Talking Screens, September 1-7, 2023: “Contra/Banned” at Siskel | Hip-Hop History at Music Box | Roots of Noir at Doc Films

“Sorcerer”

Talking Screens, A Week In Chicago Film, September 1-7, 2023

The usual Labor Day week drought for new movies may be exacerbated by the ongoing refusal by the studios to negotiate with striking writers and actors, but the repertory and revival scene continues to show its vigor with this week’s offerings.

“Between Two Worlds”

In Emmanuel Carrère’s “Between Two Worlds” (from the nonfiction “The Night Cleaner” by Florence Aubenas), Juliette Binoche plays an author who travels to the north of France to look at the state of the gig economy in that country. Carrère (“The Mustache”) puts much on screen: a critique of celebrity activists; a low-key but indignant Binoche performance; the power of a lie in the hands of a journalist; a sober, documentary-like accounting, at times, of the state of work, the world of exploitation. The heart of the picture turns out to be about friendship: the best intentions of the rest of the screenplay clatter away in the face of those bonds. Opens at Landmark Century, Friday, September 1.

Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua draw blood in “Equalizer 3,” in theaters.

“Sorcerer” is my highlight of the week: on the big screen at the Music Box, one showing only on a sunny Saturday afternoon (opening with a tribute video to the recently passed, Chicago-born-and-bred renegade filmmaker William Friedkin). I’ve seen the Blu-ray, but not projected as the relentless, drenching nightmare it makes of its source material, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 tinderbox,”The Wages Of Fear.” Notoriously released as his follow-up to the worldwide success of “The Exorcist”—such an expensive picture that it was co-produced by two studios, Paramount and Universal—and as the inadvertent counter-programming to the runaway success of “Star Wars.” The explosive potential lies not in the nitroglycerine being trekked across a jungle, it’s the untrammeled rage bottled up in its protagonists, particularly Roy Scheider in a performance of simple steel. Man fights to live; man dies. What ambition Friedkin had! The unforgiving score is by Tangerine Dream; the imagery by cinematographers John M. Stephens and Dick Bush is chilly and gorgeous. Music Box, Saturday, September 2, 2:30pm.

“Ecstasy”

The Siskel Film Center presents its ten-film “Contra/Banned“ series, ten movies “that have experienced, in varying absurd degrees, their own bans and outcries, their own protests and regulations… at times subversive, controversial, taboo, provocative and shocking.” The films, all of which are taboo-busters of one sort or another, mostly repeat next week and include Paul Verhoeven’s director’s cut of “RoboCop“; Marianne Faithful as “The Girl on The Motorcycle“; Hedy Lamarr in “Ecstasy“; Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (35mm); Howard Hawks’ “Scarface” (4K digital restoration); John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos” (35mm); and Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert’s “Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.” “This is my happening and it freaks me out!” as a key character memorably exults in “Beyond.”

“Spring Breakers”

The Music Box serves up “Fresh Films: A Celebration of Fifty Years Of Hip Hop,” a seventeen-film series, mostly in 35mm, including “Wild Style” (with director Charlie Ahearn); “Juice“; “Style Wars“; “Poetic Justice“; “Beat Street“; “Hustle & Flow” (with director Craig Brewer); “8 Mile“; “Spring Breakers“; “Belly“; “Set It Off” ; “New Jack City“; “Friday” and “Fear of a Black Hat.” Full series and schedule here.

“Sabrina”

Also at the Music Box: subtitled and dubbed versions of Satoshi Kon’s “Perfect Blue“; Martin Scorsese’s “The Age Of Innocence” (35mm); the Billy Wilder matinee of “Sabrina” (35mm); the return of “The Room“; extended runs of “Oppenheimer” and Jennifer Reeder’s “Perpetrator“; and one showing only of Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” with actress Caroline Williams for a post-film Q&A and signings. Listings here.

“Josie And The Pussycats”

“Josie and The Pussycats” remains a still-solid comedy-bubblegum exploitationer from around the turn of the century, shot by cinematographic great Matthew Libatique. Music Box,  Friday and Saturday midnight.

At Drafthouse,  Robin Hardy’s “The Wicker Man: The Final Cut,” Saturday, September 2, 4:15pm. and “Full Metal Jacket,” Tuesday, September 5, 3:45pm, 10:45pm.

“We Grown Now”

The fifty-ninth Chicago International Film Festival opens Wednesday, October 11 at the Music Box with the U.S. premiere of “We Grown Now,” the story of two boys growing up in Cabrini-Green in 1992 Chicago, starring Jurnee Smollett and S. Epatha Merkerson, and written and directed by Chicago native Minhal Baig (“Hala”). The film, presented by Stage 6 Films in association with Participant, is a Symbolic Exchange and Participant production. Opening night begins at 5pm with a free-to-attend block party spanning the 3700 block of Southport, featuring live music, outdoor film screenings, retail kiosks, and food vendors, with the screening at 7pm. More here.

“I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang”

Doc Films teases its fall schedule with a nest of noir on Instagram with “Protonoir: The Roots Of Film Noir” (programmed by Kathleen Geier), “The cycle of hard-hitting, visually dazzling crime films that we now know as film noir began some time in the 1940s,” Doc Films posts. “While there are debates about what the first noir film was, by the end of the 1940s, noir was a thriving artistic movement. Its antecedents were international in scope. Scholars locate the roots of film noir in the German expressionist films of the 1920s, Hollywood gangster films of the 1930s, and hardboiled American crime fiction. Other important influences were French poetic realism, Italian neorealism, and pre-Code American crime pictures. This series will look at the cinematic roots of film noir—films made before the 1940s that had strong noir elements, either in terms of style, content, or both. Noir borrowed its visual palette from German expressionism, with its high-contrast lighting, dramatic shadows, and off-angle, deep focus camera shots. The pulp fiction influence is felt most deeply in noir’s morally conflicted protagonists. Ranging from ordinary people driven to desperate acts to outright sociopathic antiheroes, they remain compelling in spite of the terrible things they do.” Titles to be shown include “M,” “Le jour se lève,” “Scarface,” “You Only Live Once,” “Piccadilly,” and “I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang.”