Jonathan Rosenbaum

From the Chicago Reader (February 1, 1988). — J.R.

A film that might be regarded as Nicholas Ray’s farewell to Hollywood (if not commercial filmmaking), as well as his tribute to Chicago in the 20s, this 1958 feature is also one of his most affecting love stories. An unlikely alliance between a crippled and crooked lawyer (Robert Taylor) and a dancing showgirl (Cyd Charisse), both of whom try to escape the power of a tyrannical mobster (Lee J. Cobb), forms the basis for a flamboyant poem in delirious color and ‘Scope that is treated with a mixture of violence and lyricism unique to Ray. This is the only movie he made at MGM, and he makes the most of the production resources available; Taylor and Charisse have never been better, and rarely has Ray’s theme of two flawed individuals trying to strike a symmetrical balance achieved a more beautiful and convulsive expression. With John Ireland and Kent Smith. 99 min. (JR)

From the Chicago Reader, July 28, 1995. —J.R.

Safe

Rating *** A must see

Directed and written by Todd Haynes

With Julianne Moore, Xander Berkeley, Ronnie Farer, Martha Velez-Johnson, Chauncy Leopardi, and James LeGros.

I know that Americans are supposed to hate whatever they can’t understand, and certainly current Hollywood filmmaking is predicated to the point of tedium on this truism. But part of what makes Todd Haynes’s Safe the most provocative American art film of the year so far — fascinating, troubling, scary, indelible — is that it can’t be entirely understood. The mystery and ambiguity missing from mainstream movies are all the more precious, magical, even sexy here, in a 35-millimeter feature employing professional actors set partly in the plusher suburban reaches of the San Fernando Valley.

By chance the star of Safe, Julianne Moore, also plays the female lead in the least mysterious Hollywood feature of the moment, the unspeakable Nine Months — a movie that essentially celebrates the world that Safe attacks. This makes Haynes’s film even more dangerous: seeing both films might be like combining chemicals that produce lethal explosives. One suspects that anyone who sees both in swift succession will be flirting with social or political revolution or some sort of madness. Read more

From the Chicago Reader (December 3, 2004). — J.R.

Bright Leaves

*** (A must-see)

Directed and Written by Ross McElwee

As a filmmaker who’s always philosophizing about his family, his southern heritage, and the meaning of life, Ross McElwee can get a little high-flown at times. The funniest shot in the latest installment of his autobiographical saga, Bright Leaves, brings him down to earth a bit — and shows that McElwee actually may have learned something from the deflation. The shot occurs toward the end of the film and there are several reasons it’s so funny.

(1) A noisy dog is following McElwee as he threads his way through a kitschy sculpture garden, whose relevance to the story remains obscure. Is it cemetery statuary? Whatever it is, it’s a visual and narrative non sequitur that only adds to the screwball ambience.

(2) The growling dog, seen near the lower edge of the frame, recalls a smudgy, minimalist black-and-white comic strip drawn by David Lynch between 1983 and ’92, The Angriest Dog in the World. (The graphics of the four panels in each strip were almost identical — the same dog angrily pulling at the same chain in a fenced-in backyard — but the introductory words and the balloons of dialogue coming from someone unseen inside the house were always different.) Read more

From the Chicago Reader (June 16, 2006). — J.R.

My Dad Is 100 Years Old

*** (A must see)

Directed by Guy Maddin

Written by and starring Isabella Rossellini

In May 1948 Ingrid Bergman wrote a letter to director Roberto Rossellini: “Dear Mr. Rossellini, I have seen your films Rome, Open City and Paisan and I enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, has not forgotten her German, is barely comprehensible in French and who can only say ‘I love you’ in Italian, I am ready to come to Italy to work with you.”

She was the biggest female star in Hollywood at the time, and the films she mentioned were art house hits. She and Rossellini were married to other people, and the scandal of their subsequent affair led Colorado senator Edwin Johnson to try to bar her from appearing in movies, declaring on the floor of the Senate, “No one can reflect upon her sudden plunge from the highest pinnacle of respect to the gutter without feeling that she is the victim of some kind of hypnotic influence. . . . RKO publicity brazenly termed Rossellini inspired. If this swine is inspired, he is inspired by the devil.” Read more

From the Chicago Reader (August 18, 2006). Fox has reissued this film in a  two-disc edition, combining a Blu-Ray with a DVD of the film on a second disk — the latter including an audio commentary by writer-director Neil Burger which clarifies and amplifies how well he understands the mechanics as well as the overall concept of his own film. He’s especially enlightening on the subject of late 19th century magic and how he incorporated many of his findings in the film, utilizing the expertise of several contemporary magicians, including Ricky Jay.       — J.R.

The Illusionist

**** (Masterpiece)

Directed and written by Neil Burger

With Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell, Eddie Marsan, and Jake Wood

Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate to our dreams. — Steven Millhauser, “Eisenheim the Illusionist”

At first glance Neil Burger’s first two features couldn’t be further apart. Interview With the Assassin (2002) is a scruffy-looking pseudodocumentary and thriller about two marginal characters — a young, out-of-work cameraman (Dylan Haggerty) and his 60-ish solitary neighbor (Raymond J. Barry), an ex-marine who claims to have fired the second bullet that killed John F. Kennedy. The Illusionist, based on a story by Steven Millhauser, is a lush piece of romanticism — a tale of enchantment set in turn-of-the-century Vienna about a magician named Eisenheim (Edward Norton), the son of a cabinetmaker, and his longtime relationship with Sophie (Jessica Biel), a duchess and the prospective fiancee of Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), an old-fashioned villain. Read more

From the Chicago Reader (March 31, 2006). — J.R.

I’m almost tempted to say that making me popular is a resistance against taking me serious, says Slavoj Zizek in this entertaining 2005 portrait of the Slovene cultural theorist and academic rock star. It’s a characteristic utterance, and his charisma is such that the meaning registers despite the faulty grammar. Whether he’s ruminating in his Ljubljana flat, speaking at the University of Buenos Aires, fleeing autograph hounds, running for president of Slovenia (in 1990), defining ideology, or staging his own mock suicide, his frenetic and lucid manner is neatly captured by the jazzy style of director Astra Taylor. In English and subtitled Slovene. 71 min. (JR)

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A post on the Chicago Reader‘s blog, Bleader. — J.R.

A brief dispatch from Rotterdam

Posted By Jonathan Rosenbaum on 01.28.07 at 04:32 PM

From the Chicago Reader (October 20, 2006). — J.R.

Terry Gilliam reportedly walked off The Brothers Grimm, washing his hands of the Weinstein brothers, to make this more personal tale, which he and Tony Grisoni adapted from a Mitch Cullin novel. Hallucinatory and extremely unpleasant, it involves a nine-year-old girl who loses her junkie parents (Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly) and sets off for crazed adventures in rural Texas, conversing with various rodents and a collection of dolls’ heads and meeting up with a taxidermist witch (Janet McTeer) and her mentally challenged brother (Brendan Fletcher). Enter this diseased Lewis Carroll universe at your own risk. R, 122 min. (JR)

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From the Chicago Reader (November 24, 2006). — J.R.

Bobby ***

Directed and written by Emilio Estevez

With Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Nick Cannon, Estevez, Laurence Fishburne, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Freddy Rodriguez, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, and Jacob Vargas

I’m automatically suspicious of a movie whose premise is that Bobby Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency may have been the last chance this country had to save itself. For one thing, Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary against Eugene McCarthy, who was much more outspoken about the Vietnam war and much more committed to withdrawing U.S. troops. I’m also wary of an attempt to drape Kennedy’s assassination in nostalgia for the 60s as a way to reflect on the present. But Emilio Estevez’s Bobby, set in LA’s Ambassador Hotel on the day Kennedy was shot, June 5, 1968, is so keenly felt and so deeply imagined I couldn’t help but be moved, even grateful for its bleeding-heart nostalgia — which winds up feeling rather up-to-date. I’m troubled only that Estevez minimizes or omits aspects of Kennedy’s life that don’t fit the idealistic image, such as his early work for Roy Cohn, chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy. Read more