Ray Pride

* = RECOMMENDED

Fri 21

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

(1970, USA) Directed by Russ Meyer. Roger Ebert's one credited excursion into screenwriting ain't my kettle of camp. 109m. CinemaScope. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, Midnight.

*Cat People

(1942, USA) Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Simone Simon is a knockout as the haunted, sexually repressed woman who believes her repressed sexual feelings may be turning her into... a panther. Moody, atmospheric, chilling, "Cat People" is a terrific B picture, the first of producer Val Lewton's amazing productions at RKO in the early 1940s. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6:15, 8.

*Drugstore Cowboy

(1989, USA) Directed by Gus Van Sant. Moody, goofy, nonjudgmental Pacific Northwest picaresque with low-rent grifters scoring drugstore prescription drugs to get through yet another overcast Portland day. Strong performances by Matt Dillon, James Le Gros, Heather Graham, Max Perlich, and especially Kelly Lynch, with the incomparable plaint to Dillon about another heist he has planned, "You never fuck me and I always have to drive!" 101m. 35mm. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6.

Frida

(2002, USA) Directed by Julie Taymor. 118m. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 6:45, 9, 11:15.

*Gummo

(1997, USA) Directed by Harmony Korine. See Tip of the Week. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, Midnight.

*Mala Noche

(1985, USA) Directed by Gus van Sant. Van Sant's debut feature displays many of the same gifts for visuals, stylized sound, and deadpan, off-the-wall humor that flowered later in "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho." Walt Streeter's performance as a skid-row liquor-store clerk, desperately in love with a contemptuous 16-year-old Mexican immigrant whose rejection only drives him deeper in lust, is convincingly self-immolating and often hilariously goofy. Shot in high contrast black-and-white 16mm, van Sant's funny and melancholy tour of Portland's underside is visually stunning, and there's much telling detail about the desperation of love and lust in the story's seemingly endless rainy nights. While much of van Sant's stylization, both visual and aural, seems drawn from the vocabulary of commercials, he somehow takes the slickness, makes it his own, and leaves the images burned in the mind. 80m. 35mm. The film will be preceded by a selection of van Sant's shorts. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8:15.

Sociology as A Martial Art

(2001, France) Directed by Pierre Carles. A portrait of the late, Foucaldian thinker Pierre Bourdieu. 146m. VHS video. Facets (773)281-4114, 1517 W. Fullerton, 6:30.

Sat 22

*Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, Midnight.

Detroit 9000

(1973, USA) Directed by Arthur Marks. 107m. Video. Free. Delilah's (773)472-2771, 2771 N. Lincoln, 6.

*Drugstore Cowboy

See Feb 21. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 7:45.

*Gummo

Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, Midnight.

*The Man Who Knew Too Much

(1956, USA) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Technicolor retooling of Hitchcock's own 1934 film with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day as parents whose young son is kidnapped in the Casbah. 107m. 35mm. Block Museum (847) 491-4000, 40 Arts Circle Dr., 8.

*The Naked Spur

(1953, USA) Directed by Anthony Mann. Jimmy Stewart's a bounty hunter driven by greed. With Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Ralph Meeker. 91m. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, 11:30am.

*One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich

(2000, France) Directed by Chris Marker. One of the great feats of film criticism: the master cine-essayist explicates the imagery of his late friend Andrei Tarkovsky. 55m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6:15.

*The Sacrifice

(1986, Sweden) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The apocalypse comes to a lakeside villa in Sweden in Tarkovsky's final film, made as he knew he was dying. 145m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 3:30.

*The Scoundrel

(1935, USA) Directed by Ben Hecht, Charles McArthur. 78m. Also "Secret Weapon," Chapter 7 of the series "Spy Smasher." 16mm. $5. LaSalle Theater (312)904-9442, 4901 W. Irving Park, 8.

*Showboat

(1951, USA) Directed by George Sidney. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, 11:30am.

*A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake

(2000, Netherlands) Directed by Jeroen Berkvens. A portrait of Nick Drake and his music, told with the minimal materials left after his suicide at 26. 48m. Shown with Coco Schrijber's "In Motion," a late-night ride with tenor saxophonist and cabbie David S. Ware, driving through Manhattan and philosophizing about Free Jazz. 20m. Both 35mm. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

Sociology as A Martial Art

See Feb 21. Facets (773)281-4114, 1517 W. Fullerton, 6:30.

The Transporter

(2002, USA) Directed by Corey Yuen. Jason Statham works up to kicking ass in the South of France in this Luc Besson production while Shu Qi flexes her formidable lips. 92m. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7, 9, 11.

*Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

1957, USA) Directed by Frank Tashlin. Hilarious skewering of fifties corporate life, with Tony Randall at his priceless best as a man whose greatest lusts are for a fine meerschaum and a key to the executive washroom. Tashlin, who taught Jerry Lewis the best aspects of his directorial style, draws from his background as a cartoonist and animator to shovel in all matter of madcap gags. "Madcap" is a dumb word, but it suits Tashlin's lovely, fractured comedy style. With Jayne Mansfield, the redoubtable Henry Jones, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, Mickey Hargitay, and Groucho Marx. CinemaScope. 95m. 35mm. $6. Block Museum, (847) 491-4000, 40 Arts Circle Dr., 8.

*Zoe Beloff's Slumberland - A New 3D Projection Performance

(2002, USA) Directed by Zoe Beloff. 30m. Video $7. Chicago Filmmakers (773)293-1447, 5243 N. Clark St., 2nd Floor, 8.

Sun 23

Frida

$4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 2.

In the Heat of the Night

(1967, USA) Directed by Norman Jewison. With Rod Steiger, Sidney Poitier. 109m. 35mm. Shown with "Black Panther." $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

*My Own Private Idaho

(1991, USA) Directed by Gus Van Sant. A strange and wonderful collage from the writer-director of "Mala Noche" and "Drugstore Cowboy," dense with his deadpan humor and idiosyncratic visual poetry. Van Sant again invests his intelligence in superficially unsavory material, in this case, two male hustlers circling the idea of love. River Phoenix, very good, plays a giddy innocent, a narcoleptic in love with his best friend (Keanu Reeves), a rich kid out to mock his upbringing. The result is more fragmented than his remarkably controlled earlier features, but semicoherence of this quality is preferable to any dozen unambitious cathode-spawn pictures. 104m. 35mm. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 4.

*The Naked Spur

Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, 11:30am.

*Showboat

Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, 11:30am.

*A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake

See Feb 22. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6.

Sociology as A Martial Art

See Feb 21. Facets (773)281-4114, 1517 W. Fullerton, 3:30, 6:30.

*Le Trou

(1960, France) Directed by Jacques Becker. 131m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 3:30.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

(1992, USA) Directed by David Lynch. Troubling, scorched-earth sequel to the television series is nightmarish. Video. Free. Delilah's (773)472-2771, 2771 N. Lincoln, 6.

The Wall

(1983, Turkey) Directed by Yilmaz Guney. Life as a political prisoner in Turkey. 117m. 35mm. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 4:30.

Mon 24

*8 Women

(2002, France) Directed by Francois Ozon. 103m. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

*The Sacrifice

See Feb 22. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 3:30.

Sociology as A Martial Art

See Feb 21. Facets (773)281-4114, 1517 W. Fullerton, 6:30.

Tue 25

*Cat People

See Feb 21. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6.

*Bringing Up Baby

(1938, USA) Directed by Howard Hawks. A perfect screwball comedy. Preternaturally calm paleontologist Cary Grant's life is shattered by the arrival of heiress Katharine Hepburn and her pet leopard, Baby. 102m. 35mm. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

*Mala Noche

See Feb. 21. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6:15.

*My Own Private Idaho

See Feb 23. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8:15.

Sociology as A Martial Art

See Feb 21. Facets (773)281-4114, 1517 W. Fullerton, 6:30.

Wed 26

*Gerry

(2002, USA) Directed by Gus van Sant. Van Sant's "Gerry" is a second attempt by the restless director to appropriate the vocabulary of another filmmaker, and it's more successful and less of a Rhode Island School of Design-type prank than his earlier retake of "Psycho," despite Chris Doyle's gleaming layers of sculpted, multicolored light in that pointless yet beguilingly earnest project. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck wander a seemingly limitless desert (shot in California and Argentina). "Hey, Gerry, the path," is the sort of post-Beckett absurdism, meaningfully meaningless, these two pretty lads have improvised along with van Sant. While the horizon is always important in van Sant's work, the sometimes-golden, sometimes bone-ash-gray line of desert horizon is relentlessly flattened here, Antonioni deprived of architecture, James Benning with the addition of bewildered figures, Claire Denis' great "Beau Travail" without a persistent critique of masculinity. 103m. CinemaScope. "Gerry" opens commercially February 28. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

*Lost Highway

(1997, USA) Directed by David Lynch. "Lost Highway" may be David Lynch's best, most Lynchian film yet. Dark and disturbing, unrelenting and unsettling, gorgeously made, sizzlingly sensual yet coldly fatalist, it shows Lynch ever more determined to escape the shackles of narrative convention, even after four years of being unable to get his projects financed. In its fever-dream orchestration of incident, sound and music, Lynch has made a musical. After you've seen it, you find yourself humming--in your sleep. After seeing "Lost Highway" four times, I've found it more and more haunting, open to equally nightmarish interpretations each time. "Lost Highway" is the story of Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), who has a world of trouble boiling through his head over his feelings for his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette)--jealousy, madness, rationalization, some large thing. Whether taken as fantasy or nightmare, Lynch's revisionist noir yarn is as pungent as a punch in the face, as quixotic as revisiting a lost love; it's essentially a romantic tragedy, tinged with a deep undercurrent of sadness and hurt. Lynch and co-writer Barry Gifford use minimal means in trying to convince us that Fred could transform himself into another person out of his emotional pain; the amazing surfaces that the former painter composes while working through the plot are nothing short of ravishing. And yet... is the story banal, riddled with psychological clichés, or grandly mysterious? A sometimes-overlooked element in Lynch's mastery of mood--evading the subject of traditional narrative coherence entirely--is the use of sound. Robert Bresson once wrote that "the sound film invented silence," and Lynch intuitively understands the use of the pause, of silence, of distant, indeterminate noise. My interpretation of the moebius-strip structure of "Lost Highway"--you may want to stop here if you want to be surprised--is that Fred Madison is caught in a nightmare he can't wake from, a sexually paranoid dream in which his wife has sex with every man she meets. As Madison becomes more paranoid, his personality splits into several characters--young stud Balthazar Getty, who meets a woman much like Renee; old goat Robert Loggia, who possesses the second Renee already; and Robert Blake's Mystery Man, an enabling id-creature with eyes that burn into your soul. Sound's the key. For twenty minutes, the tension between Fred and Renee grows. In a chicly furnished house of dark, interminable hallways and strange, impossible portents, the couple are cocooned in their unspoken disharmony. One morning, a dog begins to bark. Fred becomes upset--"Who owns that damn dog?" (Much as one's dreams can shift focus based on external stimulus.) Like the loopy line the late Jack Nance had in "Wild at Heart," "My dog barks... late at night... sometimes," this seems to be the moment that the nightmare begins--the moment when the outside world begins to impinge on the claustrophobic space inside Fred Madison's head. 135. Panavision. 35mm. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

Sociology As A Martial Art

See Feb 21.146m. Facets (773)281-4114, 1517 W. Fullerton, 6:30.

*Le Trou

$8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6.

Thu 27

*The Dark Mirror

(1946, USA) Directed by Robert Siodmak. Evil twin sisters go in for murder. 85m. Double feature with 1941's "Among the Living," directed by Stuart Heisler. Both 16mm. $6. Block Museum. (847) 491-4000, 40 Arts Circle Dr, 8.

*Southern Comfort

(2001, USA) Directed by Kate Davis. 90m. Shown with Gerry Rogers' 2000 "My Left Breast." $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 10.

Sharon Couzin: New Work

Three new works by the professor in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Film, Video and New Media. 85m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

*A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake

See Feb 22. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6:30, 8:30.

Sociology as A Martial Art

See Feb 21. Facets (773)281-4114, 1517 W. Fullerton, 6:30.

(2003-02-19)

Also by Ray Pride

Tip of the Week
Freak floods. High winds. Fighter jets. Prostate inflammation. What more can stop the making of Terry Gilliam's long-in-the-works vision of Cervantes' "Don Quixote," starring Johnny Depp, Jean Rochefort, Vanessa Paradis, and a trio of bare-chested, breast-blubbering giants?
(2003-02-11)

Short Runs
This week's limited engagements
(2003-02-11)

The devil you say
Colin Farrell's assassin with the perfect aim is the wildest card in "Daredevil"
(2003-02-11)

The end of the affair
In "The Quiet American," the release of which was delayed for over a year because of fears about the bruised sensibilities of U.S. audiences after September 11, everyone involved is working at the top of their form.
(2003-02-05)

Short Runs
(2003-02-05)

All about love
(2003-01-29)

Short Runs
(2003-01-29)

Tip of the Week
(2003-01-22)

Short Runs
(2003-01-22)

Face time
(2003-01-22)

Tip of the Week
(2003-01-15)

Short Runs
(2003-01-15)

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