Ray Pride

* = Recommended

Fri 28

*Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren

Films by the two traditional avant-gardists, including Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon," and Anger's "Fireworks," "Scorpio Rising," "Invocation of my Demon Brother" and "Lucifer Rising." 105m. 16mm. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

*8 Mile

(2002, USA) Directed by Curtis Hanson.110m. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 6:30, 9, 11:30.

*Gummo

(1997, USA) Directed by Harmony Korine. "Mistake-ism" is a word Harmony Korine coined for himself--try every damned thing as if you'll never have a chance to again. Yet "Gummo" tumbles along to its own blissed-out rhythm, never pretending to the alleged ethnographic veracity of the Korine-penned "Kids." Korine, mistaken for a skateboarding New York clubber, in fact spent his formative years near Nashville, where "Gummo" was shot. "Gummo" is a Southern piece through and through, particular in its embrace of a dark and freakish mood. "Oh, it's completely Southern, it's totally, one-hundred percent Southern," Korine agreed the first time I met him. "I'm a Southern boy so how would it not be?" "Gummo" takes the form of peculiar vignettes, a form Korine admires in American joke telling as well. His eclectic teenage white-trash fantasia, which is composed mostly of vaudeville-like routines, vignettes that incorporate an albino woman who adores Patrick Swayze and mentally challenged performers, and unlikely actors such as a grown-up, tap-dancing Linda Manz, from "Days of Heaven," as a silly if loving mom. His teenagers, like Malick's, are innocents who make it up as they go along. And "Gummo" boasts as many bare boy-chests as a season's worth of Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts fashion layouts. As photographed by the great Jean-Yves Escoffier, "Gummo" alternates gorgeous, sometimes dreamlike imagery, with poker-faced scenes that can be intensely distasteful. There's glue-sniffing, cat-torture and the murder of an invalid grandmother. Yet Korine's use of music and sound is rich and inventive, and his sometimes startling use of mixed media, including Super 8, video and Polaroids, marks his debut feature as bold work. At its brightest most luminous moments, "Gummo" suggests the go-for-broke immediacy of nineties Asian filmmaking. 93m. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, Midnight.

*Shaft

(1971, USA) Directed by Gordon Parks. Shut yo' mouf. 100m. CinemaScope. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, Midnight.

*The Wrong Man

(1957, USA) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Location shooting and a semi-documentary style marked a departure for Hitchcock, after the highly stylized Universal films of the early fifties in this literalization of one of his recurrent narratives. In an adaptation of actual events, Henry Fonda plays a musician whose life is destroyed by a false accusation of murder. 105m. 35mm. Block Museum (847) 491-4000, 40 Arts Circle Dr., 8.

Sat 1

*Gigi

(1958, USA) Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Colette's tale of a young girl's training to become a courtesan goes all cuddly and gets a basketful of Oscars. "Sank heffun for leetul gorls," indeed. Well-made if you ignore the subtext, much as the songs and film do. 116m. 119m. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, 11:30am.

*Gummo

See Feb 28. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, Midnight.

*Johnny Guitar

(1954, USA) Directed by Nicholas Ray. Astonishing, topsy-turvy take on Western conventions as two tough women (Joan Crawford, Mercedes McCambridge) duke it out for control of a gambling saloon and the love of Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden). Hayden's quiet psychopath is a small amazement in the cyclone of warring psychologies. Weird, beautifully paced, bizarrely photographed (the strange colors courtesy of Republic's patented color process, Tru-Color, one of the most lurid ever). 110m. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, 11:30am.

Lizzie

(2002, USA) Directed by Lee Alan. Parody of reality TV, featuring a film within a film about a girl's video diary. Alan, his producer and cast members will appear. DigiBeta video. 87m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

*Montparnasse 19

(1958, France) Directed by Jacques Becker. Godard called this Becker's "most moving"; it's the story of Modigiliani trying to survive in Montparnasse in 1919, with the help of a loyal rich girl; Lino Ventura plays a predatory art dealer. With Gérard Philipe, Anouk Aimée. 108m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 4.

*Pillow Talk

(1959, USA) Directed by Michael Gordon. Rock Hudson, Doris Day, pharmaceutical-bright set design. Yes, it's a fangless style of romantic comedy that you'll see variations on in a theater near you, very, very soon. 108m. 35mm. Block Museum (847) 491-4000, 40 Arts Circle Dr., 8.

*The Prisoner of Shark Island

(1936, USA) Directed by John Ford. 95m. Also "Sea Raiders," Chapter 8 of the series "Spy Smasher." 16mm. $5. LaSalle Theater (312)904-9442, 4901 W. Irving Park, 8.

*Roger Dodger

(2002, USA) Directed by Dylan Kidd. Campbell Scott is superb as an inveterate skirt-chaser who can't help but talk himself into trouble. With Elizabeth Berkeley, Jennifer Beals. 104m. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 6:45, 9, 11:15.

*Shaft

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

War and Peace

(2002, India) Directed by Anand Patwardhan. 148m. Video $7. Chicago Filmmakers (773)293-1447, 5243 N. Clark St., Second Floor, 7.

Sun 2

Black Mamba

(1974, USA) Directed by S. Rowe. Video. Free. Delilah's (773)472-2771, 2771 N. Lincoln, 6.

*8 Mile

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

*Gigi

119m. Music Box (773)871-6604, 3733 N. Southport, 11:30am.

*Johnny Guitar

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

*Pixote

(1981, Brazil) Directed by Hector Babenco. Wrenching kids-on-the-streets tale with doc-like verisimilitude. 122m. 35mm. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 4:20.

*Ray Charles: The Genius of Soul

(1992, USA) Directed by Yvonne Smith. A "gentle portrait" that "Reveals the sweetness behind the emotional voice, with plenty of performance footage." 61m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6.

To Sir With Love

(1966, USA) Directed by James Clavell. 105m. 35mm. Shown with "Black Panther." $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

*War and Peace

(2002, India) Directed by Anand Patwardhan. 148m. Video. $7. Chicago Filmmakers (773)293-1447, 5243 N. Clark St., Second Floor, 7.

*Way Down East

(1920, USA) Directed by D.W. Griffith. Lillian Gish, innocent as can be, is seduced by a wealthy playboy, and who gets shunned? Writes English critic Tony Rayns: "Griffith's Victorian perspective on illegitimacy threatens for a while to make [this] the tract on monogamy that it announces itself as... Gish's virtuoso performance makes her heroine's grown from gullible innocence to bitter experience credible..." Don't miss the ice-floe climax. My one regret as a college-film-society programmer was never getting away with putting this on a double bill with Laurel and Hardy's "Way Out West." 119m. Pickwick Theatre, 5 S. Prospect, Park Ridge, (847)825-5800, 2:30.

Mon 3

*How I Killed My Father

(2002, France) Directed by Anne Fontaine. 98m. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

Tue 4

*Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren

See Feb 28. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6.

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure

International short works curated by Mexico City's Ximena Cuevas. Free. Video Mundi, Chicago Cultural Center(312)744-6630, 78 E. Washington, 6:30.

Ladies and Boys Touching

International short works curated by New York City's Astria Suparak. Free. Video Mundi, Chicago Cultural Center(312)744-6630, 78 E. Washington, 8:30.

*Midnight

(1939, USA) Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Brackett and Wilder script highlights fine comedy, with Claudette Colbert adrift in Paris and wooed by taxi driver Don Ameche (actually a Russian count) and society maven John Barrymore. With Mary Astor, Hedda Hopper. 94m. 35mm. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

Wed 5

*Montparnasse 19

(1958, France) Directed by Jacques Becker. 108m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

Random Acts of Fitness

International short works curated by Houston's Andrea Grover. Free. Video Mundi, Chicago Cultural Center(312)744-6630, 78 E. Washington, 8:30.

Selections from L'alternativa Festial

International short works curated by Barcelona's Elena de la Vara. Free. Video Mundi, Chicago Cultural Center(312)744-6630, 78 E. Washington, 6:30.

*The Straight Story

(1999, USA) Directed by David Lynch. Our stories die when we die. Our stories fall away when there's no longer anyone to tell them to. Once the children and the grandchildren have heard them, once the wife or husband is gone, there is the silence before death. David Lynch knows this--and shows this--in "The Straight Story," his marvelous, meditative comedy about the unlikely 1996 five-week journey by a 73-year-old Alvin Straight on a 1966 John Deere riding lawnmower across Iowa and Wisconsin for a reunion with his brother. The last words my grandmother's second husband said to me were, "Remember me, honey." I still know only a few dozen stories that lay behind his eyes. Lynch's portrait of Alvin (embodied by the affable, timelessly craggy, 82-year-old Richard Farnsworth) doesn't try to explain Alvin or dig under his skin for story. And instead of taking the "Lost Highway" route and showing us the boil and tumult of Fred Madison's mind, Lynch shows us the taciturn visage of a man who has slowly receded to silence, lost his wife fifteen years earlier, seen his children go away as they grow older, no one left to tell the old stories to. The film is filled with swooping shots of cornfields, harvesting, sunsets, sunrises. Farnsworth's face is shown the same way: this man at the end of his life is as much a force of nature, of the cycle of life, death and rebirth as any of the other, seemingly more majestic bits of scenery. Richard Farnsworth's eyes are the hidden secret in "The Straight Story." Laurens, Iowa is near silence. Folks are getting old. Lynch, acting as his own sound designer, seeks digital hush throughout. He stops to listen: the breeze in trees, crickets, a gentle Angelo Badalamenti score. There is an effortless small-town pictorialism in the manner of Terence Malick's "Badlands," lacking the cruelty that distorts "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks." (A pack of town dogs are the last free spirits in a near-deserted main street.) To my taste, his previous, "Lost Highway," is some kind of malefic masterpiece, an unsettling, beautiful, inscrutable piece of work. This movie is recognizably Lynch's, but shows him in a less unsettling mood, observant and uncommonly generous. The autumnal quietude is filled with details as small and right as bananas in a bunch, spotting in an old man's cluttered, common kitchen. There is a night when Alvin sits with his daughter, Rose (Sissy Spacek) watching rain fall outside his modest home. When he says, "I love a lightning storm," is that a bromide or an indication of an enduring truth? Lynch and Alvin share the moment, as the shadow on rain on windowpane melts over his beaming face. A phone call comes. He hears his brother has had a stroke--and at that fateful word, there is a blanching sheet of white--lightning as empathetic aneurysm coursing over his face. Lynch has always embraced mortality and emotion, but never so directly. Early on, Alvin must hitch a ride on a tour bus filled with older women. They are happy to see him. He's a spectacle, but one they can understand. One woman says a line of the most adept truth, indicating several lifetimes lived, suffered, remembered, cross-referenced, held dear: "My Edward loved his riding mower." There's no special emphasis on any of the words, only all of them. 111m. 35mm Panavision. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

Thu 6

*Blade

Directed by Stephen Norrington. 120m. $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 9.

*Brötzmann on Film

An evening of film and video featuring the German saxophonist and improviser. Shown with "Music is My Language," a 1990 documentary celebrating his fiftieth birthday. 90m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

*D.O.A.

(1950, USA) Directed by Rudolph Mate. 83m. Lavishly bleak little noir gem about a man who has only a few hours to solve who's poisoned him. 16mm. $6. Block Museum. (847) 491-4000, 40 Arts Circle Dr, 8.

e-motional discharge

International short works curated by Amsterdam's Jan Schujiren. Free. Video Mundi, Chicago Cultural Center(312)744-6630, 78 E. Washington, 6:30.

In the Heat of the Night (1967, USA) Directed by Norman Jewison. $5. 600 N. Michigan (312)255-9340, 7:30.

The Man Who Drove with Mandela

(1998, USA) Directed by Greta Schiller. 82m. Shown with Marlon Riggs' 1989 "Tongues Untied." $4. DOC Films (773) 702-8574, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St., 7.

Mismanaging My Image

International short works curated by Vancouver's Alex MacKenzie. Free. Video Mundi, Chicago Cultural Center(312)744-6630, 78 E. Washington, 8:30.

*Ray Charles: The Genius of Soul

(1992, USA) Directed by Yvonne Smith. 61m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 6:30.

Siddeshwari

(1989, India) Directed by Mani Kaul. "Based on the life of the legendary singer Siddeshwari Devi, India's leading exponent of the classical thumri tradition, Kaul's biographic film," writes the Harvard Film Archives, "brilliantly blends fiction with documentary and structures the singer's life like a piece of thumri music itself." 92m. $8. Siskel Film Center (312)846-2600, 164 N. State at Randolph, 8.

(2003-02-26)

Also by Ray Pride

Tip of the Week
"Mistake-ism" is a word Harmony Korine coined for himself--try every damned thing as if you'll never have a chance to again.
(2003-02-19)

Short Runs
This week's limited showings
(2003-02-19)

DVD Tip of the Week
While "The Inner Landscapes of Andrei Tarkovsky," the U.S. retrospective tour of the features of Russian visionary Andrei Tarkovsky ends its Chicago leg soon, his two earliest works are out on DVD.
(2003-02-19)

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
(2003-02-11)

The devil you say
(2003-02-11)

The end of the affair
(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)

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