Friday, December 7, 2012
Film The wrong man times five, and the rest of this week's movies
Posted by J.R. Jones on 12.07.12 at 07:34 AM
One of the better things I saw in this year's Chicago International Film Festival was The Central Park Five, a documentary about the infamous 1989 rape that inflamed New York City and sent five innocent men to jail. It's the subject of this week's long review. We also recommend: Burn: One Year on the Front Lines of the Battle to Save Detroit, which looks at firefighters in a city choked with vacant buildings; Generation P, a satire of the advertising business in Russia during the early 90s; and Starlet, about the relationship between a younger woman and an older one in lower-class Los Angeles.
Check out our new reviews of Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, a documentary about the Serbian performance artist; New Jerusalem, a story of two small-town Christians, directed by Rick Alverson (The Comedy); Oliver Twist, with Jackie Coogan as the title character and Lon Chaney as Fagin; Step Up to the Plate, which profiles French chef Michel Bras and his son, Sebastien; and We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, about the online political activism of the user group Anonymous.
Best bets for repertory: Joseph von Sternberg's Anatahan (1954), Wednesday at the Portage, presented by Northwest Chicago Film Society; Erich von Stroheim's Blind Husbands (1919), Sunday at Gene Siskel Film Center; Busby von Berkeley's The Gang's All Here (1943), Friday at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art; Joe von Dante's Gremlins (1984), Saturday and Monday night at the Logan; Alfred von Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), Sunday morning at Facets Cinematheque with a panel discussion including Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and Gretchen Helfrich of WBEZ; and Hayao von Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2002), Friday and Sunday at University of Chicago Doc Films.
