Film

Innocent Saturday is a Russian film about the Chernobyl disaster… the date is Saturday, April 26, 1986, and official reports of the meltdown have been withheld, so residents in the surrounding townships are carrying on life per usual — and breathing in radioactive air.

The Turin Horse isn’t an interpretation of Nietzsche so much as a meditation on those impositions against which Nietzsche railed–order, morality, indoctrination, humanity removed from its animality.

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan Starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel Turkey Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is a film from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a name some film buffs may recognize. The movie depicts a night-long search for a body in the hills of Anatolia (the Steppe of Eastern Turkey). The police chief, medical examiner, region prosecutor, and, of course, the arrested man–who leads authorities in the direction of a body–are a crew of epistemological travelers. I say travelers in a literal and figurative sense, because the movie is concerned with the assumptions and understandings that characters make and question over the course of one night. The movie progresses linearly and is crouched within the fairytale, [...]

Directed by Joe Maggio, Starring Dennis Farina United States A couple hours ago–6pm CST to be exact–somebody–an intern, a volunteer, a professional carpet tacker–somebody–rolled out the red carpet to start the 47th Chicago International Film Festival. It was humming with excitement over on East Randolph at the Harris Theatre, as fans and press and associates ushered in the kickoff screening The Rites of Joe May. Or I can only imagine, because I wasn’t there. But director Joe Maggio and star Dennis Farina were slated to show, and I’m sure there were some other guests of note. My press pass doesn’t cover the red carpet, so I watched the screener last night, and I’m okay with skipping Joe May on the [...]

  His Brigade: a sprawling horde of Fellini-esque circus folk, armed with monstrous lights, aging cameras, tattered rolls of cellophane, buckets of diluted house paint and a woman dressed as a Giant Albatross. Fiery banners emerge! Behold! The blood and the smoke… Hooves pumping wildly – they follow him valiantly, into the breach once more. This is Krogstad Studios. To some, it is a spiraling vortex of ignorance and depravity. To others, it is nothing more than the vacuous remains of carnivale – a putrid byproduct of post-modern Americana. And yet some would say it is a true sanctuary; a temple to the fantastic, a shrine to the wondrous and absurd – the very heart of the spectacle. Whatever you [...]

Gromozeka is, in the words of my cohort, “very Russian.” Gromozeka is, in the words of my other cohort, “odd.” This odd, very Russian film is not for everyone. It’s probably not even for 75% of film-going patrons. There’s a plotline — kind of — but it’s comprised of a series of mostly disconnected vignettes. Some vignettes are poignant (a grown man being cradled by a frustrated prostitute), some endearing (a father and son sharing identical mannerisms when eating), some depressing (a man cramming barbituates into a bottle of bourbon). Quite a few are brief and almost pointless (a man ramming the back of his head once onto an elevator door, for instance). But Gromozeka is, in my words, “a [...]