Jonathan Rosenbaum

Actress Johnnie Hill plays the title role in this 1976 blaxploitation mystery, cowritten by novelist Leonard Michaels (The Men’s Club), of all people. Michael L. Fink directed. R, 93 min. (JR) Read more

One neglected aspect of Frank Lloyd Wright’s career is his involvement with Japanincluding a series of visits that spanned 17 years in the early 20th century, the abiding influence of Japanese art and architecture on his work, and the impact of his own work on Japanese architects. This informative documentary by Chicagoan Karen Severns and her Japanese husband, Koichi Mori, doesn’t give the whole story; it favors the view from Japan and skimps on the Japanese influences on Wright’s American buildings. But it offers fascinating material about Wright assistants Arata Endo (with whom Wright even shared architectural credit on occasion) and Antonin Raymond (who became a leading Japanese modernist), and its account of the now-vanished Imperial Hotel, one of Wright’s masterpieces, is priceless. 128 min. (JR) Read more

Magnificent Obsession: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buildings and Legacy in Japan

** (Worth seeing)

Directed by Karen Severns and Koichi Mori

Written by Severns

Narrated by Azby Brown and Donald Richie

Frank Lloyd Wright readily acknowledged the influence of Japanese art–particularly the abstract shapes, lively colors, and unusual perspectives of wood-block prints–on his work. He soft-pedaled or denied the influence of Japanese architecture–but then he was always reluctant to admit any direct architectural influences. Both predilections are examined in Magnificent Obsession: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buildings and Legacy in Japan, a 2004 documentary Chicago native Karen Severns made with her Japanese husband, Koichi Mori. The film also shows that Wright had a profound influence on Japanese architecture. “At one point,” Severns says in her narration, read by Azby Brown, “there were 32 Wright-related terms in the [Japanese] architectural lexicon.”

The story of the two-way cultural traffic between Wright and Japan is so intricate that even a 128-minute film can barely scratch the surface. And the surface that’s scratched is mainly in Japan, not here. Wright’s visits to Japan spanned 17 years, starting with his very first trip abroad–in 1905, when he was 37–and culminating with his work on Tokyo’s awesome Imperial Hotel. They weren’t exactly casual visits. Read more

A press release boasts that this 130-minute feature by writer-director Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) tells no fewer than ten overlapping stories, but I couldn’t work up the energy to count them. The sensibility is Southern California Witless, and the jokey intertitles that periodically take up half the ‘Scope frames (This is a comedy. Sort of.) are even more smarmy than the characters. The latter include an aspiring filmmaker who blackmails a woman who once had an illegitimate child into helping him make a documentary, a rock singer who has successive affairs with a gay drummer and the drummer’s wealthy father, and similar fun types. With Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold, and Laura Dern. R. (JR) Read more

Fingers, James Toback’s 1978 debut feature about a second-generation gangster who plays classical piano, was described by Dave Kehr as “dauntingly personal filmmaking, full of strange, suggestive ideas and deep feelings that are never made comprehensible for the audience.” Despite the enthusiasm of everyone from Pauline Kael to Edgardo Cozarinsky and Francois Truffaut, I never liked Toback’s piece of macho braggadocio, so this remake by Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips) couldn’t go anywhere but up. It’s more than a simple improvement, inverting some of the original’s qualities so that the impersonal, well-crafted filmmaking remains lucid throughout. Even more unexpectedly, the piano lessons taken by the hero (Romain Duris, very fine) from a Vietnamese woman (Linh-dan Pham) who speaks no French are more highly charged than any of the violence. Niels Arestrup is striking as the hero’s slumlord father. In French with subtitles. 107 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more

According to Scott Yanow’s book Jazz on Film, John Alomfrah’s British documentary The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong (2001, 65 min.) is marred by the interviewees — among them George Melly, Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck, Max Roach, Gary Giddins, and Lil Hardin Armstrong — talking over the music. By contrast, both the talk and the music in Edward O. Bland’s eccentric Chicago-made short Cry of Jazz (1959, 31 min.) are absolutely essential. The paradox is that Bland’s film centers on jazz and needs various kinds of performance to illustrate its points, yet what’s being played is only adequate; if the music were good enough to distract one from the talk, the film wouldn’t work as well. Lucid and provocative, this is recommended viewing for any jazz novice, one of the best social readings of jazz form I know. (JR) Read more

Trained as a musician, English writer-director Sally Potter (The Tango Lesson) still thinks like one. All the dialogue in her timely masterpiece–a passionate post-9/11 love story about an unhappily married Irish-American scientist (Joan Allen) and a younger Lebanese chef (Simon Abkarian) set in London, Belfast, Beirut, and Havana–is written in rhyming iambic pentameter. Beautifully composed and deftly delivered, it becomes the libretto to Potter’s visual music, creating a remarkable lyricism and emotional directness. This is a story about class and age as well as cultural difference, so it matters that the scientist’s dying aunt is a communist and that her sympathetically portrayed estranged husband (Sam Neill) is an English politician. It matters even more that the action is framed by the married couple’s maid (Shirley Henderson), who addresses the camera as she discusses dirt and what we think about it. R, 100 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more

With the help of director Chris Terrio, Amy Fox adapts her own play about crisscrossing sex lives in Manhattan, mainly within a theater-and-art milieu. This is brisk and fun to watch, thanks to the actors (including Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, James Marsden, Jesse Bradford, Isabella Rossellini, and George Segal in a swell bit as an avuncular rabbi). But once you catch the main drift of the plot, it becomes awfully ho-hum. R, 93 min. (JR) Read more

I had a pleasant time with this comedy about light witchery and even lighter bitchery. If you like Nicole Kidman, you might enjoy her here (she reminded me of Tuesday Weld), and even if you usually find Will Ferrell obnoxious, you might appreciate him hyping rather than trying to minimize his boorishness. Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine are a bit less at ease, but the special effects, for once, are witty rather than overblown, and director Nora Ephron, writing with her sister Delia, handles the material with grace and confidence. PG-13, 100 min. (JR) Read more

Head transplants, etc. Victor Trivas directed this dubbed 1959 German horror item, originally known as Die Nackte und der Satan. With Horst Frank, Karin Kernkew, andwhat’s he doing here?the great Swiss actor Michel Simon. 97 min. (JR) Read more

Also known as Samaria, this 2004 feature by Korean cult director Kim Ki-duk comes across like a grotesque parody, but there are signs that Kim means us to take it seriously. Two teenage girls (Seo Min-jeong and Kwak Ji-min), who enjoy soaping each another in a photogenic bathhouse, take up prostitution to earn air tickets to Europe. Kwak, who pimps for her friend, is distressed when the girl seems to enjoy her work; after Seo dies in a tragic accident, Kwak begins having sex with all their former clients in order to capture her friend’s bliss, meanwhile paying back all the money. Needless to say, there’s also violence and redemption galore. In Korean with subtitles. R, 95 min. (JR) Read more

Keren Yedaya’s powerful and memorable Israeli drama (2004) won a well-deserved prize for best first feature at the Cannes film festival. Written with Sari Ezouz, it focuses on an aging Tel Aviv hooker (Ronit Elkabetz) who’s halfheartedly trying to go straight and her resourceful teenage daughter (Dana Ivgi), who supports them both as a dishwasher while struggling with her own sexuality. They live in a world ravaged by war and occupation, one that Yedaya views with an angry lucidity. The story may suffer from a touch of determinism, but the camera’s stubborn immobility in most scenes forces us to arrive at our own conclusions, and the performances are electric. Also known as Mon tresor. In Hebrew with subtitles. 100 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Gene Siskel Film Center. Read more

Fresh, likable, and stylishly low-key, this wistful and sexy romantic comedy marks the feature-directing debut of conceptual artist Miranda July. There are a lot of strong performances by relative unknowns, but what really holds things together is a certain sustained pitch of feeling about loneliness. July plays a shy video artist, supporting herself as a cabdriver for the elderly, who becomes interested in a recently separated shoe clerk (John Hawkes) with two sons. The movie’s flirtatious roundelay also includes the clerk’s coworker, an art curator, and a couple of teenage girls. R, 90 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more

After a 20-year hiatus, George A. Romero resumes his quasi-satiric horror series about the flesh-eating living dead. Land of the Dead, his fourth entry, turns out to be his most conventional as an action thrillerthough it’s every bit as gory as the others and more clearly class conscious. By now the subproletarian zombies have taken over everything except a gated city run by scheming villain Dennis Hopper (surprisingly cliched here); spurred on by a leader of sorts (Eugene Clark), a former filling-station attendant, they’re beginning to think a little as they attack. This being contemporary, the reprisals are military. With Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento, and Robert Joy. R, 93 min. (JR) Read more

For those who haven’t yet awoken to the possibility that our government and economy might be controlled by crooks, this political thriller about the oil industry, set in the near future, may provide a bracing wake-up call. But nobody will be surprised by its CEO, executive, and Russian Mafia types, its idealistic heroine (Selma Blair), its semi-idealistic hero (Christian Slater), or the mechanical crosscutting that eventually overtakes all the other cliches. If you don’t mind the telegraphed punches of Ruth Epstein’s script and Harvey Kahn’s direction, this should carry you along. With Robert Loggia, Colm Feore, John Heard, Angie Harmon, and Kevin Tighe. R, 107 min. (JR) Read more