limited runs


BONHOEFFER
In the compelling documentary Bonhoeffer by Martin Doblmeier, we learn that this handsome theologian--who was born to an accomplished German family, collected black American spirituals, and claimed the heart of a very beautiful aristocratic woman--openly (or as openly as possible) opposed Hitler. He was by theory a pacifist, but by action a conspirator, who assisted in several failed attempts to assassinate the FĂĽhrer. The attempts ultimately cost him his life. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Little Theatre, Fri 7, 9 pm ; Sat-Sun 3, 5, 7, 9 pm; Tues-Thurs 7, 9 pm.

Films of Caveh Zahedi
Over two weekends, 911 is showing four of Zahedi's features, starting with his most recent. Drawn from a year's worth of video diaries, In the Bathtub of the World chronicles his sometimes turbulent life with his girlfriend Mandy as he grapples with his reading addiction and his prostitute addiction. I was Possessed by God recounts Zahedi's attempt to repeat a psychedelic mushroom trip in which he felt a "divine possession." (ANDY SPLETZER) 911 Media Arts Center, see Movie Times for details.

* Midnight Cowboy
"John Wayne! Are you tryin' to tell me he's a fag?" Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.

Phantom Ship
Shining Moments Films continues its timely exploration of high seas classics, with a speculative look at the real life mystery of American ship Marie Celeste, found off the coast of England inexplicably abandoned. Bela Legosi stars in the 1935 film. Rendezvous, Wed at 7:30 pm.

* Revenger's Tragedy
See review this issue. Little Theatre, Fri-Sat at 3:45, 8:30, 11 pm, Sun at 3:45, 6:15, 8:30 pm, Tues-Thurs at 6:15, 8:30 pm.

Searching For Asian America
A preview of October's Northwest Asian American Film Festival, Wing Luke presents the soon-to-be-released PBS documentary on the work of brave explorers desperately attempting to locate the lost republic of Asian America. Theater Off Jackson, Sat at 8 pm.

September 11
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun at 1:10, 4, 7, 9:45 pm, Mon-Thurs at 7, 9:45 pm.

Shiraz
The conclusion of the Seattle Art Museum's South Asian Reels series, Shiraz is a 1928 silent film set in the Mughal Empire that tells the love story of the woman who inspired the Taj Mahal. Seattle Art Museum, Fri at 7 pm.

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 Splendor
As a comic-book movie, American Splendor is more like Crumb and Ghost World than like Spider Man or The Hulk. Along with a deadpan sense of humor, the focus is entirely on character and not at all on spectacle. There's also a tone found in underground comics that this movie perfectly captures. Smartly constructed and often surprising, American Splendor indulges in how artificial the filmmaking process is, and ends up with a heartfelt portrayal of a very real man. (ANDY SPLETZER)

American Wedding
If you're finishing a trilogy about boners, boning, blow jobs, motherfuckers, call girls, and gay dudes, who needs a plot? The answer to your real question: pretty funny, although this third piece of the American Pie trilogy doesn't measure up to the first. And American Wedding definitely belongs to Stifler, who learns that in order to be the star of a Hollywood comedy, you're gonna have to eat shit from time to time. Just please promise this is the last one. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen
During the first 60 minutes of this two-hour film, one is under the impression that if it cut the last mooring holding it down, it would float up and out into new territory. The film's conditions are favorable: There is a charming jewel thief (Jeremy Irons), the somber city of Paris, and a beautiful jazz singer (Patricia Kaas) who is competing with another beautiful jazz singer for the love of a gorgeous trumpeter. But And Now Ladies & Gentlemen, which is directed by Claude Lelouch, just doesn't go far enough. It only reaches the brink of brilliance before giving up and descending into the ridiculous. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

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)

The Battle Of Shaker Heights
Those beer-swilling hacks at Project Greenlight exploit another young filmmaker in The Battle Of Shaker Heights, a movie about a 17-year-old boy obsessed with re-enacting WWII battles who exploits his passion to combat a school bully or some shit.

Bend It Like Beckham
Stuff happens and challenges are overcome, 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)

Bollywood / Hollywood
See review this issue. Seven Gables

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. If I wanted religion and the importance of prayer shoved down my throat like a giant morality tampon sucking up every last bit of patience until I'm suffocating on it, I'd be on my knees in a pew already. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

Camp
Camp, Todd Graff's low-budget comedy about a summer camp for theatrically inclined teens, arrives in Seattle trailing a crowd-pleasing reputation and an impressive amount of critical praise. The crowd-pleasing rep is understandable--any film devoted to the dramatic exertions of pubescent misfits is sure to provide its share of enthralling hilarity. But the critical gushing is... bizarre. Because where several big-name critics claim to have witnessed "a triumphant minor miracle," I saw only a fatally klutzy teen soap opera, albeit one with some devilish twists, some NAMBLA-flavored eye candy, and a whole bunch of entertaining wigs (not to mention one super-sappy plot twist that literally had me gaping in horror). Still, if you've ever been brought to tears by anything written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, you will most likely cheer for Camp. (DAVID SCHMADER)

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star
If Saturday Night Live has taught us anything, it's that there's a fine line between "comedy" and "beating a dead horse into the ground, picking its pulp-like carcass back up, and finely filleting the remains." Wait, did I say fine line? I meant GAPING CANYON. Deeply grating SNL alum David Spade explores this expanse with his latest--a fairly self-explanatory one note, sustained for an hour and a half. Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

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. It is a flower of a movie, exceedingly well imagined, that is more than worth the multiplex gouging. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Freaky Friday
Despite the generally amiable Jamie Lee Curtis and the overwhelming presence of feigned teen rock band sequences (the greatest joy that the pubescent live-action genre affords), 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
I understand that a couple of decades of speculation will let anybody down, but childhood fantasies notwithstanding, FvJ is more of mess than you could possibly imagine. No, really. Granted, the Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday the 13th series' have long been entirely inexplicable (what with their innumerable ressurections, circular logics, and endless devices used to ensure mammarian explosion into the triple digits), but this time around one gets the feeling that director Ronny Yu left about six hours of boring ol' continuity on the cutting room floor. What for all purposes should have been merely a mediocre horror film instead shifts mid-stream to become a mediocre action film--leaving an even lamer shitbag of indecision. Let me save you the trouble: nobody dies... because they're ALREADY DEAD. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

* The Hulk
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
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)

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life
Originiality of plot line is hardly the reason to see this, of course. The reason is Angelina Jolie, in a parade of urban-guerrilla/rave-girl outfits. She is rather magnificent, even when she's ridiculous. (EMILY HALL)

Le Divorce
Le Divorce robs Merchant Ivory of their period trappings; it is set in the present day (based on Diane Johnson's novel), thus conjuring up nightmarish memories of the team's 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 wrong. (CLAUDE ROC)

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
Very heavy-handed and obvious, and perhaps too moralizing for a film about the dangers of moralizing. (EMILY HALL)

Marci X
In her long-awaited return to starring-role status (her first since the underrated masterpiece that is Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion), Lisa Kudrow stars as the heir to a successful hardcore hiphop label who must clean up the hardest of the hard, played unconvincingly by Damon Wayans.

The Matrix: Reloaded
The Wachowski Brothers have veered the series' storyline sharply this time around, as what appeared to be true in the elder sibling is not necessarily true in the younger. But even if the story is still massively underwhelming, the sheer audacity the Wachowskis bring to the screen for Reloaded can only be described as brilliant. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Matrix: Reloaded at IMAX
Okay, so an already bloated movie is about to gain mucho weight, which means ĂĽber-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.

Medallion
Jackie Chan plays a stenographer in this 19th-century period piece about corruption in the British Parliment. Either that, or he compiles the scraps from his last decade of filmmaking into another piece of ass-kicking trash. Whichever.

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. (SEAN NELSON)

My Boss's Daughter
Much to my editor's shagrin, Ashton Kutcher spends another hour and a half desperately trying to fuck another trashy Hollywood blonde (in this case Tara Reid)--to little avail.

Open Range
Part standard Western, part attempted romantic epic, Open Range starts patiently and solidly, but ends up rushing through its climax; the romance, such as it is, takes it in the teeth, and what was meant to be big and important is instead messy and clumsy. Which is too bad, because it has one of the best shootouts in years. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Order
The Vatican and ritualistic murder. You know, the usual. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12

The Other Side of the Bed
Even though at times it has the feel of an episode of Friends, The Other Side of the Bed moves beyond triteness by suggesting, at the end, that the right arrangement of these particular people isn't necessarily obvious. On top of everything, song-and-dance numbers erupt periodically throughout the film, although they're less like reflections of actual emotions than the kind of lip-synching heartsick teenagers do in front of the bedroom mirror. This silly movie made me, of all things, happy. (EMILY HALL)

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)

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)

* Spellbound
Jeffrey Blitz's amazing documentary 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. (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)

Step Into Liquid
The thing about surf movies is that they're like porn: After a few glorious frames, the money shot loses its power, and the filmmakers have to scramble to make it sexy and surprising again. You have to hand it to Dana Brown, though--he keeps Step Into Liquid sexy for longer than you would think possible, and when the beautiful footage starts to pale, he throws in all the thinkable variations on the surf theme: girl surfers, aging surfers, a surfer who's paralyzed below the neck, and (my personal favorite) dedicated surfers in not-so-photogenic Sheboygan, Wisconsin. (EMILY HALL)

Stoked: The Rise And Fall of Gator
Few kids skating today are aware of Mark "Gator" Rogowski, the '80s skateboarding star turned cautionary tale. But that will change with the arrival of Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, a heartbreaking documentary directed by Helen Stickler that chronicles Gator's rise as Vision Skateboards poster boy to has-been to, finally, incarcerated former Jesus freak. The film is an engaging biography of a pop-culture casualty. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Swimming Pool
FranĂżois 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)

* Thirteen
That the teenage years are difficult is not news--it's something we've known for years, thanks to afterschool specials and blunt and terrifying movies like Kids. But stories about teens going out of control tend to inspire more polemic than art, encouraging viewers to identify the problem--the broken home, the oblivious parents, the oversexualized media--and turn the story into a message. What makes Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen more potent is that she offers no such easy outs, but rather points out the vulnerability of the whole structure (family, school, self) that keeps a teen from self-destructing. (EMILY HALL)

The Trip
See review this issue. Varsity

Uptown Girls
After seeing Uptown Girls, I am convinced that one of the funniest things in the whole entire world is watching an adorable eight-year-old girl look Brittany Murphy straight in the face and ask, "Are you on crack?" It's funny 'cause it's true; Miss Murphy has never looked more like an overdose victim in high heels than she does in this movie--during some scenes I swear her skin was blue. (MEGAN SELING)

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.