Weeklong Runs
Chicago Premiere!
THE BOSS OF IT ALL
(DIREKTORENFOR DET HELE)
2006, Lars von Trier, Denmark, 98 min.
With Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler
In a devious scheme to fleece his coworkers, a corporate partner hires an actor to impersonate his IT company’s absentee owner. In fact, no such eccentric executive exists except as an e-mail phantom with six different personalities fabricated by the man who’s actually pulling the strings. In a characteristic maneuver that poses a puckish counterpoint to the story’s Machiavellian manipulation, director Lars von Trier (DOGVILLE, BREAKING THE WAVES) has vacated the director’s chair and devised an automated camera system to shoot the film. In Danish with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
July 6--12
Fri. and Mon. -Thu. at 6:15 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 3:00 pm and 5:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
TIME
(SHI GAN)
2006, Kim Ki-duk, South Korea, 96 min.
With Sung Hyun-ah, Ha Jung-woo
“Plumbs the depths of obsessive love. . . incandescent cinema”--Giovanna Fulvi, Toronto International Film Festival program
Like a contrary take on an O. Henry story, this latest opus by Kim Ki-duk (3-IRON, THE ISLE), Korea’s critically acclaimed purveyor of the perverse, crafts a tale of a jealous woman’s plan to revive her boyfriend’s flagging libido with a new face by way of cosmetic surgery. Love gets lost in a labyrinth of look-alike emotions when the beloved seems to reappear in a new guise, but the savvy suitor embarks on a solution of his own via the scalpel. Kim lives up to his reputation for films with a barbed backlash in this tongue-in-cheek vision of romance in the age of silicon implants and surgical makeovers. In Korean with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
July 13-19
Fri. and Mon.-Thu. at 6:15 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 5:15 pm, and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 5:15 pm
Chicago premiere!
LIGHTS IN THE DUSK
(LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT)
2006, Aki Kaurismaki, Finland, 78 min.
With Janne Hyytiäinen, Maria Järvenhelmi
“A dark jewel of a movie, it glows with warmth.”--Time Out London
A blonde temptress hits on a monkish security guard in a dingy coffee shop. Her motive: to scout a fall guy for a jewel robbery for her gangster boss. His goal: to worship unto death this living, breathing image of a Barbie doll. The trials of a neo-noir Job are perversely visited on the sucker of a hero, who makes faithfulness a liability long before he is allowed to bask in one flimsy, Kaurismakian ray of hope under the midnight sun. LIGHTS IN THE DUSK joins DRIFTING CLOUDS and MAN WITHOUT A PAST to complete the master-of-deadpan’s “loser trilogy.” In Finnish with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
July 20-26
Fri. and Mon.-Thu. at 6:15 pm and 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm, 4:45 pm, and 8:15 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 5:00 pm
INTO GREAT SILENCE
(DIE GROSSE STILLE)
2005, Philip Gröning, Germany, 162 min.
“Engrossing, entrancing, enlivening.”--Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“One of those rare celluloid experiences that truly transports us into another world.”--Trevor Johnston, Time Out London
After many years of trying, filmmaker Gröning was granted unprecedented permission to film inside the Grand Chartreuse monastery high in the French Alps, working without a crew or added lighting as he lived among the silent order. The result--a surprise box-office success in Europe and a word-of-mouth cult phenomenon in the U.S.--is a film of rigorous, mesmerizing beauty that follows the rhythms of the monks’ daily routines to approach a state of transcendent harmony. In German with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
July 27--August 2
Fri., Mon,, Wed., and Thu. at 6:30 pm;
Sat. at 3:30 pm and 7:30 pm;
Sun at 3:30 pm
Chicago premiere!
PUNK’S NOT DEAD
2007, Susan Dynner, USA, 98 min.
There have been plenty of recent films looking back at the punk movement of the late 1970s, but this raucous doc is passionately dedicated to the proposition that punk is alive and well--its revival detonated by Fugazi, Nirvana, and Green Day, and sent kicking and snarling into the Bush era by the likes of The Ataris, Good Charlotte, and Pennywise. Meanwhile, geezer groups like U.K. Subs and The Adicts keep on thrashing, and punk has reared its Mohawked head in such far-flung outposts as Iceland, Indonesia, and Israel. PUNK’S NOT DEAD candidly confronts such problems as punk’s passage from lumpen outburst to mall-store fashion statement, and the contradiction of commercial success in a musical genre defined by alienation. But, as long as there are pissed-off kids driven to channel their anger into DIY two-chord anarchy, punk will never die. 35mm. (MR)