This week the Gene Siskel Film Center screens seven “energetic, irreverent independent comedies that have been turning heads and generating cult audiences at festivals including Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, and CineVegas.” Following are revews of selected films; for a complete schedule see siskelfilmcenter.org.
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Adventures of Power It’s such a fine line between clever and stupid, and this Spinal Tap-caliber cult item maintains a perfect balance. Writer-director Ari Gold stars as Power, a gangling spaz whose compulsive air-drumming to classic rock makes him village idiot of a New Mexico copper town beset by labor strife. Fired from the mine and estranged from his union-leader father (Michael McKean), he sets out to conquer big-league air-drumming in New Jersey. Bizarrely imaginative sight gags and laugh lines are timed like a Neal Peart solo, but the film also inexplicably succeeds as melodrama and heartfelt pro-labor statement. The wonderful cast includes the sublime Jane Lynch (Best in Show) and a raft of people we should have heard of already. 90 min. —Cliff Doerksen Mon 12/7, 7:45 PM
Trust Us, This Is All Made Up One weekend a month, Second City alumni David Pasquesi and TJ Jagodowski headline at New York’s Barrow Street Theatre, where director Alex Karpovsky (Woodpecker) captured a performance for this behind-the-scenes documentary. Unlike players at their alma mater, who develop comic ideas in rehearsal and assemble skits into long-running revues, the quicksilver “TJ & Dave” improvise something new each night, without conferring beforehand on how to fill their roughly 55 minutes on stage. As seen here, their risky, cerebral approach can result in three-act comedy as dizzying as a high-wire act, but the movie’s first 18 minutes, in which the actors discuss their process, isn’t as revealing as their postperformance recap. 80 min. —Andrea Gronvall Karpovsky, Pasquesi, and Jagodowski will attend the screening. Thu 12/10, 9 PM
