The 60th annual Chicago International Film Festival, with its screenings, special events, tributes, and other events, has ended. It was quite a successful festival that was a pleasure to cover.
Here are my final four exclusive reviews of CIFF movies; these will be commercially released or available for streaming in the coming weeks.
I didn't do enough reading on this one or thought it would be something else entirely because this thing was NOT what I expected. I don't even know WHAT I was expecting, but it wasn't this.
Geoffrey Rush plays a tough and arrogant New Zealand judge who suffers a near-fatal stroke that partially paralyzes him and lands him in an assisted living retirement home.
He is angry and miserable about his situation, lashing out at the staff and other residents, causing conflict with everyone, and waiting for the day he thinks he will be released.
Enter John Lithgow as a sadistic, psychotic resident who terrorizes the home with physical and verbal abuse while wielding a dementia doll named Jenny Pen.
It has a simple premise but is told in the darkest, bleakest tone imaginable, with very little humor or even relief from the constant sense of sadness and dread. This is a very heavy movie.
It's usually a lot of fun to watch Lithgow chew up the scenery as an over-the-top villain because he's just so great at being bad. His villainous turns in "Blow Out," "Raising Cain," "Buckaroo Banzai," and especially "Ricochet" are an absolute blast to watch.
But in this film, there's nothing funny about what he's doing. Although he gives a reliably terrific performance (he is, after all, one of the finest actors on the planet), it's deeply disturbing and hard to watch.
The film is very well directed by James Ashcroft, who also co-adapted the screenplay. For a good portion of its running time, it's quite creepy and effective. Ashcroft overtly pays homage to films like "Don't Look Now," "Rosemary's Baby," and especially "The Shining," from which he takes specific sound and music cues directly.
In fact, the whole thing has a very, very heavy Stephen King vibe; it really feels like it could have been written by him.
For a stretch, I was really captivated by the movie. I felt deep sadness and overwhelming empathy for the characters as the movie navigated the horrors of getting old and losing control of not just your body but your mind.
It really played like a parable about old age, with Lithgow's character being an imaginary symbol of elderly terrors and death. But, about halfway through, the symbolism goes out the window; everything becomes very grounded in reality, and it just doesn't work.
Once everything, including Lithgow and his doll, becomes literal, the movie loses its power and becomes a standard gross-out revenge thriller. Which is too bad because it was devastating until it became predictable.
Still, Lithgow and Rush are terrific, the supporting cast is strong, and even though it ends about three separate times, it's a reasonably satisfying horror ride that gives one much to think about. - ⭐️⭐️1/2
"The Rule of Jenny Pen" will open sometime in early 2025 and stream on Shudder.
This strikingly personal, deeply moving documentary from Chicago filmmaker Kyle Henry is a miracle of a movie to behold. The film, among other things, explores the relationship between Henry and his mother in great detail as Henry dives into the past using many filmmaking techniques and storytelling approaches.
The movie opens during the early days of the pandemic lock down of 2020, when Henry's mother, Elaine, was living in an assisted living facility, and they could not see each other. During this separation, while Elaine struggles with the final days of her life and the dementia that has ravaged her brain, Henry comes to terms with his own and his family's past.
He sorts through a vast assemblage of family photos, films, artwork, diaries, and more as he reflects on the complexities of his relationship with his mother and explores the larger themes of American motherhood, marriage, corporate greed, and the difficulties of coming out to your parents.
There is indeed a lot going on in this film, and yet Henry juggles it all beautifully, even if there are moments when it feels a bit overcrowded. The disparate themes and topics that have no business working together actually work beautifully. The Kodak company is taken to task, the consequences of generational oppression are explored, and the financial hardships of American families are exposed, and somehow it all works.
It's a testament to Henry's passion as a filmmaker and historian that he is able to successfully combine all this and expose himself so emotionally. He narrates the whole film and appears in almost every scene, including a striking series of sequences in which he participates in a version of Gestalt's Empty Chair Therapy technique, talking to himself as his mother (complete with wig and glasses).
All of this leads to some of the most honest and touching sequences I have ever seen in a documentary. The film also contains some of the most powerful insights into the complex world of families dealing with old age, dementia, and death I have ever seen.
You will laugh, cry, and learn much as Henry takes enormous risks to understand and come to terms with his mother's death. Those risks pay off, resulting in a rare documentary that is as much about the subject as it is about the filmmaker. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
"Time Passages" will open at The Gene Siskel Film Center in February 2025.
Cillian Murphy stars in this quiet but intensely effective film as a coal man in County Wexford, Ireland, in the early 1980s. He discovers some horrible secrets about the Magdelene Laundries, the Catholic Church's home for unwed mothers located next to his business.
Based on Claire Keegan's historical novel, inspired by actual events that took place in that area over many years, the screenplay is structured around Murphy's character's memories of his troubled childhood growing up with a mistreated and disturbed unwed mother.
The film's flashback structure is a bit choppy. Still, the content is incredibly powerful, anchored by some truly outstanding performances by Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Amy De Bhrun, Michelle Farley, and a chilling and perfectly cast Emily Watson as the Mother Superior.
The movie's brutal effectiveness comes from its unblinking honesty. The simple shared trauma of the main characters is enough to evoke terror without resorting to cheap, over-the-top dramatics.
Director Tim Mielants deftly handles the tone of sadness and oppression without hammering the audience with histrionics, which makes many of the film's quietest scenes (especially those of everyday family life at Christmas time) absolutely devastating.
At the center of it all is Murphy, who continues to prove what a remarkable actor he truly is. Often without uttering a word, his magnificent face says volumes about what his character has gone through and what he is witnessing.
There are no pat solutions in this film, and in the end, when the main character makes what appears to be a brave choice on the surface, the audience is left with an overwhelming feeling that there will be calamitous consequences. "Small Things Like These" is uncompromising and brilliant. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
4) HARD TRUTHS
The singular, brilliant, and prodigiously talented British writer/director Mike Leigh ("Secrets and Lies," "Life is Sweet," "Another Year," "Naked" and many more) is back with his 24th film, and it is one of the best he has ever made.
The richly detailed and wonderfully observed story takes place in contemporary London, focusing on various members of an extended Black family and their relationships with one another, friends, co-workers, and strangers.
The main character is Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a hypersensitive, angry, tragically damaged, and depressed middle-aged mother and wife whose relentlessly unpleasant behavior has alienated her from everyone except for her cheerful hairdresser sister (Michele Austin), who is also on the verge of reaching a breaking point with Pansy.
This piercing and tough portrait of how anger, depression, and festering trauma can destroy lives is as beautifully heartbreaking as you would expect from Leigh, one of the most powerfully observant storytellers on the planet. His love of human interactivity, both pleasant and unpleasant, funny and sad, joyful and depressing, is so thoroughly compelling that you feel as though you are invading the privacy of real people.
Leigh is meticulous in his attention to his characters' lives and behaviors, and it is nothing less than astounding. He is a true humanist artist who cares so much about giving his creations room to breathe that many of his films feel like documentaries. His direction of actors is rooted in improvisation and open collaboration, and the result is a naturalism seldom seen in commercial cinema.
The complexities of the deep family dynamic and the conflicts within the unit are elegantly explored, highlighted by Leigh's reliably truthful direction and some of the best performances you will see in any movie this year. This rich ensemble of actors continues to shine a light on Leigh's remarkable ability to get extraordinary performances from his players.
Now, to Marianne Jean-Baptiste, whose incredible performance as the tragically complex Pansy is, without question, the best performance I have seen by any actor this year. The slender tightrope of emotions that Jean-Baptiste walks throughout this film is astonishing to behold. The shifts in mood and the bouts of uncontrollable anger, depression, and sadness are all handled with grace, elegance, great depth, and, at times, remarkable humor. It is truly a performance for the ages and must be seen to be believed.
Mike Leigh is almost 82 years old and continues to be a vital, essential artist whose work is as important now as it was when he made "Bleak Moments" in 1971. The landscapes of his films change almost as much as the subjects he covers in them, and even when it's a culture that he may be unfamiliar with (as with this film), there is a feeling of genuineness that is seldom found in any cinema of this type.
I was mesmerized, entertained, and deeply moved by "Hard Truths." It made me laugh; it made me sob; it made me think. It's typical Mike Leigh, anchored by the best performance of the year by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and it's one of the year's best films. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"Hard Truths" opens in theaters on December 6th, 2024.
That wraps up my coverage of this year's CIFF, and I can't wait to do it all over again next year. Congratulations, Chicago International Film Festival, on sixty incredible years and yet another stellar fest.
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