Improbable as it may seem, John Waters has become a Cincinnati holiday tradition. A filmmaker, writer, artist, and sharp-witted comedian/social critic who delivers his often profane sarcasm with a warm smile, he began his seduction of Christmastime Cincinnati last year with a sold-out show at Clifton’s Ludlow Garage. He returns to the same venue for two shows this month, December 13 and 14. As of this story’s deadline, there still were some tickets left for the first show; the second is sold out.
The Esquire Theatre just down the street is tying in with Waters’ appearance by launching an ambitious film retrospective honoring him, beginning December 6 with Waters’ most notorious and legendary film, Pink Flamingos (1972). With its outré and sometimes shockingly raunchy humor, the movie isn’t for kids. It introduced the world—or at least the midnight-film crowd of the era—to the great Divine and her unusual snacking habits. I saw it at a midnight show in Boston at the time, and the crowd went blushingly wild.
I rewatched it upon a 1997 re-release—it was the first film I reviewed as movie critic for The Denver Post—and this time it seemed to be a parable of the Manson Family. I gave it a four-star rating (the top), leaving the paper’s entertainment editor to wonder if he chose the right person for the job. I’ll be interested to see if I still feel the same way now.
Other Waters movies in the Esquire series are:
- Female Trouble at 7:30 p.m. December 9. Divine is back in this 1977 release as a high school student who gets pregnant and turns to crime, in a film dedicated to Manson Family member Charles “Tex” Watson.
- Hairspray at 7:30 p.m. December 11. This 1988 film is an endearing, socially pointed comedy about kids in Baltimore trying to integrate a local American Bandstand-like TV dance show. With his typical odd casting (Divine, Sonny Bono, Jerry Stiller, and 1950s-era R&B singer Ruth Brown), this was Waters’ biggest hit and inspired a Broadway musical.
- Desperate Living at 10 p.m. January 3. This 1977 film was the third in Waters’ “Trash Trilogy” after Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. Perhaps owing something to Jean Genet’s play The Maids, a housekeeper kills her suburban employer’s husband and then they run off together, only to be caught and sent to a shantytown prison rife with sex. It’s classified as a “black comedy” on Wikipedia.
- Cry Baby at 7:30 p.m. January 3. Success didn’t exactly spoil Waters’ warped humor, but it made his films more accessible and widely seen and allowed him to work with bigger names. From 1990, this post-Hairspray romantic comedy-with-music is about a rebellious teen and his crowd and stars Johnny Depp in his first big role after becoming a teen heartthrob on the TV series 21 Jump Street.
- A Dirty Shame at 7:30 p.m. January 13. As accepted and ubiquitous a pop culture figure as Waters has become in the 21st century, this 2004 sex comedy was his last film (so far). An impressively odd group of actors (Johnny Knoxville, Tracey Ullman, Chris Isaak, Patricia Hearst) divide into two camps, compulsive sex enthusiasts and square conservatives, in this enjoyable romp.
Diane Janicki of Theatre Management Corp., which operates the independent Esquire and Mariemont theaters, says Waters is a perfect fit for them, especially the Esquire. That’s surprising, given that Waters’ early films, particularly, are very edgy … and at one time Cincinnati wasn’t. “Reading about John Waters, the words I was thinking describe him were ‘radically inclusive,’ ” Janicki says. “To me, that’s what I would use to describe the Esquire. So it seems like a good fit. We’ve moved back into being a repertory house and we have rooms to fill, and this is the exact kind of event to fill this house.”
John Waters film series tickets and more info here.
Dinner in America
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7 p.m. December 3 at the Garfield Theatre, downtown.]
Cincinnati World Cinema presents a film described by Variety as a mix of anarchic humor and misfit romance. In a 2022 New York Times review, Concepción de León wrote, “Rage is at the center of Dinner in America, a film by Adam Rehmeier in which the central characters are at odds with the police, bank tellers, their parents, two-timing bosses and bullying jocks. Fleeing from the cops, Simon (Kyle Gallner) is a punk rocker who leads with anger and violence. Patty (Emily Skeggs) is a naïve 20-year-old eager to break out of her mundane existence, using rock music as an escape. They help each other find their way in a community where both are outcasts.
Clueless
[Screens at 7:30 p.m. December 4 at the Esquire Theatre. Presented by Leontine Cinema.]
The local organization presenting films directed by women has a wonderfully engaging pop hit in 1995’s Clueless, directed by Amy Heckerling. It features the delightful Alicia Silverstone as Cher, a popular Beverly Hills High School student who’s also a bit of a busybody when it comes to arranging romances. Also of note is Paul Rudd as her ex-stepbrother. This film holds up as well as the real-life Cher has.
Eyes Wide Shut
[Screens at 7:30 p.m. December 10 at the Esquire. Presented by Conveyor Belt Books.]
Stanley Kubrick’s last film, released in 1995, was a critical and audience disappointment at first. The centerpiece, a cult’s “wild” masked orgy attended by a doctor (Tom Cruise) after his wife (Nicole Kidman) confesses to wanting an affair, seemed awfully dated and even square by film standards of the time. But now, almost 30 years later, it’s time to revisit and reconsider if the film improves with time, as so many others have.
Nosferatu
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 25 at the Esquire.]
This cinematic horror story has survived and even thrived in the decades since it first appeared as a masterpiece of expressionist German silent movie in 1922. (So, too, has its source material, Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.) In the November installment of this monthly film column, I wrote about a screening of the silent film at the Esquire with music by Radiohead added to serve as a score.
There has also been one gloomily terrific newer Nosferatu movie—Werner Herzog’s 1979 version—and now we’ll see if the wonderfully imaginative director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman) can reinvent this story in a memorable way. Starring Bill Skarsgård, the in-demand Lily Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and William Dafoe, this title is getting a big holiday season push.
A Complete Unknown
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 25 at the Mariemont.]
Another high-profile Christmas Day release is this Bob Dylan biopic that focuses on his early years and 1965 transformation from acoustic folk singer to Rock & Roll God, which he’s been ever since. As the always mysterious Dylan, the film features the most in-demand young actor today, Timothée Chalamet. There’s a big cast playing some notable musicians and others who figured in Dylan’s life, such as Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, Laura Kariuki as Mavis Staples, Michael Chernus as Dave Van Ronk, and more.
The film is directed by James Mangold, who previously made Walk the Line, an appealing music biopic about Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) and June Carter (an Oscar-winning performance by Reese Witherspoon). He also wrote Complete Unknown’s screenplay with Jay Cocks, who’s worked with Marin Scorsese on several films. Complete Unknown is based on Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric!; one of Wald’s previous books, a collaboration of sorts with the early Greenwich Village folk singer Van Ronk called The Mayor of MacDougal Street, influenced the Coen Brothers’ fictional movie about the Greenwich Village folk scene, Inside Llewyn Davis. So this film would appear to have good genes.
Flow
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 6 at the Esquire.]
What a great time this is for animated films for adults, following the recent Memoirs of a Snail, Robot Dreams, and Chicken for Linda. Flow is Latvia’s submission for this year’s International Feature Oscar and, according to a New York Times description, “In the wake of a flood, a cat, a lemur, a bird, a dog and a capybara (!) board a boat for destinations unknown in this animated festival breakout.” One other unusual thing—it’s a wordless movie, since animals don’t talk.
Reviewing it for The Los Angeles Times, Robert Abele was deeply moved: “One of the year’s richest discoveries, Flow belongs as much to a timeline of animal-centric masterpieces as it does the history of animated indies. And in its simple, generous spirit of giving these creatures palpable narrative power, there’s a profundity: Flow might only be imagining their coping skills without us, but it’s a charming, poignant vision of community and perseverance we could stand to be inspired by.”
Queer
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 13 at the Esquire.]
This new film is from prolific Italian director Luca Guadagnino, who’s made such distinguished and often-pointedly sexual films as A Bigger Splash, Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All (filmed in Cincinnati), and Challengers. Here, he adapts a William Burroughs novella set in 1950s Mexico City about an alienated American (Danile Craig) who is attracted to a young man (Drew Starkey). Burroughs actually lived for a while in Mexico City, where he famously shot and killed his wife while imitating shooting an apple off her head.
The End
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 20 at the Esquire.]
Joshua Oppenheimer, a European-based American filmmaker, made an Oscar nominated documentary in 2012, The Act of Killing, that needs a little background explanation. After Indonesia achieved independence from the Dutch following World War II, a nationalist named Sukarno took the helm and was friendly with the Soviet Union during the Cold War years. A failed coup in 1965 was blamed on the country’s powerful Communist Party, and when the right-wing military leader Suharto took control there followed a purge of Communists and others with leftist affiliations that killed hundreds of thousands. Oppenheimer’s film revisits that history with a shocking twist: He solicits those who committed those killings to stage reenactments for the film! Talk about staring into the face of a murderer! If you’ve seen The Act of Killing, it’s hard to forget.
Oppenheimer went on to direct some other documentary films, and now, in a dramatic career turn, he’s made a narrative film, The End, focused on a wealthy family that survives in an underground shelter for two decades after an apocalypse destroys the world. Worse, the family helped cause the world’s ruination. Oh, it’s also a musical, with songs co-written by Oppenheimer. Somehow, it seems only right that Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon star.
Paris, Texas
[Screens at 6 p.m. December 20 and 3 p.m. December 21 at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville.]
The Speed Museum’s superb cinematheque is presenting an important “anniversary restoration” version of Wim Wenders’ great American movie to celebrate its 40th anniversary. As the Speed website says, “Wim Wenders’ iconic Cannes winner from 1984, exquisitely photographed by Dutch master Robby Müller, is a powerful statement on self-discovery, loss, redemption and the unbreakable bonds of love. Outstanding performances by Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski, a masterful screenplay by Sam Shepard and Ry Cooder’s haunting soundtrack have contributed to Paris, Texas’ cult film status and its spell, even 40 years later. The new 4K restoration makes it shine more than ever.
Woodward Theater Screenings
Leontine Cinema presents 2017’s Lady Bird, the first directorial effort by indie actor Greta Gerwig, on December 2. It’s a tender and observant story of a mom (Laurie Metcalf) coping with a daughter (Saoirse Ronan) who can be passionately difficult. Gerwig went on to direct Little Women and Barbie.
The Cincinnati Palestine Solidarity Coalition presents a new movie, No Other Land, on December 3. The film is directed by a collective of four young Palestinians and Israelis and tells the story of a young Palestinian who grew up on West Bank land controlled by Israel forming a partnership with an Israeli journalist to resist attempts to force his removal from his home.
Mike Douglas had a daytime talk show that, at its height in the 1970s, could draw 40 million viewers, and so he attracted big stars as guests. But even by those standards, it was a surprise that John Lennon and Yoko Ono served as guest hosts and programmers for a week in 1972, bringing in Cincinnati-born radical Jerry Rubin, comedian George Carlin, rock pioneer Chuck Berry (who performed with Lennon), and others. Day Time Revolution, a new documentary showing December 10, revisits that amazing week in television and lets you hear the great music played there.
One of the major documentary hits of this century’s first decade, My Architect: A Son’s Journey, tells how its director, Nathaniel Kahn, searched for the hidden history of his father, the acclaimed architect Louis Kahn, who he never had the chance to know well. Alison Tavel’s new Resynator, screening on December 16, tells a similarly compelling story about her father’s death when she was just 10 weeks old. He was considered a genius inventor, and she never knew much about him, but after discovering a “lost” prototype synthesizer he invented she decided to search out his story.
On the basis of his 2016 Oscar winning film Moonlight and acclaimed follow-up If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins has become one of the top U.S. directors. On December 17, Voice of Black Cincinnati is screening his first movie, Medicine for Melancholy (2008). According to the Woodward’s website, “Wyatt Cenac (of The Daily Show) and Tracey Heggins star in this love story about two African-American twentysomethings, their one-night stand, and a revealing day-after in rapidly gentrifying San Francisco.”
All Woodward screenings are at 7:30 p.m. Get tickets and more info here.
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