From the Jul 24 – Jul 30, 2003 issue

Film

Film Shorts

LIMITED RUN


* Amélie
A beautifully kinetic testament to human sweetness that had 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. (SEAN NELSON) Fremont Outdoor Movies, Sat at dusk.

Anomalies of the Unconscious
Seattle Underground Film Festival co-founder (and longtime Linda's Outdoor Summer Films program director) Jon Behrens presents the follow up to The Flickering of the Mind's Eye in the form of another hand-painted experimental piece called Anomalies of the Unconscious. 911 Media Arts Center, Fri at 8 pm.

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
Gary Cooper takes an unlikely turn as a millionaire cad desperately trying to escape his eighth wife in Ernst Lubitsch's 1938 classic, as penned by Billy Wilder. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs at 7:30 pm.

BonHoeffer
See review this issue. Little Theatre, Fri at 7 pm, Sat-Sun at 7, 9 pm.

Chaos
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun at 1:50, 4:20, 7, 9:30 pm.

The Love God?
See review this issue. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.

My Worst Nightmare
A Seattle-based filmmaker calling himself Beeko Bobbywabbanubby (who should be punished for making me transcribe that) presents a documentary composed of interviews with Seattle- and Denver-area "hipsters and homeless" with something of an unclear premise. And if that don't sell you.... Rendezvous, Fri at 7 pm.

Northwest Fire Shoot
Ballard goes up in a sea of flames with the fiery inferno that stands to be the premiere of Northwest Fire Shoot, a new documentary about the Burningman set's predilection for setting shit ablaze and swinging it around. Featuring fire dancing by members of Pyrosutra, Cirque De Flambe, Xaos Magick, and more. Segway, Sat at 11:30 pm.

Shrek
"That'll do, Donkey. That'll do." Redhook Brewery Moonlight Cinema, Thurs at dusk.

The Son
See review this issue. Grand Illusion, Fri at 5, 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun at 3, 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9 pm.

South Asian International Shorts
Though its title tempts me to an offensive allusion, I will curb my racism momentarily to deliver some factual information: visual brevity from India, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. Seattle Art Museum, Fri at 7 pm.

Spider-Man
As filmed by Sam Raimi, Spider-Man trots out a predictable (and cloyingly Victorian) boy-girl story. (JOSH FEIT)

Spillin' My Guts
The artistry of awkward pauses and feigned "urban" inflection: a new documentary on the art of spoken word poetry, followed by a live reading by some featured artists. Richard Hugo House, Tues at 8 pm.

Vertigo
"Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere." Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.

NOW PLAYING


2 Fast 2 Furious
Most hiphop videos have better plots and stronger female characters than this movie, which makes for one boring road trip. (ANDY SPLETZER)

* 28 Days Later
How do you like your pop-apocalypse, sci-fi horror? If you like it loud, smart, and scary as all get out, you cannot miss this. Animal activists accidentally release a rage virus on London that turns the population into cannibalistic predators who could outrun a zombie anytime, anywhere. The unaffected few band together and end up in a military compound where the soldiers are as bad as the infected. Yes. This film kicks ass. (SHANNON GEE)

Anger Management
It's unofficially recommended that one wear a helmet when viewing the Adam Sandler/Jack Nicholson comedy Anger Management, so as not to cause damage to the right frontal lobe due to repeated self-administered head slapping. However, the movie is so bad you'll want to die before it's over. (KATHLEEN WILSON)

Bad Boys 2
A Miami drug dealer plans his escape to Cuba--that is, if Will Smith and Martin Lawrence don't riddle him with bullet holes first. Riddle is indeed the right word here, for Smith and Lawrence's raison d'être in Bad Boys II appears to be to dispose of enemies with as many rounds as possible; from the very opening of the film, when the duo bring a swift end to a Ku Klux Klan meeting (shooting as many quips at the hicks as bullets), ridiculous amounts of firepower are expended. Why use two rounds to disable an opponent when you can use 50? Why shoot that bad guy when you can blow him 30 feet into the air? This is Michael Bay 101, and if Bad Boys II proves anything, it's that Bay's attempt at cinematic respectability was soundly ended with the horrendous Pearl Harbor. Bad Boys II is classic, trashy, inexcusable Bay. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

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--immigrants who, still steeped in Indian culture, are only concerned with her educational and marriage prospects, and consequently just don't get it. Stuff happens and challenges are overcome, and Mummy and Papa come around in the end, as we know they will, but the predictable conventionality of the plot structure is expertly obscured by the pleasures of the journey. It is all charming fluff and captivating if improbable lightness, of course, but for a feel-good comedy, there is no higher praise. (SANDEEP KAUSHIK)

The Bread, My Sweet
There are about 50 ways this little ethnic romantic drama could have gone awry, but writer/director Melissa Martin deftly sidesteps most of them to produce an effective debut. Scott Baio (!) stars as Dominic Pizzola, a man leading a double life. By day he's a "designated asshole," firing people for a corporate efficiency department. By night, he's a passionate baker, firing the ovens in a biscotti kitchen he runs with his two brothers. The bakery is downstairs from an elderly couple, Bella and Massimo, who have more or less adopted the brothers. When Bella falls ill, Dominic decides to fulfill her greatest wish and marry Luka, her wild daughter. Naturally, the quest runs aground of both Luka's independence (she's never even met her would-be groom) and Dominic's solitary nature. Just as naturally, their romance rises like a loaf of magical realism. More surprising than the plot, however, are the touches of warm neighborhood naturalism that suffuse the storytelling. Most surprising of all are the performances of Baio and Rosemary Prinz as Bella, the kind of role that Joan Plowright would normally play. Prinz has a face like an angel, and it's in her eyes, which tear up with joy at the sight of her wayward daughter's return, that The Bread, My Sweet proves transcendent. (SEAN NELSON)

Bruce Almighty
Are you fucking kidding me? Is this a joke? No, it's not. It's the inane story of Jim Carrey as Bruce Nolan, a loser who takes the Lord's (Morgan Freeman) name in vain until He gives ol' Bruce His job so Bruce can see the importance of prayer beads and learn why God doesn't help people win the lottery and stupid stuff like that. It's also yet another example of how Jim Carrey has failed to be significantly funny since In Living Color hit reruns (and I don't even know if he was funny on that show anymore). (JENNIFER MAERZ)

* Capturing the Friedmans
To watch the Friedman family fall apart after the father and youngest brother are accused of molesting kids in the family basement is like watching a Greek tragedy unfold, five people inexorably pulled down by their flaws, by personality, fate, and human failing--the angry elder brother, the bitter mother, the passive, tired father. This doesn't mean that Capturing the Friedmans is simple; you'll spend hours afterward arguing what really happened, and who behaved, in the end, the worst. Those arguments might surprise you. (EMILY HALL)

Charlies' Angels: Full Throttle
What I wanted to see was a parable about the power of an older, wiser woman striking back at the young, naive, and pert-breasted. And Demi Moore looks amazing, it is true. But it isn't possible to read anything into this movie: If you try to apply your brain to it, it snaps back like a rubber band. Reality is just a construct anyway, subject to flat, shimmering moments of CGI. The more improbable the situation, the funnier it is (from the falling getaway truck that miraculously provides a getaway helicopter, to the big book on opera on the table in Charlie's office); Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore can barely keep their faces straight as they deliver their lines--even Lucy Liu's deadpan shows signs of cracking. Full Throttle is not so much a movie as a string of inside jokes, action sequences, costume changes, and shots of Diaz' ass, but that's the point, right? There's a story in here somewhere about the witness protection plan, an ex-Angel, and some orphans, but really it's a wet dream for both genders: Never underestimate the pure pleasure of seeing a gal throw a man through a jukebox. (EMILY HALL)

Daddy Day Care
Is Eddie Murphy just too busy counting his money to read scripts? Or perhaps they're all just printed on hundred dollar bills. The once-great man hits us with yet another piece of middling excrement in the form of a Mr. Mom knock-off.

Down With Love
With its retro setting and references, Down with Love not only manages to pay direct tribute to the kind of sex comedy Doris Day and Rock Hudson made memorable with Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back, but proves to be the most satisfying romantic comedy I've seen in--well, decades. (KATHLEEN WILSON)

Dumb and Dumberer
This movie's saving grace is that it's the kind of stupid that the majority of Americans like--every joke is about farting, poo, special education students, and short buses. And if not that, it's making some sort of sexual innuendo that would make any 15-year-old boy piss his pants with laughter. And if that's not enough to get you to crack a smile (you know, because maybe your over the age of 17), you get to hear Bob Saget yell "shit" over and over again. Who's not gonna laugh at that? (MEGAN SELING)

* Finding Nemo
A ridiculously gorgeous film, Finding Nemo proves yet again Pixar's current chokehold on big-screen animation. From the facial expressions of the fish and background shots of gently swaying sea grass, to expansive harbor shots of Sydney and the continual mist of plankton wisping by, every frame has been so detailed and obsessed over that the film stuns. Add in Pixar's gift for scripting, a gift that always makes their films tolerable for adults, and the end product is a flower of a movie, exceedingly well imagined, that is more than worth the multiplex gouging. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Holes
Based on the popular children's book by Louis Sachar, Holes is a family drama (starring Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Arquette, and Jon Voight) about kids in the chain gang.

Hollywood Homicide
Gawdawful. Seriously. Watching Hollywood Homicide, two questions flared up: 1) What has happened to Indiana Jones? and 2) Why have so many critics--Roger Ebert and Slate's David Edelstein, among them--found this insipid, unfunny, clumsily constructed "buddy cop movie" worthwhile? (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

HOW TO DEAL
So Mandy Moore thinks she's too fast for love and wants nothing to do with something that makes people act so retarded. During the summer before her senior year, her parents get divorced, her sister gets married, her best friend gets laid, and her father remarries a Barbie doll. She's lost all hope. That is, until a greasy-haired boy starts flirting with her and she falls for his lines like any dumb girl would (he pulls the Yedi Mind Trick on her ass, for chrissakes! Talk about cheeseball!). See this movie you will not, like this movie you will not. (MEGAN SELING) Pacific Place, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

* The Hulk
Whether or not you buy the beast onscreen is dependent upon just how far you yourself are willing to leap--but the old tale has been given a modern overhaul by Ang Lee and writers James Schamus, John Turman, and Michael France for The Hulk. It may in fact be the most grown-up--and most emotionally fucked-up--comic-book movie ever assembled. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

I Capture the Castle
Taking back the English period piece from those Merchant-Ivory hacks, this is one girls coming-of-age film that anyone can enjoy. Two sisters live with their family in a remote castle, and their romantic prospects are severely limited until two American brothers inherit the land they are living on. The star of the movie is good, old-fashioned repression, and it is refreshing to see the more traditional happy ending replaced by unresolved longing. (Andy Spletzer) Seven Gables

The Italian Job
Pompous jackass (Edward Norton) and inflection-handicapped pretty boy (Mark Wahlberg) team up in The Italian Job, a remake of the 1969 heist comedy starring Michael Caine and Noel Coward, and somehow, shockingly, the result is not completely fucked--a sturdy, if unsurprising, summer fluff piece. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Johnny English
With the brief flash of the rather subtle, rather British Studio Canal logo immediately preceding that of the gaudy American Universal, I held the slightest incling of hope for Johnny English, the once-brilliant Rowan Atkinson's latest vehicle for mediocrity. But be warned: despite it's appearances, Johnny English is not a British film. It is an American film. As American as his previous effort, the dismal Bean. Which means, in short--he gets shit stuck in other shit. And is shat upon. Shit, shit, shit. Shit every-which-a-way. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life
This is where I make a joke involving the word "titular." Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Varsity, Woodinville 12

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
A lame exercise in myth-historical revisionism in which the action is dull, the dialogue witless, the effects absurd (Mr. Hyde looks like the Hulk; Nemo's Nautilus looks like a binary code ejaculation), and the story about as lucid as Ronald Reagan. While they may never run out of comics to make into would-be summer blockbusters, they certainly appear to have run out of good ones. (SEAN NELSON)

Legally Blonde 2
More than any other actress, 27-year-old Southerner Reese Witherspoon embodies American ideals at their most... idealistic, representing the beauty, altruistic savvy, and awesomely fine-tuned dental hygiene we so admire in our finest citizens. A former cheerleader/debutante with a Stanford education, Witherspoon is the vision of moral upstandingness--the perfect fusion of Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly. She has even birthed a child and kept her figure. That's why we believe she can and will change the world through animal rights in Legally Blonde 2, in which Witherspoon reprises her amazing role as Elle Woods, whose desire for truth, justice, and the American way equalizes her unapologetic materialism. (JULIANNE SHEPHERD)

* 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)

Man On the Train
The French are a great people, with a great cinema; but when they stink, they really stink. This film is an utter waste of your time and mine. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Matrix: Reloaded
Whether you buy into the Wachowski Brothers' massive tale or not, any film that shows you something you've never seen before--indeed, never dreamed possible, really--is worth the effort. There is art that moves you, and art that awes you. The Matrix Reloaded, despite its flaws, is the latter. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Matrix: Reloaded at IMAX
Okay, so an already bloated movie is about to gain mucho weight, which means über-geeks will get a chance to see Trinity's PVC-clad heart-shaped ass in three-story-tall glory. This is an enhancement, to be sure, but much like Attack of the Clones' stint at IMAX, The Matrix: Reloaded's transition from big screen to really fucking big screen seems completely unnecessary.

A Mighty Wind
As with Christopher Guests' other films, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, the results of A Mighty Wind 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. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)

Pirates of the Caribbean
Even if this film's story is fairly irrelevant (a quick summation: cursed pirate ship, kidnapped maiden, much swordplay), the action is solid, the CGI intricate, and the writing adequate--and what more could you want from a summer blockbuster, especially when Johnny Depp is a such sight to behold in the film? (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Rugrats Go Wild
Why does it feel like they're not even trying anymore? Why do all American animated features have to be musicals? Why is this film's biggest selling point that it marks Bruce Willis' triumphant return to voice-over? Why indeed, my friend. Why indeed. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

The Sea Is Watching
It's sort of like Amélie set in a 19th-century Japanese brothel. Unlucky O-Shin prefers to help others before she helps herself, and she has a habit of falling in love with her clients. For her, love is a symbol of hope and a means of escape. When O-Shin falls for a Samurai who seems to love her, too, the girls gather around to enable this union despite the caste difference that threatens its very foundation. This is not the type of movie that wants to go into the nitty-gritty of the business of brothels, however, but instead uses prostitutes in the same way that Westerns used to: They are whores with hearts of gold. Director Kei Kumai is a bit too reverent to the script by the late Akira Kurosawa, because the performances are a little stilted and the characters never feel fully fleshed out, but the movie is diverting nonetheless. (ANDY SPLETZER)

Seabiscuit
Tobey Maguire breaks your little fucking heart in the story of an unlikely jockey and his unlikely horse--a premise ("based on a TRUE STORY!") that smells about as pleasant as shovel in a horse stable. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Neptune, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
No one over 10 years old ever needs to see a DreamWorks animated film. Pixar is totally cooler. (MEGAN SELING)

Spellbound
Jeffrey Blitz's amazing documentary Spellbound chronicles eight near-teens as they compete in the National Spelling Bee. At least, that's the film's obvious premise; the less obvious one, what the documentary really is, is a love letter to America. National pride via a national bee. And there is much pride to be found. The film's subjects come from a happy homes, and each is driven to take the national title; their love of words, and an eagerness to succeed, fuels the long hours of rote memorization they endure. Their parents may have money, or not, but one thing is readily apparent: The kids are bound for successful careers and lives. They are the American dream, on stage, trying to remember how to spell "logorrhea." (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Spy Kids 3D
See review this issue. Factoria, Metro, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

The Swimming Pool
François Ozon's latest tribute to the sexy superiority of French women. Starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
After a late-'90s dance around the rim of the cinematic dustbin, Arnold Schwarzenegger is reprising his most famous role as the T-101, this time taking on the beautiful and dreaded T-X. It has been 83 years since the passing of the 19th Amendment, and now, finally, women are able to claim victory in the battle for equality. They have their own ultimate killing machine. Unfortunately, the film is not victorious in the least. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* Whale Rider
Audiences at Toronto and Sundance loved this film and so will you if you like triumphant tales of charismatic youngsters who defy the stoic immobility of old-fashioned patriarchs. I like it because it captures traditional Maori ceremonies and songs on film while also showing that New Zealand is not just a backdrop for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Shannon Gee)

The Winged Migration
Following geese, cranes, swans, puffins, penguins, pelicans, and gulls, the makers of the insect documentary Microcosmos spent four years capturing impossible images of birds, via a bevy of methods and a gaggle of cinematographers, for Winged Migration, a documentary that is as much about the wonders of flight as the migration of birds.

* X2: X-Men United
The screenplay, by Michael Dougherty and Daniel Harris, is great; it would have been disastrous for the filmmakers not to rely on it. Forgoing excessive sweaty violence for richly imaginative narrative, X2's world is brought to life even more spectacularly than the first X-Men film, with very human elements of persecution, morality, and acceptance. (JULIANNE SHEPHERD)