COMING SOON

Eight-Legged Freaks, Home Movie, K-19: The Widowmaker, Never Again, Stuart Little 2


NEW THIS WEEK

* The Believer
Reviewed this issue. Didja hear the one about the Jewish Nazi? Varsity

* Best of WigglyWorld Super-8
A mini-movie medley with titles ranging from How Fireworks Work to Puppet Feast. Featuring the world premiere of Wes Kim's WigglyWorld-commissioned Super-8 trailer. Little Theatre

The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
Steve Irwin has somehow managed to volley his agonizing nature show into what promises to be an equally excruciating action-adventure film. The premise goes something like this: Steve wrestles a croc ("crikey!"), Steve involves himself in a wacky mix-up ("crikey!"), Steve is bitten by things ("crikey!"), Steve creates hilarity ("crikey!"), Steve gets a pink slip ("crikey!"), Steve receives an eviction notice ("crikey!"). Meridian 16, Lewis & Clark, Factoria

* Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn
It is, of course, difficult to remember when Sam Raimi (director of Spider-Man and For Love of the Game) was one of the really important guys of the cinema. But the first five minutes of this towering classic of comedy-horror, featuring the magnanimous Bruce Campbell as a hapless shop clerk who does battle with the demons of hell, should remind us all what Hollywood does when it discovers great talent. (SEAN NELSON) Egyptian

Halloween: Resurrection
Hang on a second... this is aNOTHER Halloween film? That makes five. Jamie Lee Curtis is in it, too, along with Busta Rhymes. The last one (Halloween H20--get it, 'cause 20 years?) was garbage, as were numbers two and three. So, the fact that this one deals with reality TV bodes what? Ill! Meridian 16, Lewis & Clark, Grand Alderwood, Woodinville 12, Factoria

Images of the Orient
By re-filming archival footage of British imperialists drinking tea in India until it clicks by in individual frames, directors Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi have managed to turn three minutes of film into a sixty-minute exercise in pure boredom. As it is completely unwatchable, there are probably about six thousand pages of self-congratulatory postmodernist blah-blah-blah to justify this film's existence skulking in a university press hardback somewhere. Yeah, and try getting the French to give you your six bucks back. For the terminally pompous only. (MATT FONTAINE) Little Theatre

Metropolis
Dude, if you put the needle down on Zepplin IV right as the gears start to turn, it's totally, like, the soundtrack! Synchronicity and shit! Dude! (Live score by the Jack Waste Orchestra.) Linda's

The Princess Bride
You mock my pain! Fremont Outdoor Movies

Reign of Fire
Reign of Fire reads like a flag-waving response to recent history. It's the year 2020, New York City's in flames again, and disagreeable dragons (read: terrorists) have destroyed Earth and extinguished most of the human population. It's up to swarthy British hero Quinn (Christian Bale) and American renegade Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), who sports a suspiciously unsoiled American flag patch on his bomber jacket, to save the survivors with vigilante actions. Evil must be stopped at any cost; there's even a scene where a glowing Van Zan, bathed in silver light, leaps toward the mouth of his napalm-breathing enemy. "Is that dragon's breath?" a child asks Quinn, as a fetid wind rumples his hair. Yes it is, and boy does it stink. (TIZZY ASHER) Metro, Meridian 16, Lewis & Clark, Grand Alderwood, Woodinville 12, Factoria

* The Road to Perdition
Reviewed this issue. Tom Hanks is a hit man with a heart... of stone. After his family gets slaughtered, Hanks and his one surviving son alight on a murder spree. Also starring Paul Newman and Jude Law. Guild 45, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12, Factoria

SKIN DEEP
Assembling a series of interviews with women of contemporary India, Skin Deep crafts six narrative portraits exploring the issue of women's personal perception. A discussion will follow the screening. 911 Media Arts Center

Spy Kids
When a brother and sister set out to rescue their parents (played by Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino)--and, subsequently, the world--from a malignant army of robotic children, they simultaneously deliver us straight into the jaws of humanity's most lethal foe, consumerism. The jet-packs are corporate fueled. The adrenaline rushes are company sponsored. And as we leave, the advertisers wave goodnight as they wish us, and especially the children, many many sweet McDreams. (SUZY LAFFERTY) Belltown Outdoor Cinema

Sunshine State
A cinematic soap opera of familial and neighborly drama centers around a small stretch of Florida coastline. Employing writer/director John Sayles' benchmark standards for dialogue and acting--the cast includes Edie Falco, Mary Steenburgen, Timothy Hutton, and Alan King--the film uses a tug of war over prime resort real estate to showcase both natural history and human frailty. Harvard Exit

Trouble in Paradise
A rare, not-available-on-video 35mm print of Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated 1932 comedy, with Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall as a couple of "elegant" thieves who plot to rip off a rich widow. Seattle Art Museum

Uzumaki
Reviewed this issue. A small Japanese town becomes obsessed with spirals in this manga-inspired horror film. Spirals? Yes, spirals. Grand Illusion

* Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Gene Wilder proves once again that he was indeed the greatest American actor of the 1970s with his titanic performance in this kinky, creepy, macabre, yet heartwarming musical classic. (SEAN NELSON) Paramount Theatre


CONTINUING RUNS

13 Conversations About One Thing
Despite being infinitely better than like-themed yuppie redemption stories (e.g. Pay It Forward), this interweaving meditation of faith, faith, and coincidence still feels like a random series of convenient super-narrative strategies, rather than the circumstantial tapestry it means to be. (SEAN NELSON)

* About a Boy
Directed by Paul and Chris Weitz (of American Pie infamy), this tale of male mid-life angst centers around Hugh Grant's Will, an idler of hilarious proportions who meets a 12-year-old boy whose depressed mother (Toni Collette) forces Will to provide guidance... except that the kid is far more mature than his begrudging father figure. (KATHLEEN WILSON)

* Amélie
A beautifully kinetic testament to human sweetness that has audiences lining up around the block and contrarians carping about its artificiality. I'm not saying you have to be an asshole not to like Amélie, but it would probably help.... When director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was in Seattle recently, I asked him if the criticism of the film's fairy-tale aesthetic bothered him. "In France," he laughed, "sometimes if you have too much style, they crucify you. They prefer films about men and women fighting in ugly kitchens. They think if you have style, if the film is lit well, or is poetic, then you are not making something true. The reverse is true. The style is important. I love to play with everything. I can't avoid it. You need the style to get to the emotion. It's actually more realistic, dans un certain sense. When you do a film, it's for you. Very egoist. But you can please people if you are sincere." (SEAN NELSON)

Bad Company
At the end of the 20th century, meteorites obsessed our cinematic nightmares (see Deep Impact, Armageddon). At the start of the 21st century, these "extinction level" meteorites have been replaced by nuclear bombs. But the nukes that spook our age are not the organized arsenal of the Cold War (Dr. Strangelove to War Games), but small, user-friendly gadgets that can fit comfortably into a laptop case. Also, these nuclear bombs are not managed by big governments but bought and sold on the open market, like used cars. This is the interesting part of Bad Company: it magnifies the most popular nightmare of the day. Outside of that, the film offers nothing but deep boredom. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* The Bourne Identity
All preliminary evidence tends to suggest that the film isn't worth bothering with. But I'll be hornswaggled if The Bourne Identity isn't a tight, satisfying exponent of its genre. The intrigue is intriguing, the tension is tense, and the action is artful. But let's be frank: What really makes the movie swing is the violence. The fight scenes, in which Bourne instantaneously "remembers" his training in the art of lethally kicking your ass, are killer. They make you clench your fists and punch the air in front of your seat. It's violence with consequences--as illustrated by Clive Owen's excellent death scene--but it's violence: clean, quick, and compelling, like movie violence ought to be. (SEAN NELSON)

City of Lost Souls
Souls makes much of its deliberate chaos, with displaced, dislocated characters, warring ethnic groups, and a plot that lurches and stalls, although not without a certain elegance. It's also full of violence that doesn't seem to come from anywhere, and since it's so hard to follow the different strands of who wants what from whom, the clashes of nationalities, the alignments and rifts, this violence is maddeningly free-floating, and all the scarier because of it. (EMILY HALL)

Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
Jodie Foster plays a stentorian nun (Catholic males: begin masturbating now), and Kieran Culkin plays the recipient of her stentority in this engaging tale of thwarted sexual energy in parochial school. (SEAN NELSON)

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
An insufferably Lifetime adaptation of the insufferably Oprah novel about an intergenerational cabal of insufferably quasi-Southern Gothic ladies. (TAMARA PARIS)

Elling
The success of this comedy in its native country, Norway, offers conclusive evidence that the closer one gets to the Arctic Circle the stranger the sense of humor becomes. Nothing in the world would convince anyone who lives near the equator that this film about two madmen who are attempting to reenter regular society as roommates is in the least bit funny. To its credit, Elling does have a few remarkable shots of Oslo. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Enough
Jennifer Lopez has had just about enough of her abusive husband (Bill Campbell from The Rocketeer), so she takes some self-defense classes so that she can murder him! You go, girl! Movie = garbage. (KATHLEEN WILSON)

* The Fast Runner
Although the filmmakers have lovingly reconstructed every detail of prehistoric Inuit culture--this being the first feature-length film entirely in the Inuktitut language--by recording life on the infinite tundra with digital-video intimacy, they keep the characters palpably real. Inside glowing igloos and behind roiling teams of sled dogs, the viewer sees a legend sprout from the very ice. I can't wait to go to sleep so I can dream that I am there again. Do not miss this extraordinary film. (MATT FONTAINE)

Hey Arnold! the Movie
A cartoon movie about a cartoon TV show. It's about time, too! I'm guessing Arnold is a nerd who outsmarts some greedy capitalists.

The Importance of Being Earnest
Rupert Everett looks terrible--his face appears to be sliding off his skull, and he's as neckless as a football player. And he should simply stop playing straight men, because he's the most unconvincing lover this side of Passions. Quibbles aside, this new adaptation is revolting. Thank God for Judi Dench, steamrolling her way through a terrible situation. (EMILY HALL)

* Insomnia
Every once in a great while, a film comes along that breaks the "remakes-are-always-shitty" rule. Christopher Noland's Insomnia is one of those films. Not only does it match its Danish original, but in many ways it tops it--no minor feat when you take into account the fact that it stars Robin Williams as the villain. Also starring Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, and the great Martin Donovan, Noland's thriller takes its time to unfold, giving each performer ample scenery to gnaw on before arriving at a tight finale. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* Italian for Beginners
The characters of Italian for Beginners begin in a state of despair. This being a romantic comedy, their lives begin to intersect through a series of coincidences--coincidences that could feel contrived, but due to the rough integrity of the script, performances, and direction (shaped in part by the monastic rigors of the Dogme 95 ethic), they feel like the organic waywardness of life. (BRET FETZER)

Juwanna Mann
I dunno. Juwanna punchinthenose?

* Late Marriage
What's best about director Dover's impressive debut chronicling the collision of sex, love, and family duty in modern-day Israel is how unsentimentally he portrays committed love, in all its forms. Whether recording a passionately ambivalent fuck between love-hungry singles or the perpetual resentment between married pairs, Late Marriage refuses to romanticize the struggles--or triumphs--of finding Love Everlasting. Plus, it's got the best sex scene I've seen in years. (DAVID SCHMADER)

Like Mike
The good news: Crispin Glover is in the film, playing the Fagin-like head of a "group home" for racially diverse orphans; this means the filmmakers aren't completely callous morons. The bad news: the movie, which concerns a kid who climbs up on power lines to retrieve some magic Nikes that make him a pro basketball star, is every bit as mediocre and irresponsible as the trailer suggests. It's insulting to kids, indefensible to parents, and abominable to everyone else. At one point fairly early on, I stopped taking notes on the film and just started noting the corporate logos I saw on screen. Here's the list: Nike, Krispy Kreme, Staples, Gatorade, AT&T, TNT, NBC, Jansport, Minute Maid, Coke, Sprite, Sheraton, Crystal Geyser, Mars, Spalding, ESPN, Sharp, Rite Aid, Vicks, USA Today, Washington Mutual, Phat Farm, Scrabble, Yahoo, Independence Day (the movie). I may have missed a few.... (SEAN NELSON)

Lilo & Stitch
Most people will be going to see this film because (a) it's Disney, (b) it's faux-vintage Disney, replete with hand-painted watercolor backgrounds, or (c) because he or she is five years old. You, however, will go to see this film because the protagonist, a little orphan child named Lilo, sits around her bedroom listening to rock and roll and commanding her big sister to "Leave me alone to die!" The plot is ripped from Frankenstein, and then tweaked to make the mutant adorable and intent on reform. Not too shabby, for a Disney flick--Lilo is the studio's best since Aladdin, and it's a tad less racist, too. (ANNIE WAGNER)

* Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Right down to Frodo's face on the poster, Fellowship is all about rising above doubts (rather than stepping up to convictions), and all the special effects in the world can't convey that. (SEAN NELSON)

Men in Black II
Aside from a few signs of life, this film is an exercise in the going through of motions. Will Smith does his ingratiating narcissism shtick, Tommy Lee Jones shows up after half an hour and does his stony hound dog routine, and digital spaceships crash in clouds of digital dust. When director Barry Sonnenfeld is living up the B-movie aspects of the movie's trappings--the sense of being there just to provide a foil for the special effects--Men in Black II (and no, I can't call it MIIB because fuck you) gives you the momentary sense that it was made by creative people with a good sense of humor. But all the humor is self-aware, and self-directed. It's like the whole joke is that the movie was even made. I call that crass. (SEAN NELSON)

* Minority Report
Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise team up for this well-made futuristic thriller, based on a story by Phillip K. Dick, and featuring several special effects that are identical to ones used in Attack of the Clones. Report works best when Tom Cruise is actually running--he's a future-crimes cop being set up to commit murder--and when the maddeningly glorious Samantha Morton is actually freaking out. Complex in good ways, simple in others, the film marks Spielberg's second attempt at allegorical Kubrick paean (check the allusions to Clockwork Orange) that ends with a cop-out. Still, a worthy effort, and much more intriguing than most sci-fi. (SEAN NELSON)

Monsoon Wedding
At first, it seems like Mira Nair is just doing family drama. The film is stylish, brisk, witty, and beautifully filmed. But within the patchwork of marriage melodrama, Monsoon Wedding presents a subversive argument about the insidiousness of progress and its fluid relationship with tradition. (SEAN NELSON)

Mr. Deeds
The fundamental structure that this production preserves from Capra's original--and perhaps the only plausible grounds for that film's selection in the first place--is a roller coaster of sentimentality. Sandler's take on the sentimental is a world apart from Gary Cooper's; more sly than earnest, the requisite sappy ending functions to reassure rather than stir the viewer. (ANNIE WAGNER)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
This romantic comedy is based on the one-woman show of Second City alumna Nia Vardalos, who also directs. It tells the story of 30-year-old Toula who searches for love and self-realization.

The New Guy
Why is the obnoxious-dweeb-turned-obnoxious-chick-magnet plot still selling? Why do people pay money for this shit? Why? Why? No. Tell me. Why? (MEG VAN HUYGEN)

* The Powerpuff Girls
This movie sets out to explain the suspicious circumstances by which Professor X (the Puff Daddy) came to give room and board to three female preschoolers for whom he carries not so much as a birth certificate or a even a receipt--somewhat unsettling in these times of high-profile kidnapped white girls. Nonetheless the opening credits of the TV show bang out this story in about twenty seconds; it takes the movie 80 minutes. Consequently, this movie's not at all as much fun as watching the show because the overall pace is far less frenetic. Still, comparisons to preposterous greatness aside, this motion picture is mightily worthy. (KUDZAI MUDEDE)

Pumpkin
At first I thought this Christina Ricci vehicle about the consequences that occur when an uptight sorority girl falls in love with a "challenged athlete" was a savage parody of those "Something About a Half-Wit" films that grind the butts of the mentally retarded for cheap laughs from audiences who should know better. By the time I was in the ladies room, I'd revised my opinion to include the possibility that this was actually a sophisticated spoof of those ubiquitous Channel for Weeping Women films that seek to beatify retarded people simply for being born. It wasn't until I was sitting in my car that the possibility occurred to me that it was neither. What if it was just a bunch of retard jokes hiding behind a cloaking device of intellectualized irony? Does that mean I'm going to hell for laughing my head off? (TAMARA PARIS)

The Rookie
In The Rookie, Dennis Quaid and Disney bring to the screen the real-life story of a baseball player-turned Texas high-school science teacher-turned baseball player. (SONIA RUIZ)

Scooby-Doo
It's a goddamned shame is what it is. (MEG VAN HUYGEN)

Spider-Man
As filmed by Sam Raimi, Spider-Man trots out a predictable (and cloyingly Victorian) boy-girl story that wastes Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) as a screaming damsel in distress, Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) as a cackling villain, and Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) spouting a bunch of pre-fab platitudes. (JOSH FEIT)

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
A cartoon about magic horses. If you like magic horses, you'll LOVE this cartoon.

* Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones
Attack of the Clones delivers exactly what you should expect from a Star Wars movie. It is big. It is fun. It is an event. From the opening surge of John Williams' familiar score, to the final optical zooming out to the words "Directed by George Lucas," Episode II lives up to the Star Wars myth--a myth that has always meant "stupid fun." Don't agree? Go back and watch the first three. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Sum of All Fears
Despite all appearances, there are two good things about the new Tom Clancy movie with Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan. One is a bold plot twist that comes so suddenly that it reconfigures the whole experience in an instant, and almost tricks you into thinking the film is better than it is. The other good thing, almost a great thing, is the casting of Liev Scrheiber in the role of John Clark, CIA spook, and all-around spy genius. (SEAN NELSON)

Time of Favor
Joseph Cedar's Time of Favor, which swept the 2000 Israeli Academy Awards, wants desperately to qualify as a sensitive appraisal of life on an Israeli settlement. Unfortunately, the film delivers this meditation wrapped up in a heart-stopping thriller cum defiant romance--and there's nothing like sex masquerading as rebellion to weigh a story down. (ANNIE WAGNER)

* Undercover Brother
At first glance, Undercover Brother just looks like a Blacksploitation Austin Powers. Which it is. Fortunately, it happens to be funnier that Austin Powers. No, seriously. I mean it. Littered with gags, some of which fire, many of which don't, it is perfect summer fare--a grand opportunity to get baked and spend an afternoon at the movies (if you're want to do that--and I'm not condoning such behavior, mind you). The story? Does it matter? (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Unfaithful
An Adrian Lyne film, in which another brand-new black SUV speeds down a street freshly hosed down to produce the perfect pointless sheen while Diane Lane and Olivier Martinez make soft-lit, glossy love and Richard Gere pines commercially. (TAMARA PARIS)

Windtalkers
Nicolas Cage plays Sergeant Joe Enders, assigned to keep Private Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a "Windtalker", (Navajo code breaker) out of harm's way. This involves killing many, many Japanese soldiers, along with single-handedly causing more explosions than were seen in the entire Pacific Theater during the war. The violence is top-notch, but during quiet moments and simple transitions, the film is almost laughably bad. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* Y Tu Mamá También
As two Mexican teenagers frantically fuck, the boy, Tenoch (Diego Luna), pleads/demands that the girl not screw any Italians on her impending European trip with her best friend. Meanwhile, that best friend is having rushed pre-departure sex with her boyfriend, Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), who is also Tenoch's best friend. When the girls have left, we settle down to watch these two boys spend an aimless summer. Everything gets thrown sideways when they meet a sexy older woman (that is to say, in her 20s) named Luisa. Y Tu Mamá También is a brilliant, incisive core sampling of life in Mexico. It's both slender and profound; the movie's greatest pleasures are often its smallest ones-even the title comes from a tossed-off bit of banter. Any individual moment could be trivial, silly, pointless, even embarrassing--but the accumulation of moments has a devastating scope. (BRET FETZER)