Jonathan Rosenbaum

A minor Douglas Sirk thriller, better in atmospherics than story logic (1948). Adapted from a Leo Rosten novel, it’s about a man (Don Ameche) who’s trying to drive his wife (Claudette Colbert) crazy and the man (Robert Cummings) who comes to her rescue. Aficionados of esoterica should note that Cy Endfield wrote the Chinatown wedding sequence. With Hazel Brooks, George Coulouris, and Raymond Burr. (JR) Read more

Steven Spielberg’s enormously successful SF tearjerker (1982) remains a veritable manifesto about what it feels like to be ten years old, male, suburban, lonely, and captive to the Spielberg spell. Does that include everybody? No, but the movie’s unusual achievement is to make it seem that way. With Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert McNaughton, and Drew Barrymore; screenplay by Melissa Mathison. PG, 120 min. Read more

Tim McCann’s first feature (1995), made at a cost of $27,000 and distributed by McCann himself, bears absolutely no relation to the Jack Kerouac novel of the same title. Come to think of it, this disturbing and persuasive critique of machismo, which refuses to restrict blame to one or two individuals and ends up indicting a whole milieu, is also very unlike anything else in recent American filmmaking. A young blue-collar worker (Michael Rodrick) returns to Brooklyn after a short trip to discover that his best friend (Peter Bassett) has raped his girlfriend. In the ensuing tragicomic chain of events, everyone behaves badly and foolishly, and McCann’s direction in nailing down this destructive behavior rarely falters. The lack of a clear moral center makes this a challenging film, but also one with an undeniable moral vision. (JR) Read more

Tom Hanks turns writer-director in a pleasant and energetic 1996 feature set in 1964, about four friends from Erie, Pennsylvania, who form a rock band and have a hit, then reach Los Angeles and the big time and see what’s in store for them. Hanks, playing their manager, seems to take a certain pleasure in portraying someone sleazy for a change. Though Hanks keeps the satirical and critical aspects of this look at show biz fairly light, there’s a lot of conviction and savvy behind the steadiness of his gaze, and his economy in evoking the flavor of the period at the beginning of the picture is priceless. With Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Charlize Theron, and Ethan Embry. (JR) Read more

Larry and Andy Wachowski, who scripted Assassins, wrote and directed this adroit and sexy 1996 crime thriller about the hot romance between a gangster’s moll (Jennifer Tilly) and the ex-con who’s her neighbor (Gina Gershon). Eventually they concoct an elaborate scam to rip off the gangster (Joe Pantoliano) — a money launderer for the mob who temporarily has a couple million dollars. (The laundering here involves literally washing blood off bills.) This gets very suspenseful (as well as fairly gruesome) in spots, and if it never adds up to anything profound, it’s still a welcome change to have a lesbian couple as the chief identification figures. With Richard Sarafian. (JR)

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Li Shaohong, the only female member of China’s celebrated Fifth Generation of filmmakers, offers a remarkable retrospective look (1995) at the 1949 communist revolution. Adapting a novel by Su Tong, author of the source material for Raise the Red Lantern, it follows two former Shanghai prostitutes who are close friends and one of their favorite former clients and their shifting fortunes over many years, and its conclusions about their separate strengths, weaknesses, and destinies are never simple or obvious. The beautiful cinematography, by Li’s husband Zeng Nianping, frames much of the action from a distance, in a manner that recalls both Chinese painting and 30s Mizoguchi, while remaining unusually sensitive to architecture (for example, the film wonderfully reveals the interactions between one couple and their downstairs neighbors with many shots framed from the courtyard). This is the best mainland Chinese feature I saw in the mid-90s. In Cantonese with subtitles. 115 min. (JR) Read more

Tim Burton, working as a producer at Disney, employed stop-motion animation to flesh out a story he’d first dreamed up while working at the same studio a dozen years beforea tale about the havoc that ensues when Jack Skellington, the pipe-cleaner hero of Halloween Town, decides to take over the duties of Santa Claus at Christmastime. As adapted by Michael McDowell and scripted by Caroline Thompson, this 1993 release is at worst a macabre Muppet movie, at best an inspired jaunt. The set designs are ingenious and the songs (music and lyrics by Danny Elfman) are fairly good. Directed by Henry Selick, with the voices of Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, Elfman, and Paul Reubens. PG, 75 min. (JR) Read more

The final and weakest part of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy (begun with Pather Panchali and continued with Aparajito), this 1959 feature follows Apu through an arranged marriage that unexpectedly blossoms and then ends tragically, followed by a dark period and eventual spiritual regeneration. Though the rhythm of the storytelling is choppy and Apu himself seems incompletely realized, the first appearance of the remarkable Sharmila Tagore as his well-to-do bride upgrades the film’s middle section, and the final scene between the title hero and the son he’s never known certainly carries a charge. In Bengali with subtitles. 103 min. (JR) Read more

A fascinating, revealing, and deeply disturbing–if highly imperfect–documentary feature by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, codirectors of the excellent Brother’s Keeper, about the trials and convictions resulting from the brutal murder and mutilation of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Most of what we see persuades us that two teenage boys have been convicted of these crimes more because of their nonconformity within the community than from any hard evidence (the likeliest suspect, the stepfather of one of the victims, hasn’t even been charged). Unfortunately, the filmmakers refuse to acknowledge their own role in the proceedings, which makes for an incomplete version of the story. Adding to the confusion is the film’s popular assumption that seeing excerpts of a trial qualifies one to reach an independent verdict. Moreover, there are times when the intrusiveness and callow exploitativeness of TV reporters (one early on asks a bereaved mother whether she’s contemplating suicide) seem to be matched by some of the moves of the filmmakers: though it appears that one of the defendants is being railroaded in part because of his taste for heavy metal, the use of songs by Metallica behind much of the footage seems obscene rather than ironic. By the time the second trial’s verdict is read and the defendant’s mother, sister, and girlfriend are seen rushing into the ladies’ room, you half expect the filmmakers to follow them. Read more

Painter Julian Schnabel’s feature is a biopic about Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeffrey Wright), a black graffitist in New York who became famous in 1981 and died seven years later. Art critic Robert Hughes titled his obituary for Basquiat “Requiem for a Featherweight,” and part of what’s so interesting and unexpected about this picture is that it makes fresh observations without actually refuting that judgment. It’s also quite energetic–there isn’t a boring shot anywhere, and writer-director Schnabel is clearly enjoying himself as he plays with expressionist sound, neo-Eisensteinian edits, and all sorts of other filmic ideas. What emerges may be unfocused as narrative, but it’s lively as filmmaking. Others in the cast include David Bowie as Andy Warhol, Michael Wincott as Rene Ricard, Paul Bartel as Henry Geldzahler, and Elina Lowensohn as art dealer Annina Nosei; the actors playing fictional characters include Gary Oldman (as an apparent stand-in for Schnabel himself), Christopher Walken (in a brilliant bit as a slimy interviewer), Willem Dafoe, and Courtney Love. Fine Arts, Davis.

–Jonathan Rosenbaum

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more

This exquisitely filmed 1992 experimental feature by Svetlana Proskurina, starring her husband Victor Proskurin and written by Andrei Chernykh, concerns a famous stage actor undergoing an identity crisis–a theme that may call to mind Bergman, though the mesmerizingly slow camera movements often recall Tarkovsky. Much of the film is erotic and lyrical, with a fair amount of nudity, and there’s an eclectic score with jazz elements by Vyacheslav Gaivaronsky. The unidiomatic and often confusing subtitles make this difficult to follow in spots, but the color images are so ravishing that you may not care. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Sunday, September 22, 4:30, 443-3737.

–Jonathan Rosenbaum

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This hour-long 1995 Danish documentary by Krzysztof Wierzbicki, made shortly before Krzysztof Kieslowski’s untimely death, feels incomplete when it comes to fleshing out every important stage of writer-director Kieslowski’s career with clips, but as an extended interview giving us some notion of why he retired and what his state of mind was like in his last days it’s priceless. Kieslowski’s mordant wit is trained on a good many subjects, including the behavior of Americans, and we learn that the script he was working on when he died was for a project he had no intention of directing. On the same program at the Polish Film Festival are two short films I haven’t seen–Michal J. Dudziewicz’s The Cinema Workers Come to Light out of the Dream Factory (1995), a documentary about half a century of Polish filmmaking, and Mariusz Malec’s half-hour The Quiet Harbor, which will be shown without English subtitles. Gateway, 5216 W. Lawrence, Saturday, September 21, 4:00, and Wednesday, September 25, 8:00, 486-9612.

–Jonathan Rosenbaum

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A Texas drifter (Bruce Willis) works on both sides of the law to decimate a corrupt town during Prohibition. This 1996 thriller was inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), which in turn was inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest, and that itself begat a whole cycle of spaghetti westerns. Writer-director Walter Hill, known earlier in his career for his American versions of French thrillers by Jean-Pierre Melville (indebted in turn to Hollywood noir), specializes in tweaking much-used material. With Christopher Walken, Alexandra Powers, David Patrick Kelly, William Sanderson, Karina Lombard, Michael Imperioli, and Bruce Dern. R, 101 min. (JR) Read more

One more chapter in the tasteful, intelligent anticinema of director James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and producer Ismail Merchant (teamed here with David L. Wolper), as well as another celebrity impersonation by Anthony Hopkins. These tried-and-true strains converge in an adaptation of Arianna Huffington’s Picasso: Creator and Destroyer; it’s basically a domestic biopic about how the philandering artist treatedand mainly exploitedhis many mistresses. Most (but not all) of the continental characters, including Picasso and Matisse (a Joss Ackland cameo), are inexplicably furnished with English accents. Not a movie that needs to exist, but it passes the time, and at least Hopkins manages to look like Picasso at odd moments. With Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Peter Eyre, Jane Lapotaire, Joseph Maher, Bob Peck, Diane Venora, and Joan Plowright. (JR) Read more

For all of John Cassavetes’s concern with acting, this 1977 film is the only one of his features that takes it on as a subject; it also boasts his most impressive cast. During the New Haven tryouts for a new play, an aging star (Gena Rowlands), already distressed that she’s playing a woman older than herself, is traumatized further by the accidental death of an adoring teenage fan (Laura Johnson). Fantasizing the continued existence of this girl as a younger version of herself, she repeatedly changes her lines onstage and addresses the audience directly, while the other members of the company–the director (Ben Gazzara), playwright (Joan Blondell), costar (Cassavetes), and producer (Paul Stewart)–try to help end her distress. Juggling onstage and offstage action, Cassavetes makes this a fascinating look at some of the internal mechanisms and conflicts that create theatrical fiction, and his wonderful cast–which also includes Zohra Lampert as the director’s wife, assorted Cassavetes regulars, and cameos by Peter Falk and Peter Bogdanovich as themselves–never lets him down. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, September 14, 3:00, 443-3737.

–Jonathan Rosenbaum

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