From the November 11, 1994 Chicago Reader. — J.R.
*** OLEANNA
(A must-see)
Directed and written by David Mamet
With William H. Macy and Debra Eisenstadt.
David Mamet’s four features to date, none of them realistic, are all concerned to a greater or lesser extent with con games. Ultimately what one thinks of any of them has a lot to do with which side of the con one winds up on — which proves to be a matter of how one relates to the style as well as the content. Language is the major instrument of both seduction and deception in these films, and Mamet’s stylized use of it, playing on its ellipses and ambiguities as well as its more abstract and musical qualities, often deceives and seduces the audience. So how one responds to these characters has a lot to do with how one reacts to these language games.
To my mind, House of Games and the first half of Things Change are seductive (if brittle) fantasies about the allure and danger of spinning seductive fantasies; the second half of Things Change and Homicide are outsized sentimental bluffs. All three films star Joe Mantegna, are about criminals, and bear some relation to Hollywood genres; but where one places one’s trust and emotional allegiances is different in each case. Read more
This started out as an essay commissioned by Criterion for their 2011 DVD release and submitted to them in February. They weren’t happy with the result, so we agreed to disagree. — J.R.
When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion. – Umberto Eco on Casablanca
My nightmare is the H Bomb. What’s yours? – Marilyn Monroe’s notes for her responses to a 1962 interview, first published in 2010
As I wrote in my capsule review of Insignificance for the Chicago Reader,
Nicolas Roeg’s 1985 film adaptation of Terry Johnson’s fanciful, satirical play — about Marilyn Monroe (Theresa Russell), Albert Einstein (Michael Emil), Joe DiMaggio (Gary Busey), and Senator Joseph McCarthy (Tony Curtis) converging in New York City in 1954 — has many detractors, but approached with the proper spirit, you may find it delightful and thought-provoking. The lead actors are all wonderful, but the key to the conceit involves not what the characters were actually like but their clichéd media images, which the film essentially honors and builds upon. The Monroe-Einstein connection isn’t completely contrived. Read more
This is fourth in an ongoing series of five lists of lists.(Sorry that I haven’t been able to fix the format irregularities.) –J.R.
Chicago Reader, 2000:
The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)
Rosetta (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch)
The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)
The Smell of Camphor, the Scent of Jasmine (Bahman Farmanara) + The Child and the Soldier (Seyyed Reza Mir-Karimi)
Khroustaliov, My Car! (Alexei Guerman)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano)
Chicago Reader, 2001:
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
Waking Life (Richard Linklater)
The Circle (Jafar Panahi)
ABC Africa (Abbas Kiarostami)
The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (John Gianvito)
Gohatto (Taboo)(Nagisa Oshima) + Chunhyang (Im Kwon-Taek)
Yi Yi (A One And A Two…)(Edward Yang) + In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai)
What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch) + Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
Boesman & Lena (John Berry)
Chicago Reader, 2002:
*Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow)
Platform (Jia Zhiang-ke)
Y tu mama tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
I’m Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira)
Ellipses, Reels 1-4 (Stan Brakhage)
Russian Ark (Alexander Sokurov)
The Cat’s Meow (Peter Bogdanovich) Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (Jean-Luc Godard) Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes) 8 Mile (Curtis Hanson)
Chicago Reader, 2003:
25th Hour (Spike Lee) + Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi) Down With Love (Peyton Reed) In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Marta Kudlacek) Pistol Opera (Seijun Suzuki) The School of Rock (Richard Linklater) The Same River Twice (Robb Moss) + My Architect: A Son’s Journey (Nathaniel Kahn) Cold Mountain (Anthony Minghella) Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles) + The Shape of Things (Neil LaBute) Oporto of My Childhood (Manoel de Oliveira) + Joy of Madness (Hana Makhmalbaf) All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green) + Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach)
Chicago Reader, 2004:
The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Samuel Fuller)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)
The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie)
The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
Young Adam (David Mackenzie)
Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch)
Springtime in a Small Town (Tian Zhuangzhuang) Read more
From the Autumn 1974 Sight and Sound.
In the spring of 1970, Jacques Rivette shot about thirty hours of improvisation with over three dozen actors. Out of this massive and extremely open-ended material have emerged two films, both of which contrive to subvert the traditional movie going experience at its roots. Out 1, lasting twelve hours and forty minutes, has been screened publicly only once (at Le Havre, 9-10 September 1971) and remains for all practical purposes an invisible, legendary work. (Its subtitle, significantly, is Noli Me Tangere.) Spectre, which Rivette spent the better part of a year editing out of the first film — running 255 minutes, or roughly a third as long — was released in Paris earlier this year. And during the interval between the editing of Spectre and its release, Rivette shot and edited a third film, Céline et Julie vont en Bateau, 195 minutes in length, which surfaced in Cannes last May. The differences between and Spectre and Céline et Julie vont en Bateau are considerable: they are respectively the director’s “heaviest” film and his “lightest,” probably the least and most accessible of his six features to date. Read more
