Arthouse films

Opening this week on the local film society circuit:

'Showman: Albert Maysles Retrospective' Rating 3 out of 4

Three perceptive "direct cinema" works by filmmakers Albert and David Maysles document the American cultural scenes of the 1960s and 1970s in "Showman: Albert Maysles Retrospective." It is just a sampler, not an overview of an oeuvre praised for its humanist detail and behind-the-scenes access.

"Showman" (1963) is 53 minutes of verite observation of film producer Joseph E. Levine, a show-biz pro who handled the U.S. distribution of Vittorio De Sica's "Two Women." We see the ballyhoo around the film's star, Sophia Loren, winning a best actress Oscar in 1962, and a pitch for the poster for her next film, "Madame." The tagline begins: "Sophia ... so female." On radio, we see Levine defend the film "Hercules" that host David Susskind calls "a kind of an insult to movie intelligence." This incisive profile of a deal-making jet-setter anticipates "Salesman" (1968), the Maysles' film about door-to-door Bible salesmen.

In "Dali's Fantastic Dream" (1966), Salvador Dali plays to news cameras in New York City as he creates a poster for 20th Century Fox's film "Fantastic Voyage." The outlandish painter poses with shotgun-toting guards when he transports his commissioned art in an armored car. This amounts to six minutes of show with no man. The Maysles fail to get past Dali's act of self-caricature.

"Christo's Valley Curtain" (1973) portrays an artist and a showman: Christo, accompanied by his wife Jeanne-Claude. Sharing a co-directing credit with Ellen Hovde, the Maysles watch ironworkers unfurl nine tons of orange nylon fabric across a quarter-mile valley in Rifle Gap, Colo., for the spectacular "Valley Curtain," the first

of five ephemeral Christo art projects filmed by Albert and David Maysles, and after David's death in 1987, by Albert with other collaborators. This one may be the best.

No MPAA rating. Total running time: 87 minutes. Screening at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Chicago Filmmakers.

'Sundance Film Festival Short Film Collection 2009' Rating 3 out of 4

The Sundance Film Festival reports that 5,632 short films were entered in 2009. Ten of the best come to Chicago for a two-night run. About half of these animated and live-action films, plus one documentary, already screened here in various festivals, but deserve another chance to reach an audience on the big screen.

"John and Karen" is Matthew Walker's touching animated tale of a polar bear named John telling a penguin named Karen that he is sorry for some things he said. They make plans to go see a movie on Saturday night. The drawing and voicing of this wry four-minute vignette from the United Kingdom are pitch perfect.

"Steel Homes" by British director Eva Weber is a poetic follow-up to her earlier documentary about the men high up in tiny cabs operating cranes at London construction sites. Now, in this melancholy take on mortality, she contemplates self-storage units where people sort through the things of their lives.

"I Am So Proud Of You" by American animator Don Hertzfeldt relates the absurdly downbeat life and death of the stick figure Bill. Flashes of non-animated abstract color imagery point to a bigger, better picture beyond. "Countertransference" by Madeleine Olnek is a short live-action drama about a woman overcoming abjectly low esteem and her toxic therapist. Destin Daniel Cretton's "Short Term 12" is a fictional slice-of-life set in a juvenile facility treating disturbed teens.

Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve depicts the gravity of gluttony in "Next Floor": A Bunuelian banquet heavy on meat crashes through one floor after another, as the posh guests keep eating. Nadejda Koseva's "Omelette" shows a Bulgarian woman buying three eggs for a doomed meal in inflationary times.

No MPAA rating. Total running time: 115 minutes. Screening Monday and Tuesday at the Music Box.

'Into Temptation' Rating 2 out of 4

Jeremy Sisto, an actor raised in Chicago who got his start at the Goodman Theatre, plays Father John Buerlein in this middling indie drama written and directed by Patrick Coyle. "Into Temptation" is a routine tale of a moody do-gooder priest in a downscale parish.

One day a blond woman wearing a crucifix around her neck comes into his confessional, interrupting his work on a crossword puzzle. It's been 19 years since her last confession; she was 12 when her stepfather started raping her; and she plans to commit suicide on her birthday. And she says she's an Aries. For the rest of the film Father Buerlin searches Minneapolis bars and porn joints for leads to this upscale prostitute with "a unique voice."

"Into Temptation" suffers from a simplistic color code. Blond is the hair color of the elusive Linda (Kristin Chenoweth) as well as Buerlin's high school sweetheart, and the recipient of a non-random act of kindness he performs at the end. Black is the skin color of everyone who enables his quest in the city's underworld: a librarian, a hooker, a pimp and an ex-boxer.

Black-and-white is the format of bookend scenes that will eventually explain why this prostitute sought out this priest. It's a minor moment of illumination. Another priest in the film (Brian Baumgartner from "The Office") encounters a more "unique" character, if Coyle is considering a sequel: "I had a woman who confessed her confessional lies. Said she'd been making it up for years. Catholic Munchausen syndrome."

No MPAA rating. Running time: 95 minutes. Opening today for a two-week engagement at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Bill Stamets is a Chicago-based free-lance writer and critic.

Color Photo: "Into Temptation"