Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, The Mirror) takes a giant step forward with his third feature (2000), shifting his focus from little girls to grown women and presenting such a scorching look at what they put up with in their daily lives that it’s no surprise the film was banned in his native country. This masterpiece is radical in form as well: it begins one morning in a hospital and ends that evening in a jail cell, the camera revolving 360 degrees in each space, and its narrative passes from one character to the next as does Luis Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty (and Richard Linklater’s Slacker). Extremely realistic yet highly artificial in structure, it’s dazzling as a whole (if occasionally overloaded), recalling the Warner Brothers proletarian quickies of the 30s and the noir thrillers of the 40s (an effect enhanced by the fact that some of the women characters are fresh out of prison). The most talented disciple of Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi actually tops him at leaving things out of a story to tantalize the viewer; he uses these ellipses for political as well as aesthetic ends, trusting the audience’s decency as well as its imagination. Read more
This likable crowd pleaser (2000)nominated for an Oscar, and predictably trimmed by Miramax for North American consumptionis a good-natured Flemish comedy about a middle-aged factory worker (Josse De Pauw) who’s so eager to make his untalented teenage daughter (Eva Van Der Gucht) a famous recording artist that he kidnaps a pop star (Thekla Reuten) in a harebrained scheme to make the world take notice. This is the first feature I’ve seen by writer-director Dominique Deruddere, and I hope it won’t be the last. 97 min. (JR) Read more
The prolific Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been at work for nearly two decades, sometimes making straight-to-video features but more recently receiving some belated international recognition. This month the Film Center will show 35-millimeter prints of a half dozen of his recent thrillers, made between 1996 and 2000, and I can recommend all three that I’ve seenthough not without certain caveats. All three are fairly grisly, though Kurosawa’s frequent long shots impart a cool, detached tone to the cruelty and violence. And his plots can be difficult to understand, though his visual style is so riveting you might not mind. Eyes of the Spider and Serpent’s Path, rhyming companion pieces made in 1997, both star Shoh Aikawa and involve yakuza intrigues and a father tracking down the men who kidnapped and killed his little girl; I often couldn’t figure out who was doing what to whom, but I didn’t much care, because the visual sweep of the former and the claustrophobia of the latter were both compelling. The engrossing Cure (1998), which is getting an extended run, stars Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dance?, The Eel) as a troubled detective exploring a series of murders committed through hypnotic suggestion (as in The Manchurian Candidate), and while its creepy mystery plot is easy enough to follow even when it turns metaphysical, it’s unsatisfying as a story precisely because it aspires to create a mounting sense of dread by enlarging questions rather than answering them. Read more
This opening-night program of the eighth annual Chicago Underground Film Festival gave me my first taste of the work of James Fotopoulos, an energetic experimental filmmaker in his mid-20s whose morbid preoccupations with sex and horror have already been getting him some attention from serious critics. His third feature is a black-and-white narrative shot in about a week for $26,000, and the simple synopsis provided for itA group of people struggle to obtain power through sex and violencedoesn’t hint at the long takes from fixed camera positions, surveying a variety of grim midwestern locations, or the layered and sinister industrial sound design. The centrifugal and somewhat confusing narrative has something to do with a few women who work in lingerie modeling, showing off their outfits to older men (the conspicuous absence of sex and nudity is balanced to some degree by the stripping and masturbating of the model in Fotopoulos’s accompanying 2000 short, Drowning). Many writers have linked the filmmaker to Lynch and Cronenberg, but a heavily made-up grotesque who becomes prominent toward the end reminded me more of Tobe Hooper. The most interesting thing for me is the film’s abrupt ending, which proves how difficult it is to anticipate what Fotopoulos is up to. Read more
Ousman Sembene, the greatest of all African filmmakers (and one of the finest fiction writers on the continent as well), directed this upbeat 2000 comedy from Senegal, about a sassy, self-made woman who manages a filling station. Faat-Kine supports two illegitimate children by different fathers, along with her mother, and she’s not about to take shit from anyone. This is Sembene’s first film in eight years, and while it’s no less serious or political than his other late films (Camp Thiroye, Guelwaan), it’s a good deal funnier, more easygoing, and more affirmative. 118 min. A 35-millimeter print will be shown. Gene Siskel Film Center, Saturday, August 11, 8:00, and Sunday, August 12, 3:30. Read more
The prolific Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been at work for nearly two decades, sometimes making straight-to-video features but more recently receiving some belated international recognition. This month the Film Center will show 35-millimeter prints of a half dozen of his recent thrillers, made between 1996 and 2000, and I can recommend all three that I’ve seen–though not without certain caveats. All three are fairly grisly, though Kurosawa’s frequent long shots impart a cool, detached tone to the cruelty and violence. And his plots can be difficult to understand, though his visual style is so riveting you might not mind. Eyes of the Spider and Serpent’s Path, rhyming companion pieces made in 1997, both star Shoh Aikawa and involve yakuza intrigues and a father tracking down the men who kidnapped and killed his little girl; I often couldn’t figure out who was doing what to whom, but I didn’t much care, because the visual sweep of the former and the claustrophobia of the latter were both compelling. The engrossing Cure (1998), which is getting an extended run, stars Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dance?, The Eel) as a troubled detective exploring a series of murders committed through hypnotic suggestion (as in The Manchurian Candidate), and while its creepy mystery plot is easy enough to follow even when it turns metaphysical, it’s unsatisfying as a story precisely because it aspires to create a mounting sense of dread by enlarging questions rather than answering them. Read more
The initial idea is provocative: a man abandons his wife in the cafeteria of a French airport just before their scheduled flight to Buenos Aires, but instead of going home she remains in the airport as a permanent resident, working as a prostitute. Writer-director Roch Stephanik explores many of the nuances and ramifications of this fascinating concept, ably assisted by Dominique Blanc (Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train), whose performance won her a Cesar, the French equivalent of an Oscar. Yet the latter stretches of this 2000 feature are less memorable than the first part. 119 min. (JR) Read more
A nicely shaped script by Chicagoans Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata makes this independent comedy drama (2000) a pleasure to watch. Directed by restaurateur Bob Giraldi, it unfolds over a winter evening at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s Tribeca (though it was originally set in Chicago). Danny Aiello stars as the owner, who’s the father of the nouvelle cuisine chef (Edoardo Ballerini). Others on the staff include Kirk Acevedo and Summer Phoenix; among the restaurant guests are an art critic (Mark Margolis), a restaurant reviewer (Sandra Bernhard), and a couple of crooks trying to muscle in on the business. The action is nicely paced, and the story has a very satisfying payoff. With Vivian Wu, Mike McGlone, John Corbett, and Polly Draper. 98 min. (JR) Read more
Completing a loose trilogy of revisionist horror films that’s already seen Habit (about vampires) and No Telling (which works with the Frankenstein myth), writer-director Larry Fessenden’s loose take on the wolf man movie (2000) is stylistically lively and generally well acted. Thematically, however, it’s somewhat incoherent. When a photographer (Jake Weber) and a psychotherapist (Patricia Clarkson) from New York City drive upstate with their eight-year-old son (Erik Per Sullivan) to spend a weekend in a friend’s farmhouse, their car hits a deer being tracked by local hunters, antagonizing one of them. Over the course of the weekend the boy is introduced to the Native American myth of the Wendigo, a spirit that combines man, animal, and vegetation, but the film sends mixed signalssometimes it simply seems to want to be a horror remake of Deliverance. The bold editing keeps things visually interesting throughout. 90 min. (JR) Read more
Started in 2000 near the Afghan border in Iran, shot in rough and haphazard conditions, and completed the following spring, this is one of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s strangest films. An Afghan woman (Nelofer Pazira), exiled to Canada, returns to look for her sister, who still suffers under the Taliban and has threatened to kill herself during the forthcoming solar eclipse. This may sound like a setup for action and suspense, but the narrative is much more splintered than that, combining poetry, black comedy, social protest, and a sharp sense of actuality. The acting is mainly horrendous and the English dialogue is frequently awkward, but they’re overcome by the beautiful colors and settings and a grim sense of the uncanny spilling over into twisted humor. I didn’t even mind when the narrative stopped abruptly; in retrospect, Kandahar seems like an experimental film, a horror story, and a slapstick comedy–sometimes all at once. In Farsi with subtitles; also known as The Sun Behind the Moon. 85 min. Music Box, Friday through Thursday, February 22 through 28. Read more
Written and directed by Steve DeJarnatt, this taut, apocalyptic thriller shows some improvement over DeJarnatt’s previous direction of Cherry 2000 (which was released in this country only on videotape), apart from some faulty continuity in the final reel. Most of the film concerns what happens when the young hero (Anthony Edwards) accidentally intercepts a phone call that announces an impending nuclear holocaust only 70 minutes away, and is desperate to find the woman (Mare Winningham) he has just fallen in love with. The action all unfolds in and around the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard that constitutes LA’s “miracle mile,” nearly all of it in the middle of the night, and the strongest B-film virtues here (apart from a running time of only 87 minutes) mainly have to do with a very nice feel for the particulars of this time, milieu, and place; the biggest drawback is that the film doesn’t wind up going anywhere in particular. Among the many interesting costars (including Lou Hancock, Danny de la Paz, Robert Doqui, Kelly Minter, and Denise Crosby), there’s a particularly nice cameo by John Agar as the heroine’s grandfather. (McClurg Court, Ridge, Oakbrook Center, Bricktown Square, Webster Place, Evanston) Read more
It’s tempting to call this low-budget, independent 1991 feature by Chicago stand-up comic Greg Glienna (who directed and cowrote the script) the ultimate worst-case-scenario comedy. Glienna plays an unassuming young adman who drives from Chicago to Indiana with his fiancee (Jacqueline Cahill) to meet her folks (Dick Galloway and Carol Whelan) and sister (Mary Ruth Clarke, Glienna’s cowriter). The cascade of nightmares that results may not always make you laugh, but you’ll be impressed by the singularity of Glienna’s dark approach. Some of the incidents work better than othersI could have done without the encounter with the fiancee’s former boyfriend, and there are bits about the maniacally starstruck sister that seem overworkedbut overall you’re likely to be taken with the purity and relentlessness of this picture’s vision. Remade in 2000 (to great commercial success) with Ben Stiller as the fiance and Robert De Niro as the father. (JR) Read more
Iranian filmmaker Bahman Farmanara produced one of Abbas Kiarostami’s early features and won praise for his own work, including Prince Ehtejab (1974). But state officials began rejecting his film proposals in the mid-70s, and for much of the past 30 years he’s lived in the West. In this welcome comeback (2000) he plays a middle-aged director, rather like himself, who ruefully agrees to make a documentary about Iranian death rituals for Japanese TV. His wife has been dead five years (Farmanara’s wife, to whom he dedicated the film, was alive and well), and after discovering that their cemetery has planted someone else next to her, he has the strange experience of witnessing his own funeral, one of many fantasy sequences. This oddball comedy is full of wry asides and unexpected details; ultimately it’s more memorable for its ideas than its sounds and images, but it’s still fascinating and entertaining. In Farsi with subtitles. 93 min. (JR) Read more
Written in January 2006 for 1000 Films To Change Your Life, an anthology edited by Simon Cropper for Time Out. — J.R.
Wonder is closer to being a feeling than a thought, and one that we associate both with children and with grown-ups recapturing some of the open-mouthed awe and innocence that they had as children. Many of us experienced some of this as kids watching the classic Disney cartoon features or certain live-action fantasy adventures like King Kong (1933) or Thief of Bagdad (1940).
Other generations, for that matter, might recall feeling a comparable emotion before the vast spaces of the 1916 Intolerance (whose gigantic Babylon set would eventually be redressed for Kong’s Skull Island) or the 1924 Thief of Bagdad or the 2005 King Kong —- or even in that hokey opening line, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” Or what about the hushed sense of reverence that we bring to the virgin wilderness of The Big Sky (1952), whose very title expresses our feeling of astonishment? It’s a primal emotion, particularly as it relates to cinema in the old-fashioned sense: 35-millimeter projection in palatial theaters, the screen invariably much larger than us (‘Bigger Than Life,’ as the title of a Nicholas Ray melodrama in CinemaScope has it). Read more
Last year the Film Center screened Last Dance, the 69-minute film directed by Tsai Ming-liang for the French TV anthology “2000 Seen By”; this 95-minute version is the one Tsai prefers, though the film is well worth seeing in any form. An SF story set in the present, wryly postapocalyptic and gorgeously shot and framed, it charts the effects of an epidemic on a Taipei man and the woman who lives in the apartment directly below his. After the rest of the building has been vacated, a plumber drills a hole in the man’s floor and neglects to fill it up again. Periodically the man or the woman or both break into full-scale musical numbers that re-create Hong Kong musicals of the 50s, using both the voice and inspiration of Grace Chang; the rest of the time, they’re wrestling with the same sort of urban angst and alienation that consumes Tsai’s characters in Rebels of the Neon God, Vive l’amour, and The River. I like all of his films, but this one has given me the most pleasure. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday, June 18, 6:45; Saturday and Sunday, June 19 and 20, 2:45 and 6:45; and Monday through Thursday, June 21 through 24, 6:45; 773-281-4114. Read more
