LIMITED RUN


Aguirre, Wrath of God
See Stranger Suggests. Grand Illusion, Fri at 9 pm, Sat-Sun at 5, 9 pm, Tue-Thurs at 9 pm.

Aliens
"All right people, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I love the corps!" Fremont Outdoor Movies, Sat at dusk.

The Devil and Miss Jones
Not to be confused with the porn classic The Devil In Miss Jones. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs at 7 pm.

The Fucking Fabulous Film Festival
See Blow Up. The Bar, Coffee Messiah, see www.Lot11Pictures.com for complete listings.

* Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun at 2:10, 4:30, 7, and 9:20 pm, Mon-Thurs at 7, 9:20 pm.

The Goonies
"I got an idea! Why don't we just put chocolate all over the floor and let Chunk eat his way through!" Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.

Groundhog Day
"I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over...?" JBL Theater, Mon at 8 pm.

In the Mirror of Maya Deren
See review this issue. Little Theatre, Fri-Sun 7, 9 pm.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Geek out in the outdoors. Renton Outdoor Cinema, Sat at dusk.

National Home Movie Day
The first installment of a great worldwide event, National Home Movie Day is a chance for amateur auteurs to dig their 8mm and 16mm masterpieces out of their closets and give them a showing before public peepers. 911 Media Arts Center, Sat Aug 16 at 6:30 pm.

* Repo Man
"There's fuckin' room to move as a fry cook! I could be manager in two years! King! God!" Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.

Road to Morocco
See Stranger Suggests. Grand Illusion, Fri at 7 pm, Sat-Sun at 3, 7 pm, Tue-Thurs at 7pm.

Super-8 Open Screening
See Blow Up. This monthly, theme-based screening series at the Little Theatre is open to anyone with a reel. Just drop your film off at the theater 48 hours prior to the screening, and boom: You're in the show. Little Theatre, Wed at 8 pm.

Twin Peaks/David Lynch Festival Night
See Blow Up. Seattle Art Museum, Sat Aug 16 at 7:30 pm.

Usual Suspects
"He was dead just long enough for the murder rap to blow over. Then he had lunch." Redhook Moonlight Cinema, Thurs at dusk. NOW PLAYING


* 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)

American Wedding
Pretty funny, although this third piece of the American Pie trilogy doesn't measure up to the first. And please promise this is the last one. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

Bad Boys 2
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, it is all charming fluff and captivating if improbable lightness. But for a feel-good comedy, there is no higher praise. (SANDEEP KAUSHIK)

Bruce Almighty
Just when you thought there was nothing worse than an earnest Jim Carrey comedy, it hits you like a sack of shit in the kisser--there is something worse, and that's an earnest Jim Carrey comedy that casts the overacting, overarching comedian as God. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

* Buffalo Soldiers
See review this issue. Crest

Camp
See review this issue. Egyptian

* 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)

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
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. (EMILY HALL)

Dirty Pretty Things
I'm sad to announce that Dirty Pretty Things is a failure. True, it is a beautiful failure, as it is beautifully shot, with beautiful set designs, and beautiful actors (Amistad's Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays, with great success, a fallen but still noble Nigerian doctor, and Amélie's Audrey Tautou, who plays with considerably less success a vulnerable Turkish immigrant); but in terms of its concept, plot, and general message, the movie falls apart shortly after it starts. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* Finding Nemo
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. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Freaky Friday
The new Freaky Friday movie is not the old Freaky Friday movie. Absent: Jodie Foster, Barbara Harris, Boss Hogg, and (in the most unfortunate oversight) the earth-shattering car-chase/water-skiing/hang-gliding finale. Present: an univested Jamie Lee, obligatory modernizations, and (most inexplicably) something called "Asian voodoo." (ZAC PENNINGTON)

Freddy Vs. Jason
After a decade of lowbrow teen horror flicks cloaked in a thin veil of irony, Hollywood redeems itself completely with three simple words. Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Gigli
Chief among Gigli's failings is the fact that the picture simply isn't bad enough; if, like me, you've looked forward to seeing the film with a Showgirls level of anticipation--which early word seemed to promise--you will leave the theater supremely disappointed. Alas, there is no amazing new level of awfulness to be found in Gigli, just a terrible picture. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Grind
See review this issue. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Woodinville 12

* The Hulk
Whether or not you buy the beast onscreen is dependent upon just how far you yourself are willing to leap. A failure, but an interesting one. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

I Capture the Castle
Taking back the English period piece from those Merchant-Ivory hacks, this is one girl's 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)

The Italian Job
A remake of the 1969 heist comedy starring Michael Caine and Noel Coward, this somehow, shockingly, is not completely fucked--a sturdy, if unsurprising, summer fluff piece. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Johnny English
Rowan Atkinson's latest vehicle for mediocrity. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life
It's come to this: a movie where all the references are not to previous adventure flicks, but to special effects from previous adventure flicks. That's what happens when you run out of ways to pit the evil against the less evil. (EMILY HALL)

Le Divorce
Let me confess that I can be stirred by Merchant Ivory and their regard for throttled emotions. Unfortionately this movie doesn't work, conjuring up nightmares of their 1989 Slaves of New York. The effect is like granddad coming into the party to rap with the young folk: The tone, the timing, the touch is all wrong. Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts are sisters in Paris, but they both act as if the blood has been drained out of them. (CLAUDE ROC) Guild 45, Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center

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. (SEAN NELSON)

The Magdalene Sisters
See review this issue. Metro, Uptown

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)

Masked and Anonymous
As an inspired continuation of Dylan's cryptic myth, Masked and Anonymous scores its biggest points. As a movie, it's a mess. (DAVID SCHMADER)

The Matrix: Reloaded at IMAX
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. (SEAN NELSON)

* Northfork
Filmed with little more than a gray palette, Northfork, which concludes brothers Michael and Mark Polish's trilogy (the film's siblings: Twin Falls Idaho and Jackpot), is a challenging picture--an exercise in magical realism, and an exploration of and rumination on death. While it is not entirely successful, there is enough mystery in the film to make it a worthwhile experience. Confusing, beautiful, and occasionally sad, it does what all the best films do: inspires argument. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Open Range
See review this issue. Meridian 16, Metro, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Passionada
See review this issue. Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro

Pirates of the Caribbean
Watching Pirates of the Caribbean, I realized how supremely disappointing it is that in the 108 years since the Lumière brothers first fumbled with their primitive cinematograph, we are only just now being given a zombie pirate movie. The summer's best blockbuster. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

S.W.A.T.
Starring the young Colin Farrell and the old Samuel L. Jackson, S.W.A.T. is pure nonsense. This doesn't mean it's bad (it's not too bad), but it's as far from reality than anything you could ever imagine. Here is the new crew: S.W.A.T. team member number one dates a punk girl with tattoos just above her behind; S.W.A.T. team member two used to be the hardest rapper in hiphop; S.W.A.T. team member three is, like J.Lo., from around the block; and S.W.A.T. team member number four sounds more like Shaft than Steve Forrest. Utterly ridiculous! (CHARLES MUDEDE) Factoria, Grand Alder-wood, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12

Seabiscuit
Maybe I'm too cynical for Triumphant Lessons like this, but I like a little more grit under the nails of my Hollywood movies, and the manicured emotions in Seabiscuit are a bit too Hallmark for me, even if they are based on a true story. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

Secret Lives of Dentists
See review this issue. Uptown, Varsity

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
Tyler Durden, some gay-ass prince, and the chick from the T-Mobil commercials with the speech impediment run into big birds and big fish and big goddesses and after a whole lot of swinging and flying through the air, all ends well. In conclusion: It's dumb. No one over 10 years old ever needs to see a DreamWorks animated film. Pixar is totally cooler. And Bradley Steinbacher can suck it for sending me to this film. (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 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
The third installment of Robert Rodriguez's kiddie franchise rests firmly in two dimensions for the bulk of its duration. With shots that stand to age as well as Jaws 3-D, the real tragedy here is that the children of America live in a world where this sort of tripe stands as a pale approximation of the majesty that was Captain EO. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

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
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. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Uptown Girls
See review this issue. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Pacific Place, Woodinville 12

* 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)