5 Dolls For an August Moon, Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie, Just a Kiss, Moonlight Mile, Old School, Red Dragon, Run Lola Run, Siddhartha, Super-8 VS. DV Deathmatch, Wasabi, Youth Voices Shout Out!

8 Women
Reviewed this issue. Harvard Exit

* Das Experiment
The good news is, this movie's about a journalist who takes part in an interesting scientific study of power dynamics. In the study, half of the volunteers play guards and the other half play prisoners. The bad news is, this study was done in real life, and they had to stop the experiment because the "guards" got too violent. If you believe that humans have a core of decency within them, you may want to skip this one. Varsity

Secretary
Reviewed this issue. Meridian 16, Metro

Skins
Skins is set on the most impoverished reservation in America, and describes the day-to-day world of a reservation cop (Eric Schweig) who has an eccentric understanding of the law and how it should be administered. He is not a "bad lieutenant," but his sense of right and wrong is complicated by the maze and layers of misery that he encounters while on and off duty. At the end of Skins, we don't so much have a story or a clear idea of the cop than an impression of the deep sorrow that suffocates him and his fallen community. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Harvard Exit

Sweet Home Alabama
Reviewed this issue. Grand Alderwood, Woodinville 12, Factoria, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Majestic Bay

The Tuxedo
As everyone knows, what makes a kung fu film great is that sooner rather than later they get to the point: the dazzling dance of attack and defense. The Tuxedo is a bad kung fu film because it spends too much time and energy and developing its sorry plot (a spy spoof) and the fight scenes (the very point of the movie!) are worth shit. The Tuxedo sucks like nobody's business. (Charles Mudede) Metro, Pacific Place, Lewis & Clark, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12, Factoria, Oak Tree

The Wedding Banquet
The film that shot Ang Lee to international prominence, 1993's Academy-Award-nominated The Wedding Banquet is something of a Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? reversal, this time centered around a queer Taiwanese immigrant to New York who enters into a marriage of convenience in order to remain closeted to his conservative family back home. Seattle LGBT Community Center

* Baraka
This movie is what's known in cinephile circles as a "tone poem." All that means is there's no plot, no characters, and no literal meanings. All you get instead are some of the most beautiful images ever rendered for the screen. You have got to see this on a big screen. (Sean Nelson) Egyptian.

Dead Ringer
Continuing the creep-streak she began with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Bette Davis covers two roles as a pair of rival twins in a dark tale of murder and deceit. Rendezvous, Thurs at 7 pm.

Eye Candy
Looped shorts serving as white noise for drunken conversation. Rendezvous, Fri from 7-10 pm.

* First Person Cinema
Year two in the film series that risks subjective indulgence in an attempt to yield objective truth. Week three features Mai's America. Marlo Poras' sweet documentary chronicles the journey of a young high-school senior named Mai as she travels from Hanoi, Vietnam, to Mississippi as part of a student exchange program. Needless to say, in Buttfuck Mississippi, Mai receives an awakening. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Little Theatre, Fri from 7 pm.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Grand Illusion's Mario Bava series continues with 1963's The Girl Who Knew Too Much, the first of his giallo films. When Nora (Leticia Roman) hears word that her aunt has fallen ill, she travels from America to Rome to tend to her. Upon the first night of arrival, Nora's aunt is brutally murdered, and our Nancy Drew begins her journey to unravel the mystery at hand. In Italian with English subtitles. Grand Illusion, Fri-Thurs at 9 pm, no show Mon.

Intervista
In one of his final productions, Federico Fellini advances his vision of autobiographical filmmaking to an extreme--a filmed autobiography of sorts, this semi-documentary directed by Fellini is scaffolded by the skeleton of an interview conducted by a Japanese film crew in the late '80s at Cinecitta studios. With guest-appearances by Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg. JBL Theater, Sat at 3 pm.

Kill, Baby, Kill
The Mario Bava-fest persists with 1966's sinister supernatural affair, the gruesomely gothic Kill, Baby, Kill. A turn-of-the-century Transylvanian village is haunted by the specter of a murderous little girl 20-years-dead. A local sorcerer sets out to put a stop to a seemingly random series of grisly murders (each accompanied by a spine-chilling, childish snigger) plaguing the quiet town. Grand Illusion, Fri-Thurs at 9 pm, no show Mon.

La Voce della Luna
As part of Seattle's Italian Festival (don't ask) the JBL Theater screens the final film in Federico Fellini's vast catalog, 1989's La Voce della Luna, or The Voice of the Moon. Starring the uniquely polarizing Roberto Benigni (playing, one assumes, Roberto Benigni), the lack-luster conclusion to Fellini's film career concerns the exploits of one Salvini (Benigni), a saintly fool stumbling his way through a series of otherworldly adventures much to the delight or insufferable annoyance of his audience. JBL Theater, Sun at 3 pm.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
A restored director's cut of David Lean's sweeping epic about a lone British soldier who helps the Arab Bedouins fight against the Turks during WW I. With Peter O'Toole and Sir Alec Guinness, in 70mm. NO PRISONERS! TAKE NO PRISONERS! Cinerama, Wed-Thurs 3 pm and 7:30 pm.

Mirror Box Stories
A short DV documentary about the women who dance for your sweaty dollars at the Lusty Lady. As a piece of filmmaking, the documentary is remarkable mainly for its access. In the room with the ladies is certainly nowhere I ever expected to be. In that sense, it's a lurid surprise. As an inquiry into stripping, Stories is a lot like every other inquiry into sex work-it circles around the question of exploitation and lands squarely on the side of the worker, which is fine, but old news. (SEAN NELSON) Seattle Art Museum, Fri at 8 pm.

MULLETVILLE
Tony Leahy wrote, directed, and stars in Mulletville, a movie that is framed around a film school documentarian's return to his roots to scoff at the white trash who shunned him in high school. It'a a funny, no-budget satire that cuts both ways as the documentarian's hunger for acceptance unravels him. The best moments are the least joke-driven, fueled purely by the hilarity that close observation of human behavior delivers. NATE LIPPENS Little Theatre, Mon Sept 30 only at 7:30 pm.

Puppeteers Make Movies
The NWFF and Wigglyworld Studios continues its Artists Make Movies series with this installment from local string-smiths, including Jean Enticknap, Elizabeth Luce, Tony DeFillips, Dmitri Carter, taking their hands out of the much-relieved asses of their felt friends and picking up cameras. Wigglyworld Studios, Wed at 8 pm.

Ravi Shankar: Between Two Worlds
A biographical documentary on the man responsible for breaking up the Beatles. JBL Theater

Russ Forster's Tributary
See Stranger Suggests. A documentary about the phenomenon not of cover bands, but of TRIBUTE bands. Consolidated Works, Fri-Sun at 8 pm and 10 pm.

* Waking Life
Richard Linklater's monologue-heavy, beautifully animated opus about the quest for lucid dreaming and active living is one of the coolest, most interesting movies you'll ever see. Or you might hate it and think it's talky and pretentious. (SEAN NELSON) Egyptian, Fri-Sat at 8 pm.

When Two Won't Do
When Maureen Marovitch began to feel, um, "limited" in her monogamous relationship with boyfriend David Finch, the two decide to pursue (in Finch's case, fairly reluctantly) the practice of polyamorous intimacy--and for some reason decide to bring the Handi-cam along for good measure. Filmmakers Marovitch and Finch will be on hand at the screening for a question and answer session to follow. 911 Media Arts Center, Fri at 8 pm.

Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever
Seeing as how only ten people appear to have seen this flick opening weekend, this here review will be necessarily brief: Lucy Liu is, of course, hot. Antonio Banderas appears to be asleep throughout the film. And the director, "KAOS," appears to be harboring a substantial grudge against train boxcars, since at least twenty or incinerated during the film's finale. In short, yes, it's pretty bad. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Banger Sisters
After her daughter's eye-catching turn as a young groupie in Almost Famous, Goldie Hawn plays an aging one in this cloying, aggravating piece of false, middlebrow claptrap. Not all of this movie sucks, just 2/3 or so. The main problem is the script's rank substitution of groupiedom for actual liberation, which makes any potential insights about friendship, growing old, or even sexual freedom, pale next to the unshakable image of writer/director Bob Dolman jerking off as he wrote. (SEAN NELSON)

The Barbershop
Starring two popular rappers, Ice Cube and Eve, Barbershop is about a young man (Ice Cube) who reluctantly runs a barbershop he inherited from his recently departed father. The best parts of the movie take place in the barbershop--the locus of laughter and general idiocy. The most complete or sophisticated argument in the movie concerns the scientific difference between good booty and bad booty. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* The Fast Runner
Although the filmmakers have lovingly reconstructed every detail of prehistoric Inuit culture 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. (MATT FONTAINE)

Four Feathers
The second adaptation of the A.E.W. Mason novel about the glory of Her Majesty's Empire is a good deal more skeptical than its 1939 predecessor. War is clearly hell, here, and imperialism is hardly left unexamined. But while director Shekhar (Elizabeth) Kapur's revisionist eyes find some chilling contrasts, the overall effect is that of a pre-built battleship being crammed into a whiskey bottle. Despite some poor casting choices (were no British actors available?), and a painfully obvious editorial hatchet job by the studio (I'd wager that at least 60 minutes have been trimmed from the real version of this film), Feathers remains a noble, if misguided, effort at political filmmaking. (SEAN NELSON)

* The Good Girl
Following 2000's Chuck & Buck comes The Good Girl, which explores similarly perverse terrain--the soul of a woman trapped by fate and circumstance, driven to commit acts of deeply iffy morality and legality. Starring Jennifer Aniston, doe-eyed Jake Gyllenhaal, and John C. Reilly. (DAVID SCHMADER)

* I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Aside from sporting one of the best titles of any film ever, this film about Wilco's battle to record and release its Yankee Hotel Foxtrot LP joins Don't Look Back and Cocksucker Blues in the ranks of music documentaries that validate (and possibly transcend) the musicians they document. If you're not a fan going in, chances are you will be coming out. (SEAN NELSON)

* Igby Goes Down
Igby, a preppie with a punk streak, gets kicked out of his last boarding school, and takes to Manhattan, where he squats purposelessly, has sex with junkies and JAPs, and basically seethes, until life more or less insists that he make a move. A sharply-observed film down to the upturned collars and half-Windsor knots, Igby gets to the heart of its characters without either indicting or apologizing for its cultural framework. (SEAN NELSON)

The Last Kiss
This movie stars a lot of beautiful Italian people you've never heard of, and it's set in Italy, where everyone cheats on each other and it's always raining. Somewhere in between all of the schmaltz, though, is a curious little portrait of the psychology behind adultery and what it'll do to you. Secretly, I want to see it again. (MEG VAN HUYGEN)

* Lovely & Amazing
This follow-up to the similarly graceful Walking and Talking is a shrewdly respectful character study of a fractured family of women trying to ride herd on their raging neuroses. Fantastic acting and sensitive writing underscore the simple DV directorial approach. (SEAN NELSON)

One Hour Photo
Why is Mork acting so mean? Directed by Mark Romanek, One Hour Photo is at best a mildly surprising thriller, and at worst a rather dull affair. Tedious and more than a little flaccid, it passes before your eyes in the shape of a shrug, easily forgotten once the lights come on. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

SATIN ROUGE
Satin Rouge is an easy film to like. It celebrates something that's always worth celebrating: the sexual liberation of women. Satin Rouge is about the modernization of the widow: her progress from tradition to liberation. What is fascinating is that such a traditional form--belly dancing, rather than something Western--facilitates this modernization. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Serving Sara
Sucks. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Sex and Lucia
The digital cinematography in this film is remarkable, but following the plot, which involves a very serious writer and his myriad romantic entanglements (all serving as grist for the proverbial mill), is like trying to figure out a single episode of a soap opera that's been broadcast for twenty years. But the girls are adorable and the high drama is quite absorbing, so it's not a complete waste of time. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Signs
Signs would have been exceptional if not for the necessity of elaborate surprises. If liberated, this film, about a troubled man who is dealing not only with his wife's death but a massive alien invasion, would have been truly scary. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Spirited Away
Princess Mononoke director Hayao Miyazaki follows his 1997 masterpiece with his latest--an Alice in Wonderland-inspired fable about a little girl whose parents are transformed into pigs.

Stealing Harvard
Usually funny Jason Lee, and perpetually unfunny Tom Green, turn to criminal endeavors in an attempt to send Lee's niece to Harvard. Hilarity is nowhere near this debacle. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

SWIMFAN
Fatal Attraction in a speedo.

* Tadpole
Tadpole is a witty, intelligent, and unsentimental coming-of-age comedy in which the a precocious preppie teen's lustful projections (onto his stepmom, whoa!) are part of a much larger picture, and the lusty boy is a too-smart-for-his-own-good kid who learns a lesson about snobbery and poseurdom. (SEAN NELSON)

Trapped
The screening of this kidnapping drama, starring Charlize Theron, Kevin Bacon, and Courtney Love, was yanked at the last minute. Draw your own conclusions on that one.

XXX
Just how bad is XXX? Worse than you've imagined. (Bradley Steinbacher)