The Weekly Watch: Round 3 (Part One)
Something different: my dispatches from the Chicago Critics' Film Festival, back in May
Hello dear readers. This week I am diverging from the form of the past few weeks to publish a piece that I actually wrote for my erstwhile school newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, just before I graduated. Back in May, I had the incredible opportunity to attend my first ever film festival – the Chicago Critics’ Film Festival, or CCFF to real insiders – as a member of the press no less. For the better part of a week I travelled up Lake Shore Drive from Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago to Wrigleyville on the North Side, where the historic Music Box Theater played host to a series of screenings of new and to-be-released films. For some reason the piece never actually got out, so I decided to put it up here. Most of the films that were shown have since been released, so if any of them sound interesting you don’t have to wait months to see them!
To make the piece palatable, I’m dividing it into two parts, with one coming today and the other coming tomorrow. Stay tuned!
The Chicago Critics’ Film Festival (CCFF) returned for its 9th edition between May 13th and 19th. The festival, which bears the distinction of being the only film festival in the city curated entirely by film critics, took place at the historic Music Box Theater in Wrigleyville. It was a triumphant return to full scale for the CCFF, which returned last November in abbreviated form after a pandemic-induced hiatus in 2020.
Twenty-one new feature films and sixteen new shorts were screened over the course of the festival, in addition to anniversary screenings of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Boogie Nights. The new releases consisted mostly of films that debuted earlier this year at other film festivals such as Sundance and South by Southwest (SXSW), with releases scheduled for later in the calendar year. Some films featured post-screening Q&As with members of the cast and crew. This included both the opening film Cha Cha Real Smooth, which was introduced by writer, director and star Cooper Raiff, as well as the closing film I Love My Dad, whose cast of Patton Oswalt, Amy Landecker, Claudia Sulewski, and James Morosini (also the writer and director of the film) sat for a panel discussion following the screening.
Months of work go into programming, scheduling, and dealing with the logistics of the festival. “It’s the craziest thing I do,” said Brian Tallerico, president of the Chicago Film Critics’ Association, Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and one of the key organizers of the festival since its inception. “Every year, I think it might be my last,” he told me with a wry smile. When asked whether he would consider taking a step back in future years, he shook his head. “It’s too much fun.”
I was able to attend screenings of ten of the new feature films shown at the CCFF, and offer some thoughts on each of those films below.
Cha Cha Real Smooth
Cooper Raiff’s second feature is a poignant, hilarious, and authentic tale of millennial listlessness. Andrew (Cooper Raiff himself) moves back in with his mother and stepfather shortly after graduating college, without any real prospects besides a vague plan to save enough money to follow his girlfriend to Barcelona. In addition to an absolutely miserable fast-food job, Andrew picks up a gig as a “party starter” following a stellar job he does at hyping up a lifeless crowd at a bar mitzvah to which he escorts his younger brother. It is quite clear that his main incentive in taking the job is the chance to see a young mother named Domino (Dakota Johnson) again, after being completely spellbound by her on their first encounter. His unique ability to connect with her autistic daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt) leads to Domino hiring him as a sitter, sparking a friendship between them that eventually becomes… complicated. Cha Cha enchantingly captures the euphoria of falling in love, and how one’s emotions can supersede all logic and reason that ought to push one in the other direction. The sincerity with which Raiff and Johnson depict the budding attraction between their characters makes eventual, inevitable clash between the cloudy ecstasy of romance and the harsh reality of circumstances ever more devastating. Johnson is particularly spectacular at embodying the feeling that life has kind of passed her by. Her occasionally self-destructive behavior is born out of a desire to exert control, a fact that she is aware of and yet does not (or perhaps cannot) change. A Sundance sweetheart, Cha Cha Real Smooth was picked up by Apple for a sizable sum earlier this year, and debuted on Apple TV+ on June 17th.
Watcher
Imagine Lost in Translation, but instead of the young wife in a foreign land finding an escape from loneliness in a sardonic, lightly depressed Bill Murray, let her find it instead in the specter of a serial killer who she believes has chosen her as his next victim. Chloe Okuno’s thriller tracks Julia (Maika Monroe, of It Follows fame), an American actress trying to settle into a new life in Bucharest after her husband takes a position there. Her husband’s heavy workload means that she is forced to pass her days mostly in solitude, with much of her entertainment arising from gazing out her floor-to-ceiling windows at the lives of others. The entertainment value quickly dissipates when she comes to believe that a neighbor in an apartment across the way is nearly always looming in his window, seemingly watching her every move. Her budding dread does not take long to escalate into full-blown paranoia; she becomes convinced that she is being stalked, that eyes are on her at all times of day, and that it could well be the serial killer whose grisly murders of young women have been all over the news. A creeping camera heightens the pall of disquiet plaguing Julia, while the at times unbearably sluggish pace forces repeated wavering of the viewer between believing and doubting her. How much of what she sees (and thus what we see) is a projection of her boredom, an attempt to inject life into her dull existence? I wish the conclusion had taken a bit more time to unfold (there is a bit of whiplash between the lethargy of most of the film and the rapidity with which it wraps up), but on the whole Watcher’s high level of craft and supremely effective filmmaking makes for gripping, uneasy viewing. Another Sundance debut, it was released on June 3rd, and is now available on on demand.
Speak No Evil
What a vicious, cynical, mesmerizing film. Speak No Evil follows a Danish family which hits it off with a pleasant Dutch family on an idyllic Tuscan vacation, and months afterwards receives an invitation to come out to rural Netherlands for a weekend visit with their new friends. What ensues is a discomfiting, darkly comic evocation of the disappointment of realizing the inaccuracy of a first impression, taken to a terrifying extreme. It does not merely posit that new acquaintances are not who they initially seem, but that they are far, far worse than one could possibly imagine. In response to the question “Why is there evil in this world?” it proposes the brutally simple answer “Why not?” The camera work is unflashy and methodical, refusing to engage in any manipulative trickery to elevate the scares, as if to allow the gradually unfolding terrors to speak for themselves. Speak No Evil is certainly not for everyone, least of all the faint of heart. There is a moment of body horror at the film’s conclusion which I quite literally had to look away from, an unusual occurrence for my typically steely self. That being said, this is the rare horror film which deploys shock value not as an end in itself, but as a means of pressing home its themes; its shocks are not gratuitous, but earned. Speak No Evil was acquired by the horror streamer Shudder at Sundance, and is slated to debut in limited release on September 9th before a streaming release on September 15th.
To Leslie
Leslie (Andrea Riseborough) is broke. This would not be altogether unusual in her part of West Texas if it weren’t for the fact that Leslie also won the literal lottery five years ago. Her elation in the old, grainy news footage (“Local Woman Wins $500K Lottery” reads the chyron) that plays during the opening credits forms a stark contrast to her first appearance on screen, in which she is being thrown out of a seedy motel following a string of missed rent payments. Her previous actions have evidently alienated her son and former friends, all of whom view her with a mixture of disdain at having drank away all of the money and pity at her helpless continuing alcoholism. It is only someone with whom she has no history, a motel manager (Marc Maron) who has recently moved to her town (himself nursing old emotional scars), that is willing to give her a chance at a restart. The film is laced with gifted performers, featuring Stephen Root and Oscar-winning Alison Janney as exhausted friends of Leslie’s in addition to Riseborough and Maron. The tremendous acting talent on display cannot quite compensate for the frustrating, manipulative narrative, which is equal parts predictable and tiresome. Leslie’s inevitable redemption arc feels inorganic, stemming less from actual internal growth than from the film having to go somewhere. A shame, because Riseborough’s star turn is simply stunning; she somehow crafts Leslie to be irritating in her self-destructive antics and yet worthy of empathy. To Leslie received a SXSW debut and as yet does not have a distributor.
Emily the Criminal
How far would you go to pay off your student loans? For most college students, the furthest may involve selling one’s soul to become a corporate workhorse. For Emily (Aubrey Plaza), an art school graduate who happens to have a felony conviction against her for assault, the answer is a life of small-time crime as a “dummy shopper” – a mule who makes purchases with stolen credit card information on behalf of a scammer with ambitions to go straight (a charismatic Theo Rossi). Emily’s evident experience with adversity has given her a scrappy persona which happens to be well-suited to such a life; she quickly abandons her various gig-economy pursuits to get deeper into the scam. With increased stakes comes increasing danger, and director John Patton Ford is nearly as ruthless as the Safdie brothers in ramping up the anxiety factor as Emily’s risk-taking accelerates. Emily the Criminal has the veneer of a “message” movie, but its politics are not particularly coherent beyond its premise. It is better interpreted as a simple, tight, and effective thriller, peering into the upper portion of the underworld not because of some deeper morality it is trying to communicate, but because it is heaps of fun to do so. After its acquisition following a successful Sundance debut, Emily the Criminal debuted in theaters on August 12th.