This is part of the Teenage Kicks season and also screens on August 24th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: From noted still photographer-turned-director Larry Clark and young
screenwriter Harmony Korine, both making their screen debuts, a slightly
better than average youth exploitation film (and grim cautionary fable
about both AIDS and macho teenage cruelty) that hysterical American
puritanism contrived to convert into big news. (The New York Times's
Janet Maslin called this “a wake-up call to the world”—meaning, I
suppose, that rice paddy workers everywhere should shell out for tickets
and stop evading the problems of white Manhattan teenagers.) But if the
news is so big, why does it sound like such tired and familiar stuff?
And reviewers who claimed that this depressing movie takes no moral
position about what it's depicting must have been experiencing some form
of self-induced shock, because taking moral positions is just about all
it does. The photography is striking and the acting and dialogue seem
reasonably authentic, if one factors in all the sensationalism, but
let's get real—this was at best the 15th most interesting movie I saw at
the 1995 Cannes festival. If you're determined to succumb to the bait, I
hope you have more fun than I did. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This is part of the Teenage Kicks season at the BFI and also screens on August 22nd. Details here.
Time Out review: A wicked black comedy about teenage suicide and pernicious peer-group
pressure, this refreshing parody of high-school movies is venomously
penned by Daniel Waters
and sharply directed by Lehmann. The Heathers are three vacuous
Westerburg High school beauties who specialise in 'being popular' and
making life hell for socially inadequate dweebettes and pillowcases.
Having sold out her former friends in these categories, Veronica (Ryder)
becomes an honorary member of the select clique - but turns monocled
mutineer. Aided by handsome rebellious newcomer JD (Slater), she devises
a drastic plan to undermine the teen-queen tyranny, but underestimates
JD's ruthlessness: the scheme backfires dangerously. The compromised
ending (forced on the film-makers by New World) is a serious let-down,
but there is some exceptional ensemble acting, several stylish set
pieces, and more imaginative slang than you could shake a cheerleader's
ass at. More crucially, the film uses an intimate knowledge of
teen-movie clichés to subvert their debased values from the inside. Nigel Floyd
As part of this year’s Film4 FrightFest, prog-rock ensemble Goblin are to perform their original scores for George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Dario Argento’s Suspiria at two special screenings in London. Led by Brazilian-born Italian composer Claudio Simonetti, the
four-piece will provide real-time accompaniment to the cult horror
classics on August 18 and 19 at Union Chapel in Islington – follow the
links for tickets to Dawn of the Dead and Suspiria.
Time Out review: From his stylish, atmosphere-laden opening - young American ballet
student arriving in Europe during a storm - Argento relentlessly
assaults his audience: his own rock score (all dissonance and
heavy-breathing) blasts out in stereo, while Jessica Harper gets threatened by location, cast, weather and camera. Thunderstorms
and extraordinarily grotesque murders pile up as Argento happily
abandons plot mechanics to provide a bravura display of his technical
skill. With his sharp eye for the bizarre and for vulgar
over-decoration, it's always fascinating to watch; the thrills and
spills are so classy and fast that the movie becomes in effect what
horror movies seemed like when you were too young to get in to see them.
Don't think, just panic.
Here (and above) is the celebrated opening to the film.
As part of this year’s Film4 FrightFest, prog-rock ensemble Goblin are to perform their original scores for George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Dario Argento’s Suspiria at two special screenings in London. Led by Brazilian-born Italian composer Claudio Simonetti, the
four-piece will provide real-time accompaniment to the cult horror
classics on August 18 and 19 at Union Chapel in Islington – follow the
links for tickets to Dawn of the Dead and Suspiria.
Chicago Reader review: George Romero's 1979 sequel to Night of the Living Dead is a more
accomplished and more knowing film, tapping into two dark and dirty
fantasies—wholesale slaughter and wholesale shopping—to create a grisly
extravaganza with an acute moral intelligence. The graphic special
effects (which sometimes suggest a shotgun Jackson Pollock) are less
upsetting than Romero's way of drawing the audience into the violence.
As four survivors of the zombie war barricade themselves inside a
suburban shopping mall, our loyalties and human sympathies are made to
shift with frightening ease. Romero's sensibility approaches the
Swiftian in its wit, accuracy, excess, and profound misanthropy. Dave Kehr
If you've seen the film before you might want to read critic Nick Pinkerton's take on this troubling movie here from the Reverse Shot website here.
Chicago Reader review: A 15-year-old French girl (Sandrine Bonnaire,
extraordinary) finds refuge from her troubled family in a series of
casual sexual encounters. The subject invites a certain social-worker
condescension (it's the stuff of TV movies), yet Maurice Pialat's
mise-en-scene allows us no comforting distance from the characters. His
ragged long takes plunge us straight into the action and hold us there,
as if we, too, were combatants in this family war. His unorthodox
dramatic construction rejects the symmetry of classical plotting, and
the narrative has a quirky, self-propelling quality that allows for some
astonishing things to happen. Pialat himself plays the father, whose
disappearance sets the action in motion and whose reappearance makes it
explode.
Dave Kehr
***************************
This film ranked #38 in Time Out's list of the 100 greatest French films. Click here to see the full list.
Time Out review:
Fifteen-year-old Suzanne (Bonnaire) seems unable to progress beyond a
rather doleful promiscuity in her relations with boys. Alone of her
family, her father (played by Pialat himself) understands her, but when
he leaves home for another woman, family life erupts into a round of
appalling, casual violence, until Suzanne escapes into a fast marriage,
and finally to America. Pialat's methods of close, intimate filming may
place him close in many ways to our own Ken Loach, but his interests are
rooted in a very cinematic approach to personal inner life, rather than
any schematic political theory. The message may be that happiness is as
rare as a sunny day, and sorrow is forever, but a counterbalancing
warmth is provided by Pialat's enormous care for his creations. The
rapport between father and daughter is especially moving. Pialat once
acted in a Chabrol film, and one French critic's verdict on his
performance can stand equally well for this film: 'Massive, abrupt, and
incredibly gentle'. Chris Peachement Here is the trailer.
This is part of the Eye-Popping Colour season at the Barbican. Full details here. This film is presented uncut and includes the ‘missing reel’ not featured in the movie’s original release.
Chicago Reader review: French director Gaspar Noe has kept a pretty low profile since his 2002 drama Irreversible,
notorious for its brutal nine-minute anal rape scene. But this epic,
psychedelic mindfuck confirms him once again as the cinema's most
imaginative nihilist (a conflicted honor if, like me, you consider
nihilism a failure of the imagination). The main characters are a young
Frenchman and his sister living at the margins of the Tokyo underworld,
he as a drug dealer and she as a stripper; after the young man is shot
by police and dies on the floor of a grimy toilet, his spirit floats
omnisciently over the city (consistent with his recent study of the
Tibetan Book of the Dead) and keeps tabs on his vulnerable sibling. The
colored lights of nocturnal Tokyo provide an apt jumping-off point for
Noe's drugged-out imagery, and his nicely calibrated story line reveals
the siblings' tragic past before circling back to the present and what
the future might hold. It's a dark and commanding vision, reaching for
the heavens even as it wallows in the muck. JR Jones
This is a special screening of David Lean's movie accompanied by live music from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The centrepiece of a three-week series of films screened in Royal Festival Hall, Brief Encounter is shown with a newly commissioned orchestral soundtrack by Southbank Centre's Resident Orchestra for three nights only on the 15th, 22nd and 29th August.
This performance is introduced by actor Lucy Fleming (daughter of
Celia Johnson) and a complete performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto
No.2 precedes the screening. Full details here.
The BFI Film Classics collection includes
this film - it is written by Richard Dyer and I can thoroughly
recommend it. Details here.
Time Out review: Nighttime; a railway station in Britain, circa WWII. An express train
races through the smoky darkness, Rachmaninoff’s second Piano Concerto
rages, and a man and a woman—their intimate tête-à-tête interrupted by a
prissy acquaintance—silently say farewell, his hand lightly gripping
her shoulder in lieu of a kiss. What led devoted housewife Laura Jesson
(Celia Johnson) to this point? The memories flood in after she arrives
home to her husband and two children: that speck of grit that flew in
her eye all those months before, which brought Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor
Howard) to her aid and led to an impulsive, mostly chaste affair. A
love, of course, that couldn’t last. David Lean’s classic weepie, adapted from a Noël Coward play (Still Life),
is sheer perfection—the gold standard of tragic romances whose
influence can still be seen to this day. (Andrew Haigh’s recent indie Weekend
gave the basic template a queer twist, and plenty have interpreted
Coward’s story as a coded gay romance.) Johnson and Howard’s repressed
passion could fuel an English tank battalion, and the shadowy
black-and-white cinematography—a love story drenched in noirish
tones—looks especially gorgeous in this new 4K restoration. But it’s not
all tears and anguish: Lean and Coward leaven the film’s inevitably
upsetting outcome with a few pointedly satirical asides, the best of
which is a movie-within-the-movie (Flames of Passion) that does all the emoting Brief Encounter’s prim-and-proper protagonists can’t. Keith Uhlich
Geoff Andrew introduces this marvellous Jacques Demy musical in the Gotta Dance, Gotta Dance! season. The film also screens on 11th and 16th August. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: One might argue for Lola (1960), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), or the lesser-known Une Chambre en Ville
(1982) as Jacques Demy's greatest feature. But his most ambitious is
this 1967 big-budget musical shot exclusively on location, a tale of
various dreamers searching for and usually missing their ideal mates,
who are usually only blocks away. The score is Michel Legrand's finest,
with various jazz elements, lyrics in alexandrines by Demy, and
intricately structured reprises that match the poetic, crisscrossing
plot. Demy pays tribute to the American musical yet mixes in
accoutrements of French poetic realism: dreams and reality coexist more
strangely and stubbornly than in most other musicals. The results may be
quintessentially French, but the energy and optimism are clearly
inspired by America, and Gene Kelly's appearances are sublime. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here's the UK premiere of the award-winning documentary about musician & writer Nick Cave, which garnered rave reviews at Sundance this year.
Time Out review: ‘This is my 20,000th day on Earth,’ says Australian rock musician and
writer Nick Cave as we see him waking up in a luxurious bed and baring
his chest in the mirror. What are we watching? Is this ‘At Home with
Nick Cave – The Royalties Years’? Far from it. Like much in this smart
and deliriously strange film, the opening scene embraces a familiar tic
of the music doc (here, the pretence of intimacy) but manages both to
reject and rework it in inspiring ways. Put it this way: we don’t then
see Cave take a crap or boil an egg. The film preserves his public face,
even reinforces it, while also managing to offer a no-nonsense and
revealing take on living and working as an artist.
The idea is that we spend one day on Earth with Nick Cave, from dawn
til dusk, via family, friends, a recording session and a gig, but it’s
just a conceit, a neat device, and much of the film plays out more like
drama. It’s all a performance – but artifice co-exists with honesty.
There’s a sense of intimacy, but not the sort that pretends we’ve
managed to breach the defences of someone’s life. There’s a shot of Cave
watching a film with his young twin boys, eating pizza – the cuteness
is exploded when we realise they’re watching ‘Scarface’. It’s a
typically playful moment. Cave talks of his wife, Susie, and we hear an
exciting monologue as he explains with moving hyperbole how he felt when
he first laid eyes on her. But we only see her as a reflection in a
window. The film conceals as much as it reveals, and its beauty is that
it pretends to do nothing else. It embraces a mystery and protects it,
and it’s thrilling to behold. Dave Calhoun
This Hitchcock classic is on an extended run at BFI Southbank. See here for details.
Chicago Reader review of To Catch A Thief: 'Cary Grant is a retired cat burglar on the Riviera and Grace Kelly is
the spoiled American rich girl who seems to have the perpetual hots for
him, in Alfred Hitchcock's fluffy 1955 exercise in light comedy, minimal
mystery, and good-natured eroticism (the fireworks scene is a classic).
Jessie Royce Landis (North by Northwest) is delightful as
Kelly's clearheaded mother (she and Grant were born the same year, by
the way), and John Williams gives expert support as usual.'
Dan Druker
This is part of the Passport to Cinema season and also screens on August 17. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: Sam Peckinpah's notorious western depicted an outlaw gang, made obsolete
by encroaching civilization, in its last burst of violent, ambiguous
glory. By 1969, when the film was made, the western was experiencing its
last burst as well, and in retrospect Peckinpah's film seems a eulogy
for the genre (there is even a dispassionate audience—Robert Ryan's
watchful Pinkerton man—built into the film). The on-screen carnage
established a new level in American movies, but few of the films that
followed in its wake could duplicate Peckinpah's depth of feeling. Dave Kehr
Each summer, The Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court hosts London's most
beautiful open-air cinema, the Film4 Summer Screen. The series features a
range of films, all
showing on a state-of-the-art screen with full surround sound. Full details of the season at Somerset House can be found here.
Chicago Reader review: Howard Hawks's grand, brassy 1953 musical about two girls from Little
Rock—Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell—gone gold digging in Paris. The
male sex is represented by a bespectacled nerd (Tommy Noonan), a dirty
old man (Charles Coburn), and a 12-year-old voyeur (the unforgettable
George "Foghorn" Winslow), all of whom deserve what they get. The
opening shot—Russell and Monroe in sequins standing against a screaming
red drape—is enough to knock you out of your seat, and the audacity
barely lets up from there, as Russell romances the entire U.S. Olympic
team to the tune of "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" and Hawks keeps
topping perversity with perversity. A landmark encounter in the battle
of the sexes. Dave Kehr
This is part of the Eye-Popping Colour season at the Barbican. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: One of the most remarkable and unaccountable films ever made in
Hollywood, Douglas Sirk's 1957 masterpiece turns a lurid, melodramatic
script into a screaming Brechtian essay on the shared impotence of
American family and business life. Sirk's highly imaginative use of
color—to accent, undermine, and sometimes even nullify the drama—remains
years ahead of contemporary technique. The degree of stylization is
high and impeccable: one is made to understand the characters as icons
as well as psychologically complex creations. With Dorothy Malone (in
the performance of her career), Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, and Rock
Hudson. Dave Kehr
This better be good. I helped to fund this film (in a modest way) through Kickstarter. It's been a popular ticket but definitely worth travelling to BFI Southbank on the night for returns. Here is the BFI introduction: As part of our Teenage Kicks season, Sonic Cinema presents the London
premiere of film critic Charlie Lyne’s bold and stylish feature debut,
with live music from critically acclaimed indie-pop duo ‘Summer Camp.’
Part documentary, part essay and part experimental driftwork, Beyond
Clueless explores and celebrates the world of the American teenager,
complete with its jocks, nerds, freaks, geeks, cheerleaders, angst,
attitude and rebellion, as depicted by countless movies made in the wake
of 1995’s breakout success Clueless. Lyne combines an intricate collage
of scenes from over 200 teen movies with hypnotic narration by cult
teen star Fairuza Balk (The Craft) and sophisticated pop from ‘Summer
Camp,’ to create a dreamlike and highly original cinematic experience. Followed by a special DJ set in the benugo bar until late.
Each summer, The Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court hosts London's most
beautiful open-air cinema, the Film4 Summer Screen. The series features a range of films, all
showing on a state-of-the-art screen with full surround sound. The UK premiere of the new Dardennes brothers' latest movie will be a highlight this year. Full details of the season at Somerset House can be found here.
Time Out review: Two Days, One Night features a career-high performance from Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard
– by far the Dardennes' starriest casting to date – and has a
starting-gun premise: a young mother, Sandra (Cotillard), recently off
work with depression, is made redundant from a small factory that makes
solar panels. In her absence, 14 of her 16 colleagues have voted to take
their bonuses (around 1,000 euros each) rather than let her keep her
job. But willed into action by a supportive husband, Manu (Fabrizio
Rongione), she persuades her boss to give her one last chance and to
host a second vote round of voting two days later. Will she be able to
save her job by knocking on doors over the weekend to persuade her
colleagues to support her? This is political drama (with the smallest of p's) at its finest and
most humane: heady, engaging, gently ingraining ideas about empowerment,
taking a stand and how we organise our societies into the fabric of the
film. Each one of Sandra's encounters is a surprise and adds shade or a
new perspective to what we think the film has to tell us about human
nature and how we live our lives. There are no heroes or villains here;
everybody is simply getting by, and by the skin of their teeth. After
spending 'Two Days, One Night' in the company of Sandra, you'll be
punching the air with pride. Dave Calhoun
This promises to be a special screening (also showing on August 7). Here is the Roundhouse introduction: By arrangement with Miramax and Park Circus Films, Roundhouse is pleased
to be the home of a series of world-premiere screenings of Paul Thomas
Anderson’s Academy Award-winning There Will Be Blood with Jonny
Greenwood’s score performed live by the London Contemporary Orchestra,
conducted by Hugh Brunt.
These live screenings will draw together an orchestra of over 50
musicians, including Jonny Greenwood himself, who will play the Ondes
Martenot part.
Although widely regarded as one of the most influential soundtracks in
recent years, There Will Be Blood was famously ruled ineligible in the
Best Original Score category at the 2008 Academy Awards due to its use
of pre-existing material. The score features passages from Greenwood’s
compositions Popcorn Superhet Receiver and Bodysong (the latter used in
the track Convergence), as well as works by Arvo Pärt and Brahms. All
these cues have been collated into one ‘performance edition’, offering a
complete representation of the original film, shown in a striking new
light.
This great Brian De Palma movie, part of the Teenage Kicks season, is also being shown on August 1st and 2nd. Details here. Time Out review: She
wasn’t the favourite to play ‘creepy Carrie’, but it’s impossible to
imagine anyone other than Sissy Spacek (looking like she’s stepped into
the ‘70s from another time altogether) in the role. Stephen King got the
idea for the novel, his first, in the girls’ locker room of a college
where he was working as a caretaker. Teenage girls can be pure evil and
it’s in a locker room that we meet Carrie, who’s just had her first
period and is being told to ‘plug it up!’ by the mean girls. Carrie’s
secret is that she has telekinetic powers, which are about to wreak an
apocalypse at the school prom. As for the pig’s blood scene, it doesn’t
matter how many times you watch it, you’re willing that bucket not to
drop. Spacek gamely offered to be covered in real pig’s blood, but in
the end was drenched with a mix of syrup and food colouring. Cath Clarke Here(and above) is the trailer.
This multi-Oscar winning movie is on an extended run at BFI Southbank. Details here.
Time Out review: This is probably one of the few great films of the Seventies. It's the
tale of three Pennsylvanian steelworkers, their life at work, at play
(deer-hunting), at war (as volunteers in Vietnam). Running against the
grain of liberal guilt and substituting Fordian patriotism, it proposes
De Niro as a Ulyssean hero tested to the limit by war. Moral imperatives
replace historical analysis, social rituals become religious
sacraments, and the sado-masochism of the central (male) love affair is
icing on a Nietzschean cake. Ideally, though, it should prove as
gruelling a test of its audience's moral and political conscience as it
seems to have been for its makers.
Chicago Reader review of Thieves' Highway:
Perhaps the most unjustly neglected of Jules Dassin's preblacklist
Hollywood pictures, and one of the best noirs ever made, this 1949
release is a terrific, fast-moving thriller about the corruption of the
California fruit market business. Adapted by A.I. Bezzerides (Kiss Me Deadly, Track of the Cat)
from his own novel, it has a pretty exciting cast as well: Richard
Conte, Valentina Cortese (in her American debut), Lee J. Cobb (in a role
anticipating his part in On the Waterfront), Barbara Lawrence, Jack Oakie, and Millard Mitchell. Jonathan Rosenbaum ____________________
Chicago Reader review of Rififi: It's one of the enduring mysteries of the Hollywood
blacklist that directors such as Joseph Losey and Cy Endfield had to
hide behind fronts or pseudonyms, whereas Jules Dassin was able to
direct this atmospheric 1955 French thriller under his own name and
still get it shown in the U.S., where it was something of an art-house
hit. (Oddly, as a cast member he uses the name “Perlo Vita.”) Shot in
Paris and its environs and adapted from an Auguste le Breton novel with
the author's assistance, this is a familiar but effective parable of
honor among thieves, and though it may not be as ideologically
meaningful as the juicy noirs Dassin made for Hollywood—The Naked City (1947), Thieves' Highway (1949), and Night and the City
(1950)—it's probably more influential, above all for its half-hour
sequence without dialogue that meticulously shows the whole process of
an elaborate jewelry heist. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This superb Orson Welles film noir is on an extended run at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
I have written a feature about the drama both on and off the screen involving this brilliant movie here at the Guardian Film website. Chicago Reader review: The weirdest great movie ever made (1948), which is somehow always
summed up for me by the image of Glenn Anders cackling "Target practice!
Target practice!" with unbalanced, malignant glee. Orson Welles directs
and stars as an innocent Irish sailor who's drafted into a bizarre plot
involving crippled criminal lawyer Everett Sloane and his icily
seductive wife Rita Hayworth. Hayworth tells Welles he "knows nothing
about wickedness" and proceeds to teach him, though he's an imperfect
student. The film moves between Candide-like farce and a deeply
disturbing apprehension of a world in grotesque, irreversible decay—it's
the only true film noir comedy. The script, adapted from a novel by
Sherwood King, is credited solely to Welles, but it's the work of many
hands, including Welles, William Castle, Charles Lederer, and Fletcher
Markle. Dave Kehr
This screens as part of the Eye-Popping Colour season at the Barbican. Time Out review: Deliriously playful yakuza pic, in which Suzuki lets logic hang.
Basically just another tale of gang warfare, it's kitted out with plot
ellipses, bizarre sets and colour effects, inappropriate songs, absurd
irrelevancies (nice hair-drier gags!), action scenes that verge on the
abstract, and some visual jokes tottering precariously between slapstick
and surrealism. Somehow, it still just about works as a thriller, with
(very, very faint) echoes of Melville and Leone. Inspired lunacy. Geoff Andrew
Actor and writer Mark Gatiss will be on hand for a rare midnight screening of Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria as part of the Phoenix Nights season.
Time Out review:
In 1957, Fellini was still as indebted to neo-realism as to surrealism,
and this melancholy tale of a prostitute working the outskirts of Rome
is notable for its straightforward depiction of destitution. It may come
as a surprise to those who know only Fellini's later work. It's easy to
appreciate how Bob Fosse, Neil Simon and Peter Stone found a musical in
it (Sweet Charity): Fellini orchestrates his story in waves of simple, pure emotion, telegraphed with silent screen gusto by Giulietta Masina.
With her Noh eyebrows and white bobby socks, Masina is the missing link
between Charlie Chaplin and Shirley MacLaine. One of life's eternal
optimists, Cabiria one day meets the man of her prayers (Périer), and
what follows is scarcely unexpected, but heartbreaking for all that.
This new (1999) print features a seven minute sequence not seen since
the film's Cannes premiere - Cabiria's encounter with a stranger
delivering food parcels to the poor. Censored apparently at the behest
of the Catholic Church, it underlines the severity of the social
context, deepens Cabiria's character and serves as a poignant harbinger
of things to come. Tom Charity
Chicago Reader review: Howard Hawks's 1932 masterpiece is a dark, brutal, exhilaratingly
violent film, blending comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico
Marx let loose with a live machine gun. Paul Muni gives his best
performance as the simian hood Tony Camonte, whose one redeeming virtue
is that he loves his sister (Ann Dvorak, of the limpid eyes and jutting
limbs). Hawks reverses the usual structure of the gangster tragedy:
Camonte doesn't hubristically challenge his world so much as go with the
flow of its natural chaos and violence. The supporting actors—Osgood
Perkins, Karen Morely, Boris Karloff, Vince Barnett, George Raft
(flipping his coin)—seem to have been chosen for their geometric
qualities; the film is a symphony of body shapes and gestures,
functioning dynamically as well as dramatically.
Dave Kehr
This is screening on a double-bill with Cold In July. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: James M. Cain's pulp classic (1944), as adapted by Raymond Chandler and
directed by Billy Wilder. Barbara Stanwyck is perfectly cast as a Los
Angeles dragon lady burdened with too much time, too much money, and a
dull husband. Fred MacMurray (less effectively) is the fly-by-night
insurance salesman who hopes to relieve her of all three. Wilder trades
Cain's sun-rot imagery for conventional film noir stylings, but the
atmosphere of sexual entrapment survives. With Edward G. Robinson. Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader: A runaway hit in Hong Kong, this 2002 crime thriller reinvigorated the genre with its airtight script, taut editing, and sleek cinematography (Christopher Doyle served as visual consultant). Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) plays an undercover cop who's spent three years infiltrating a local triad, and Andy Lau (Days of Being Wild) is his doppelganger, a triad mole rising through the ranks of the police department's organized crime unit. Neither man knows the other's identity, but after a while neither seems entirely sure of his own either. Their only reference point seems to be the mutual antagonism between their respective father figures, a steely police superintendent (Anthony Wong) and a scheming triad boss (Eric Tsang). In Cantonese with subtitles. JR Jones
The Alibi Film Club continue their excellent run of movies with this Cronenberg cult classic.
Chicago Reader review: 'This 1983 shocker by David Cronenberg comes about as close to abandoning
a narrative format as a commercial film possibly can: James Woods plays
the programmer of a sleazy Toronto cable channel who stumbles across a
mysterious pirate emission—a porno show called “Videodrome” that
features hideous S and M fantasies performed with appalling realism.
Knowing a ratings winner when he sees one, Woods sets out to find the
producer and quickly becomes involved with a kinky talk-show hostess
(Deborah Harry), expanding rubber TV sets, a bizarre religious cult,
and—almost incidentally—a plot to take over the world. Never coherent
and frequently pretentious, the film remains an audacious attempt to
place obsessive personal images before a popular audience—a kind of
Kenneth Anger version of Star Wars.' Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader review: Joseph Losey's film of Mozart's opera (1979) has redundant trappings of Freud and Marx, as if Losey felt the need to make the material more personal. He shouldn't have bothered, because it already plays straight to his concerns: Giovanni, with his self-destructive idealism, stands in the line of Losey heroes fromThe Boy With Green HairtoMr. Klein. The visual context is ravishing, with a lighting scheme that builds from the understated and naturalistic to shocking contrasts of black and white. Meanwhile, the camera moves with a preternatural grace, drawing clean, curving lines through the romantic confusions. If the film has a fault, it is a common one in Losey: the absence of an emotional support for his piercing intellectual observations. Dave Kehr
