Elaine May's MIKEY AND NICKY (American Revival)

Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Friday, 7pm

Letting Peter Falk (Mikey) and John Cassavetes (Nicky) run wild on film can be a dangerous proposition. Sure, Cassavetes got away with it as a director, but he financed his own movies. After shooting 1.4 million feet of film while running 3 cameras at once, Elaine May was understandably over budget and the studio was understandably disappointed. Paramount buried the film after a short run, and t would be 12 more years until she would direct again (ISHTAR). Although panned by critics at the time, May's approach yielded a nuanced portrait of the male ego and of Downtown LA that has rarely been matched. The 2 close-ups and a master approach to cinematography was effective, albeit listless, in generating a claustrophobic world – a structure largely controlled during May's lengthy editing process. Although the two leads play low-level LA gangsters, they may as well be any of Cassavetes' standard protagonists: cornered by their jobs and social circumstances, and long past fighting to break out of them. We know the hero isn't going to win by the end of the first reel, and we know that he's not much of a hero by the end of the second. But watching May's collaboration with two great method actors in their prime is worth savoring until the credits roll. (1976, 119 min, 35mm) JH - cine-file.info

John Cassavetes' LOVE STREAMS (American Revival)

Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Friday, 7pm
John Cassavetes' final film, LOVE STREAMS, is both his most fully realized in its portrayal of the fallacy of human connection and his most conventional in cinematic style. Working in front of the camera for the last time, he once again cast his wife Gena Rowlands in the female lead—a fitting public bow for their long collaboration. They play Robert and Sarah, a dysfunctional brother and sister—he's never learned to love and she loves too much—who lean on each other as their lives fall apart. LOVE STREAMS lacks anything that could be called an exposition despite the heaviest use of non-diegetic music and the only use of dream sequences in any of Cassavetes' work. We are dropped into the lives of an aging, drunk, womanizing, and wealthy writer and his clinically depressed, soon-to-be divorced sister, initially by following them separately on parallel paths and downward trajectories. Each sibling has a child that they make a genuine but clumsy attempt to bond with, but ultimately they prove unfit as parents. Sarah shows up on Robert's doorstep just as he's taking the 8 year-old son he's never met before on a weekend bender to Las Vegas. When he returns without his son, Cassavetes and Rowlands are left to act out the end of this tragedy. The story is somewhat secondary here, though, as the film functions as a recap of Cassavetes' previous directorial themes. Cassavetes' lonely artist is colored by a splash of personal regret (he had already been diagnosed with the liver cirrhosis that would kill him five years later). His sister, on the other hand, echoes the absurdist antics that Cassavetes was known for as a younger man, going further and further to keep everything cheery in the face of her own depression. Using one last script from her husband to show just what an amazing actress she is, Rowlands continually makes us forget her character's mental instability, only to unleash it again like a tantrum. For any fan of his films the use of Cassavetes and Rowlands' home as the primary set is both comforting and distressing. In color, we see all the rich, dark wood on the walls and the clutter of years filling up each room, scribbling the scent of John’s physical decline on every frame. As his life was coming to a close, Cassavetes seemed willing to yield a little of his standard formal difficulty in order to be understood more clearly. What he would not yield, though, was an insistence that Hollywood sold the public a false bill of goods regarding love and marriage. It is through understanding the pain of life that Cassavetes depicts on the screen that we gain greater appreciation for the joys of our own lives off it, not the other way around. (1984, 141 min, 35mm) JH - cine-file.info

Blake Edward's BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (American Revival)

Music Box — Sunday, 2pm
With one of the most well known plots in movie history, it is the more insidious aspects of this romantic favorite that lend it an enduring appeal. In the popular imagination neither Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) nor Paul Varjak (George Peppard) are remembered for how they pay their rent. To face facts, each of them is a kept person, accepting money from dates or steady lovers. Therein lies much of the appeal of these two characters, who eventually fall in love. Neither is perfect but they have big dreams. They use hope to get through today and to forget the past. Emblematic of this existence is the character of Cat, Holly's rice-paper-thin-metaphor of an orange tabby. Content when given a saucer of milk and happy to stay for some fun, this pet demands no commitments and wouldn't notice them anyway. As much a film about the masks we use to face the world as it is about love (which never really comes), it's fitting that Cat ends up being tossed from a cab into the pouring rain. Untethered and free is fun to a point, but only in the movies do the girl and the boy come back for a kiss, and rescue the sloppy and matted Cat from the downpour. (1961, 115 min, unconfirmed format) JH - Cine-File.info

Lizzie Borden's BORN IN FLAMES (American Revival)

White Light Cinema and The Nightingale at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee Ave., 4th Floor) - Saturday, 7pm
With a concept, style, and politics that are still radical and relevant, Lizzie Borden's 1983 film gets a revival screening that is long overdue. Railing against the patriarchal and racist structures that remained in even the most progressive corners of American Society after the '60s and '70s, we are thrust into a feature length narrative of critique. Borden is able to place her ideology front and center, but also let the story sneak up around it. Embracing the gritty look of both 16mm film and the more battered parts of New York City in the early '80s, and combining them with an objective camera, she uses her low-budget as a storytelling asset. The world in which the anarchist movement dubbed the Women's Army carries out its counterrevolutionary campaign of pirate radio and direct action is rendered complete through a skillful combination of narrative and documentary modes. Artificial news clips about the progress of the current Socialist government and covert operations of the Women's Army's are mixed with observational shots of unemployed men and women on the streets, and we are constantly reminded of the veiled nature of the allegory. Other fictional scenes feel like we're watching the unedited negotiations between rival factions in a civil war as shot by an embedded cameraperson. When the pirate radio DJ—who acts as the film's voiceover—declares that the true nature of socialism is constant revolution, it seems a natural reinforcement of the film's message, rather than a didactic add-on. Managing to tow the line between preaching and pandering is not an easy task when taking on the very fiber of our society, and rarely has a film done it with such ease. The screening will be introduced by SAIC grad student Beth Capper. (1983, 90 min, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Perry Henzell's THE HARDER THEY COME (Jamaican Revival)

Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 9:45pm
Too often dismissed as "that Jimmy Cliff film," it might be overlooked that this 1972 slum-gangster click cum star-vehicle was the first feature to be made in Jamaica by Jamaicans, and is a heck of a smart story. Loosely based on the true story of Rhygin, a '50s era outlaw folk hero, alongside elements taken from Cliff's own life, the film mixes pop and politics to capture the emerging identity of the post-colonial Caribbean nation and the structural struggles that its people faced. Violent and self-reflexive, the scenes of destitute poverty in the Kingston slums stand in contrast to the pockets of wealth where Ivan (Jimmy Cliff) begs for work upon his arrival from the country. Finding no opportunities, the plight of many in the third world is captured as Cliff digs through the garbage at Kingston's landfill alongside real people who were scavenging for their daily subsistence. He turns to a preacher in the ghetto for help, and is offered employment, but not respect. This affords the subplot containing high-energy scenes of a poor Baptist congregation, its choir singing and dancing with palpable emotion so real it's hard to discern the actors from the extras. Wearing out his welcome with the preacher, Ivan leaves and gets the chance to cut a record, only to find out that he has to sign away the rights if he wants it released. His exploitation almost complete, he takes a job trafficking marijuana, and becomes an outlaw. Just as his song is starting to get radio play, he shoots a cop and as he goes on the lamb. He tries to flee the country, but the film hurtles towards a finale where the hero will be gunned down before he can escape the cycle of poverty for a shot in the US. The movie also features a soundtrack that's a who's who of the Reggae world (sans Bob Marley) and served as a primary vehicle for the worldwide popularization the music. A fitting film for an art that was itself a social and political movement. Though not particularly well received upon its release, THE HARDER THEY COME has aged well, and remains a benchmark in post-colonial cinema. (1972, 120 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (American Revival)

Music Box — Monday-Tuesday, Dec. 19-20, Check venue website for showtimes
After the success of BATMAN, Tim Burton was able pull out all the stops for this surreal take on teenage suburban isolation, and got twice the budget that was originally planned. Often referred to as his masterpiece, this contemporary fairy tale vacillates between story elements straight out of a Universal horror film and a stylized set of pastel tract homes, emphasizing Burton's mixed feelings about the American middle class lifestyle. Based on drawings Burton made while growing up in Burbank, where he struggled to keep friends and often retreated into his painting and stop-motion animation, Johnny Depp's portrayal of the meek and scarred Edward is amongst his finest performances. Notable for his character's economy of dialogue and cautious demeanor, the meek and scarred Edward is the incomplete construction of a deceased inventor, played by Vincent Price. Emotionally stunted from his "father's" death but bursting with creativity, our hero stands in for every adolescent who would rather be left alone to make art than conform in order to make friends. Dianne West is wonderful as the Avon Lady who finds Edward in the abandoned mansion on a hill, and takes him home to join the cookie cutter enclave below. Frightened by his outward appearance but seeing the gentle prince underneath, her motherly efforts to integrate him into the conservative town are doomed from the start. But, there is magic in both of their hearts, and eye-candy galore for us. (1990, 105 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (American Revival)

Music Box — Friday and Saturday (11/25 and 11/26), Midnight
This buddy comedy about two California teenagers (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) trying to make up for lost academic time is both dated and, well, excellent. Faced with the prospect of failing History class and Ted being shipped to military school, the pair of wannabe rock stars is visited by a mysterious figure from the future (George Carlin). He gives them a time machine disguised as a telephone booth, and they go on something of a road trip through the past to collect historical figures for a last-chance final project. Stops in ancient Greece, Napoleonic France, the Wild West, and the Mongol Empire show a simplification of events the target audience (12-18 year old males) could easily relate to. But, from this boiling down of history to the "important truths," the film gets its biggest laughs with a collision of historical stereotypes and 80s suburban staples. Knowing Napoleon only as a "short, dead dude," we get blindsided by the ridiculous image of him wearing a bib while conquering "the single greatest ice cream spectacle known to man" and battling lines at the local water park. Inevitably, the pair manages to overcome familiar teenage obstacles (house chores and the cops), make it to school on time, and give a rock star presentation with the help of their new friends. These dudes are dumb, but they're so harmless you have to root when they get inspired. The first in what would turn out to be a line of slacker pairs to grace the big screen as the 90s began, it is a clever little film about just getting by, and doing it in style. (1989, 90 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

John Landis' AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (American Revival)

Terror in the Aisles 9 at the Portage Theater - Friday 9pm
Maybe a little too funny for hard-core Horror fans, and a little too creepy for your average moviegoer, this might be the best werewolf film ever made. Sparse on bloodshed, Landis' tale of a college-aged American who gets infected by a lycan while backpacking through the moors of Scotland has aged quite well. We don't get bogged down with too much "legend of the beast" talk, and the love story between David (David Naughton) and his nurse (Jenny Agutter) fits naturally into the plot. Killed in the original werewolf attack, David's friend Jack (Griffin Dunne) appears as a mauled and decomposing corpse who warns him that at the next full moon he will change into an animal. Much of the film's humor is derived from this continual repetition of a chummy but stern berating delivered by the progressively-less-flesh-covered apparition. Some of the film comes out of left field, and the ending is a bit abrupt, but those things can be easily excused. The real highlights are David's transformation scenes and Jack's prosthetics, both of which were so well done the Academy had to create a new awards category (Outstanding Achievement in Makeup) just for them. Comparing them to the VFX of today makes you long for a time before CGI supplanted the art of fake blood and body parts. Actor David Naughton in person (1981, 97 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

William Friedkin's THE BOYS IN THE BAND (American Revival)

Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday and Tuesday, 6pm
Making a feature film about gay men in 1970 was a bold move. THE BOYS IN THE BAND is often cited as being the first Hollywood narrative to put queer men front and center, and that meant it was going to be judged more for its politics than its content. It generally received tepidly positive reviews from critics, but at the same time some major newspapers refused to run its ads. Released less than a year's remove from the Stonewall Riots, the Boys in this Band were not the cheerleaders for gay pride that some would hope for. Based on an off-Broadway play by Mart Crowley and featuring the same cast, it has aged well, in most ways. Accused of trafficking in negativity by some in the gay community because of the self-hatred that is so apparent in most of the characters, it gives its gay-stereotyped ensemble the three-dimensionality they deserve. We're not supposed to love or hate these men; we just drop in on an emotional evening that ends with a lot of hurt feelings. Despite some unevenness in the dialog and over-reliance on the close-up, the film is essential viewing because of the topic it chose to address. Sometimes, a period piece that is the first of its kind is more important than repeatable one-liners and intricate plot twists. The Boys aren't likable movie icons, but they are real, and necessary. Pamela Robertson Wojcik lectures at the Tuesday screening. (1970, 119 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Arthur Penn's ALICE'S RESTAURANT (American Revival)

Music Box — Friday, Midnight and Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
A quirky little movie, loosely based on a quirky song. As the 1960's were coming to a close, Arlo Guthrie and Arthur Penn had their collaborative fingers on the pulse of the counterculture. For both men this was also the height of their popularity, with Penn fresh off of 1967's taboo breaking BONNIE AND CLYDE, and Guthrie's 1967 song and album with the same title as the movie having become a defining symbol of the anti-Vietnam war movement. But where that song had a catchy ragtime backbeat to make tuning in and dropping out seem like a whole lot of fun, the movie catches the darker side of the alternative lifestyle. Not without its moments of joy, the multiple, mostly fictional plot lines include a 13 year-old runaway groupie who hits on Arlo so she can add him to her collection, the death of a talented young artist named Shelly from drug addiction, and the emotional breakdown of a battered wife. Sure, we get the silly play about how an arrest for littering ends up saving Guthrie from being drafted (this part of the story is true), but the power of this film lies in its depiction of tragedies. In one scene, the wintertime funeral of the young Shelly is accompanied only by the sound of a song by Joni Mitchell, who also appears on-screen. As it begins, the camera slowly tracks past the cemetery, shaking slightly as if we are watching from a car driving on the other side of the fence, at a remove from the characters that are spread throughout the cemetery as snow falls. As we travel downhill to catch a glimpse of the grave and casket, the camera lifts higher as if we're just passing them by, keeping our distance. We do get a series of close-ups to end the scene, but these only reveal a numb makeshift family, watching as one of their own is buried. No one talks, and no one touches; all are left as singular people, separately pondering whether their carefree existence has been a terrible mistake. The sadness in this scene is echoed in the film's final shot, when the camera drives away again. The titular Alice is standing alone on the porch of the church where she and her husband have played parents to ragtag love children, staring blankly towards a future that could have been. Penn understood that the Summer of Love was already a memory, and the revolution had not been a success. (1969, 111 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info