Talking Screens, February 24-March 2, 2023: John Mossman on “Good Guy With A Gun” | “Pacifiction” is Cahiers du Cinema’s Number-One Film for 2022

“Cocaine Bear”

Talking Screens, A Week In Chicago Film, February 24-March 2, 2023

Albert Serra’s multi-level hallucination of the Pacific Islands, “Pacifiction,” where the languid mood is all, continues at Siskel, where the Icelandic period piece “Godland,” a kindred cousin to Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” opens on Friday.

One of the year’s most distilled Chicago film festivals: the twenty-sixth Chicago European Union Film Festival showcases twenty-four new films from twenty-three EU nations. Opening night is Lasse Hallström’s “Hilma,” a portrait of Swedish artist Hilma Klint, with actresses Lena Olin and Tora Hallström in attendance. Siskel, all through March, starting Wednesday, March 1.

Material Issue performs at the Cubby Bear on September 14, 1990/Photo: Paul Natkin, Wire Image

Alamo Drafthouse brings Balin Schneider’s documentary “Out of Time: The Material Issue Story,” about the history of Chicago’s premiere power-pop group of its moment.

Featuring: original band members Mike Zelenko and Ted Ansani, the first interviews of the family of Jim Ellison since his passing, and other figures including Jeff Murphy, Joe Shanahan, Jay O’Rourke, Jeff Kwatinetz, Greg Kot, Matt Pinfield and Steve Albini. Opens Friday, February 24, with Q&As with some shows.

Absurdist comedy “Cocaine Bear” from director Elizabeth Banks (“Pitch Perfect 2,” “Charlie’s Angels”) opens Friday. Advance reactions range from wide-eyed to wholly agog. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” continues at River East and AMC Evanston.

Among repertory savories: Spike Lee’s dense, wrenching post-9/11 masterpiece, “The 25th Hour,” (2002, 35mm), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ed Norton, Barry Pepper and Rosario Dawson. Doc Films, Friday, February 24.

The violent, virulent love of “Possession” also christens the Wrigleyville Alamo Drafthouse on Saturday and Monday. Billy Wilder’s “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” is at the Music Box for weekend matinees.

And Chicago actor-writer-director John Mossman talks about the local character of his second feature, “Good Guy With A Gun,” from the Midwest Film Festival at Siskel.

OPENERS

“Pacifiction”

The Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra has made multiple movies as dark and dour and cloacal as you could imagine, including “Story of My Death” and “The Death of Louis XIV,” starring Jean-Pierre Léaud. Working with wildly improvisational techniques that he loves to describe in interviews, Serra goes in another direction with “Pacifiction,” which defines a movie as “whatever the fuck it is up there on the screen.” Which is not to say it’s not enjoyable or admirable, starting with distributor Grasshopper Film’s synopsis: “On the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, the High Commissioner of the Republic and French government official De Roller (Benoît Magimel) is a calculating man with flawless manners. His somewhat broad perception of his role brings him to navigate the high end ’establishment’ as well as shady venues where he mingles with the locals. Especially since a persistent rumor has been going around: the sighting of a submarine whose ghostly presence could herald the return of French nuclear testing.” At 162 widescreen minutes, it’s a gorgeous, baffling monster of moment-to-moment tactile glories, odd gestures and unexpected satisfactions. What else would you expect from Cahiers du Cinema’s number-one film for 2022? Siskel, through March 2.

REPERTORY & REVIVALS

The 4K digital restoration of Ang Lee’s Michelle Yeoh-starring “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” continues at AMC Evanston 12 and Newcity 14. “How best to describe ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’?” I wrote after its Toronto 2000 debut. “It is a musical comedy.. Instead of several moments of dynamic dancing or heartfelt, expository lip-syncing, the characters instead pick up swords or machetes, pirouette in the air, fly across rooftops, tumble and counter-tumble in battle with those who might stunt their learning; dip their toes like pebbles skimming across placid ponds on their way further into this impossible past. These scenes dazzle in their own quiet way, with even a barroom brawl turned into an abstraction of aggression and masochistic determination.”

“Charlie’s Angels” (2000)

“Charlie’s Angels” (35mm) is also a musical in disguise. Lore holds that the first version of the movie was listless, but was saved by an editor who said, give me some time here, I want to structure the setups and sequencing like a musical, let’s see if that works. And it did! Music Box midnight shows, preceded by an 11:30pm DJ set, Friday-Saturday, February 24-25.

Coming up on the last of the Billy Wilder matinees: 1970’s “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” (35mm), a studio-mutilated but still heart-tugging once-upon-a-roadshow production. Music Box, Saturday-Sunday, February 25-26.

“Possession”

“Possession” (1981) is the vicious motherfucker: Either version of “Scenes From A Marriage”: only vamping. Seen in recent years in battered versions and an only modestly cleaned-up version, this digital version from Metrograph Pictures is the first since Andrzej Zulawski’s passing in 2016. (It’s drawn from a 2020 photochemical restoration.) A young Isabelle Adjani, a young Sam Neill, timeless marital conflict, blood, blood, and everlasting demons are here to play. Few movies attain shrieking madness and emotional horror of this order. See it with someone you’re not sure about. Wrigleyville Alamo Drafthouse on Saturday and Monday

CHICAGO SEEN

“Good Guy With A Gun”

Chicago actor-writer-director John Mossman’s second feature “Good Guy With A Gun” debuts at the Midwest Film Festival at Siskel on Monday. A Chicago teen visits his father’s hometown and a group of local kids introduce him to gun culture. The cast includes Tiffany Bedwell, Beck Nolan, Jack Cain, Joe Swanberg and David Pasquesi. “Just got into the Capital City Film Festival in Lansing, site of MSU, where shootings took place recently. I chose it because it was Midwestern and in gun- and militia-land. Never anticipated this as a backdrop,” Mossman tells me.

I asked Mossman: How local is “Good Guy With A Gun”? “This is local top to bottom! Chicago crew, Chicago producers, shot in and around the city, with some of the best local actors. Most of the money comes from the Midwest, where I specifically placed it, as I didn’t want it to be a Southern story, expected for a topic like this. There’s plenty of material in our own backyard for anyone wondering how someone goes from normal neighbor to a ‘freedoms’-obsessed insurrectionist.

“These people weren’t all from Texas, very few were from Alabama or Mississippi. There was a heavy Midwestern contingent, some Chicagolanders connected to police and fire departments. The truth is that it is here in the Midwest. And telling the truth also meant that bad words and feelings might be invoked, which caused more than a few ruffled feathers, but as a Black writer friend essentially said, ‘You’re gonna make a movie with racists and not make it ugly? Guess you’re making a movie about nice people then. Tell the truth.’ So I tried to tell the truth, from what I knew.

“One experience in particular resonates. There’s a scene where the main character, a kid who has been having fun shooting at cans and bottles is pressured to shoot at a human form. A mannequin, which is a huge step, psychologically. What would make it worse, I thought, would be if they had painted it brown, but wrestled with whether that would be too much. Was it exploitive? Was it true? I kept it in. When we got to the location, a remote, abandoned overgrown foundry occasionally used by locals for shooting (much like the makeshift ranges I remember), we began to clear and dress the area. In the bushes was a mannequin torso, painted black. It had been shot to hell. This was thirty-four miles outside Chicago. Go another ten miles and you start seeing confederate flags. It’s local.” Midwest Film Festival at Siskel, Monday, February 27.