Calendar: Week 10

June 1 - 7

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Christian Mungiu, 2007 - 113 min.

Many critics expressed shock when this austere Palmes D’Or winner wasn’t among the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. A young woman, aided by her roommate and friend, attempts to get an abortion under Ceausescu’s repressive regime. They encounter the seedy underbelly of Bucharest, including the grotesque abortionist Dr. Bebe. It’s been compared to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 12:08 East of Bucharest, largely for their shared Romanian heritage, but 4 Months is even bleaker, a portrait of a nation trapped by tyranny and repression. In Romanian with English subtitles. 35mm.

Be Kind, Rewind
Michel Gondry, 2008 - 101 min.

When a freak accident causes Jerry (Jack Black) to become magnetized and erase all the video tapes from his friend Mike (Mos Def)’s struggling video store, there is only one solution: “You name it, we shoot it. Be Kind, Rewind Videos, a la carte.” From Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s Michel Gondry comes a unique comedy about two friends who, in an effort to save their video store, remake classic films like Ghostbusters and Rush Hour and inspire their community. This film will make you laugh, warm your heart, and like Cinema Paradiso - remind you of the movies’ magic. 35mm.

Daniel Sefik Presents Metropolis
Fritz Lang, 1927 - 126 min.

Probably the most iconic silent film ever made, Fritz Lang’s futuristic superproduction fuses socialism and sci-fi to create a startling vision of a society that has lost its human core. The bold contraptions and contradictions of Lang’s film assured in a place in both mainstream and avant-garde film canons, inspiring animation, experimental art, and horror and science fiction cinema. Long available only in a severely re-edited version, the present restoration attempts to approach the beauty of the Berlin premiere version. 35mm.
Live piano accompaniment by Daniel Sefik.

Wisconsin Death Trip
James Marsh, 1999 - 76 min.

Michael Lesy’s experimental, fanciful, and beautiful 1973 book is a collection of newspaper articles and photographs from Black River Falls, Wisconsin, written and shot in the 1890s. It’s a chronicle of disease, tragedy, madness, murder, arson, and horror. Adapting less the brief stories excavated from newspapers, director Marsh focuses instead on the astounding photographs. Above all, Marsh’s film is a frightening and sobering challenge to the stability and value of the American Dream, of Western expansion, of the peaceable and tranquil influence of civilization. Ian Holm narrates.35mm.

Les Parents terribles
Jean Cocteau, 1948 - 105 min.

When a young man announces his marriage, it distresses his neurotically overprotective mother, who fears she will lose him. This hilarious dark comedy about a dysfunctional family is rarely screened and not very well-known in this country. But it’s not only among Cocteau’s very best films, it’s among the greatest French films of its era. Originally written as a play, it’s set almost entirely in two cramped apartments. Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed to this film as “an illustration of the paradox that accentuating the theatrical aspects of theater on screen makes them quintessentially cinematic.”In French; subtitled. Archival 35mm.

The Collector
William Wyler, 1965 - 119 min.

Terrence Stamp stars as the loner Freddie Clegg in this adaptation of a John Fowles novel by veteran director Wyler. Freddie enriches his otherwise meaningless life as a bank clerk by collecting butterflies, a hobby that fills him with a sense of power and control. After purchasing a house in the country, he decides to acquire a girlfriend, and begins converting the cellar into a human-sized collection jar. Samantha Eggars turns in a great performance as Stamp’s romantic interest, and Wyler, who made his name during the formative years of American cinema, demonstrates his mastery over the use of color. 35mm.

***Schedule Change***La Zandunga
Fernando de Fuentes, 1937 - 107 min.

Within a year of Allá en al Rancho Grande, the Mexican film industry devoted half of its output to churning out sentimental and folkloric variations upon the comedia ranchera calculated to appeal to the Spanish-speaking market. De Fuentes moved away from the political subject matter that had animated his earlier work and churned out musical melodramas like his compatriots. But this one is a cut above the rest, if only because this story of a proud woman in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec fighting off suitors stars Hollywood’s most famous Latina actress Lupe Vélez in her first Mexican film. In Spanish with English Subtitles. Archival 35mm.

Jurassic Park
Steven Spielberg, 1993 - 127 min.

Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster ought to have been the dinosaur film to end all dinosaur films - though that hasn’t stopped them from making two inferior sequels, with a third on the way in 2009. Based on a Michael Crichton novel, the plot involves a millionaire who invites a trio of scientists to a private island to tour a theme park filled with dinosaurs cloned from prehistoric DNA. Something goes horribly wrong, of course. Jurassic Park introduced raptors to the collective consciousness of seven-year-olds. 35mm.
Presented and with a Q&A by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno.

The Counterfieters
Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2007 - 100 min.

Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, The Counterfeiters is an intense examination of the lengths people go to in order to survive under extreme circumstances. Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire, is torn away from his debauched lifestyle in Berlin when arrested and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. There he sees his fellow prisoners suffer from the brutal horrors of Nazism, but uses his skills to get special treatment. He eventually oversees the largest counterfeiting operation in history. In German with English subtitles. 35mm.

My Blueberry Nights
Wong Kar-Wai, 2007 - 111 min.

In Wong’s first American feature, Norah Jones becomes the director’s vehicle for sightseeing across the country and making cozy rest stops with a cast that seems designed to martial all that’s best in today’s acting talent in one fell swoop, as if to make up for not having arrived on the continent sooner. Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, and David Strathairn all make cameos in the film, but the force and effect of each player’s presence is to plunge us deeper into the intricate latticework of emotional and sexual tensions that defines all of Wong’s films. 35mm.