which takes place in and around some strangely depopulated ghetto high-rises outside Paris in the year 2010 and involves drug-dealing gangs, corrupt cops, and a nuclear device. This is every bit as silly and adolescent as you’d expect from Besson, and about as contemporary as The Perils of Pauline. But I was delighted by the balletic and acrobatic stunts, some of which evoke Tarzan. Pierre Morel directed; with Cyril Raffaelli, David Belle, Tony D’Amario, and Bibi Naceri. In French with subtitles. R, 85 min. (JR) Read more
Vince Vaughn (who collaborated on the story) plays a Chicago tour guide who’s into sports; Jennifer Aniston’s character works in an art gallery. The unlikely couple meet at Wrigley Field; by the time the opening credits are over they’re sharing a condo but she’s ready to call it quits. This strange comedy is nothing but curveballs after that; like director Peyton Reed’s previous Down With Love, it has to do with real estate and the way we live. It’s full of pain and quirky characters standing at oblique angles to one another, and while it doesn’t add up it held me throughout. With Jon Favreau, Joey Lauren Adams, Judy Davis, Vincent D’Onofrio, Ann-Margret, John Michael Higgins, and Jason Bateman. PG-13, 105 min. (JR) Read more
Solving crossword puzzles isn’t exactly a sport, but documentarian Patrick Creadon makes it one by focusing on the 500-odd enthusiasts who compete at the 28th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut. Will Shortz, puzzle master for the New York Times, hosts the event, and among the crossword fans interviewed are Ken Burns, Mike Mussina, Jon Stewart, Bob Dole, and Bill Clinton, who’s especially interesting on the subject. This is mildly entertaining, though like the puzzles themselves, it favors diversion over wisdom. PG, 90 min. (JR) Read more
The first movie scored by George and Ira Gershwin, this 1931 musical may seem dated, but its subject matterillegal immigrationcouldn’t be more timely. A Scottish lass in steerage (Janet Gaynor) charms a millionaire jock in first class (Charles Farrell) before skirting U.S. customs and hiding out with a Russian family; Virginia Cherrill plays the heartless, wealthy villainess. If you can make it through the unmemorable songs and stale ethnic humor (dominated by El Brendel as a Swede), there’s a remarkable sequence toward the end in which Gaynor wanders through an expressionistic Manhattan, contemplating suicide to the strains of Second Rhapsody (a sequel to Rhapsody in Blue that was truncated by the studio). 106 min. (JR) Read more
From the Chicago Reader (June 2. 2006). — J.R.
An interesting failure, this rarely seen 1975 English feature about World War II combines documentary and fictional elements, though they tend to undermine each other. Director Stuart Cooper culled a remarkable selection of newsreels from the Imperial War Museum and, collaborating with cowriter Christopher Hudson, integrated them into a sincere but cliched story about a young soldier (Brian Stirner). Shooting in black and white, the brilliant cinematographer John Alcott (Barry Lyndon) matches up the dramatic scenes with the archival footage, yet the filmmakers’ ingenuity often seems misplaced; in particular, added sound effects compromise the precious truth of the documentary materials. 83 min. (JR) Read more
Adapted from a novel by Victoria Redel, this 2005 feature starts off as a vulgar comedy and then turns serious, as a neglected girl with no taste for romance grows up to become a possessive single mother (Kyra Sedgwick) who lives only for her son. Kevin Bacon, making his theatrical feature debut as director, wrests decent performances from the cast, which includes Marisa Tomei, Matt Dillon, Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, and Sandra Bullock. But the movie seems miscalculated on so many levels that it’s hard to know whether to blame Hannah Shakespeare’s tortured and semicoherent script, with its ill-defined characters and cumbersome flashbacks, or Bacon’s fancy cutting and self-conscious flurries of slow motion. R, 84 min. (JR) Read more
This rarely screened but famous adaptation of the Dostoyevsky novel (1931, 93 min.), more commonly known as The Murder of Dmitri Karamazov, was one of the favorite films of English critic Raymond Durgnat. It’s rightly celebrated for its atmosphere, mobile camera, inventive editing, and musical score by Karol Rathaus (which Bernard Herrmann cited with admiration), and it’s one of those transitional films that combine the most expressive aspects of silent cinema and early talkies. The cast, which includes Fritz Kortner (Pandora’s Box) as Dmitri and Anna Sten as Gruschenka, is notable as well. Directed by Fyodor Otsep, a Russian, and Erich Engels, a German, and shot in Germany. In German with subtitles. (JR) Read more
The accidental death of a 12-year-old boy casts a long shadow over the lives of his twin brother (Conor Donovan) and two close friends (Jesse Camacho, Zoe Weizenbaum) in this 2005 feature by Michael Cuestra. The shock of seeing kids this age treated without the standard cliches led me to overlook some of the limitations of Anthony S. Cipriano’s script, which avoids assigning blame but tends to systematize the families’ dysfunctions. Cuesta directs the lead actors with such feeling that their misery seems authentic; also good are Jeremy Renner as a traumatized ex-fireman and Annabella Sciorra as his therapist. 94 min. a Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more
The team responsible for Ghost World–director Terry Zwigoff, screenwriter/comic book artist Daniel Clowes, and John Malkovich’s production company–reunites for this bitter satirical comedy. An ambitious and virginal young artist (Max Minghella) arrives at art school in search of sex and fame, but the careerism he encounters causes him to despair and betray his talent, especially when the model he loves (Sophia Myles) goes after one of his classmates. It’s a fascinating and provocative muddle: social satire, self-hatred, misanthropy, and misogyny become hard to disentangle as a subplot involving a serial killer comes to the fore. With Malkovich, Matt Keeslar, Jim Broadbent, Steve Buscemi, and Anjelica Huston. R, 102 min. Read more
In this loving and heartbreaking 2004 video Margaret Loescher recounts her father’s traumatic experience in Iraq. A specialist in war refugees and correspondent for the Web page OpenDemocracy, Gil Loescher was meeting with the UN commissioner for human rights when a truck filled with explosives hit the building, killing 22 people and costing Loescher much of his right hand and both his legs. In her terse but eloquent voice-over Margaret denounces the war and its justifications, but she also interrogates her own motives in recording her family’s struggles and respects the fact that othersincluding the paramedic who saved her father’s life and whom she interviewsfeel differently. 63 min. (JR) Read more
