CCFF SPOTLIGHT
“Movie Houses Are Temples For Me” | Viggo Mortensen, The Dead Don’t Hurt
Both a tragic love story and a nuanced depiction of the conflict between revenge and forgiveness, Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt is a portrait of a passionate woman determined to stand up for herself in an unforgiving world dominated by ruthless men.
Out of the Inkwell: A Celebration of Fleischer Studios
Bridging the gap between the technical innovations of the works produced by Walt Disney, often serving as testing grounds for techniques that he would utilize in his feature films, and the laugh-a-minute antics favored by the output at Warner Brothers, the animated shorts produced by Max and Dave Fleischer for the studio that bore their name from the early 1920s until 1942 continue to dazzle the eye and tickle the funny bone in equal measure. Alas, while a number of their creations have more than stood the test of time, the Fleischers and their contributions to the art of animation have sometimes been overlooked. Happily, an initiative to locate and produce 4K restorations of the Fleischer Studio’s output, spearheaded by Max’s granddaughter, Jane Fleischer Reid, has been on-going for the last couple of years.
Bringing Out The Dead
Watching Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead today, it seems insane that it is not regularly recognized as one of the major works from one of the greatest American filmmakers of our time. And yet, even as once-overlooked projects of his like The King of Comedy and After Hours have gone on to be reevaluated and praised in the years since they debuted, here is one that remains one of the lesser-heralded titles in his admittedly spectacular filmography with even scholars who should know better too often relegating to little more than a cursory mention when discussing his work. We at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, on the other hand, feel that it is a work eminently worthy of reappraisal and hope that after seeing it here—in the miracle of 35MM, no less—that you will feel the same way.