Film

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Weekly Top Five: Joseph Lewis and the B movie swamp

Posted by today at 02.00 PM

The Big Combo
  • The Big Combo
Tomorrow night, the University of Chicago's Doc Films will screen the Joseph H. Lewis noir Gun Crazy, one of the major works of classic B cinema and one of the most radical and thoroughly entertaining movies in American film history, period. Prior to a renewed interest in expressionistic style during the 1970s, Lewis was considered a simple B movie director in the United States. (That wasn't the case elsewhere, of course—the staff of Cahiers du Cinema sang his praises while his career was still ongoing.) Known for their brazen style, his films often dealt with sensational themes, such as sexual obsession, ethical/moral dilemmas, and hereditary or otherwise inescapable criminal behavior. But beneath the surface, one can detect Lewis's deep curiosity of human behavior as well as a particular affinity for film form.

Gun Crazy is obviously his foremost masterwork—Dave Kehr eloquently called it "One of the most distinguished works of art to emerge from the B movie swamp"—but his filmography features many exuberant and highly personal films. You can catch my five favorite after the jump.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Friday, May 17, 2013

An interview with Dan Sallitt, director of The Unspeakable Act

Posted by on 05.17.13 at 01:05 PM

The Unspeakable Act
  • The Unspeakable Act
The Unspeakable Act, which screens this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center (and with writer-director Dan Sallitt in attendance tonight and tomorrow afternoon), is an opaque independent drama about family ties. The title refers to incest, although the movie isn't concerned with shock value or sex. Drew Hunt notes in this week's issue, "In the grand tradition of French director Eric Rohmer, The Unspeakable Act is a story in which transgression is considered but never acted upon." Teenage siblings Jackie and Matthew—bookish, introspective types who sometimes recall J.D. Salinger characters—have an extremely close relationship, but neither seems so impulsive as to push it into the realm of taboo. The movie is a mystery of sorts, inviting viewers to ponder the unspoken motivations behind peculiar behavior. Last week I spoke with Sallitt about his influences, his experience as an employee of the Reader in the early 1980s, and his particular filmmaking methods. Like his other three features, Unspeakable Act was entirely self-financed, with Sallitt doing most of the leg work in preproduction—the intimate nature of his approach, I think, has a direct impact on the artisanal quality of his finished product.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Incest, adultery, and the rest of this week's screenings

Posted by on 05.17.13 at 07:36 AM

Compensation
  • Compensation
In this week's long review Drew Hunt considers The Unspeakable Act, a new indie drama by Dan Sallitt in which a high school senior ponders her intimate feelings for her college-age brother. I review Stories We Tell, a documentary by Sarah Polley (Away From Her, Take This Waltz) about her discovery that her biological father was a Montreal film producer with whom her mother had a brief affair. And we've got recommended capsule reviews of Compensation, a Chicago-shot drama by Zeinabu Irene Davis, and Leviathan, a semi-abstract documentary recording the sights and sounds aboard a fishing trawler off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Iceman: A true-crime story in shorthand

Posted by on 05.16.13 at 10:47 AM

Michael Shannon and Ray Liotta play real-life criminals Richard Kuklinski and Roy DeMeo
  • Michael Shannon and Ray Liotta play real-life criminals Richard Kuklinski and Roy DeMeo
When did people start saying "porn" as shorthand for pornography? It sounds like a product of the home video era, when pornographic movies became easier to come by: a flat, workaday term for an increasingly familiar commodity. Compared with the more juvenile "porno," with the negative sound of its second syllable, it's difficult to imbue "porn" with any sense of outrage or taboo. This may explain why I have trouble imagining anyone using the term before the 1980s. Even among its makers or staunchest defenders, did anyone predict it would ever become so commonplace?

I thought about this while watching a new movie called The Iceman, which opens commercially tomorrow. In it people utter the word "porn" during two scenes, one set in the mid-60s and the other in mid-70s; at both points it sticks out like a sore thumb. In the first instance it's spoken by Ray Liotta, who plays the New Jersey mobster who hires Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) as his hit man. When they first meet, Kuklinski copies hard-core movies for a living, leading Liotta to sneer, "How long you been dubbing porn?" I suppose it's not implausible that in 1964 the sleazeballs who profited off stag reels were so familiar with their product that they'd employ this blase term. But where would they pick it up? Wouldn't they be used to saying "stag reels" or "blue movies" (or some other such euphemism) like everyone else?

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Now online: Adam Curtis's Margaret Thatcher memorial

Posted by on 05.14.13 at 12:31 PM

The ominous title screen
  • The ominous title screen
A few weeks ago British filmmaker Adam Curtis responded to the death of Margaret Thatcher by uploading The Attic, his 1995 TV movie about her, to his BBC-sponsored blog. "I'm putting it up as a bit of a corrective to the terrifying wonk-fest that took over after Mrs. Thatcher died," Curtis wrote in a new postscript. "A conveyor belt of Think Tank pundits and allied operatives poured into the TV studios and together they built a fortress around Mrs. Thatcher's memory that was rooted in theories about economics."

Like all of Curtis's work, it would be imprecise to call The Attic a documentary—or even a political film. The characteristically dense collage draws from vintage newsreels and fiction films as well as contemporary interviews and TV footage. Curtis's realm isn't political reality but rather the signs among us (to borrow a chapter title from Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma, which Curtis's movies often resemble). And so The Attic isn't a critique of Thatcher, per se, but a consideration of the myth she created around herself.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, May 13, 2013

Does national culture determine moviegoing habits?

Posted by on 05.13.13 at 04:02 PM

From Yasujiro Ozus Late Spring
  • From Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring
"The Japanese film audience still behaves much as it does at the theater," wrote Donald Richie in his A Hundred Years of Japanese Film. "Members . . . rarely leave the theater during the projection and often remain seated until all the credits have been viewed and the lights go up. For whatever reason, the film is watched in silence, in marked contrast to film-viewing habits elsewhere, but much in keeping with Western theater-going behavior."

I came across this passage last week while preparing a blog post about Yasujiro Ozu; it made me recall my own impressions of going to the movies in Japan. I attended both a multiplex and a cinematheque when I visited Kyoto in 2006, and I found in each the respectful sort of environment Richie describes. I didn't hear anyone so much as move his feet—whenever someone sneezed or coughed, he quickly muffled the sound, as he might in a symphonic hall. The air of propriety was so thick I could sense it even before the show began. Not only did theaters advertise when the movies started, they listed the precise minute at which they began seating. (It was never a round number, as I recall, but something like 5:07 or 9:01.) Spectators would line up single file in front of the screening room, getting themselves properly becalmed for the occasion.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, May 10, 2013

This week in Indian cinema: Wadala, Goa, and Gatsby,

Posted by on 05.10.13 at 04:32 PM

Amitabh Bachchan (left) in Baz Luhrmanns The Great Gatsby
  • Amitabh Bachchan (left) in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby
This week the River East 21 is showing two new Bollywood releases: Go Goa Gone, a horror-comedy about zombies attacking a rave party, and Shootout at Wadala, an action film inspired by the real-life standoff between Mumbai police and gangster Manya Surve in 1982. I suspect either film will make for a decent double feature with Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (also playing at River East), which feels closer in spirit to a Bollywood spectacle than to F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. As if to seal the connection, Luhrmann's film features a cameo from Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan as Jewish gangster Meyer Wolfsheim. It's a brazen casting choice to be sure, but I think, in this rare case, Luhrmann didn't go far enough. If you're going to cast Bachchan as a gangster, why not have him play Wolfsheim's twin brother as well?

Speaking of Indian cinema, Doc Films will screen the epic documentary Jai Bhim Comrade on Tuesday at 5:30 PM. The film, made over a 14-year period, concerns the history of India's Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, focusing on atrocities committed against this caste as well as efforts by artists and activists to raise national awareness of the Dalits' experience. Relatively few Indian movies screen around here at all, and few of those acknowledge the plight of this caste. Regardless of its quality as filmmaking, Jai Bhim Comrade will surely be eye-opening for most local spectators. A trailer follows the jump.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Joyce, Fitzgerald, and the rest of this week's screenings

Posted by on 05.10.13 at 07:30 AM

Something in the Air
  • Something in the Air
In this week's long review Tal Rosenberg makes a case for Olivier Assayas's latest feature, Something in the Air, as a mature revision of his first international success, Cold Water, akin to James Joyce's revision of his aborted first novel, "Stephen Hero," into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. If that's not literate enough for you, we've also got a short review of The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann's big-screen adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic. And don't forget Haile Gerima's Bush Mama, screening tonight at Logan Center for the Arts with the filmmaker in person.

Check out this week's section for new capsule reviews of Aqui y Alla, in which a man returns from the U.S. to his home in Mexico to find himself a misfit in his own family; Dark Waters, the 1944 debut feature of cult director Andre de Toth; In the House, an academic satire by French director Francois Ozon (Under the Sand, 8 Women, Potiche); and Love Is All You Need, a Danish rom-com from director Susanne Bier and screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen (Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding, In a Better World).

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, May 9, 2013

See Yasujiro Ozu's final silent film this Saturday

Posted by on 05.09.13 at 04:27 PM

From An Inn in Tokyo
  • From An Inn in Tokyo
This Saturday at noon, the Music Box will screen Yasujiro Ozu's An Inn in Tokyo (1935) in its monthly silent-cinema series. It's a special movie in a number of ways: not only was it the last silent film made by Ozu—one of the greatest of Japanese filmmakers—it was one of the last Japanese silent films, period. And since it's estimated that 90 percent of Japanese movies made before 1945 are forever lost, it's one of relatively few examples of its kind still in existence. The silent era lasted longer in Japan than in any other nation, due to the enduring popularity of benshi, live narrators who would explicate the on-screen action and provide voices for the characters. (About a decade ago, Roger Ebert re-created this phenomenon by organizing a benshi-accompanied screening of Ozu's I Was Born, But... at the Chicago International Film Festival; to my knowledge, no one in Chicago has attempted anything similar since.)

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Does Aqui y Allà (Here and There) take you anywhere?

Posted by on 05.08.13 at 04:20 PM

The Mexican art film Aqui y Allà (Here and There) opens this Friday.
  • The Mexican art film Aqui y Allà (Here and There) opens this Friday.
Since I reviewed it last fall, I've often found myself thinking about a shot in the Turkish film Honey. From a stationary position at the top of a hill, the camera looks down at a middle-aged woman picking tea leaves. There are countless rows of plants behind her and presumably even more past the camera's location. The shot, which lasts for a minute or two, leads us to assume that the woman has been at this for a long time. Far longer than the average shot of a mainstream movie—and notably lacking music or sound effects that might make it more entertaining—it briefly encourages the viewer to imagine the monotony of her work.

If you watch international art cinema on a regular basis, you've likely seen plenty of shots like this in recent years. The subjects tend to be impoverished, living in undeveloped areas, and employed in some kind of menial labor. The visual style is purposely uncomplicated, marked by minimal cutting and exacting compositions, as if to reflect the characters' uncomplicated lifestyle. If you're unfamiliar with this mode of filmmaking, you can see it in Aqui y Allà (Here and There), a Mexican film about farm laborers that opens this weekend at Facets Multimedia, and in Sharqiya, an Israeli film about impoverished bedouins screening at Block Cinema a week from Friday. Surely I'm not the only person who finds it odd that movies from Turkey, Mexico, and Israel should look so similar?

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tabbed Event Search

Search

The Bleader Archive

Recent Comments

Popular Stories

Follow Us

Sign up for a newsletter »