Previewing the 54th Chicago International Film Festival

October 10, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Festival

Write about this festival long enough and you run out of things to say. I complain every year about the Chicago International Film Festival and there’s plenty to complain about (Asako I & II, Burning, La Flor, Her Smell, High Life, Hong Sang-soo, 3 Faces, etc. are all immediately felt absences in a line-up filled with a lot of, to say it diplomatically, filler). Blasé inclusions aside (The Front Runner is your Closing Film? And why is our After Dark programming year in, year out always so terribly sparse?), I’m going to try to stay positive.

I’m glad that Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma and Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind are screening in, you know, a theater. I’m happy that Oliver Assayas’ new film, Non-Fiction, is screening. Same for the new Christian Petzold, Jia Zhangke, and Dominga Sotomayor. And the stuff that I’m going to see before the end of the year (staying positive), like Steve McQueen’s Widows and Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite should benefit from a festival crowd. I don’t know what’s going on with their “Masters” programming, which is a hodgepodge of puzzling inclusions and equally perplexing exclusions (where’s the new Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Jean-Luc Godard, or Frederick Wiseman?). But it does feature the new Hirokazu Kore-eda and Pawel Pawlikowski, so – positive.

Look, I won’t pretend like I know the economics or the web of complex relationships required to manage and maintain a festival. I don’t have the constitution to even consider all the handshaking and endless series of emails required to get so-and-so film to screen, or the logistics necessary to get this or that filmmaker in attendance. All I know is that New York City and Toronto and Telluride have those resources and Chicago does not. But what I guess I want to know is… why not?

The 54th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 10 to October 21. For a complete schedule of films, screening times, and ticket information, refer to the Chicago International Film Festival website here.

[Censored]

Diane

Sofia

Too Late to Die Young

Transit

United Skates

First Man (Damien Chazelle)

October 08, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Damien Chazelle, First Man

The Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) of Damien Chazelle’s First Man doesn’t utter the line “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” out of humanity or loyalty to his country. He says it out of defeat. A litany of children, men, and women that came within orbit of Armstrong have passed, and in them a crater-sized lesion has all but eaten away at the astronaut. From Armstrong’s vantage point, the tentativeness of life takes on a whole different meaning when you’ve lost, and continue to lose, everyone that means anything to you. The fleeting image of Armstrong running his fingers through the hair of his now dead daughter haunts him, and when asked during his job interview with NASA if her recent death will affect him, Armstrong firmly remarks that it obviously will. Later in the film, while going for a walk with NASA colleague Edward Higgins White (Jason Clarke), White suggests how lonely it must be on the moon. Armstrong, stoic and despondent, doesn’t so much reply as simply mention how they’ve passed by a swing that reminded him of his daughter. It’s the first time he’s mentioned her to anyone since her passing. And it’s the last time we see Armstrong and White talk – the shadow cast by his daughter’s death consuming everything around him.

A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper)

October 01, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born

Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born is a convenience store chocolate bar: an immediately, immensely satisfying distraction, a rush to the head that settles into to the bloodstream before crashing into a lull. It’s a mindful distraction that’s positively transparent in its intentions and so free of irony that it suggests something almost pathologically indifferent to criticism. It’s a series of contradictions: muscular and ephemeral, expressionistic and literal. And it somehow possesses the gift of being interesting while telling an essential but trite narrative. It’s an achievement in polarity; familiar but transgressive enough.

The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard)

September 24, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Jacques Audiard, The Sisters Brothers

The Oregon Territory, 1851. Where helping one another remained as unfashionable and primitive as it does now, we find the Sisters siblings, Eli and Charlie (John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix) in a gunfight with shadows under the veil of darkness. The blasts from their pistols briefly illuminate the pitch-black landscape before light surrenders again. The exchange ends quickly, Eli and Charlie surviving another job in their limitless mercenary journeywork, when they realize the adjacent ranch has caught ablaze. Eli, the sentimental, unabashedly optimistic one, attempts to save the barn’s stable of horses before the structure collapses. Charlie stands aside, berating his brother for wasting their time as the two return to their keeper, The Commodore (Rutger Hauer). They ride off, the burning wreckage of their work behind them. It’s a moment that recalls Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”, where the writer suggests that “death seemed the most prevalent feature of the landscape”. In Jacques Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers, death is unavoidable, unarrangable, and inconvenient, though attempts to find some measure of solace in a landscape that incinerates the spirit is positively vital, lest you thin away into oblivion.

Searching (Aneesh Chaganty)

August 27, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Aneesh Chaganty, Searching

To distinguish itself immediately from the Unfriended series, Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching opens with a sequence that compresses a decade’s worth of Margot Kim’s (Michelle La) childhood. The exposition dump depicts the trauma of Margot losing her mother to cancer and her entry into high school; her father David (John Cho) sticking by her side. It’s an intriguing move, a notably swift, exquisitely edited example of narrative economy that also summons some rather uncomfortable feelings about Chaganty’s manipulative use of saccharine musical cues and blasé plotting. Those two qualities become more pronounced as Searching screeches at numerous points before stumbling upon its dunderheaded conclusion. It’s baffling, really, that anyone could suggest that Searching’s narrative trajectory is any less insipid or dumb as what we get from the Unfriended films. At least those films resist the banalities that we get from Searching.

Operation Finale (Chris Weitz)

August 26, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Operation Finale, Chris Weitz

Operation Finale moves with steady if unsatisfying progress. It navigates a narrative path that bares a noticeable resemblance to Academy Award winners of its past, not even remotely concerned with camouflaging its numerous hackneyed influences or banal passages intended to provide clip-worthy fodder moments of capital A Acting. If you told me Ben Affleck directed Operation Finale I wouldn’t have been surprised. Instead, it’s Chris Weitz. A swift Google search jogs my memory of the filmmaker’s quote unquote credentials: he directed the Oscar-nominated A Better Life. He also did one of those Twilight films. Well, at least he’s consistent. With Operation Finale, Weitz tackles the Holocaust. There’s a throughline in between these three films I’m missing but I’m certain it’s there.

Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu)

August 14, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Crazy Rich Asians, Jon Chu

Jon M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians, the film, is sufficiently unastonishing; a meandering though nevertheless engrossing romantic comedy that, despite its cast of Asian actors and Singaporean milieu, remains tethered to American values and principles, both culturally and cinematically. Crazy Rich Asians, the commercial product, is perhaps a little more interesting and certainly sheds light on the troubling innocuousness of the film. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and, more importantly, financed by SK Global (a relatively new conglomerate formed from American distributor Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and the Hong Kong-based Ivanhoe Pictures), the synergistic opportunities in adapting Kevin Kwan’s worldwide bestseller are impossible to overlook. Subsequently, to find Kwan’s text navigate a series of obfuscated, impossible to distinguish conglomerates, fashioned and engineered to placate audiences throughout planet Earth is, at the very least, head-clutchingly impressive. Which, with the Academy Awards now singling out achievements in “Popular Film”, probably makes Crazy Rich Asians a shoe-in for a gold statue.

Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub)

August 04, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Puzzle, Marc Turtletaub, Review

A neglectful husband; a past riddled with missed opportunities and searing regrets; a sharp, inquisitive mind rendered stagnant by domesticity; a family who takes her for granted; being named Agnes: the logarithm of suffering checks all the request boxes in Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle. It’s a film of modest ambitions, made by a director whose history as a producer includes the likes of Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning, and Jack Goes Boating. Which, as a review, may as well speak for itself. Depending on my temperament, I can describe the qualities of the Turtletaub genre of films as either toothless renditions of white domesticity or modest (there’s that word again, which practically reads as a polite version of lame) examinations of white anhedonia. Neither of these definitions are especially generous but I won’t deny that these films can provide a measure of solace and comfort, especially when they’re anchored by some especially terrific performances. Little Miss Sunshine had Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, Sunshine Cleaning had Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, Jack Goes Boating with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Puzzle has Kelly McDonald and as you’d expect, she’s astonishingly good. Shame that the movie she supports is so pedestrian.

En el Séptimo Día (Jim McKay)

July 25, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Jim McKay, En el Septimo Dia, 2017, Review, Noteworthy

José (Fernando Cardona) is a restaurant deliveryman. He cycles through the hectic streets of NYC, avoiding car doors, as he survives another day-in-day-out hustle. He returns home to an apartment shared by nearly a dozen others: undocumented Latino workers, all aiming for something better, and holding onto a promise of an American Dream that seems increasingly less possible with each passing day. It’s only on his day off on Sunday, i.e. the film’s title, that he’s able to indulge in his two faiths – church and soccer. And it’s here where Jim McKay’s En el Séptimo Día situates the conflict of his modest drama, where José’s humble living is presented with an existential battle between duty and happiness. The stakes may seem low, but when you have so little, the most minuscule of inconveniences end up resonating profoundly.

Unfriended: Dark Web (Stephen Susco)

July 18, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Unfriended Dark Web, Stephen Susco, Noteworthy

In Zadie Smith’s 2016 novel Swing Time, the main character offers a backhanded compliment of certain b-tier Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films, asserting that “the story was the price you pay for the rhythms.” Perhaps at my grumpiest I would’ve taken umbrage with that statement, but I think it’s an assessment that can be applied to Levan Gabriadze’s 2014 film Unfriended and its new sequel, Stephen Susco’s Unfriended: Dark Web. The two films are above all examinations in form, removed from their experimental trappings and provided global distribution. As such, Dark Web remains indebted to certain banal, universal truths in service of its genre, but communicates its ideas in novel, perpetually intriguing ways. What certain Astaire and Rogers’ films may have lacked in narrative sophistication they made up for with the finesse and rhythms of their physical performances. The “performance”, as it were, at the center of Dark Web is one of ocular empathy, where, contained on a desktop, the movement of every mouse click, collapse and minimization of a window, and the flickering of a cursor is given tactile depth.