A multitude of movies at the second week of the Chicago International Film Festival’s forty-eighth installment at the River East wave a big, bold middle finger at the cacophony of elder critics who’ve been declaring the death of their cinema for the past couple of months. From Bill and Turner Ross, who made the splendid portrait of their Ohio hometown, “45365,” comes a city symphony of New Orleans, “Tchoupitoulas,” produced by members of the collective behind “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Equally humid but more arid is one of several new films by SAIC graduate Apichatpong Weerasethakul is “Mekong Hotel,” where polite ghosts are hungry for brains. Obstinate Mexican visualist-cum-spiritual seeker Carlos Reygadas took home Cannes’ best director nod for  ”Post Tenebras Lux,” another languorous, lush look at landscape and climate. Read the rest of this entry »

“Something in the Air.”

“The Festival of Festivals” was what Toronto called its film festival back in its beginnings thirty-five years ago, but looking at the offerings of the forty-eighth Chicago International Film Festival, that could apply to its attractions over the next couple weeks of October. While Toronto, the world’s largest film festival open to the public, showed over 350 features this year (and where many local reviewers get their first glimpse of festival season), Chicago tops out at about 150, from fifty countries. It’s a cliché, but you can’t help but create your own festival of festivals, however diligent with schedules and free with cash and flexible with time you may be. Read the rest of this entry »

Crazy Horse

By Ray Pride

No matter even if you truly wanted to, there’s no way a single viewer could give you an overview of an international film festival with more than a hundred events: you can surmise all you want, based on what festival films have played or have been reviewed at already, or the filmmakers’ reputation. Even festival programmers miss out on sections they’re not part of. I’ll be curious to see statistics after this year’s CIFF to see how many programs the average, but dedicated moviegoer, is able to attend. It’s tough even if you’ve been to a few prior festivals, seen a fistful of advance screeners, availed yourself of advance screenings. But, as luck, fortune or programming may have it, Chicago International has more programs of note in its second week, and a growing number of them have further distribution in the near future. (Disclosure: I was a program consultant for this year’s Docufest section.) Read the rest of this entry »

Goodbye, First Love

By Ray Pride

After summer’s somersaults, autumn through Christmas is when the grownup movies come out to play, and the forty-seventh edition of the Chicago International Film Festival has a lot to celebrate. In this rundown, I’ll keep “great” as a random adjective to a minimum. (Disclosure: I was a program consultant for this year’s Docufest section.)

From the highlights of the program, it seems like it’s going to be a strong season for good, solid movies in coming months. The range of films being shown that have been submitted for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award seem to be uncommonly strong as well. While there may well be other discoveries to be made, most of the films recommended here will show up in commercial or art-house release. Screenings can sell out in advance, which may partly be due to the capacity of the smaller screens at River East. The festival is keeping a running tally of shutouts on their Facebook page. Read the rest of this entry »

Drunkboat

In its forty-sixth edition, a first look at the programming of the Chicago International Film Festival passes on retrospectives and sidebars, and most titles of interest are premieres of movies that should open in Chicago in coming months. (There are fourteen titles in the New Directors Competition, of which I’m one of the four judges; I hope there are discoveries there.) First week attractions of note that will be released soon are Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” a multipart story by screenwriter Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon”); “Stone,” a character study about infidelity and religious belief from John Curran (“We Don’t Live Here Anymore”); and Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy,” which won Juliette Binoche the Best Actress nod at Cannes 2010. Cannes’ Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonme Who Can Remember His Past Lives” by SAIC grad Apichatpong Weerasethakul is also on this week. Cannes offered a slot to the mini-indie teen drama “Myth of the American Sleepover” as well. Bertrand Tavernier turns to costume drama with “Princess of Montpensier” and Quebecois kid-actor-turned-boy-director Xavier Dolan-Tadros turns up with his second feature at the age of 21, “Les Amours Imaginaires,” a sweet title now known as “Heartbeats” in the U.S. Two films likely not to light up a screen again: “Revolución,” with short contributions from ten Mexican directors, including Carlos Reygadas, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Gerardo Naranjo and Fernando Eimbcke. Rodrigo García’s contribution, a single take in which figures from the Mexican Revolution barrel full dress down a modern L.A. street, comes highly regarded. And, a real rarity, 2007′s unreleased “Drunkboat,”  a Chicago-set drama from gifted theater director Bob Meyer (a Chicago expat living in Paris), starring John Malkovich and John Goodman in a story of a boy growing up among alcoholic men. (Ray Pride)

All programs are at the River East.

By Ray Pride

Some movies sound deadly, and it’s amazing when that’s all to the good because then the film can take you by glorious surprise.

That’s the case with Lee Daniels’ “Precious, Based Upon the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire.” Set in Harlem in the mid-1980s, it follows Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), an overweight teenager with a Down Syndrome child who’s been repeatedly abused sexually by the boyfriend of her resentful mother (Mo’Nique). At first, as Precious is thwarted in her attempts to educate herself out of agony, the film’s stylistic choices seem as eccentric and naïve as its protagonist, yet “Precious” grows in assurance and its gestures of character growth toward demonstrating how a generational cycle of abuse can be cut moves toward an ending that can only be called earned. Read the rest of this entry »

A high art cry has gone up from film festivals this year from Cannes to last weeks’ Fantastic Fest in Austin: “Chaos reigns!” It’s a confrontational burst from a fox in the woods in Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” [pictured] taking a moment from gnawing itself to bloodiness. Weird and also weirdly prescient about the economics of film and film festivals, Von Trier’s misanthropic performance piece yields at least that variation on William Goldman’s timeless observation about filmmaking, “Nobody knows anything.” In its forty-fifth manifestation, the Chicago International Film Festival is located under a single roof in Streeterville, at River East, and while film distributors are slimming and ways for smaller and foreign language movies to find audiences are in question, there’s still a world of film to explore. Some have distribution via ambitious companies like IFC, Sony Pictures Classics and Magnolia and will be in theaters soon; others may be harder to find in months to come. Picks from the festival’s opening week: “Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl” is likely tidy, a short feature about desire and obsession from 100-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, who’s begun another feature since. One of the untidiest movies I’ve seen this year is “Cooking History,” an intense documentary about the battlefield cooks of twentieth-century European War. A tasty collection of characters, indeed: an army travels on its scuttlebutt. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

No other competition is quite like a marathon, because no other event in sports puts its elite athletes on the same playing field, on the same day and time, with such a vast and diverse collection of amateurs. Combine this with its intensity and the duration of the preparation, and you have the foundation for naturally rich narrative. “Spirit of the Marathon,” a documentary that chronicles six stories of runners preparing for the 2005 Chicago Marathon, plumbs these advantages, following first-timers, old-timers and the fastest runners in the world, including Deena Kastor fresh off her Bronze Medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics and Kenyan sensation Daniel Njenga. Director Jon Dunham—a veteran marathoner—manages to cover these simultaneous stories, unfolding across four continents, with a finesse that belies the project’s modest budget, interweaving a history of the marathon and interviews with the sport’s leading figures, letting the natural narrative of triumph and setback tell the story. Read the rest of this entry »

The 44th Chicago International Film Festival continues through October 29, and highlights include a repeat showing of Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” with Mickey Rourke as a man whose body had been his living is killing himself with it; “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” a seeming mock-doc about a real, middle-aged Canadian heavy metal band; and “Wesley Willis’ Joyrides,” which chronicles the local musician who did not make it to middle age. Erick Zoncka’s “Julia,” with Tilda Swinton in the central role, reportedly examines the far reaches of a troubled woman’s sanity; it’s his first feature since “The Dreamlife of Angels.” James Gray moves outside of his usual realm of New York corruption to examine a love affair between two troubled souls, played by Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow, in “Two Lovers”; holiday family conflict is on the menu in Arnaud Desplechin’s “A Christmas Tale,” a worthy complement to his earlier features like “My Sex Life… or How I Got Into An Argument” and “Kings and Queen.” Stefan Forbes’ “Boogey Man: The Story of Lee Atwater” is the most seasonal of attractions, dealing with the amoral life and painful, slow death of the political advisor who developed much of the Republican style of campaigning, and was a mentor to Karl Rove. It’s almost possible to believe that such a loathsome man existed, but Forbes does fine work in capturing his life and legacy. Established directors are on hand as well, with Andrzej Wajda’s “Katyn,” about the aftereffects of the Russian slaughter of the cream of the Polish military; Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Four Nights With Anna,” reportedly a return to form for the genially absurdist director of “Deep End” and “Moonlighting”; and Hong Kong action master Johnny To’s “Sparrow” makes its Chicago debut. (Ray Pride)

Full schedule at chicagofilmfestival.com