Slack Bay (May 27th and 28th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[SLACK BAY screens Saturday May 27th at 7:10 pm and Sunday May 28th at 3:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Class warfare and cannibalism collide in the deadpan black comedy SLACK BAY. The setup is that tourists are disappearing from the small French village of Ma Loutte. The local constabulary, the Laurel and Hardy-esque pair of Inspector Machin (Didier Després) and Malfoy (Cyril Rigaux) are at a loss.  

The audience, however, is very much aware of what is happening and who is responsible. Call this a SPOILER ALERT if you will, but the movie shows us early on that the Brufort family – headed by patriarch L'Eternel (Thierry Lavieville) – are murdering and eating hapless vacationers. Mom (Caroline Carbonnier) doesn't even bother cooking the meat, serving up bloody red plates of tasty foot for her ravenous progeny.

Camille Claudel, 1915 (January 9th and 10th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 screens Thursday, January 9th at 8:35 pm, Friday January 10th at 7:00 pm, and Saturday January 11th at 7:20 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Milan Paurich

Even if you’ve never seen--or wanted to see--a film by French auteur Bruno Dumont, CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 is worth seeking out for its fearless lead performance by Juliette Binoche alone. Dumont has been racking up festival prizes (including two Cannes Grand Jury wins for HUMANITE and FLANDERS) and international critical plaudits for nearly two decades without making a dent in the U.S. market. His one foray onto American shores--2003’s California-lensed TWENTYNINE PALMS--is best forgotten.

Maybe it’s because Dumont’s films seem too intimidating with their deliberate pacing and tendency to reduce the human species to the level of barnyard animals, especially while fucking. Or perhaps it’s just because most domestic arthouse habitues don’t like being challenged. (Hard to believe that equally “difficult” foreign-language directors like Alain Resnais and Ingmar Bergman were once furious topics of conversation--and debate--at tony American cocktail parties.) As a result, they’ve missed out on one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary world cinema. 

Elles (August 10th and 11th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[ELLES screens Friday August 10th at 9:35 pm and Saturday August 11th at 7:10 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Its back-to-school time (or, if you're an American gun owner, Open Season), and while a college education in Ohio's no-jobs economy no longer means anything as far as material worth, the Cleveland Cinematheque is still on duty trying to provide University Circle youth reasons to fork over all that tuition. Case in point is Friday and Saturday's all-prostitution-international-movie double feature, right there on campus. In glorious Tramp-o-Rama, I guess. Programmers have paired an interesting, if lurid documentary WHORE'S GLORY, with - no not that Italian sexist omnibus of yesteryear THE OLDEST PROFESSION - but rather a Euro-flick prostitution drama with unimpeachable feminist credentials, ELLES.

If you mentally checked out of this review when you stumbled over the word "feminist," two things: you're probably a guy (or an uncommonly smart female) and you know where ELLES is going, pretty much into victimhood. Yes, guilty as charged, and if ever Match.com sets you up on a date with director Malgorzata Szumowska, don't say Charles didn't warn you.

Chocolat (February 11th at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium)

[CHOCOLAT screens Saturday February 11th at 7:00 pm and 9:30 pm at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

The student film society at Case apparently has deemed fit to revive CHOCOLAT as a proper cinematic St. Valentine's Day special. What, all the prints of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE already rented out? Come on, they just outfitted Strosacker Auditorium for theater-quality digital projection setup. Surely some faculty's got a bootleg DVD of FACES OF DEATH or some torture-porn more appropriate to the holiday? Yes, I'm cynical and bitter this time of year.