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Reviews, profiles and news about movies in Chicago

At Zeroes End: Best Films, 2000-2009

The State of Cinema No Comments »

By Ray Prideinthemoodforlove-2jpg

1. “In the Mood for Love,” Wong Kar-Wai, 2000
Repetition, proximity, music, exchange of glances. Looks of desire, clouds, rain. Unconsummated romance = cinema.

2. “Yi Yi,” Edward Yang, 2000
Perfection. It’s taken for granted because it seems so simple, so easy, so natural. Family as lovingly detailed soap opera; at just under three hours, the late Taiwanese master made a multigenerational epic worthy of a novel. And, strangely befitting his background in computer science, he knew precisely where to place the camera for the most dynamic effect.

3. “Before Sunset,” Richard Linklater, 2004
Linklater knows there’s grandeur in the smallest of shared, skittery moments. This couple that never was, with dreamy memories of their one-night stand, are different people now, older, oft-disappointed, yet despite underlying melancholy, still straining for a moment of genuine contact. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: Summer Hours

Drama, Recommended, World Cinema No Comments »

RECOMMENDEDsummerhours

Oliver Assayas’ “Summer Hours” (L’heure d’été, 2008) is a mature masterpiece from one of the best filmmakers working today. I’m sure it can countenance all manner of rigorous analysis, yet its gentle touch belies how he’s masterfully woven all of his diverse themes and concerns in a seemingly simple telling of a family story. The man who made the memorably jangled, jangling twenty-first-century-in-the-making “Demonlover” (2002) and the fin-de-siècle turn of the twentieth century “Les destinees” (2000) and the ever-in-the-moment “Irma Vep” (1996) and “Clean” (2004) and “Boarding Gate” (2007) has combined, with the gentlest touch, these diverse pictures of varying success. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing Like a Deep-Dish Movie: On the road again with Jim Jarmusch

Drama, Recommended, Thriller No Comments »

By Ray Pridelimits-2113

There’s a lovely, lovely comic harrumph from Preston Sturges’ “Sullivan’s Travels”: “Nothing like a deep-dish movie to drive ‘em out in the open!” Sturges adored both the patrician and the philistine in human nature and made comic hey-hey out of both. Jim Jarmusch’s latest, the glorious, gleaming, controlled-in-the-service of repetition-compulsion “The Limits of Control” managed in its first weekend in New York and Los Angeles to drive a raft of nay-saying critical minds out into the open, and it’s a bit of a sorrow to read so many resistant to its hypnagogic pull. The Wall Street Journal’s smart Joe Morgenstern’s review read, in total, “Jim Jarmusch’s Dada meander, shot by Christopher Doyle, is empty and excruciating—that’s really all you need to know.” This may not be your cup of cinema, but cinema it is, and it’s dreamy. And if you love movies, it’s aromatic, deep-dish as all get-out. Read the rest of this entry »

Newcity’s Top 5 of Everything 2008: Film

News and Dish No Comments »

Top 5 Domestic Filmsslumdog-1

“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

 

Review: Ashes of Time: Redux

Action, Adventure, World Cinema No Comments »

RECOMMENDED

(Dung che sai duk redux, 1994-2008) Fevered eye candy of an extraordinary order, Wong Kar-Wai’s fourth feature, “Ashes of Time: Redux,” trims the 1994 version of his martial-arts collaboration with cinematographer Chris Doyle and patches together fragmented elements from multiple versions of a film that was almost lost. Wong’s 1994 “Chungking Express” was a toss-off made after the protracted battles to complete “Ashes,” and its fierce, bright energy and wit contrasts strongly with the incomprehensible doings here. Mood reigns, especially with the digital-intermediate impositions of grain and color atop an already delirious movie. The narration, in the form of stories told by an innkeeper about the life of swordsmen and the women who elude them, is dutiful. Unlike 2007′s “Blueberry Nights,” there’s little sentimentality to make an audience wince, but much to make the eyes water. Unrequited love is the force behind the film’s sorrow and battles. But look is what matters. Improbably distended shadows, stark faces, mirror-like lakes, invented colors for skies of blue and green and celadon. There are many, many moments of pure cinema. Yo Yo Ma’s cello solos are an addition as well. With Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung. Based, distantly, on Louis Cha’s 1957 wuxia martial arts novel, “The Legend of the Condor Heroes.” 93m. (Ray Pride)