Japanese director Mikio Naruse drew on the fiction of Fumiko Hayashi for some of his best features (Late Chrysanthemums, Floating Clouds), and this 1953 drama about a bad marriage begins promisingly with separate disgruntled voice-overs from the wife and husband. But the script, adapted by Toshiro Ide from Hayashi’s novel, fails to dig as deeply into the material as Naruse’s best. (The semiliterate subtitles, with their unsure grasp of English idiom, don’t help.) But this comes from one of Naruse’s richest periods, and the quirky performances by many cast members keep this interesting. In Japanese with subtitles. 89 min. (JR) Read more
Otto Preminger’s 1951 remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau (1943), a nasty noir thriller about a series of poison-pen letters that terrorize a small town, shifts the action to Quebec, where much of the film was shot. The original film courageously if covertly attacked the sleaziness of collaboration during the German occupation of France; Preminger’s version, scripted by Howard Koch, projects a more generalized as well as sanitized misanthropy. But it’s still one of his best efforts of the periodhe’s so adroit at raising doubts about all the characters that the denouement can’t help but disappoint a little. With Michael Rennie, Charles Boyer, Linda Darnell, and Constance Smith. 85 min. (JR) Read more
When men die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art. This botany of death is what we call culture. So begins the commentary of a remarkable half-hour French documentary (1953) about African sculpture, cosigned by Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet. (I haven’t been able to preview the English subtitles, so the translation here is my own.) To my mind, it’s the first major work by all three menthough it comes five years after Resnais’ Van Gogh, which won him his only Oscar to date. One reason why it’s almost never been seen in its integral form is that the French government suppressed its final reel, a blistering attack on French colonialism, for almost 40 years. The beauty and anger of Marker’s provocative text are perfectly matched by Resnais’ exquisite editing and Cloquet’s piercing images. As a poetic meditation on how we perceive, exploit, and sometimes destroy other cultures, this is essential viewing. Showing with Sans soleil (1982, 100 min.), perhaps Marker’s greatest feature-length film essay. (JR) Read more
I can’t think of a better portrait of contemporary Paris or the zeitgeist of 2001-’04 than Chris Marker’s wise and whimsical 58-minute 2004 video. Marker, now in his 80s, shot the images on the streets of Paris and in its metro stations: graffiti, posters, demonstrations, musical performances, cats (real and cartoon). The original conveys Marker’s commentary only through pithy intertitles, but the English version screening here has an unfortunate voice-over delivered in a heavy French accent by actor Gerard Rinaldi that tries to explain as well as translate these titles. Still, no one can film people in the street better than Marker or combine images with more grace and finesse. (JR) Read more
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Torture and mutilation as entertainment seem to be on the rise, in life as well as in movies; what served as mere titillation in Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Audition (2001) now gets stretched out to feature length. Tautly directed by David Slade, this drama probably offers more sadism than anyone could want, as a 14-year-old girl and a 32-year-old photographer (Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson, both good) meet on the Internet and arrange to rendezvous in person. The characters are absurd, but if you’re up for this sort of thing, then surely you can con yourself into accepting them. Personally, I’d rather have this movie obliterated from my memory. R, 99 min. (JR) Read more
Danny Aiello runs a lobster farm on Sheepshead Bay, a family business that’s been put up for auction because the bank has defaulted on a loan; his wife (Jane Curtin) quietly leaves him, and he firmly resists every offer of help from their friends and grown children. Kevin Jordan (Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire), a protege of Martin Scorsese, wrote and directed this dull 2005 autobiographical feature; it feels real, but solid performances fail to enliven the characters. Ancient pop songs turn up on the sound track periodically, as if to compensate for the lack of energy. With Daniel Sauli and Heather Burns. 90 min. (JR) Read more
Jonas Mekas’s 36-minute diary film, shot between 1965 and 1982 and released in 1990. The interest of Mekas’s celebratory hand-held camera style is almost wholly dependent on his choice of subjects; and despite the home-movie charm that infuses all Mekas’s diary films, this one is limited by the fact that his subject is more the Warhol scene than Warhol’s work. Though Mekas has been one of the most passionate defenders of Warhol’s filmmaking, his own stylenostalgic, sentimental, highly personal, and poeticis fundamentally at loggerheads with Warhol’s. Consequently, this selection of glimpses of Warhol and others (including John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Lee Radziwill, Mick Jagger, and several children), mainly at festive gatherings or on vacation, hasn’t anything more to say about the work than Chuck Workman’s slick documentary about Warhol, Superstar. (JR) Read more
My favorite John Ford feature (1953) was also the director’s, and it’s one of his cheapest and coziest, made in black and white at Republic Pictures. Vaguely a remake of his 1934 Judge Priest, set in an idyllic Kentucky town at the turn of the century, it features the same alcoholic herothis time played by Charles Winninger and even more transparently a stand-in for Ford. The busy plot, confused by insensitive studio cutting, concerns racial strife, prostitution, prudery, and death and involves the entire community; Ford makes the film a ceremonial elegy and testament to everything that he loves and respects. With Stepin Fetchit, John Russell, Arleen Whelan, Francis Ford (in his last screen appearance), and Slim Pickens (in his first). 90 min. (JR) Read more
My favorite John Ford feature (1953) was also the director’s, and it’s one of his cheapest and coziest, made in black and white at Republic Pictures. Vaguely a remake of his 1934 Judge Priest, set in an idyllic Kentucky town at the turn of the century, it features the same alcoholic hero–this time played by Charles Winninger and even more transparently a stand-in for Ford. The busy plot, confused by insensitive studio cutting, concerns racial strife, prostitution, prudery, and death and involves the entire community; Ford makes the film a ceremonial elegy and testament to everything that he loves and respects. With Stepin Fetchit, John Russell, Arleen Whelan, Francis Ford (in his last screen appearance), and Slim Pickens (in his first). 90 min. Screening in a double feature with Judge Priest (see separate listing). Sun 1/29, 7 PM, Univ. of Chicago Doc Films. Read more
For the first time since his brilliant debut feature, Real Life (1979), Albert Brooks plays a semifictional character named Albert Brooks, this time a guy who heads an ill-conceived State Department mission to discover what makes people in India and Pakistan laugh. Questioning and mocking himself, he combines personal worries about his dwindling career as a comic performer with more general ones about this country’s lack of smarts when it comes to the third world. Filmed mainly in Delhi, this provocative comedy couldn’t be more up-to-date. As usual, Brooks’s penchant for realism involves filming from a distance in extended takes and sometimes challenging the viewer to accept him as both an identification figure and a foolthough a softening of his usual obnoxious persona confuses matters a little. With Sheetal Sheth and Fred Dalton Thompson (also playing himself). PG-13, 98 min. (JR) Read more
The neglected English master Peter Watkinswho came into international prominence with The War Game (1967)has specialized in political forms of pseudodocumentary throughout his career, including a treatment of historical subjects done in the form of TV news shows. In 1971, he made his only major feature in the U.S., a terrifying look at a future America where civil liberties are suspended, deliberately blurring many of the usual boundaries between documentary and fiction while staging a kind of psychodrama with his nonprofessional actors. The results are both hysterical and unforgettable, as well as creepily up to date in certain respects. There are other Watkins features that I prefer, but all are worth seeing. 88 min. (JR) Read more
The decision to use torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib can be traced to the highest levels in U.S. government, and much of the value of this excellent documentary by Michael Kirk, broadcast on PBS’s Frontline last October, lies in its comprehensively mapping how the policy got carried out. Kirk reveals the pecking orders and blurred lines between military police and military intelligence, and the impression of ill-informed incompetence leading to frustration and sadism on the part of the torturers is devastating. The interviewees include Colonel Janis Karpinski, who appears to have been a convenient scapegoat, and Tony Lagouranis, an army interrogator in Iraq for four years who also speaks chillingly of how innocent Iraqis were and still are abused and tortured in their own homes. 90 min. (JR) Read more
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s most minimalist film to date (2003) is a bracing return to form, a provocative and haunting look at Tokyo and the overall drift of the world that’s slow to reveal its secrets and beauties. Commissioned by the Japanese studio Shochiku as an homage to its famous house director Yasujiro Ozu, it references Ozu only indirectly, through the repetition of a few visual motifs and through details that indicate how much the world has changed since his heyday. The 23-year-old heroine (pop singer Yo Hitoto), single and pregnant, is a freelance writer obsessed with the life of Taiwanese classical composer Jiang Wenye (whose music we hear in the film); she’s helped in her research by a friend equally obsessed with recording the noises of subway trains. The plot is spare, but the sounds, images, and ambience are indelible. In Japanese with subtitles. 103 min. (JR) Read more
The decision to use torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib can be traced to the highest levels in U.S. government, and much of the value of this excellent documentary by Michael Kirk, broadcast on PBS’s Frontline last October, lies in its comprehensively mapping how the policy got carried out. Kirk reveals the pecking orders and blurred lines between military police and military intelligence, and the impression of ill-informed incompetence leading to frustration and sadism on the part of the torturers is devastating. The interviewees include General Janis Karpinski, who appears to have been a convenient scapegoat, and Tony Lagouranis, an army interrogator in Iraq for four years who also speaks chillingly of how innocent Iraqis were and still are abused and tortured in their own homes. 90 min. Fri 1/20, 7 PM, Chicago Filmmakers. Read more
