Once the lights
finally dimmed for the last time, with the realization that the Chicago Film
Festival was finally over, it’s clear that this year’s screenings surpassed all
expectations. In what I thought was a
very weak year for movies overall, this surge of quality films was indeed a
surprise, like a plethora of goodies that had been hidden and kept out of
sight, as there were plenty of good films without many of the name directors
that populate the bigger festivals occurring earlier in the year. Fewer films from Cannes, fewer films with
reputations that preceded them, but a marked improvement over last year, with
some of the best films coming out of nowhere, and that likely occurred with a
majority of festival goers, as some were premier screenings, some more recent,
like the Toronto Film Festival that occurs mid-September, with only a few scant
reviews available, and very few were viewed as must-see’s due to the buzz that
occurs at Cannes. Someone asked what
film I was most looking forward to seeing “before” the fest began, and that
would have to be Let
the Sun Shine In (Un Beau Soleil Intérieur), a new film by Claire
Denis, arguably the greatest female director that ever lived (that’s right,
I said it), yet her film premiered at Director’s Fortnight at Cannes with most
of us hearing next to nothing about it, so we had no idea what to expect. My favorite of all the films seen was Joachim
Trier’s Thelma,
which only premiered at Toronto a few weeks earlier, and again most viewers knew
next to nothing about it. It is this
possibility of not knowing what to expect, and then being blown away, that is a
cinema lover’s dream. In year’s past,
this has rarely happened, with the exception being 2015 when the Chicago Fest
screened 10 of the 21 Cannes films in competition, making that among the best
festivals ever. But this would have to
rival that year, with quality really on an upsurge, though one other thought is
that after experiencing such utter mediocrity in films earlier in the year that
perhaps we might be overrating these films slightly, simply by being so
grateful for finally seeing some quality films.
That is indeed a possibility, as these films aren’t just slightly
better, but much better than anything we’ve seen for months, as this has really
been a drought year for cinema. Or
perhaps we might attribute this to the addition of Alissa Simon to the
programming team, as she was like a breath of fresh air at the festival,
bringing revitalized new energy, where her introductions and post-screening
interviews were terrific. Among her more
memorable moments was getting the actor (Terry Notary) in The Square
to recreate the animalistic cries that led to his most audacious scene, which
he more than happily recreated before a live audience, where absolute joy could
be seen written all over Ms. Simon’s face, thrilled that this moment could be
shared publicly, as that’s so different from the tired voices we’re used to
hearing that repeat the same introductory message word for word or read from
prepared scripts.
For the second year in a row, fellow cinephile Kirk Madsen
was unable to attend due to medical issues, where the festival is simply not
the same without him, as we all value his views and recommendations, not to
mention his appreciation for quality films and an acute ability to spot
them. I can’t tell you how many times
his last minute recommendations have ended up on a Best Films of the year
list. Besides that, he’s simply fun to
watch movies with, as he’s watched way more than we have. A longtime projectionist at Facets, including
back in the day when they regularly screened 35mm and 16 mm films, breaking
them down ahead of time, getting them ready for screenings. I recall during a screening of Fassbinder’s
epic Berlin Alexanderplatz, a 15-hour
film broken down into segments over several days, where the projector bulb
burned out in mid-screening, where he had to go in the back rooms somewhere to
find an old projector and set it up, respooling the reels, which took about
fifteen minutes or so, and not a single customer complained or expressed any
impatience whatsoever, but were perfectly patient with the process, as Kirk was
among the best in the business. Hope to
see him back next year.
The real problem
of the Chicago Fest is that it rents space from a 21-screen movie theater that
continues to show the latest releases, where festival films are screened side
by side with their usual fare, with both audiences intermingling, but most
festival films are shown on smaller screens in less than optimal circumstances,
which is the biggest disappointment of the entire festival, as they easily
fill-up, either selling out altogether or leaving only the worst seats in the
front row directly under the screen.
Regular festival aficionados understand that if you want the better
seats, you have to wait in line to get them, which means planning ahead,
leaving time between screenings. Only
one full-sized theater is utilized (Theater 11, 312 seats), and one
medium-sized theater (Theater 7, 240 seats), with two around 150 seats
(Theaters 20, 21), while the rest are smaller than your average movie house,
closer to 100 seats (Theaters 2, 3, and 4).
Occasionally they utilize other theaters, but only for special
circumstances. Sometimes at the end,
when they re-screen Best of the Fest films, they again put them in these
smaller theaters which simply defeats the purpose of a film festival, where
audiences want to see the best films on as large a screen as possible. One year, the outlandish Léos Carax film 2012
Top Ten Films of the Year: #4 Holy Motors, basically a love letter to
cinema itself, was initially screened in the largest theater, but when it
played again at the Best of the Fest, it was relegated to a theater half the
size, which simply diminishes the overall experience. The result is, instead of having the best
cinema experience, Chicago audiences routinely have to settle for what’s
available.
By the way, in the event viewers are unable to read all of
the reviews, if you view anything, please watch Claude Lelouch’s masterful
eight-minute short C’ÉTAIT UN RENDEZ-VOUS (1976), C'était un rendez vous -
Claude Lelouch (HD) 8'24'' - YouTube (8:24), one of the more remarkable
sequences in cinema, which is included at the end of the review for Racer
and the Jailbird (Le Fidèle), as that film ends with a very similar shot,
though not nearly as legendary.
AMC River East
Theater sizes
1 – 107
2 – 107
3 – 107
4 – 114
5 – 150
6 – 96
7 – 240
8 – 61
9 – 256
10 – 410
11 – 312
12 – 397
13 – 174
14 – 62
15 – 88
16 – 174
17 – 88
18 – 62
19 – 96
20 – 165
21 – 149
Total seats: 3,415
2 – 107
3 – 107
4 – 114
5 – 150
6 – 96
7 – 240
8 – 61
9 – 256
10 – 410
11 – 312
12 – 397
13 – 174
14 – 62
15 – 88
16 – 174
17 – 88
18 – 62
19 – 96
20 – 165
21 – 149
Total seats: 3,415
From Robert Kennedy, cranesareflying site
Ratings of films
seen:
A
Thelma 95
A-
Miami 93
B+
Gemini 92
Rogers
Park 91
Samui Song 90
B
B-
The Square 82
C+
C-
D
Hannah 59
From Frank Biletz, college history
professor:
The list of all
the films that I saw during the festival roughly in my order of preference
follows below. I have adjusted a few grades slightly (downward), with two of
the A grades now at A- and one B+ reduced to B. A lot of the B+ films are
very close together and every time that I look at the list I make some changes
based on mood. In any case, you may find it useful. Note again that I saw two
of the four highest rated films on the last day of the festival.
It was also a
noteworthy year for terrific performances, especially by actresses. The best of
these were (again, more or less in order, though the top three are virtually
tied):
Diane Kruger (Aus dem Nichts) (In the Fade)
Darya Zhovner (Closeness).
Juliette Binoche
(Let the Sunshine In).
Eliane Umuhire (Birds Are Singing in Kigali).
Jowita Budnik (Birds Are Singing in Kigali).
Overall, I
thought that it was a very good year at CIFF.
Here is my list
of films seen:
Aus dem Nichts (In the Fade) (Germany, Fatih Akin) A
1945 (Hungary, Ferenc Török) A-
Birds Are Singing in Kigali (Poland, Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof
Krauze) A-
Sammy Davis, Jr: I've Gotta Be Me (US, Sam Pollard) A-
The Cakemaker (Israel/Germany, Ofir Raul Graizier) B+
Faces Places (France, Agnès Varda and JR) B+
Miami (Finland, Zaida Bergroth) B+
Un Beau Soleil Interieur (Let the Sunshine In) (France, Claire
Denis) B+
Life Guidance (Austria, Ruth Mader) B+
Thelma (Norway/Sweden/France, Joachim Trier) B+
The Square (Sweden/Germany/France, Ruben Óstlund) B+
Gemini (US, Aaron Katz) B+
Spoor (Poland/Germany/Czech Republic, Agnieszka Holland) B+
Men Don't Cry (Bosnia and
Herzegovina/Slovenia/Germany/Croatia,
Alen Drljevic) B+
Rogers Park (US, Kyle Henry) B+
Budapest Noir (Hungary, Éva Gárdos) B+
Wind Traces (Mexico, Jimena Montemayor) B
Arrhythmia (Russia/Finland/Germany, Boris
Khlebnikov) B
Wormwood (US, Errol Morris) B
A Man of Integrity (Iran, Mohammad Rasouof) B
Closeness (Russia, Kantemir Balagov) B
Hannah (Italy/France/Belgium, Andrea Pallaoro) B
God's Own Country (UK, Francis Lee) B-
Nos Années Folles (Golden Years) (France, André Techiné) B-
Before We Vanish (Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) B-
Sea Sorrow (UK, Vanessa Redgrave) B-
Additional scores from:
Evan Wang, Masters in Biology from IIT and grad
student at Northwestern Documentary Films program
Ivan Albertson, perennial Film Center volunteer
Combined ratings of festival films seen
by all 5 viewers, including listed grades, which may be viewed on a Google
Spreadsheet here:
From Jonathan Dabian, freelance software
informer (who created the spreadsheet):
Several of you
have likely noticed, but I've been playing around with the spreadsheet a
bit. Trying to clean up the data and perhaps do a bit of analysis.
I've added two
new worksheets (though one of them will likely go through some big
revisions). Sheet 2 now has an alphabetical list of all films (attended
and otherwise) with everyone's scores on a single line. Now you don't
have to hunt to see what everyone else thought of the same film when they saw
it at a different showtime than you did.
I started
working on a Pivot table, based on the collapsed info in sheet 2, where I hope
to do a bit of analysis regarding country of origin (I did this manually for
the last year or two. Hoping to make it a little easier.) Right
now, the "pivot" sheet only has a count of Attended = Yes / No.
This tells me that we saw a total of 85 features as a group (it says 86, but
that includes the single shorts program Ivan watched and didn't care for);
while 58 features were unseen by any of us. That's a total of 143
features. I could swear I heard one of the program coordinators say 145
at some point. And I've even gone back and added the couple of films they
added to the festival, like The Ballad of Lefty Brown (though I did leave-off
the Swanberg program they did of his Netflix series). Maybe they were
counting the industry days or architecture panels and such. Or the 8
short programs. Probably something like that.
Anyway, I intend
to add country of origin to sheet 2 and switching the pivot over to displaying
that information. Just guessing though...we are HEAVILY over-represented
in Europe and US Indies this year. Latin America is down a little.
And Africa and Asia are FAR down (if it's even possible to go "far"
down from the less than a dozen Asian films they program every year). I
may be a little pessimistic on Asia though. We only had one feature from
China this year, whereas we usually get three or four; however, we got two from
Korea (zero last year, as I recall), two from Thailand, and five from
Japan. Add one each from Taiwan and India (also both zero last year, as I
recall), and I guess the totals there aren't as bad as I thought.
Anyway, at the
least, I think the new alphabetical view is helpful. The original data is
still on sheet 1. They are not linked, so, if you revise scores, you may
wish to do it in both locations. I'll continue massaging this and see if
I find anything interesting.
I revised quite
a bit just now, actually. Bumped a bunch of films from an 8 to a 7.
Bumped Closeness up from a 6 (I believe) to a 7. I think that's the only
one I changed. The more I think about that film, the more I think about
the lead actress' performance. Frank was right to call her out in his
last email. She was fantastic. The whole film rested on her
performance. While I still have issues with the film itself, her
performance was superlative.
As an aside....I
was looking at the list of films submitted for consideration for Best Foreign
Film.
https://enwikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submissions_to_the_90th_Academy_Awards_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film#Submissions
https://enwikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submissions_to_the_90th_Academy_Awards_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film#Submissions
I saw all six
films in CIFF 2016 listed as their country's nominee that year. However,
I've seen eight of the seventeen that played at CIFF this year. Nearly a 3:1
ratio more. One showed in EUFF 2017, and one showed in the Iranian Film
Festival; both earlier in the year. One just got a limited release and
played at the Siskel just last week.
|
Country
|
Title
|
Original Title
|
Director
|
Seen
|
|
Bulgaria
|
Glory[21]
|
Слава (Slava)
|
Kristina
Grozeva and Petar Valchanov
|
CIFF 2016
|
|
Ecuador
|
Alba[30]
|
Alba
|
Ana Cristina
Barragán
|
CIFF 2016
|
|
Greece
|
Amerika
Square[37]
|
Πλατεία
Αμερικής (Plateia Amerikis)
|
Yannis
Sakardis
|
CIFF 2016
|
|
Kenya
|
Kati Kati[50]
|
Kati Kati
|
Mbithi Masya
|
CIFF 2016
|
|
Netherlands
|
Layla M.[62]
|
Layla M.
|
Mijke de Jong
|
CIFF 2016
|
|
Portugal
|
Saint
George[72]
|
São Jorge
|
Marco Martins
|
CIFF 2016
|
|
Belgium
|
Racer and the
Jailbird[17]
|
Le Fidèle
|
Michaël R.
Roskam
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Bosnia and Herzegovina
|
Men Don't
Cry[19]
|
Muškarci ne
plaču
|
Alen Drljević
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Estonia
|
November[32]
|
November
|
Rainer Sarnet
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
France
|
BPM (Beats per
Minute)[34]
|
120 battements
par minute
|
Robin Campillo
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Georgia
|
Scary
Mother[35]
|
საშიში დედა (Sashishi Deda)
|
Ana Urushadze
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Germany
|
In the
Fade[36]
|
Aus dem Nichts
|
Fatih Akin
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Iceland
|
Under the
Tree[40]
|
Undir trénu
|
Hafsteinn
Gunnar Sigurðsson
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Italy
|
A Ciambra[47]
|
A Ciambra
|
Jonas
Carpignano
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Lebanon
|
The Insult[55]
|
قضية رقم ٢٣ (L'insulte)
|
Ziad Doueiri
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Luxembourg
|
Barrage[57]
|
Barrage
|
Laura
Schroeder
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Norway
|
Thelma[64]
|
Thelma
|
Joachim Trier
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Poland
|
Spoor[71]
|
Pokot
|
Agnieszka
Holland
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Senegal
|
Félicité[6]
|
Félicité
|
Alain Gomis
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Slovakia
|
The Line[77]
|
Čiara
|
Peter Bebjak
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Spain
|
Summer
1993[81]
|
Estiu 1993
|
Carla Simón
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Sweden
|
The Square[82]
|
The Square
|
Ruben Östlund
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Switzerland
|
The Divine
Order[83]
|
Die göttliche
Ordnung
|
Petra Biondina
Volpe
|
CIFF 2017
|
|
Romania
|
Fixeur[73]
|
Fixeur
|
Adrian Sitaru
|
EUFF 2017
|
|
Iran
|
Breath[43]
|
نفس (Nafas)
|
Narges Abyar
|
Iranian Film
Fest / Siskel
|
|
Dominican
Republic
|
Woodpeckers[29]
|
Carpinteros
|
José María
Cabral
|
Siskel
|
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