2010 Chicago International Film Festival: Week Two

* Recommended titles

If you go
Where: AMC River East
322 E Illinois St
Tickets: call Ticketmaster at 312-902-1500, or go to ticketmaster.com. For more information, call 312-332-3456 or go to chicagofilmfestival.org.

Thursday 14 | Friday 15 | Saturday 16 | Sunday 17 | Monday 18 | Tuesday 19 | Wednesday 20

Thursday 14

2pm Devil’s Town Dir. Vladimir Paskaljevic. 2009. 82mins. Serbia. Prostitution, pedophilia, child abuse, immigration and a mondo case of PTSD are among the horrors in this Belgrade-set roundelay, which has little to say about any given topic but seems mighty pleased with itself all the same. —Ben Kenigsberg
2:30pm The Neighbor Dir. Naghmeh Shirkhan. 2010. 105mins. USA/Canada. There’s a lot of pained looking out of windows and people listening to answering-machine messages in this inert drama about an Iranian-Canadian who intervenes in the life of her neighbor, a young mother who seems ready to ditch her kid.—Hank Sartin
3:15pm Shahada Dir. Burhan Qurbani. 2010. 88mins. Germany. Three Muslims in Berlin try to reconcile their faith with secular German culture. (Not made available for review.)
3:30pm All That I Love Dir. Jacek Borcuch. 2010. 95mins. Poland. A Polish teen punk rocker in the early 1980s gets a dose of two big historical movements when his “rebellion” makes trouble for his military father. Reasonably engaging snapshot of the last spasms of the socialist government before change hit Poland in a big way.—HS
3:45pm I Miss You Dir. Fabián Hofman. 2010. 95mins. Argentina/Mexico/Uruguay. Worthy subject matter (the disappeared in Argentina in the 1970s and ’80s and the holes their losses leave in families) gets a frustratingly mundane treatment in this drama, in which incident follows incident, never really adding up to the emotional impact that Hofman seems to intend.—HS
3:50pm My Joy Dir. Sergei Loznitsa. 2010. 127mins. Ukraine/Germany. The daisy-chain narrative is getting to be a bit of an art-house cliché, but this immersion in the depravities of backwoods Russia benefits from a dark sense of humor and a sharp visual style.—BK
4pm Love Life of a Gentle Coward Dir. Pavo Marinkovic. 2009. 95mins. Croatia. After he starts dating a masseuse from his health club, a put-upon restaurant reviewer finds new inner strength to deal with all the pompous bullies and scheming power brokers in his life. Well, sort of. The comedic potential is mostly squandered, and there’s only so much comedy you can wring out of a guy being weak and cowardly.—HSThe Tree Dir. Julie Bertuccelli. 2010. 101mins. Australia. Suffering a heart attack, a father crashes his truck into a tree and dies, but his presence lives on its roots and branches. Bertuccelli (Since Otar Left) imbues the story with a delicate mystical feel, and Charlotte Gainsbourg could probably make a fertilizer commercial watchable. But neither one saves the movie from a maudlin undergrowth.—BK
4:45pm Drunkboat Dir. Bob Meyer. 2010. 98mins. USA. A teen buys a boat behind his mom’s back with the help of his alcoholic uncle. Shot around Chicago. (Not reviewed.)
5:45pm The Last Report on Anna Dir. Márta Mészáros. 103mins. 2009. Hungary. Absent the warm tones that kept optimism in the picture for Stasi-monitored German literati in The Lives of Others, this film travels deep into Eastern Bloc despair as exiled Hungarian Social Democrat Anna Kéthly (Enikö Eszenyi) encounters writer-turned-informant Péter Faragó (Ernõ Fekete).—Zachary Whittenburg
* 6pm My Good Enemy Dir. Oliver Ussing. 2010. 90mins. Denmark. Two bullied kids develop a secret plan to get revenge on their oppressors, but soon they find that power corrupts. Violent comic books bear a weirdly heavy load of the blame for the situation, but there’s no denying this is suspenseful, unsettling and intriguing.—HS
6pm Little Rose Dir. Jan Kidawa-Blonski. 2010. 118mins. Poland. Those evil commies pressure a buxom lady into romancing and spying on an older professor. That gives Kidawa-Blonski a reasonable excuse for making his lead actress spend huge chunks of the movie shirtless. Um, yeah; damn those exploitative sexist commies.—HS
6:10pm Come Undone Dir. Silvio Soldini. 2010. 124mins. Italy. Anna steps out on her adoring partner to have a lusty, tumultuous affair with Domenico, a married waiter. We’re not sure if the movie’s title refers to their charmless trysts or how we feel after spending hours watching them.—Madeline Nusser
6:15pm Hereafter Dir. Clint Eastwood. 2010. 129mins. USA. It’s refreshing to see Eastwood expanding on his themes in a supernatural tale, but Peter Morgan’s embarrassing, Babel-like script makes this a misfire. Among other things you’d never expect to find in an Eastwood film, Hereafter includes a risible Derek Jacobi cameo, an exploitative use of the London Underground bombings and a bit of touristic coincidence that it’s hard to believe got by an editor.—BK
6:20pm Heartbeats Dir. Xavier Dolan. 2010. 102mins. Canada. Twenty-one-year-old Dolan’s still-unreleased festival favorite I Killed My Mother (2009) was crude but unflinchingly personal. His follow-up, a more conventional love triangle heavily indebted to Wong Kar-wai, doesn’t have the same therapeutic quality: It’s the kind of arty meander you’d expect a first-timer to make.—BK
6:30pm Go For It! Dir. Carmen Marron. 2010. 83mins. USA. A lack of focus and pacing prevents this Chicago-based tale of a troubled teen with dreams of being a hip-hop dancer from fulfilling the emotional message at its core.—Jessica Johnson
8:15pm Black Field Dir. Vardis Marinakis. 2009. 104mins. Greece. Marinakis displays an eye for striking images (a group of 17th-century Greek nuns facing off against a wounded soldier, the maze-like interiors of the convent) in this slow, often dreamlike drama about a soldier on the run and a nun with a secret.—HS
8:30pm Erratum Dir. Marek Lechki. 2010. 95mins. Poland. After killing a homeless person in a car accident, a guy is stuck in his hometown, where he divides his time between investigating the life of his victim and trying to reconcile with his own past. Moody and slow, but relatively engaging.—HS
8:45pm The Days of Desire Dir. József Pacskovszky. 2010. 104mins. Hungary. What at first looks like an austere art film inspired by the work of Béla Tarr quickly turns into a fairly conventional grieving story, in which a separated couple slowly unburden their regrets to a new housemaid, who can’t speak. The employers’ assumptions about the mute interloper’s feelings lend the movie an intermittent fascination.—BK
8:50pm A Somewhat Gentle Man Dir. Hans Petter Moland. 2010. 107mins. Norway. Fresh out of prison, a man must choose between revenge and reconciliation. (Not made available for review.)
9pm Southern District Dir. Juan Carlos Valdivia. 2009. 108mins. Bolivia. A heavy-handed but unnerving look at class issues in a family from a wealthy district of La Paz, told an oblique style through a constantly dollying camera. There are surface similarities to some of Argentine director Lucrecia Martel’s films, but pair it with The Housemaid (see Sun 17), which has similar strengths and weaknesses.—BK
9:15pm Asleep in the Sun Dir. Alejandro Chomski. 2010. 83mins. Argentina. After his mentally ill wife’s brief stay at a hospital changes her, a man slides into an increasingly surreal world. Chomski creates an unsettling mood through the emphasis of mundane details.—HS
10pm Black, White and Blues Dir. Mario van Peebles. 2010. 91mins. USA. A troubled bluesman (Morgan Simpson) rebuilds his life after his grandfather dies. Partially a road-trip film, it takes a few wrong turns after the singer and his friend (Michael Clarke Duncan) reach their destination.—BK

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Friday 15
1:45pm Lula, the Son of Brazil Dir. Fabio Barreto. 2009. 128mins. Brazil. The president of Brazil gets his own Generic Biopic, which charts his rise from poverty to leading a steelworkers’ union. Even potential voters may be bored.—BK
2pm Mamas & Papas Dir. Alice Nellis. 2010. 110mins. Czech Republic. Four couples cope with unwanted pregnancies, infertility and child death in a well-made but glib spot-the-connections piece from people who took the screenwriting in Babel (and the similarly themed Mother and Child?) too seriously.—BK
2pm Panel: Telling the Truth
3pm Panel: Triple Threat
3:15pm Lisanka Dir. Daniel Díaz Torres. 2010. 110mins. Cuba/Spain/Russia. The boisterous tone of this comedy set in a small town in Cuba during the missile crisis is a little uneven, and the jokes are wielded with a heavy hand, like bludgeons.—HS
3:30pm Loose Cannons Dir. Ferzan Ozpetek. 2010. 109mins. Italy. A gay man from a conservative family has to decide whether to come out to them or not in this light fare. It’s mostly perfectly fine, though the appearance on the scene of his swishy friends, played for maximum yuks, strikes a false note.—HS
3:45pm Southern District See Thu 14.
* 4pm Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff Dir. Craig McCall. 2010. 86mins. U.K. Even if you know and love the work of the eponymous cinematographer—who died last year at 94 and who, for his groundbreaking work for Powell and Hitchcock alone, belongs on any list of the greatest in the field—his anecdotes and an assortment of well-chosen clips will provide ample insight into his art.—BK
4:10pm Shorts 5: Tales of the Unexpected Various dirs. 2010. 104mins. Various countries. We can only hope that this selection of shorts will include an appearance by the Spanish Inquisition. Because, you see, no one expects…never mind.
4:15pm Of Love and Other Demons Dir. Hilda Hidalgo. 2010. 97mins. Colombia. This adaptation of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel—about a sensuous teenage girl in the colonial era whose possible rabies infection is taken for demonic possession—turns the author’s luxurious prose into long, ponderous shots of the girl and butterflies and the agonized, love-struck priest.—HS
6pm Nice Guy Johnny Dir. Edward Burns. 2010. 89mins. USA. If the 1995 Sundance jury could see what Burns was up to now, would they take back the award that launched his career? This predominantly Hamptons-set story of an obsequious DJ’s romantic woes is innocuous but rarely plausible.—BK
6:05pm Erratum See Thu 14.
6:15pm The Happy Housewife Dir. Antoinette Beumer. 2010. 100mins. Netherlands. Black Book’s Carice van Houten does what she can to class up a PSA on postpartum depression, but even she can’t do much once her character’s illness is written off as the result of unresolved daddy issues.—BK
6:30pm Cinema of the Americas Tribute: Guillermo Del Toro
* 6:30pm Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 2010. 114mins. Thailand. The winner of this year’s Palme d’Or is the most refined film yet from SAIC grad Weerasethakul (see interview online)—a beguiling, serenely surreal meditation on nature, death and memory.—BK
6:40pm The Minutemen Dir. Corey Wascinski. 2010. 82mins. USA. You may not agree with the questionable tactics employed by the small cadre of freedom-lovin’ volunteers minding the U.S./Mexico border (the San Diego “Minutemom” is particularly loathsome), but this balanced doc manages to show a fresh angle on a timeworn issue.—Laura Baginski
8:30pm Skeletons Dir. Nick Whitfield. 2010. 94mins. U.K. This low-grade British attempt at a Primer–like mindfuck suffers from a basic concept—psychic memory invaders—that has only vague ground rules. What at first seems like playful obfuscation ultimately disguises a fundamental, irritating hollowness.—BK
8:45pm Heartbeats See Thu 14.
* 9pm Beautiful Darling Dir. James Rasin. 2010. 84mins. USA. Transgender actor Candy Darling (1944–74) had dreams, or delusions, of turning roles in Andy Warhol films into Hollywood starlet-dom. In Rasin’s compelling doc, which portrays Darling as both victim and hustler, most insightful is Darling’s own diary, beautifully read by Chloë Sevigny.—Novid Parsi
* 9:15pm We Are What We Are Dir. Jorge Michel Grau. 2010. 89mins. Mexico. With their father dead of an apparent poisoning, a family of Mexico City cannibals struggles to carry out a ritual without him. Carefully balancing urban realism and social critique with a hint of the supernatural—and keeping our sympathies in flux—Grau’s debut doles out information at just the right rate: It’s splatter horror at its most suggestive.—BK
9:20pm Little Rose See Thu 14.
9:30pm Amphetamine Dir. Scud. 2010. 97mins. Hong Kong. A swimming instructor and a businessman have sweaty gay sex and deal with personal problems. The festival is describing this as an erotic drama and slapping a “mature audiences only” label on it. (Not made available for review.)
10:45pm Big Tits Zombie Dir. Takao Nakano. 2010. 73mins. Japan. You got your zombies. You got your strippers with wicked sword skills. Any questions? (Not made available for review.)
11:15pm The Defiled Dir. Julian Grant. 2010. 100mins. USA. A friendly zombie looks after a human woman and a baby in this no-budget, locally shot campfest, but an amateurish pace and wall-to-wall Wiseau-like scoring may cause actual brains to explode.—BK

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Saturday 16
11am CineYouth Best of the Fest Various dirs. and years. 95mins. Various countries. Winning films from the CineYouth competition for young filmmakers are screened.
11:30am Black Field See Thu 14.
* noon Beautiful Darling See Fri 15.
* noon My Good Enemy See Thu 14.
12:15pm I Miss You See Thu 14.
12:20pm Besouro Dir. João Daniel Tikhomiroff. 2009. 95mins. Brazil. A messiah figure in 1920s Brazil defends the oppressed black population and capoeira—a martial-arts-inflected dance banned at the time—in a screen version of a local myth that never makes sense of its story’s metaphysics.—BK
1pm Panel: Cinema of the Americas
* 1:30pm Louder than A Bomb Dirs. Greg Jacobs, Jon Siskel. 2010. 99mins. USA. Four Chicago high-school poetry teams dazzle, inspire and kick serious ass with words as they prep for the world’s biggest youth poetry slam. Thankfully their journey is never saccharine. What it is: powerful and exhilarating.—Liz Plosser
1:50pm All That I Love See Thu 14.
2pm A Screaming Man Dir. Mahamet-Saleh Haroun. 2010. 91mins. France/Belgium/Chad. Even those who caught Haroun’s acclaimed Abouna and Dry Season have split on this arresting-sounding but sluggish drama set in war-torn Chad, about a father whose desire to retain his job as a pool attendant pits him against his son.—BK
2:15pm Come Undone See Thu 14.
2:20pm The Minutemen See Fri 15.
2:30pm Abacus and Sword Dir. Yoshimitsu Morita. 2010. 125mins. Japan. As a historical saga, Abacus and Sword opts for detailed reality (it’s based on the actual diary of an accountant for the Kaga Clan) rather than over-the-top drama. Recommended for those with more than a casual curiosity about Japan’s embrace of modernity.—John Dugan
4pm The Days of Desire See Thu 14.
4pm King’s Road Dir. Valdís Óskarsdóttir. 2010. 103mins. Iceland. An amusing crossing-guard gag notwithstanding, this overloaded ensemble comedy—set in remote Iceland and directed by an editor who’s worked for Gondry and Korine—suggests that Eyjafjallajökull is erupting with quirk.—BK
4:20pm Skeletons See Fri 15.
4:30pm The Happy Housewife See Fri 15.
5pm Trust Dir. David Schwimmer. 2010. 97mins. USA. A Chicago girl is tricked and eventually raped by an online pedophile; she and her family (including seething patriarch Clive Owen) then cope with the aftermath. Schwimmer’s film version of the play he wrote with Andy Bellin goes way beyond tolerable didacticism, and it’s hard to buy that these characters would be so consistently oblivious.—BK
5:15pm Missing Man Dir. Anna Fenchenko. 2010. 96mins. Russia. A middle-aged loner finds himself living a Kafka-esque nightmare: The police suspect him of something, his apartment building is torn down, and he ends up on the lam with a weird collection of strangers. The allegory probably resonates for Russians used to dealing with a mix of decaying infrastructure and monstrously corrupt bureaucracy, but I found it exhausting.—HS
6:30pm Problema Dir. Ralf Schmerberg. 2010. 95mins. Germany. A collection of intellectuals, activists and celebs gathers in Berlin to answer 100 questions. Schmerberg picks up the New Age-y vibe with a montage of archival footage that makes me feel simultaneously bad about the world and annoyed at the frequent pretentiousness.—HS
6:30pm White as Snow Dir. Selim Günes. 2010. 82mins. Turkey. Günes’s background as a photographer is evident in the gorgeous compositions, but also in the static quality of this simple portrait of a poor boy struggling to make ends meet for his family in a tiny Turkish town.—HS
6:50pm Honeymooner Dir. Col Spector. 2010. 75mins. U.K. A hapless twentysomething recently dumped by his fiancée has a series of lightly comic adventures as he tries to recover. Spector adds some nice little touches to a scenario that’s all too familiar.—HS
7pm R U There Dir. David Verbeek. 2010. 87mins. Netherlands. Next time spring 4 better plot device? An arm injury prevents an obsessive gamer from competing in a Taipei tournament, and that allows him to rejoin humanity, at least briefly. But given the stilted presentation and dialogue, it’s unclear the filmmakers themselves have ever interacted with humans.—BK
7:30pm Nannerl, Mozart’s Sister Dir. René Féret. 2010. 120mins. France. The storytelling is as stiff and constricting as the corsets in this costumer about Mozart’s older sister, whose musical talent was neglected by their ambitious father. At times, it feels as if Féret believes this is a profound feminist statement, the take-home lesson of which is “women in the past were underappreciated.” Got it.—HS
7:30pm The Tree See Thu 14.
8:45pm Southern District See Thu 14.
9pm Go For It! See Thu 14.
9:10pm Polish Bar Dir. Ben Berkowitz. 2010. 96mins. USA. A well-made but pretty familiar locally shot crime melodrama about an aspiring DJ who dabbles in drug sales—something he knows won’t go over well with his Orthodox Jewish family. It has the unusual effect of making Chicago feel like Brooklyn.—BK
9:30pm Carancho Dir. Pablo Trapero. 2010. 107mins. Argentina. This solid but forgettable policier—a tad more kinetic than what we’ve come to expect from Trapero (Rolling Family, Lion’s Den)—wins points for an unusual premise. It explores a form of insurance scam apparently common in Argentina, in which people throw themselves in front of cars to collect on the reimbursement.—BK
10pm Sword of Desperation Dir. Hideyuki Hirayama. 2010. 114mins. Japan. That title might lead you to expect some sword action, but you’ve got to wait through a lot of court intrigue and a long section in which the hero is under house arrest to get to the action. The dramatic tension isn’t adequate to hold your attention for that long.—HS
10:15pm Amphetamine See Fri 15.
11pm Shorts 3: Midnight Mayhem Various dirs. and years. 79mins. Various countries. The subject matter is dark and creepy in this program of shorts.
11:15pm Big Tits Zombie See Fri 15.

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Sunday 17
11:45am Shorts 1: Illinois[e]makers Various dirs. 2010. 95mins. USA. This selection of shorts is a product of our great state.
noon Erratum See Thu 14.
12:15pm The Last Report on Anna See Thu 14.
12:30pm How I Ended This Summer Dir. Aleksei Popogrebsky. 2010. 124mins. Russia. A man stationed at a remote Russian meteorological station harbors a secret from his only colleague. Especially with such a slow buildup, the film can’t afford to botch the outcome the way it does.—BK
1:15pm Love Like Poison Dir. Katell Quillévéré. 2010. 92mins. France. Like poison? We wish. This picturesque Breton coming-of-age tale seems content to be fairly ordinary.—BK
* 1:30pm Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff See Fri 15.
2:10pm White as Snow See Sat 16.
* 2:15pm Tony and Janina’s American Wedding Dir. Ruth Leitman. 2010. 81mins. USA/Poland. In 2007, Schiller Park resident Tony Wasilewski’s wife, Janina, was deported to Poland and barred from returning for ten years; their struggles to win her reentry are chronicled in this local advocacy doc, which wrenchingly highlights the injustices of current immigration bureaucracy and its impact on families.—BK
2:30pm The Tree See Thu 14.
3pm Nannerl, Mozart’s Sister See Sat 16.
3:30pm R U There See Sat 16.
4pm Michel Ciment, the Art of Sharing Movies Dir. Simone Lainé. 2010. 52mins. France. For those unfamiliar with one of the true lions of contemporary film writing, this featurette provides a decent if basic primer on the Positif editor’s reviewing philosophy. Even filmmakers gush over his ability to help them see their movies better.—BK
4pm Panel: Reel Women: Power Players
4:15pm The Matchmaker Dir. Avi Nesher. 2010. 104mins. Israel. An Israeli boy in the late ’60s learns life lessons from a matchmaker, gets a visit from a hot cousin and otherwise goes through a series of contrivances his countrymen might refer to as “schmaltz.”—BK
4:30pm Problema See Sat 16.
5pm Fair Game Dir. Doug Liman. 2010. 104mins. USA. The inevitable screen version of the Valerie Plame–Joseph Wilson story offers the relative novelty of seeing events unfold through the couple’s eyes (Naomi Watts and a self-amused Sean Penn are as good as you’d expect), but it has little to add to a story that already seems like old news.—BK
5:45pm Shahada See Thu 14.
* 6pm Norman Dir. Jonathan Segal. 2010. 97mins. USA. Ignore the comedy label the fest has thrown on this unexpectedly moving little indie about a teen who lets everyone at school believe he has terminal cancer as a way to deal with trouble at home. The performances are solid (Richard Jenkins as the father. Need we say more?) and the thing grows on you after a slightly unsteady start.—HS
* 6:15pm Twice a Woman Dir. François Delisle. 2010. 94mins. Canada. Imagine Sleeping with the Enemy’s plot—battered wife makes new identity but can’t escape her past—as a serious subject and not just suspense. Unsettling and tightly controlled, like a bad dream from which you want to awake but can’t.—HS
* 6:45pm Brother & Sister Dir. Daniel Burman. 2010. 105mins. Argentina. Based on a novel by Diego Dubcovsky, Burman’s sedate character study of aging, lonely siblings has a cumulative power, owing mainly to finely observed performances by Antonio Gasalla as shy, closeted Marcos and, especially, Graciela Borges as overbearing diva Susana.—John Beer
7pm Polish Bar See Sat 16.
7:15pm The Housemaid Dir. Im Sangsoo. 2010. 106mins. South Korea. Im’s supremely stylish remake of the great 1960 Korean classic of the same title inverts the original’s central dynamic, so that the housemaid herself is now the victim. The movie hits the class-warfare hammer way too hard, but visually, it’s ravishing—the sort of frustrating half-success you may actually want to see.—BK
8:15pm Of Love and Other Demons See Fri 15.
8:20pm 5X Favela Various dirs. 2010. 103mins. Brazil. This relatively enjoyable omnibus of five shorts made by young filmmakers features simple stories, mostly with clear morals and a bit heavy on sentimentality, set in Rio de Janeiro’s poorest neighborhoods.—HS
8:40pm Honeymooner See Sat 16.
9:15pm Missing Man See Sat 16.
9:30pm The Defiled See Fri 15.
9:45pm Blame Dir. Michael Henry. 2010. 89mins. Australia. Distraught over a young woman’s romance-related suicide, her friends and family plot revenge. To think: If only the characters had done due diligence, they’d have saved us this tedious, moralistic Murder on the Orient Express.—BK
10:30pm Shorts 3: Midnight Mayhem See Sat 16.

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Monday 18
1:30pm Asleep in the Sun See Thu 14.
2:45pm R U There See Sat 16.
3pm Little Rose See Thu 14.
3:15pm Black, White and Blues See Thu 14.
3:30pm Louder than A Bomb See Sat 16.
4pm All That I Love See Thu 14.
4:15pm The Sentiment of the Flesh Dir. Roberto Garzelli. 2010. 92mins. France. The festival blurb implies this slightly daffy but absorbing French thriller is the glasses-fogger of the year, but its eroticism is mainly Cronenbergian, combining the medical setting of Dead Ringers with the wound fetishism of Crash. A doctor and an anatomy illustrator get to know each other in the most intimate way possible—which includes somehow making MRIs seem hot.—BK
4:20pm All Good Children Dir. Alicia Duffy. 2009. 80mins. Ireland/Belgium/France. Sent to live with relatives in the French countryside after his mother’s death, a young Irish boy’s emotions spiral out of his control. Beautifully weighted with a sense of building dread.—Ruth Welte
5:30pm For 80 Days Dirs. Jon Garaño and José María Goenaga. 2010. 106mins. Spain. Leaving aside the novelty of a Basque film, this story of two women whose teen flirtation is reignited 50 years later will look very familiar to anyone who hits Reeling; the out and proud unconventional lesbian who brings out the best in the seemingly straight reserved woman. More conventional than it thinks it is.—HS
* 5:30pm Ten Winters Dir. Valerio Mieli. 2010. 99mins. Italy. Two students meet in Venice and then reconnect once every year for a decade in one of those cruel screenwriter’s fantasies that contrives to keep two obvious soul mates apart until it hits feature runtime. But as these movies go, it’s touching, well-acted and even a tad realistic in delineating its characters’ wrong moves.—BK
5:40pm Lisanka See Fri 15.
5:45pm King’s Road See Sat 16.
* 6pm Twice A Woman See Sun 17.
6:15pm The Building Manager Dir. Periklis Hoursoglou. 2009. 92mins. Greece. A put-upon guy takes over the management of his mother’s apartment building and starts a flirtation in this low-key sort-of comedy, which leaves little impression.—HS
* 6:30pm Brother & Sister See Sun 17.
7pm The Tempest Dir. Julie Taymor. 2010. 110mins. USA. A whopper of a dud, Julie Taymor’s harsh, frequently incomprehensible adaptation of Shakespeare’s final play will remind you of the overcooked regality and dorky special effects of David Lynch’s Dune (not a good thing).—Joshua Rothkopf
* 7:50pm Made In Dagenham Dir. Nigel Cole. 2010. 112mins. U.K. A raucous but polite women-out-of-water tale about the female machinists who went on strike at Ford Dagenham in the late 1960s. Politically it’s light, but its mission is honest.—Dave Calhoun
8pm Shorts 2: Animation Nations Various dirs. 2010. 98mins. Various countries. A selection of animated short films from around the world.
8pm Trust See Sat 16.
8:10pm 5X Favela See Sun 17.
8:15pm Of Love and Other Demons See Fri 15.
8:20pm Shahada See Thu 14.
8:30pm Moving to Mars Dir. Mat Whitecross. 2009. 84mins. U.K./Thailand. Two families living in a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand are relocated to Sheffield, England. The culture-clash material is fascinating, but it’s hard not to wish Whitecross had spent another year or so filming—the movie feels as if it ends just as it’s getting started.—BK
9pm Devil’s Town See Thu 14.
10:15pm Skeletons See Fri 15.

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Tuesday 19
1:45pm Shorts 2: Animation Nations See Mon 18.
2pm White as Snow See Sat 16.
2:30pm Polish Bar See Sat 16.
3:15pm The Happy Housewife See Fri 15.
3:30pm The Middle of the World Dir. Jaime Ruiz Ibáñez. 2009. 92mins. Mexico. The premise—a mentally challenged teen is initiated into sex and becomes popular among the ladies of his small village—ought to lead to a lot of wacky sex-comedy jokes, but things turn uncomfortably dark in this uneven film.—HS
3:45pm The Days of Desire See Thu 14.
* 3:50pm Twice A Woman See Sun 17.
4pm Shorts 1: Illinois[e]makers See Sun 17.
4:15pm 5X Favela See Sun 17.
4:30pm Moving to Mars See Mon 18.
5:30pm The Building Manager See Mon 18.
5:50pm Abacus and Sword See Sat 16.
6pm Carancho See Sat 16.
6:10pm A Somewhat Gentle Man See Thu 14.
6:20pm Devil’s Town See Thu 14.
6:30pm Norman See Sun 17.
6:30pm Rabbit Hole Dir. John Cameron Mitchell. 2010. 96mins. USA. In filming David Lindsay-Abaire’s powerhouse play, Mitchell—apparently a gun for hire—hides any signs of personality and stays out of Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart’s way. That’s basically enough.—BK
8pm Trust See Sat 16.
* 8:15pm Ten Winters See Mon 18.
8:30pm Lisanka See Fri 15.
8:30pm Surprise Event! Something will be screened. That’s all we’ve got.
8:40pm The Matchmaker See Sun 17.
8:45pm For 80 Days See Mon 18.
9pm My Joy See Thu 14.

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Wednesday 20
6pm INTERCOM Best of the Fest A selection of the best films from the INTERCOM fest of corporate, branded, educational and interactive multimedia films.

For updates on any schedule changes and ticket information, go to chicagofilmfestival.org.

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