In this week’s issue I review Outrage, the new documentary by Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated). It’s only one of several new releases by notable directors.
Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience stars porn sensation Sasha Grey as a Manhattan call girl who makes $2,000 an hour.
Olivier Assayas, creator of such noirish intrigues as Demonlover and Irma Vep, turns to quieter material with Summer Hours, about a trio of siblings trying to sort out their late mother’s valuable art and furniture.
Adoration, the latest by Canadian director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), is a puzzle-box story about an orphaned teen who sends shock waves through his small-town community with his school essay explaining that his father was a Lebanese terrorist.
Carlos Saura, known for such dance films as Tango and Flamenco, turns his attention to Portuguese traditional song with Fados.
And Rian Johnson follows up his debut feature, Brick, with the whimsical The Brothers Bloom.
This week brings plenty of good repertory programming: at Block Films, Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville; screening by DVD projection at Bill’s Blues in Evanston, Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia; at Doc Films, Stanley Donen’s Charade, Pat O’Neill’s The Decay of Fiction, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Autumn; screening as a midnight show at Music Box, David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch; and at Gene Siskel Film Center, Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women, with Sophia Loren.
If you’ve never seen them before, prepare yourself to be floored by Pare Lorentz’s Depression-era documentaries The River and The Plow That Broke the Plains, screening on a double bill this Tuesday at Doc Films. And don’t forget: Masaki Kobayashi’s ten-hour war epic The Human Condition screens this weekend at Gene Siskel Film Center in three parts. You can see them successively on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, or, if you have a strong ass, as a marathon this Sunday, May 24.