The Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute inaugurates its new location at 164 N. State with a 24-hour marathon of films shot or set in Chicago, beginning Friday, June 1, 6:00. Tickets for individual screenings in the marathon are $5, $3 for Film Center members. The series continues Saturday, June 2, 8:00, through Saturday, June 23; tickets for these screenings are $7, $3 for members. For more information call 312-846-2800.
The Untouchables
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Like so many post-Val Lewton horror films, this 1992 feature starts out promisingly while the plot is mainly a matter of suggestion, but gradually turns gross and obvious as the meanings become literal and unambiguous. A University of Illinois grad student (Virginia Madsen) doing a dissertation on urban folklore–specifically on a legend about a killer with a hook (Tony Todd) associated with the Cabrini-Green public housing project–ventures into the project for interviews and photographs and gets more than she bargained for, etc, etc. Adapted by writer-director Bernard Rose from a short story by executive producer Clive Barker that originally had an English setting, this depends for much of its shock and suspense on demonizing ghetto life beyond its real-life horrors, which is another way of saying that it exploits white racism to produce some of its kicks. Philip Glass contributed one of his monotonous hack scores; with Xander Berkeley and Kasi Lemmons. 93 min. (JR) (10:40)
Cooley High
This 1964 film is so obscure that contemporary critics dismissed it as a colossal bit of self-indulgence by director Arthur Penn and star Warren Beatty. Scripted by Alan Surgal, it’s a variation on Kafka’s The Trial, with Beatty as a second-rate nightclub comic on the run from a nameless threat (which may or may not involve the syndicate and some gambling debts). Quintessential Penn, far easier to read now than it was then, and even funny in spots. 93 min. (DD) (4:40 am)
Sons of the Desert
The 1981 feature debut of Michael Mann (The Insider) is firmly aligned along the neo-macho axis of Scorsese, Cimino, and Schrader; it’s an attempt to parlay a surly, alienated hero (James Caan) into an abstract existential force. But Mann’s observations are trite, derivative, and frequently sentimental; by giving us a professional burglar who yearns for the suburban security of wife and family, he comes weirdly close to an amalgam of Taxi Driver and Kramer vs. Kramer. The visual style is strictly small screen: tight, head-bonking close-ups occasionally relieved by self-conscious pictorial effects. With Tuesday Weld, Willie Nelson, Jim Belushi, and Robert Prosky, who, as a fatherly crime boss, has the great wisdom to underplay in this exaggerated context. 122 min. (DK) (1:40)
