LIMITED RUN


* Ascent
See Stranger Suggests. Grand Illusion, Fri at 9 pm, Sat-Sun at 5, 9 pm, Tues-Thurs at 9 pm

Blackboards
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun at 12:30, 2:40, 4:45, 7, 9:15 pm, Mon-Thurs at 7, 9:15 pm

Dim Sum
Another heartwarming tale of Asian America from Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club, Chinese Box)'s seemingly endless canon. Northwest Asian Art Theatre, Tues at 7 pm.

Dr. Strangelove
See review this issue. Grand Illusion, Fri at 5, 7 pm, Sat-Sun at 3, 7 pm, Tues-Thurs at 7 pm

Gaza Strip
See review this issue. Little Theatre, Thurs-Sun at 7, 9 pm

HorroR Hotel
Young coed meets coven of witches, and somehow by the grace of god, everybody keeps their clothes on. Rendezvous, Thurs Jan 30 at 7:30 pm

* I Put a Spell on Me
The legacy of influential stageman Screamin' Jay Hawkins, as explored through interviews and archival footage. JBL Theatre Wed at 7, 9 pm

* La Signora di Tutti
Max Ophuls' 1934 psychological drama about the life of a suicidal film starlet, kicking off a five week retrospective on his career. Seattle Art Museum, Fri at 7 pm

* Pixel Depth 2
Live music (except it's electronic), short films (except they're digital video), and dancing (no qualifications!) are to be found at this "roaming digital film and musical showcase." 911 Media Arts, 8 pm

* Richard Hell Double Feature
Love comes in spurts as our own DJ Jennifer Maerz presents two films featuring the great Richard Meyers (or "Hell," as the kids know him), Smithereens and Blank Generation. Sunset Tavern, Mon at 8 pm.

Suburbia
In between her brilliant Decline of Western Civilization documentaries and her exercises in pop prostitution (Wayne's World, Beverly Hillbillies), the semi-great Penelope Spheeris made this odd movie that attempted to resolve punk and Hollywood. It fails, but in grand '80s style. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm

* Trainspotting
"I'm a bit of a jazz purist, actually." Egyptian, Fri-Sat at Midnight.

NOW PLAYING


25th Hour
We spend the first half of 25th Hour trying to figure out who turned in heroin dealer Ed Norton. Then all of a sudden we're not in that movie at all. The mystery is solved summarily, and we're left with nearly another hour to go and not a single three-dimensional character to fill it with. (BARLEY BLAIR)

* 8 Mile
It's the Marshall Mathers version of the underdog-done-good idea, as seen in films from The Karate Kid to Hoop Dreams. This one works because you believe the story behind it. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

About Schmidt
About Schmidt stars an exhausted Jack Nicholson as Warren Schmidt, an Omaha actuary facing the nothingness of retirement. At the end of his last day at the insurance agency, his life's work is packed into blank boxes, and he has nowhere to go. When he awakes the following morning, he finds himself atop of the slope of slow time that leads down to an ordinary death. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Adam Sandler's EIGHT Crazy Nights
Adam Sandler plays a twentysomething loser with a bad temper who causes trouble, makes cracks about bodily functions, and finds redemption. For a change.

* Adaptation
Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze have created a rich entertainment, stuffing it with enough meta-plot twists to fuel half a dozen lesser movies, and bringing it to the screen with brilliant performances by Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep. (DAVID SCHMADER)

Antwone Fisher
Denzel Washington directs with the same dignity and craft that he brings to his work as an actor. The performances are realistic but not self-consciously so, the filmmakers avoid drowning the film in syrupy music, and the production design gives us deep, dramatic settings without stealing focus. (MATT FONTAINE)

Biker Boyz
A shit-eatting redux of The Fast & the Furious, Biker Boyz puts our urban heroes atop whining Hondas in a film that will no doubt make more money in its opening weekend than I will in my entire life. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12

Bowling For Columbine
For a while, 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. He wants to say something great, but ultimately doesn't. Can't, maybe. (SEAN NELSON)

Catch Me If You Can
Long stretches of Catch Me If You Can are filmed so lazily, that the entire enterprise falters, producing more shrug than excitement. Add to that a script that stumbles between oversentimentality and near-cartoonishness, and the end result is a thrilling, near-unbelievable story rendered dull and even less unbelievable. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* Chicago
Basically, the last hour of Chicago is a mess. In addition to not trusting his material, director Rob Marshall doesn't appear to trust either of the two movie-musical solutions he picks. Nevertheless, I recommend Chicago. You'll have to endure Richard Gere as Billy Flynn, of course, but it's a small price to pay to watch the Fosse-inspired choreography and Catherine Zeta-Jones' star-turn as Velma Kelly. (DAN SAVAGE)

* City of God
Fernando Meirelles' Cidade de Deus (City of God) draws its energy, visual flourishes, and narrative strategies from two American sources: Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese. This borrowing, or theft, does not, however, make Cidade de Deus an American film; Cidade de Deus is a Brazilian film. Though great to watch, Cidade de Deuscuriously fails to comment on the reason why most of the people who live and die in the ghetto are brown, beige, and black. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is audacious and ridiculous and completely fucked, both on the page and on celluloid, and for that its subject Chuck Barris should be recognized for what has long been ignored: his undeniable genius. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Darkness Falls
See review this issue.

Die Another Day
After two hours of workmanlike action, and a battery of sexual innuendo about as subtle as a herpes sore, the 20th James Bond film finally surrenders to its own muddled identity. (SEAN NELSON)

Drumline
Of course we all know that you can take the boy out of the 'hood, but you can't take the 'hood out of the boy. What this film presupposes is, maybe you can? (JONATHAN MAHALAK)

* Far From Heaven
Todd Haynes' pitch-perfect inclusion of sexual confusion and racial bigotry into Douglas Sirk's original mix gives him the power to transcend his source material and create a melodramatic masterpiece all his own. (DAVID SCHMADER)

Final Destination 2
If those goddamned teenagers don't stop having visions of their own demises, thereby causing rifts in "death's design," Hollywood's gonna have to make a LOT more of these poo piles. Starring some young actors and actresses who appear destined for infomercial stardom. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12

Frida
Frida is yet another artist's story that has been stripped of nuance. (EMILY HALL)

* Gangs of New York
Scorsese invests the picture with increasingly biblical gravity in an attempt to portray the birth of a nation as a violent, ritualistic collision between two men. Daniel Day-Lewis gives the kind of performance that makes you feel proud to be a member of the human race. (SEAN NELSON)

A Guy Thing
It's official: Guys ARE the new girls. And as if there was any doubt, A Guy Thing is the final proof. Jason Lee is at his best when he's angry, not when he's a spineless, henpecked, about-to-be-married chump who gets the thrill of his life via involvement with Julia Stiles. (KATHLEEN WILSON)

Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a thunderous bore. (SEAN NELSON)

* The Hours
I was prepared to hate this movie. Script by David Hare, whose previous work is self-absorbed Brit-babble, from a novel I haven't read that won a Pulitzer (kiss of death) about a writer whose life is a lightning rod for stupidity about mental illness and feminism, and whose work has never meant much to me. Altogether, I expected a shapeless pasticcio that would let me make cruel fun. I was so wrong. This is a really good movie. (BARLEY BLAIR)

* Jackass: The Movie
Jackass is a perfect film. (SEAN NELSON)

Just Married
Ashton Kutcher is SO FUCKING SEXY. (DAN SAVAGE)

Kangaroo Jack
If there's one thing that I love more than talking animals in sunglasses, it'd have to be Christopher Walken. Well I'll be damned! Two great tastes....

The Lion King
"Slimy... yet satisfying."

* Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The film resonates so deeply, despite its potentially embarrassing fantasy trappings, because the filmmaker recognizes that violence and sacrifice are unavoidable aspects of the survival of civilizations. (SEAN NELSON)

Maid in Manhattan
While pretending to tell the truth about class distinctions, Maid depends too hard on the pretty American fiction that such distinctions are only a matter of money. (EMILY HALL)

* My Big Fat Greek Wedding
I love how this movie has been playing for like 25 years and has made 200 grillion dollars and no one I know has seen or even heard of it. (SEAN NELSON)

Narc
Totally worthless garbage that has the power to ruin not just the two hours (is that all?) that it takes to watch it, but the entire day or even week during which the screening takes place. Ptui! (SEAN NELSON)

National Security
The advertising for this Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn vehicle features the image of a crazed Martin Lawrence stalking the streets of California wielding a handgun. How quickly we forget, how quickly we forget.

Nicholas Nickleby
Douglas McGrath's adaptation of Charles Dickens' 800-page novel is simply entertaining. As I have never read the source novel (and don't intend to), I have no idea how the story has been altered by the filmmakers. Nevertheless, it does feel a bit rushed at times. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* The Pianist
For all the possible autobiography of the story, Polanski's latest masterpiece is most personal when it stares into the abyss of the Holocaust and finds nothing looking back. (SEAN NELSON)

* Rabbit-Proof Fence
Director Phillip Noyce makes all the right decisions in telling what could have (justifiably) been a big slab of moist, liberal liver and onions; a tale of indomitable metaphor and sackcloth villainy. Instead it is a measured tale of a secret history, and of basic human desires asserting themselves in the most inspirational of ways. (SEAN NELSON)

Real Women Have Curves
A simplistic and thought-provokeless tale about one spirited teenage member of the underclass' struggle to individuate her young self in the context of her traditional, stifling, almost-poverty-stricken family. Every major scene devolves into sloganeering, a champagne socialist's daydream of life in the po' house. Real Women is a lowest-common-denominator piece of silky propaganda. (MICHAEL SHILLING)

The Recruit
Al Pacino and Colin Farrell star in this CIA potboiler, whose entire story, twists and all, is to be found in its ubiquitous trailer. It hardly seems worth paying to see, but then, "nothing is what it seems." Since there was no preview screening at press time, a review is forthcoming next issue. Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12 (SEAN NELSON)

The Santa Clause 2
The most unnecessary sequel since Silent Night, Deadly Night 4.

Star Trek: Nemesis
This action-heavy sequel's narrative is cleaner and more efficient than most of its predecessors'. While this bodes well for the movie--it's rather good--it doesn't, necessarily, for the future of the series. This is rumored to be the last cinematic voyage not only of this crew, but the entire Star Trek franchise. To be honest, Picard's crew appears to have exhausted its usefulness. (KUDZAI MUDEDE)

* Talk to Her
Talk to Her, Spain's camp bad boy Pedro Almodovar's latest film, contains no drugs or sex, and I didn't even notice until it was over. That's because Almodovar has always trafficked in extreme emotions and the actions that spring from them. Actions and craziness often overshadow feelings in his earlier films--but with Talk to Her, Almodovar gives us the most mature and deeply felt of his movies. The story of two comatose women (one a female bullfighter and the other a ballerina), the two men who care for them (Benigno, a male nurse, and Marco, a writer), and the friendships that grow between them. The two men deal differently with their sleeping beauties: Marco retreats into silence and Benigno, who cared for his mother before becoming a nurse, talks and carries on as if Alicia were awake and responsive. The movie unfolds with grace and still manages to shock while being funny, strange, morally complex, and moving. (NATE LIPPENS)

Treasure Planet
Updating Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate classic for the space-age is a fun conceit. Unfortunately, this kid's movie, which keeps the the "aye-matie" setting in-tact while beautifully working in computer wizardry, high-tech skate boarding, space ships, and dimensional portals, is far too wholesome to thrill. Wholesome might be good for kids, but kids simply aren't going to pay attention to this well-intentioned, but truly square rendition of Stevenson's bawdy novel. (JOSH FEIT)

Two Weeks Notice
Everyone says I take after my dad, but unlike that sweet-hearted man, I have, on several occasions, found the steel to detest a romantic comedy here and there. When I walked into the theater to watch the non-chemistry of Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant try to make an audience weep with happiness in Two Weeks Notice, I was absolutely positive my shell could not be cracked. Well, I didn't cry, but I'm still ashamed to admit that I actually liked Two Weeks Notice, mostly because there is no "rescuing" going on in the movie--just a rich guy and a dedicated lawyer trying like hell not to fall in love with each other. If that's some form of rescuing, so be it. I'm going to call my dad and discuss. (KATHLEEN WILSON)

The Wild Thornberrys
Nickelodeon's marginally successful animated series: The Movie!