limited run


Bio Zombie
George Romero meets a modern Hong Kong shopping mall as a whole mess of flesh-eating zombies take on a band of captive mall employees with names like Woody Invincible, Crazy Bee, and Sushi Boy. In Cantonese with English subtitles. Grand Illusion, Fri-Thurs at 7 pm and 9 pm, no show Mon.

* Devil Got My Woman
In 1966, director Alan Lomax had the presumptious notion to approach some of this century's most accomplished blues musicians (including members of the 1920s Delta and 1950s Chicago blues scenes) for something of an impromptu jam session, all to be captured on celluloid. The resulting footage became Devil Got My Woman, a 60 minute documentary featuring performances by Howlin' Wolf, Skip James, and Son House, among others. JBL Theatre, Wed at 7 pm and 8:45 pm.

* Dog Soldiers
Soldiers on a training exercise run across some blood stains where a squad of special-ops forces used to be, and embark on a mission to find out what exactly wiped them out. As it happens, the answer is werewolves. This smart and scary horror film has as much respect for the werewolf genre as it does for the military, which is a rare combination. The camaraderie between the soldiers is palpable, and the decisions they make in fighting their unknown opponents are proper, which makes each defeat that much harder to take. Holed up in a remote house in the woods, with their ammo running out against opponents who refuses to die, these soldiers are doomed. Which is when the black humor shines through. Dog Soldiers is the kind of a movie where, if you play the "What would I do in that situation?" game, the answer is simple: You would die. Go ahead and see for yourself. (ANDY SPLETZER) Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.

* Dual-Projector Shorts
Consolidated Works continues its multimedia exploration of duality with a series of recent epilepsy-inducing experiments of juxtaposition, including Jonathan Marlow's superimposing (read that as you will) Latitude and Longitude, plus works by Konrad Steiner, and our beloved Andy Spletzer. The new ConWorks cinema is beautiful, and, need one mention, only about 20 feet away from the new full service ConWorks bar. Consolidated Works, Fri-Sun at 8 pm, 10 pm.

* Evil Dead
Before there was Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, there was Evil Dead, a murky, homemade work of horror comedy genius by the great Sam Raimi, before he became the mezzo mezzo Sam Raimi. (SEAN NELSON) Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.

Family Fundamentals
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sat at 12:50 pm, 2:50 pm, 4:50 pm, 7 pm, 9 pm, Sun-Thurs at 7 pm, 9 pm.

Go for Broke
An Academy Award-nominated drama tracing the American Nisei soldiers of the 442nd Regiment, who were forced to battle on two fronts--the Nazis of the foreground, their fellow bigotted soldiers from behind. Screens with Enemies Closer, a similarly-themed short culled from 2002's A-Fest. Northwest Asian American Theatre, Tues at 7 pm.

Hell Hole High
Three students sent to Hell Hole High battle manic parents, abusive teachers, video surveillance, and a slow, clunky script in this locally produced feature. Native American shaman, lesbian seductresses, drug addicts, and S&M punishers crowd a little color into this campy comedy, which mixes forced dialogue and crappy computer animation with a bumbling plot about a bunch of young, stubborn misfits who attempt to triumph over an evil system and end up finding love in unusual places. (JENNIFER MAERZ) Rendezvous, Thurs at 7 pm.

How's Your News
The Seattle premiere of Arthur Bradford's empathetic documentary, How's Your News provides an oft-neglected voice to a group of disabled summer camp attendees on a cross-country mission to collect man-on-the-street interviews for the titular news program. Little Theatre, Thurs-Sun at 7 pm, 9 pm.

International Horror Film Shorts
See Stranger Suggests. Little Theatre, Sat-Sun at 7 pm & 8 pm.

* Polterchrist
A cult-classic in the making, Polterchrist combines blasphemous humor, raunchy bathroom scenes, and low-grade special effects to make for one excellently creepy "horrordy" film. The local B-movie production follows Jesus' cranky, bloodthirsty return to Earth, drawing you into his unholy massacre of teenagers in a Kent, Washington bowling alley. While the main storyline is pure bloodsploitation, it's the constant segues into the dreams, hallucinations, and fantasies of Jesus, the glue sniffer, and Johnny Appleseed (he fits in here, too, somehow) that make this movie so goddamn funny. And the Polterchrist soundtrack--which ranges from metal to post rock to country songs about turds--isn't bad either. (JENNIFER MAERZ) Little Theatre, Sat at 1 pm, 3 pm.

Traveling Film South Asia
Three days of nonfiction film from the South Asian subcontinent. 911 Media Arts Center, for specific dates and times, see www.tasveer.org.

now playing


* 8 Women
On the surface, jealousy is the combative common ground the film's eight women share in the home of a murdered man--who is a husband, a father, a brother, a son-in-law, and a philanderer in relation to the various characters. The women candidly sing and dance to their inner feelings, while hiding away their jealousies or hurling bold suspicions at one another. (KATHLEEN WILSON)

Abandon
A suggestion for a better title: "Inept." Written/directed by Traffic scribbler Stephen Gaghan, Abandon is a futile exercise in suspense. In fact, the only real reason to go see it is Katie Holmes (for me at least; for women, there's Benjamin Bratt). (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

All or Nothing
See review this issue. Seven Gables

All the Queen's Men
I don't know who comes up with this shit. (MEG VAN HUYGEN)

Auto Focus
Auto Focus is a monument to everything rotten in so-called "bio-pics" today; it is based on nothing but rumor and innuendo. It is not the true story of Bob Crane's life. Period. The film discovers nothing and reveals even less. The weak from-the-grave narration designed to help the viewer "get it" fails because the director can't figure out how to show you the story. Alas, there is nothing here to get--except restless and disappointed. (SCOTTY CRANE)

The Banger Sisters
Goldie Hawn plays an aging groupie in this cloying, aggravating piece of false, middlebrow claptrap. (SEAN NELSON)

The Barbershop
The best parts of the movie take place in the barbershop--the most complete or sophisticated argument in the movie concerns the scientific difference between good booty and bad booty. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday is a faux-documentary account of January 30, 1972, when British troops fired on Northern Irish civilians, killing 13 people and wounding 14 others. Propaganda, as a valid art form, can be wicked fun, but this film's determined drabness is no fun at all. With its gag-making handheld camera and its austerely non-acting Irish actors, Bloody Sunday tries to suggest that it's a serious moral inquiry. How can we tell it's not? Because one side is all good and the other is Eeee-vil (George W. Bush please take note). (BARLEY BLAIR)

* 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. (SEAN NELSON)

Bowling For Columbine
A film about a huge subject, desperately grasping for a thesis. For a while, Michael Moore seems on to something--a culture of fear endemic to our country--but in the end, he shortchanges the psychological complexity in favor of cheap shots. (SEAN NELSON)

Brown Sugar
Hollywood's first hiphop romance, Brown Sugar is fucking filled with rappers, who are on the whole bloated and boring. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Comedian
See review this issue. Metro

* The Fast Runner
Inside glowing igloos and behind roiling teams of sled dogs, the viewer sees a legend sprout from the ice. (MATT FONTAINE)

Formula 51
This movie has a little bit of everything: its bad ass comes from blaxploitation (Samuel Jackson); its pace and action from Hong Kong cinema (director Ronny Yu); its object of desire from La Femme Nikita (Emily Mortimer); and comedy/sidekick from lad films (Robert Carlyle). The result is utter rubbish. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Four Feathers
This adaptation of the A.E.W. Mason novel about the glory of Her Majesty's Empire is a good deal more skeptical than its predecessors. 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. (SEAN NELSON)

Frida
See review this issue.

Ghost Ship
A haunted old 1953 cruiseliner in the Bering Sea is the setting for this gorey horror flick. Opening with a graphic scene that involves a dance floor full of people getting cut in half (all at once!), the film never gets easier to watch. Ghosts, carnage, and surprise twists keep you on the edge of your seat in this plot-weak but effects-heavy supernatural thriller. And the scene where every mystery is explained is kick-ass: The nefarious scheme, set to techno music, plays out in front of the heroine (former ER star Julianna Margulies). (AMY JENNIGES)

* The Grey Zone
Based on actual events at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the story follows a "Special Squad" of Sonderkommandos--Jews who facilitated the killing of other Jews by preparing the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies. The night I watched this movie, I couldn't sleep. (ALLEGRA WIBORG)

* Heaven
Written by Krzysztof Kieslowski (director of the Three Colors trilogy) and directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), Heaven begins with an English schoolteacher, Cate Blanchett, attempting to assassinate a notorious drug dealer with a bomb. But she bungles the mission and accidentally kills two girls, their father, and a cleaning lady. The terrorist is captured, and during the interrogation a young Italian police officer, Giovanni Ribisi (who is actually great in this film), instantly falls in love with her. The terrorist eventual falls in love with the police officer. Both accept their fate, escape from the police station, and dreamily drift to the blue nothingness of the end. Heaven is beautiful. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

I-Spy
Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson team up for the Ebony and Ivory of spy flicks.

Jackass: The Movie
See review this issue.

Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie
The computer-animated version of the pamphlets you find at bus stops.

Knockaround Guys
A fine film to watch while doing something else. (MICHAEL SHILLING)

Lilo & Stitch
Lilo is the studio's best since Aladdin, and it's a tad less racist, too. (ANNIE WAGNER)

The Man From Elysian Fields
The main problem is that the film wants you to believe that writing is holy work that ennobles its servants and renders their flaws tragic, which is a bigger load of crap than an escort service where males are hired to escort women. (SEAN NELSON)

* Metropolis
This ain't your older brother's Metropolis, the one with the new wave music and the tidy running time. This is the 75th-anniversary, restored-to-its-original-length-by-the-Munich-Film-Archive, original-orchestral-score version of Fritz Lang's enduring meisterwerk. Though you have probably seen the film, you've never seen it like this. Just like the last time. (SEAN NELSON)

* Moonlight Mile
I know this film looks like a sappy weeper, and it kind of is, but as a story of bereavement, commitment, and coming of age (and finding the limits of each), it is also funny, smart, and exquisitely well acted by Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, and Jake Gyllenhaal. (SEAN NELSON)

Mostly Martha
American audiences are hot for foreign films about food. Sandra Nettelbeck's Mostly Martha, a German production, is compatible with this American fantasy--but the result feels much less crude than the escapist "foreign" fantasies American audiences have become accustomed to. (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.

* Naqoyqatsi
The long-awaited third chapter of his "life" trilogy, Godfrey Reggio's Naqoyqatsi examines life in war, or more generally, life as a constant battle between the warring impulses of consumption and conservation, technology and humanity, civilization and earth. (SEAN NELSON)

* Paid In Full
Based on a true story, Paid in Full paints a vivid and sincere portrait of the lives and times of a group of teenage Harlem drug lords in the early '80s. Every single actor in this movie gives a phenomenal performance, and the Diff'rent Strokes aesthetic is irresistible, but the most curious aspect is that it quietly turns its protagonist into its villain. Ace is shy and honest in the beginning and his reluctance toward crime shows, but money talks, and as he gradually submerges himself in Calvin's dope and Glocks and hos, it breaks your heart a little. Ergo, Paid in Full preaches against drug culture by using humanity in place of sensationalism or fear, and unlike Blow or Traffic, it works. (MEG VAN HUYGEN)

Pokémon 4ever
The fourth (4ever, get it?) Pokémon film features another series of absurdly named, unbarably cute beasties that inexplicably shoot fire from every pore. And don't the kids just love it?

Punch-Drunk Love
Starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Punch-Drunk Love is a confused story--not confusing to the audience, but confused within itself. Paul Thomas Anderson seems to have so much to say, so many bizarre scenarios to explore and see through to the end, that the film as a whole suffers. So much is happening that very little registers. Still, this doesn't mean Punch-Drunk Love is unworthy of your peepers; it's not. But if you expect to remain entranced once you've started your car after the show, you'll have to look elsewhere. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* Red Dragon
So here it is, the trifecta for Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, and it's sure to make piles of money. But is Red Dragon any good? The answer is kinda and no--kinda, thanks to Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Emily Watson, and Ralph Fiennes; no, thanks to Sir Anthony himself, who seems so utterly bored with the role that you can almost hear him snoozing with his eyes open. Clunky and breathtakingly unoriginal, Brett Ratner's film is an absolute paint-by-numbers affair. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Ring
The Ring, despite its relatively brief running time, takes its own sweet time unfolding. And while such a leisurely pace would normally be to its benefit (after all, the best horror films are generally slow, quiet, moody pieces), Gore Verbinski's (The Mexican) direction, along with Scream 3 scribe Ehren Kruger's hack-job, makes for rather dull going. There are a few jumps here and there, along with one startling image near the end involving a TV, but for the most part The Ring just sorta trudges along, rarely surprising, often befuddling. Naomi Watts gives a fine performance, but the film, unfortunately, offers her very little in the way of support. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Road to Perdition
Sam Mendes has done the impossible: He has made a film that is even more smug, phony, and wasteful than American Beauty. (SEAN NELSON)

Roger Dodger
See review this issue.

The Rules of Attraction
An artfully mediocre adaptation of a sub-mediocre novel. (SEAN NELSON)

The Santa Clause 2
A prosthetically-enhanced (at least I hope that's make-up) Tim Allen satiates all of your "sit on my lap" and "naughty or nice" fantasies in the most unnecessary sequel since Silent Night, Deadly Night 4.

* Secretary
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lee Holloway, a slightly retarded nymphet secretary just released from a loony house, who develops a subversive relationship with her employer, played by James Spader. Part of Secretary's singular quality is that the heroine's problem is never resolved. She entrenches herself deeper and deeper in her "sick" dependency, and ultimately, it becomes her virtue. (MEG VAN HUYGEN)

Signs
Signs would have been exceptional if not for the necessity of elaborate surprises. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Spirited Away
In spite of its conspicuous cute deficiency, Spirited Away is by all means a striking visual composition--just make sure you're not drowsy going in. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

Sweet Home Alabama
A lesson that's already been taught in one hackneyed comedy after another--namely, that poor white Southern folk are fat, dumb, and wear Jaclyn Smith, but the boys are hot and they ain't as stupid as city folk think, 'cause they have heart. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

The Transporter
You see, there's this guy, a kinda shady guy, who's British but is a master of Kung Fu, and his job is to transport materials--shady materials, of course, because, as stated before, he's a kinda shady guy--for various individuals, and he has this rule that he never wants to know exactly what he's transporting, but, you see, here's the thing: This bad guy, who's American, hires him to transport something and when he does he opens it, breaking his big rules, and it turns out to be a really hot Chinese woman, and once that happens, well, you know, all hell breaks loose--not spectacular hell, but more of a muddling, dimwitted hell. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* The Truth About Charlie
See review this issue.

Tuck Everlasting
A wonderful cast, lovely cinematography, and an almost Zenlike pace cannot overcome the fact that this story is about a 104-year-old guy who's doing it with a teenager! He is approximately six times her age! Yuck! (TAMARA PARIS)

The Tuxedo
The Tuxedo is a bad kung fu film because it spends too much time and energy developing its sorry plot (a spy spoof), and the fight scenes are worth shit. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* Welcome to Collinwood
Made by the writer-director team of Joe and Anthony Russo, this comedy is the best of the movies I've seen that take its cues from the stylistic holy trinity of the Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson, and Paul Thomas Anderson. Bright, pointed colors, an ornamentally goofy script, a Buster Keaton-meets-marijuana physicality, unique facial hair: It's all here. After a slow start, Collinwood takes off under the steam of the chemistry between the actors, who attain moments of sublime slapstick. (MICHAEL SHILLING)

White Oleander
Oleander is a waste of talent (Michelle Pfeiffer and Renée Zellweger may not be great actresses, but they're better than this movie lets them be) as well as time. (SEAN NELSON)

XXX
Just how bad is XXX? Worse than you've imagined. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)