This week's movie action

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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Film This week's movie action

Posted by J.R. Jones on 03.15.12 at 04:30 PM

Jesse Bernstein in Peter Sillens I Am Secretly an Important Man

Jesse Bernstein in Peter Sillen's I Am Secretly an Important Man

The best thriller I've seen so far this year is Marcin Wrona's Polish drama The Christening, about two old friends who once worked for the same brutal crime boss but are now about to part ways in the most unpleasant fashion. It screens Sunday and Thursday night at the Gene Siskel Film Center as part of the European Union Film Festival, along with Andre Techine's Unforgivable. Check out our festival sidebar for more. The new issue also brings reviews of Footnote, Israel's nominee for the Academy Awards; I Am Secretly an Important Man, about the Seattle poet, performance artist, and grunge-rock figure Jesse Bernstein; Jeff, Who Lives at Home, a comedy by the Duplass brothers starring Ed Helms and Jason Siegel; Kill List, a British exploitation film about contract killers; Seeking Justice, a vigilante actioner with Nicolas Cage, directed by Roger Donaldson; The Snowtown Murders, an Australian horror flick with its own vigilante angle; and 21 Jump Street, with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as undercover cops in high school.

Best bets for repertory: Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1955), Saturday and Sunday morning at Music Box; Lucrecia Martel's The Holy Girl (2004), Tuesday at Gene Siskel Film Center with an introduction by film professor Daniel Eisenberg; and Terence Davies's The Long Day Closes (1992), all week at Music Box. The last of these anticipates the Music Box's March 30 opening of The Deep Blue Sea, Davies's screen adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play.

Friday through Sunday the Sound of Silent Film Festival pairs avant-garde work with scores and live accompaniment by local musicians (included are Chris Marker's La Jetee and Chantal Akerman's Hotel Monterey). Columbia College filmmaking prof Dan Dinello celebrates his retirement next Thursday with a retrospective screening of his comic films. And at the Mayne Stage in Evanston, Kristen Day's documentary Capone's Whiskey: The Story of Templeton Rye, looks at an Iowa distillery that supplied the midwest during prohibition; there's a reception afterward.