A Letter to Uncle Boonmee

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Experimental filmmaking lives and thrives. Here are highlights of the opening night of the 22nd Onion City festival. School of the Art Institute alum Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” began that project with the short, “A Letter to Uncle Boonmee,” an atmospheric piece set in a small Thai jungle village.  Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s found-footage-animation hybrid, “Beauty Plus Pity,” makes witty play of hunters-vs.-animals and ends with an animated musical number by animal “gods.” Janie Geiser’s “Ghost Algebra” is lovingly treated animation about a woman’s mysterious voyage. Daïchi Saïto’s “Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis” is hand-processed 35mm film of a forest scene, scored by violinist Malcolm Goldstein. The flicker of its color variations is enhanced by the bold, sawing score. Sharon Lockhart’s “Podwórka” is a gorgeous portrait of the battered courtyards between apartment buildings in Lodz, Poland. Children play, dogs sniff, the sounds of the city are more distant than birdsong. Striking compositions and rich color add to the hypnotic effect. Jia Zhang-ke’s gentle “Cry Me a River” is as elusive as his recent features, as a quartet of thirtysomething former students meet to celebrate a professor’s birthday. Their exchange of memories since their parting is, in the director’s words, his attempt to  “see if I could tell a story that spanned ten years in fifteen or twenty minutes.” Visually beautiful and emotionally tender, comparisons to Ozu and Hou Hsiao-Hsien are instructive but do not convey its delicate, memorable fragrance. (There’s even a joke about Hou’s muse, the actress Shu Qi.) Program 105m. (Ray Pride)

This opening night program plays Thursday, June 17, 8pm. The festival continues at Chicago Filmmakers through next weekend.

Top 5 U.S. Films
“The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow
“The Limits of Control,” Jim Jarmusch
“A Serious Man,” Joel and Ethan Coen
“Two Lovers,” James Gray
“The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Wes Anderson
—Ray Pride

Top 5 Foreign Films
“Summer Hours,” Olivier Assayas
“The Headless Woman,” Lucrecia Martel
“35 Shots of Rum,” Claire Denis
“You, the Living,” Roy Andersson
“Night and Day,” Hong Sang-soo
—Ray Pride Read the rest of this entry »

Top 5 Domestic Films

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“Che,” Steven Soderbergh

“Paranoid Park,” Gus Van Sant

“Rachel Getting Married,” Jonathan Demme

“Ballast,” Lance Hammer

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Foreign Films

“Man on Wire,” James Marsh

“Reprise,” Joachim Trier

“Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mike Leigh

“Slumdog Millionaire,” Danny Boyle

“A Christmas Tale,” Arnaud Desplechin

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Films

“Slumdog Millionaire,” Danny Boyle

“Ballast,” Lance Hammer

“Hunger,” Steve McQueen

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“In The City of Sylvia,” Jose Luis Guerin

—Bill Stamets

Top 5 Films

“Milk,” Gus Vant Sant

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“Man on Wire,” James Marsh

“Let the Right One In,” Tomas Alfredson

“Rachel Getting Married,” Jonathan Demme

—Tom Lynch

Top 5 Performances – Female

Sally Hawkins, “Happy-Go-Lucky”

Melissa Leo, “Frozen River”

Kristin Scott Thomas, “I’ve Loved You So Long”

Kate Winslet, “Revolutionary Road”

Kat Dennings, “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Performances – Male

Benicio Del Toro, “Che”

Sean Penn, “Milk”

Mathieu Amalric, “A Christmas Tale”

Michel Blanc, “The Witnesses”

Ben Kingsley, “Elegy”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Supporting Performances – Female

Ann Savage, “My Winnipeg”

Nurgul Yesilcay, “The Edge of Heaven”

Viola Davis, “Doubt”

Penelope Cruz, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”

Zoe Kazan, “Revolutionary Road”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Supporting Performances – Male

Michael Shannon, “Revolutionary Road,” “Shotgun Stories”

Danny McBride, “Pineapple Express”

Richard Dreyfuss, “W.”

Toby Jones, “W.”

Anil Kapoor, “Slumdog Millionaire”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Directors

Mike Leigh, “Happy-Go-Lucky”

Joachim Trier, “Reprise”

Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”

Tomas Alfredson, “Let the Right One In”

James Marsh, “Man on Wire”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Screenplays

Fatih Akin, “The Edge Of Heaven”

Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, “Reprise”

Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog Millionaire”

Charlie Kaufman, “Synecdoche, New York”

Martin McDonagh, “In Bruges”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Domestic Documentaries

“Encounters at the End of the World,” Werner Herzog

“The Order of Myths,” Margaret Brown

“At The Death House Door,” Steve James, Peter Gilbert

“The Unforeseen,” Laura Dunn

“Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father,” Kurt Kuenne

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Foreign Documentaries

“Man On Wire,” James Marsh

“Of Time and the City,” Terence Davies

“Waltz With Bashir,” Ari Folman

“Up the Yangtze,” Yung Chang

“Young@Heart,” Stephen Walker

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Follies

“Speed Racer,” The Wachowski brothers

“The Fall,” Tarsem

“Adam Resurrected,” Paul Schrader

“Australia,” Baz Luhrmann

“My Blueberry Nights,” Wong Kar-wai

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Films You Can’t See Yet

“24 City,” Jia Zhang-Ke

“35 Shots Of Rum,” Claire Denis

“The English Surgeon,” Geoffrey Smith

“Liverpool,” Lisandro Alonso

“Voy a Explotar (I’m Going to Explode),” Gerardo Naranjo

—Ray Pride

By Ray Pride

Of all the things you could possibly say about the potential of this year’s installment of the Chicago International Film Festival, I’ll start with two: most of the attractions are at two theaters within walking distance of each other, the River East and 600 North Michigan, and of a claimed 175 movies, I’ve seen or can easily recommend a fine total of thirty-eight.

Some will open during the run-up to the year-end awards gauntlet, while others have less chance of being seen elsewhere. Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke continues his explorations with documentary-fiction hybrids in “24 City,” a fascinating critique of socialism in contemporary China. Veit Helmer’s German-Azerbaijani spaghetti-sex-comedy “Absurdistan” posits the world as an eternal backwater ruled by, well, water and women, an equally intriguing perspective. Then again, your life could be a series of repeated gestures year after year and song after song like in the passion of the metal-comic doc, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil.”

Lance Hammer’s “Ballast” is spare American regional filmmaking of uncommon delicacy, while Mike Leigh’s latest, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” partakes equally deeply of the concerns of compassion and empathy. French novelist Philippe Claudel’s “I’ve Loved You So Long” is reed-delicate and wire-taut, as rich as the kind of prose that mirrors life, with a bold central performance by Kristin Scott Thomas as a haunted middle-aged woman. Utterly evanescent but also lived-in is “Nights and Weekends,” by Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg as a long-distance couple in New York and Chicago, more long distance than couple. The glimpse we have of their lives is only the moments of incomprehension, only disconnect. The characters are ill matched and ill starred; the filmmaker-leads palpably suggest the failure of modern romance. A different take on the world today: Danny Boyle’s latest, “Slumdog Millionaire,” about an 18-year-old Mumbai orphan who competes on India’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Streets teem, lives dance. And, reflecting a pornography-filled culture, there’s the casual obscenity of Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make A Porno,” which, in a matter of speaking, starts at snowball and snowballs from there.

Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” is a world within worlds within the veteran screenwriter’s head, to drenching, wrenching result. (I’m moderating Sunday night’s Q&A with Kaufman.) More drama: Darren Aronofsky’s spare “The Wrestler” boasts a painfully physicalized performance by Mickey Rourke as a man whose body is his life, to the threat of both; thematically and acting-wise, Marisa Tomei is his equal as a stripper he knows not well enough. Chicago-set torment is on-screen in “Wesley Willis Joyrides,” an assembly of material about the late, troubled Chicago musician.

Terence Davis, who hasn’t made a movie since 2000′s “The House of Mirth,” returns in smashing form with the “Of Times And The City,” an elegy to his Liverpool hometown that is both comic and heartfelt, sardonic and emotional. American sense of place: Kelly Reichardt (“Old Joy”) returns with more Pacific Northwest minimalism with “Wendy and Lucy,” with a radiant Michelle Williams center screen as a needy woman whose life revolves on her car and her dog. That’s not to overlook special screenings at the Music Box of a restored print of Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time In the West,” as well as John Cassavetes’ “Faces.”

Films from other cultures are always important for an idea of lives lived, sidewalks walked. Jerzy Skolimowski (“Moonlighting,” “Deep End”) reportedly returns to Polish-absurdist form with his “Four Nights With Anna.” The great Arnaud Desplechin (“Kings and Queen,” “My Sex Life, Or, How I Got Into An Argument”) returns with “A Christmas Tale” (pictured), a two-and-a-half-hour family comedy-drama that attains as many mysterious heights as his earlier work. Ace Icelandic editor Valdis Oskarsdottir (“Julien Donkey-Boy,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) debuts with “Country Wedding,” a road movie about two busloads of Icelanders heading off from Reykjavik to a wedding in the countryside with the expected perplexing comic result amid the grand volcanic landscape. “Be Like Others” is a documentary about the Iranian perplex where homosexuality is punishable by death, but sex-reassignment surgery is encouraged: the concept is mind-boggling, and Tanaz Eshaghian does a fair job balancing the personalities of her subjects.

Other notables: Abdel Kechiche’s “The Secret of The Grain,” an explosive admixture of family and food with rich, unpredictable outcomes. Cai Shangjun’s “The Red Awn” is a diverting family drama on a distant Chinese wheat farm. Nina Paley’s “Sita Sings The Blues” is an animated adaptation of the Hindu epic “Ramayana,” mingled with the story of a modern divorce, combining music and images to captivating effect. Nacho Vigalondo’s “Timecrimes” is bright modern sci-fi; Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for his eerie tales of the otherworldly, works in the genre of family drama, reportedly with the same impact; and James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” which debuted at Cannes to decidedly mixed reviews, transposes bits of Dostoevsky to a somber, contemporary New York romance. Sincere or overstated? Like many of the sweet surprises to be found at any good film festival, it might be a little of both.

Visit chicagofilmfestival.com for a full schedule.

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What lies beneath “Up The Yangtze” is a true depth charge. A longitudinal documentary of surface calm, it’s a smashing debut for young Canadian-Chinese director Yang Chung whose three years in making the film included a year of befriending teenagers above and below decks on a cruise ship trawling the immense waterway known in China as simply “The River” while on trips called “Farewell Cruises.” As the waters rise behind the Three Gorges dam, history’s largest hydroelectric venture, thousands of years of small-town culture has been submerged. The “farewells” are to submerged or soon-to-be-submerged cities and towns. (See Jia Zhang-Ke’s still life for a formidably stylized take on the same subject.) Yang’s first stroke was to approach Victoria Cruises, a Queens-based company run by a Taiwanese-American family. They said yes and as the project wore on, they remained patient and without suspicions. I heard Chung hold forth several times on the subject at panels at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, but didn’t record any of it: suffice it to say, he was pleasantly surprised at the access he got. But the result is worthy of its comparison to Altman in a nonfiction format: the months of conversation and contemplation have been fluently edited into a compassionate, never didactic narrative of great heart. In swirling waters and workaday sorrows, there are always currents of metaphor and analogy racing through the viewer’s brain. Wang Shi Qing’s camerawork is a marvel as well. There is a haunting shot of a small dancing girl that Chung captured on his cell phone; it’s emblematic of his eye and his focus. 95m. (Ray Pride)

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Can anyone master any aspect of modern China? Not even its bureaucrats and commissars and Army seem capable. For a Westerner with better-than-average knowledge of cultural currents, a few remarkable exports seem to arrive each season. In film alone, the U.S. has recently seen releases of “Summer Palace,” a film about a young woman’s coming of age that mingles strains of Truffaut and Hou Hsiao-hsien, and the magical miserablist Jia Zhang-ke’s “Still Life” and “Dong,” one a fictional film, the other a semi-documentary about life in the Three Gorges area of China where for years rising waters have been covering thousands of years of civilization (Canadian-Chinese director Yang Chung’s “Up the Yangtze” also opens this week). Trimmed by Chinese censors before its Cannes debut, Li Yang’s 2007 “Blind Mountain” (his second feature after 2003′s pulpy “Blind Shaft”) is an often-beautiful film about brutal occurrences, largely the things that happen to a young woman who’s sold in the early Nineties to a family who farms pigs. As part of a “sixth generation” of Chinese filmmakers, Li has not yet succumbed to the neutral pictorialism of his predecessors. The ending is a cataclysm, but likely a daily occurrence in the uncharted territory of that vast land. 97m. (Ray Pride)