* Academy Leaders
NWFF presents its annual screening of animated shorts nominated for Oscars. This year's selections are really really good. Little Theatre, Thurs-Sun at 7:30, 9 pm
* Beautiful Works: Four Films By Claire Denis
See Stranger Suggests. Grand Illusion, see Movie Times for specific information.
Censored Underground Films From East Germany
Life's not all pastries, beer, and tubed-meat splendor over there in Germany. It's a little known fact about those jovial Germans, but as a people, they've had a few bouts of downright nastiness over the years. Tonight examines, peripherally at least, one such period in a 10-film retrospective that spans 19 years of German censorship. Rendezvous, Wed at 7 pm.
Deacons For Defense
The Freedom Socialist Party (a group whose name never ceases to amuse me) presents a benefit screening of the recent, made-for-TV docudrama starring Forest Whitaker. Freedom Socialist Party, Fri at 7:30 pm.
* The Doors
"You're all a bunch of fuckin' SLAVES!" Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.
* Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun at 2:10, 4:30, 7, 9:20 pm, Mon-Thurs at 7, 9:20 pm.
* Harold Lloyd Shorts
The great silent comedian Lloyd is paid tribute with an evening of his lesser-known shorts, 1920's High and Dizzy and 1921's Never Weaken. Hokum Hall, Fri at 7, 9 pm, Sat at 2 pm.
In Search of the Revolution
Local filmmaker Megan Folsom presents a fundraising screening of her recent documentary charting the violent, if brief, overthrow of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. 911 Media Arts Center, Tues at 7 pm.
Mistaken Identity: Sikhs in America
A documentary that "triumphs in breaking down misconceptions and cultural barriers." See Movie Times for venue and time information.
Paint It Black
This film by Jessica Lawless examines race, culture, and media as they relate to the anarchist movement. Independent Media Center, Fri at 7 pm.
* Satellites 2003
"Screens from outer spaces" represents a commitment to cooperative programming (the festival is produced by a coalition of nearly every alternative film concern in town) of good work from people whom you've probably never heard of, and whom a few of the more assiduous cinephiles among you will have known for years. See Movie Times for venue and time information. (SEAN NELSON)
Seven Days To Noon
SAM continues its tribute to the cinematic exploits of Brits, with this Oscar-winning 1950 thriller about a rogue atomic scientist. Starring Barry Jones and Olive Stone. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs at 7:30 pm.
Thank God It's Friday
The seemingly limitless EMP onslaught of the most irrelevant movement in all of music's history continues with the West Coast answer to Saturday Night Fever. Featuring Donna Summer, the Commodores, Jeff Goldblum, and Debra Winger. JBL, Wed at 7, 9 pm.
Twisted Flicks: The Land That Time Forgot
MST3K treatment from Jet City Improv. Historic University Theater, Fri-Sat at 8 pm.
* UHF
"I like the spatulas so much, I bought the company." Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.
NOW PLAYING
About Schmidt
An exhausted Jack Nicholson stars in this entertaining film, whose comedy alone sustains the entire picture. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
* 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)
Agent Cody Banks
"When it comes to girls, I suck." That's the central conflict in a dumb movie about a smart teenager who leads a double life as a regular kid and a top-secret CIA agent. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
Anger Management
It's unofficially recommended that one wear a helmet when viewing this Adam Sandler/Jack Nicholson comedy so as not to cause brain damage due to repeated self-administered head slapping. However, the movie is so bad you'll want to die before it's over. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
Basic
Remember when the prospect of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta co-starring in a movie was exciting? Yeah, me neither.
* Bend It Like Beckham
Essentially a traditional coming-of-age story, though with a spicy ethnic twist: A hot Anglo-Indian teenage girl in outer London pursues her dream of professional soccer stardom against the wishes of her traditional Sikh parents. (SANDEEP KAUSHIK)
Better Luck Tomorrow
The story of a pack of overachieving Asian high-school students turning to crime for kicks in suburbia, the film is little more than Goodfellas and Boyz 'N' the Hood spackled together with an Asian cast, directed with overly hyper flare by Lin, and purchased by MTV films for release to teens and tweens nationwide. Does swapping out Italians for Asians make for enough originality to create a buzz? I guess so, though it doesn't really make for a memorable picture. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
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)
Bringing Down the House
For the majority of its journey across the screen, it is as expert as fluff gets. Queen Latifah and Steve Martin navigate the deeply familiar plot with enough wit and flair to keep the audience howling with glee, stumbling only in the final quarter with--I wish I were kidding--the bumbling kidnap of a wealthy dowager. (DAVID SCHMADER)
Bulletproof Monk
Finally, after all these years, Chow Yun-Fat has successfully translated his Hong Kong charm into the language of popular American cinema. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Chasing Papi
Okay, so get this: Some dumb schmuck is engaged to three women in three different cities, right? All right, so then, like, all of a sudden, they're all in the same city, okay?
* Chicago
Basically, the last hour of Chicago is a mess. Nevertheless, I recommend it. 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)
Confidence
Opening. See review this issue. Factoria, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12
* The Core
Filled with entertaining, unnecessary complications, along with surprisingly well-formed characters, the film somehow works--if not on an intelligent level, at least on a popcorn one. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
Based on a popular Cartoon Network series of the same name, Cowboy Bebop is a beautifully drawn, brightly colored, candy-coated piece of shit. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
Daredevil
First some good news: Just two months until Ang Lee's The Hulk arrives. Now the bad news: Daredevil is stunningly bad. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Dreamcatcher
I remember when Stephen King used to have an imagination. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
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. (SEAN NELSON)
* The Good Thief
The Good Thief is based on the 1955 French classic Bob le Flambeur by Jean-Pierre Melville, whose assured direction and cash-poor location filmmaking are widely considered precursors to the French New Wave. Neil Jordan directs the remake as a sort of tribute to the stylings associated with later New Wave films, with effects like freeze-frame cuts that make you aware that you're watching a movie and a cast of actors for whom English is not the primary language, so the dialogue is also awkward and self-aware. Jordan is commenting on Melville's film as much as remaking it, so if you can see the original first, do so--but either way you should have a good time. (ANDY SPLETZER)
Head of State
Chris Rock stars in a film about a Washington D.C. city councilman (who yells a lot) turned unexpected presidential hopeful (who yells a lot). Scripted in part by Rock, the film is assured some semblance of humor--in spite of its trailer's hint at some rather unfortunate rappin'-granny potential.
Holes
Based on the popular children's book by Louis Sachar, a family drama (starring Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Arquette, and Jon Voight) about kids in the chain gang.
* The Hours
I was prepared to hate this movie. I was so wrong. This is a really good movie. (BARLEY BLAIR)
House of a Thousand Corpses
First-time feature director Rob Zombie loads his debut with so many tricks of the music video trade, from split-screens to oversaturated video, the biggest shock is that he makes it work. There's even one murder sequence that's aesthetically beautiful and expertly executed (so to speak). The movie is a tribute to the straight-to-video slasher films from the '80s, where young adults are picked off one at a time. Zombie's film is more self-aware in its humor and its gore, which makes it better, but it ultimately errs on the side of setting up only four sacrificial lambs, andthey're not enough to sustain the 88-minute running time. It starts to drag near the end, but fans of the genre should check it out anyway. The immoral of the story? Don't make fun of inbred-looking rednecks, particularly when they're putting on a Halloween talent show for you, because they'll likely kill you. (ANDY SPLETZER)
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
The film is touching in those brief minutes when Kate Hudson and Matthew McConnaughey realize they might have feelings for each other, so long as the idiot soundtrack doesn't swell in and ruin the mood. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
The Hunted
A problematic soldier played by Benicio Del Toro is trained to be a killing machine for some elite army unit. The uneven story fails to properly explain why and how the once-brave soldier went insane and started killing deer hunters in the woods, or why Tommy Lee Jones, who is an excellent killer and hunter, is also a pacifist who worries about the hunting of wild animals, refuses to use a gun, and has never killed a person. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Identity
Opening. See review this issue. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12
It Runs In the Family
Opening. A whole mess of Douglases (Kirk, Michael, Groucho, Harpo, etc.) toss together some vanity project (will not poke fun at stroke victims, will not poke fun at stoke victims) about wacky dysfuntion in a prominent New York family. Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Woodinville 12
The Jungle Book 2
AKA Clear Cut!
Kangaroo Jack
If there's one thing that I love more than talking animals in sunglasses, it'd have to be Christopher Walken.
* Laurel Canyon
In Laurel Canyon, thoroughly modern young lovers Sam and Alex (Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale) are stranded at the home of Sam's mother, Jane, a famous record producer, played by Frances McDormand. During the course of the film, the couple's uptight romance is threatened by Jane's swinging lifestyle, which includes liberal pot-smoking and the free-ish love of her musician boyfriend Ian (Alessandro Nivola). Alex is tempted by both Ian and Jane, while Sam, still angry about his mother's loose parenting style, seethes. Though this description might lead one to believe Laurel Canyon is a bedroom farce between hippies and yuppies, the film is in fact a smart, emotionally insightful exploration of the multigenerational consequences of the quest to live free. (SEAN NELSON)
* 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)
Malibu's Most Wanted
The wigga son of a wealthy politician is introduced to C.O.M.P.T.O.N. by Juilliard-trained street thugs. Sensitive treatment of complicated racial stereotypes follows.
A Man Apart
Vin Diesel is a streetwise DEA agent who rolls with real niggaz. America, the consumer, is ultimately Good; Mexico, the producer, is ultimately Bad. And to prevent the total corruption of what is at heart Good, the Good must relentlessly pursue and gun down the Bad. The Bad in this film is even called El Diablo. I rest my case. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
The Man Without a Past
Opening. See review this issue. Harvard Exit
A Mighty Wind
As with Christopher Guests' other films, Waiting For Guffman and Best in Show, the results are alternately hilarious and flat. So much of what makes these movies enjoyable rests on the rhythm of the improv, which is why the increasingly rigid formula is both troublesome and necessary: It's the skeleton that allows these world-class performers to let loose (Fred Willard once again steals the show). The problem is that it's become so familiar that, taken together, the three films feel like one long, predictable sketch. (SEAN NELSON)
* Nowhere in Africa
Nowhere in Africa follows a rich Jewish family that leaves Germany in 1938 and moves to Africa. There they can avoid the Nazis, but have to deal with some other issues like, oh, the lack of water. Naturally, the characters all experience guilt (you just can't have a Holocaust movie without guilt), but there are also things here you never see in any movie, such as the scene in which a swarm of locusts plunder a field of maize. The hazards of humanity and the hazards of nature are not dissimilar, this movie argues, though (at two and a half hours long) not very succinctly. Thankfully, the actor Merab Ninidze, who's very sexy, is in almost every scene. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
Old School
Here's a film that relies on a whole list of old clichés (marriage is a ball and chain; the school losers vs. the campus suits) to deliver comedy that's actually really funny in a dumb kind of way. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
Phone Booth
I swear I'm just as shocked by this as you are, but dig this: Phone Booth, the new film by Joel Schumacher--yes, that Joel Schumacher--is pretty damn good. Somehow--Grace of God? Shadow director?--the man who ruined Batman, the chump behind Bad Company and Flatliners, has managed to make a film worth seeing. A gimmick gone wild, it breezes past in 80 quick minutes, starting from a sprint and only stumbling somewhat at the very end. And Schumacher, notorious for soaking his films in style, keeps matters relatively grounded, apparently realizing (perhaps for the first time in his career) that tension does not need flash. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* The Pianist
For all the possible autobiography of the story, The Pianist is most personal when it stares into the abyss of the Holocaust and finds nothing looking back. (SEAN NELSON)
Piglet's Big Movie
From the fever dreams of Christopher Robin comes another exploration of the Jungian neuroses of Hundred Acre Wood's most unbearably anxious citizens.
* 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)
Raising Victor Vargas
Opening. See review this issue. Neptune, Uptown
The Real Cancun
Opening. Girls Gone Wild hits the big screen with this reality TV-based "documentary" following 16 nubile college students making mom proud spending money and getting fucked in Mexico on spring break. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Pacific Place, Woodinville 12
Rivers and Tides
Andy Goldsworthy, the subject of this documentary, makes things out of nature--icicles, shards of stone, leaf, thorn, tufts of sheep's wool--and lets nature take them apart. There is something both arrogant and humble at work here: the very Western wrestling of order out of chaos; the kind of acceptance of entropy associated with Zen. This is probably what makes Goldsworthy such a popular artist among the well-meaning; a glossy book of photographs of his work graces the coffee table of every super-liberal environmentalist you know. For the most part, director Thomas Riedelsheimer gives this wit room to breathe, although the New Agey plinka plinka music is truly awful. Silence, I think, would have been more respectful, more surprising, more Goldsworthian. (EMILY HALL)
Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation
I am not an 18-year-old boy, nor do I smoke copious volumes of marijuana--so there were already two strikes against me when considering whether or not I would enjoy this year's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. But I watched the video of collected shorts with an open mind, thinking maybe there'd be some funny shit in there. There wasn't. It was just sick and twisted (duh). Venereal disease, incest, death, farts, burps, vomit, murder, blood... is there still an audience for this shit?
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)
A View From the Top
Playing out like something of a saccharine, low-rent version of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, A View from the Top is pure ocular Wonder Bread--featureless, familiar, and entirely inoffensive. Characters appear and disappear without relevance or explanation, the plot plods along with heartwarming comic relief, and the whole slapdash mess ends almost painlessly. Almost. (ZAC PENNINGTON)
What a Girl Wants
Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, and Kelly Preston star in Girls Gone Wild: London Edition, in a film filed somewhere between "Coming of Age," "Fish Out of Water," and "Product Placement Opportunity."
