420
The world premiere of Robert Zverina's experimental new work, shot on location in Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Seattle, and more. Rendezvous, Thurs Feb 19 at 7 pm.
Atlantic City
Louis Malle's meditation on a resort city that resorts to gambling as a means of revitalization. Movie Legends, Sun Feb 15 at 1 pm.
Filmmaker's Saloon
See Blow Up. A discussion about digital intermediates (stuff like color correction and final titles) with Rich Fassio of Modern Digital and filmmaker Geof Miller. Little Theatre, Wed Feb 18 at 7:30 pm.
Framed! The Corporate Media at War
Planet of the Arabs, a collage of the dominant images of Arabs in Hollywood cinema, mixes scenes from dumb movies like True Lies (James Cameron's worst effort) and Rambo III (the worst in a series that began brilliantly), and in each sequence we find the same Arab--the Arab who is obsessed with the destruction of the West and its values; the Arab who is fanatically religious. In a word, the Arab as the eternal terrorist. No doubt, some Arabs are terrorists, but their terrorism is not innate or sourced from some strain in their language, or culture, or religion; it has been and still is shaped by real historical/social processes. Hollywood, of course, does not have the money or inclination to develop backgrounds to acts of terrorism; it simply wants bad guys that good guys can eliminate during explosive scenarios. All movies screen at the Broadway Performance Hall. Planet of the Arabs plays with Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land, Fri Feb 13 at 7 pm. Selves & Others: A Portrait of Edward Said with Arab Stereotypes Shorts Program, Fri Feb 13 at 9 pm. Israel's Secret Weapons with The Accused, Sat Feb 14 at 2 pm. Fear & Favor in the Newsroom with Constructing Public Opinion, Sat Feb 14 at 5 pm. Lord's Song in a Strange Land, Sat Feb 14 at 7 pm. Al Jazeera: Voice of Arabia with Driving an Arab Street, Sat Feb 14 at 9 pm. Nazrah: A Muslim Woman's Perspective, Sun Feb 15 at 2 pm. Scenes from an Endless War with Re: The Operation, Letters, Conversations, and My Beard Forever, Sun Feb 15 at 5 pm. Hijacking Catastrophe with Beyond Good and Evil, Sun Feb 15 at 7 pm. Shooting Scripts: Paradise Now screenplay reading, Sun Feb 15 at 9 pm. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Heartbreak Extravaganza Featuring Black Moon
Louis Malle's art-house classic Black Moon is about a girl who tries to escape the battle of the sexes, with dubious success. Music follows screening. 911 Media Arts, Sat Feb 14 at 8 pm.
Hey Is Dee Dee Home
See review this issue.
I Vitelloni
See review this issue.
Mahogany
Diana Ross plays a ghetto girl who makes good in this 1975 drama. Sunset Tavern, Mon Feb 16 at 8 pm.
Of Human Bondage
See Blow Up. The 1934 adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, with Bette Davis in the role of Mildred Rogers. Aren't club-footed boys sympathetic? Rendezvous, Wed Feb 18 at 7:30 pm.
* Piccadilly
Directed by the German Ewald Andre Dupont, Piccadilly tosses the audience into smoky nightclubs and dark back rooms, giving seediness a blue and amber tint. Originally released in 1929, this silent classic stars Gilda Gray, Charles Laughton, and, most notably, the sunning and mysterious Anna May Wong, who is a cool, possibly sinister woman who rules the show. Her presence alone is worth the effort. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 5, 7, 9 pm, Tues-Thurs 7, 9 pm.
Princess Mononoke
An anime war between a forest and a mining company is the bewitching third entry in SAM's Hayao Miyazaki series. Seattle Art Museum, Sat Feb 14 at 1:30 pm.
* Rear Window
George Bailey develops an unhealthy obsession of Ironside in this Hitchcock classic. Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.
State of the Union
SAM's Katharine Hepburn series trundles along with this Frank Capra film from 1948, about an industrialist (Spencer Tracy) hand-picked to run for president on the Republican ticket. Watch for the source of Reagan's famous line, "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green." Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Feb 19 at 7:30 pm.
The Last Link
A documentary about the Basque region of Spain, narrated by Willie Nelson. Central Cinema, Mon Feb 16 at 7 pm.
* Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa's retelling of Macbeth transposes the Scottish play to 15th-century Japan. Thomson Hall Room 125, University of Washington campus, Tues Feb 17 at 6:15 pm.
* Weird Science
"You two donkey dicks couldn't get laid in a morgue!" Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.
Woman of the Year
George Stevens' 1942 film features questionable political content, Spencer Tracy, and... you guessed it, the inimitable Katharine Hepburn. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Feb 12 at 7:30 pm.
NOW PLAYING
* 21 Grams
Though fragmented and seemingly random, 21 Grams is musical; it feels, moves, and concludes like a massive musical composition. 21 Grams is not a perfect work of art--it gets to be a bit long toward the end--but as with all great music, it manages to leave, once all of its parts come together, a strong impression on the senses. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
50 First Dates
Dating a girl with short-term memory loss is a drag for Adam Sandler. But short-term memory loss is a boon for the girl, because unlike the rest of us, she can forget that Adam Sandler exists.
* Along Came Polly
It's one of life's great mysteries why you can watch one movie, such as this one, which is full of predictable humor, improbable situations, unlikely segues, and unnecessary pop psychology (in lieu of character or motive), and not be filled with loathing for yourself, the world, and Bradley Steinbacher for sending you to see it, and why another, quite similar movie (such as Something's Gotta Give or Chasing Liberty) makes you want to slit your wrists--but there it is. (EMILY HALL)
Barbershop 2: Back in Business
Clearly, Ice Cube's Barbershop 2 is the product of a larger financial investment than Barbershop--the sets are better, the acting has climbed up a notch, and the direction, by Kevin Rodney Sullivan (How Stella Got Her Groove Back), is generally stronger. There's less ghetto and more Hollywood in Barbershop 2. The movie will make you laugh as long as you don't recall that it's released during the month we celebrate black history, in which case it will make you cry. This piece of shit cinema is what we get after 500 years of struggle for liberation, civil rights, and black nationhood. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
* Battle of Algiers
See review this issue.
The Big Bounce
Owen Wilson as a romantic lead in a film is kinda odd, but add the word comedy to the romantic tag and it's a whole other ball of surf wax. From the author of Out of Sight comes a movie about criss-crossed double-crossing in Hawaii that'll make you laugh harder than it'll make you think--which is to say, not too strenuously for either activity, but it's still a lot of fun. (Or maybe I've just been away from sun and sand for too long). (JENNIFER MAERZ)
Big Fish
Tim Burton's Big Fish is an ungainly, rambling piece of work built upon a bed of lies. The liar: a man named Ed Bloom who has spent his life spinning outrageous tales about himself, including run-ins with witches and giants, Siamese twins, and massive, uncatchable fish (hence the title). Sappy and cluttered, the entirety of Big Fish doesn't quite hold together. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
The Butterfly Effect
Dude, where's my chaos theory? The latest feature-length advertisement for Ashton Kutcher's bone structure, this film is so stultifyingly poor on every level that unless you're (a) 12 years old, (b) a sadly desperate gay man/straight woman with a thing for hunky morons, or (c) 13 years old, you really have no business watching. (SEAN NELSON)
Catch That Kid
This review would be a whole lot easier to write if I were writing about a movie that had any sort of substance. But I'm not writing about a movie that has substance, I'm writing about Catch That Kid. (MEGAN SELING)
Cheaper by the Dozen
Speaking from a former nanny's point of view, unless you're expressly accompanying a child, don't be tempted by Cheaper by the Dozen--this is the kind of kid's fare that is to be savored by the parent/caretaker once it's out on video. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
* City of God
As with Mathieu Kassovitz's French film La Haine (Hate, 1995), 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 (unlike Kassovitz's The Crimson Rivers); Cidade de Deus is a Brazilian film. The Americanism structures the story's form rather than its content. Set in hell (a heated Rio de Janeiro ghetto) and narrated by a young newspaper photographer named Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), Cidade de Deus essentially describes the rise and fall of the legendary, psychopathic gangster Li'l ZĂ© (Leandro Firmino da Hora), who, after murdering every obstacle in his way, mercilessly rules the ghetto's turbulent drug trade. During Rocket's '60s boyhood, the film's violence is comical, its criminals romantic and ethical. But as the slum expands and Rocket becomes a young man in the '70s, the violence intensifies. By the film's end in the '80s, the sound of bullets replaces actual dialogue. Though great to watch, Cidade de Deus curiously 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)
* Cold Mountain
Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain is a burly, brooding romantic epic set during the Civil War and starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renée Zellweger. Minghella steers the film into a few minor rough spots (including a somewhat clumsy beginning, and an occasionally annoying performance by Zellweger as a lodger who helps Kidman on her farm), but the picture as a whole delivers a big, heartfelt epic. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* The Company
The Company is very much a dance movie, but not in the sentimental way that The Turning Point was. This is to say that you'll see a lot of dance, much of it lovely, threaded in among the lives and rehearsals of the movie's characters like a kind of fever dream--rising out of the everyday, a better, more beautiful, more artful version of normal interaction. It might be that the subject of this film, rather than being "about" characters, is what it means to do something very, very well, to make it look easy, and what might be given up in the process. (EMILY HALL)
The Cooler
In The Cooler, director Wayne Kramer has managed to give audiences something all too rare in films these days: a sexy scene that not only causes the audience to flush, but makes sense to them as well. But the film itself feels cluttered and unfocused, especially as it limps toward a ridiculous climax that not only doesn't work, but nearly undermines the entire picture. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* The Fog of War
War is never a clean affair, and looking back on Vietnam--even with a firsthand guide such as the film's subject, Robert McNamara--it appears no cleaner. Some have complained about McNamara's refusal to fully admit his guilt--they seem to want him to apologize for the whole affair. No such words appear to be coming from the former secretary of defense, but what he offers instead is in some ways more interesting. McNamara is quite obviously riddled with guilt about Vietnam, which was a pitiful tragedy. As The Fog of War artfully shows us, McNamara is now a pitiful, tragic figure himself. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Girl with a Pearl Earring is stuffy to a fault, no matter how many shots of Scarlett Johansson's pout director Peter Webber can fit in, and the final tally falls somewhere between the best of Merchant Ivory and the worst of Merchant Ivory. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
House of Sand and Fog
House of Sand and Fog is about many things, including stature and safety, racism and compassion, history and addiction. What it is not about, sadly, is subtle directing; blessed with great performances and an interesting story, the film is nearly derailed by ham-fisted direction from first-time director Vadim Perelman. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
In America
Director Jim Sheridan always turns up the emotion in his films, but at least his earlier movies took place in faraway Ireland. When all this emotion is suddenly close to home and out of its usual cultural environment, it's rather obnoxious and exasperating. Like a truck whose brakes have been tampered with, the emotion in this movie rolls uncontrollably down a steep road, swerving from side to side, until it finally hits a big tree. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Japanese Story
Japanese Story, which as one critic has pointed out should be called Australian Monogatari, begins as a beautifully photographed romance that is sustained by lead Toni Collette's professional performance. After the accident near the final third of the film, however, it becomes a bad melodrama that drags on and on. The change from one mode to the other is sudden and disastrous, and what would have easily turned out to be a charming little film becomes a tiresome piece of utter nonsense. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Last Samurai
We have all seen The Last Samurai before when it was called Gladiator, or Lawrence of Arabia, or Dances with Wolves, and because of this, all the film can offer is the sight of Tom Cruise wielding a lengthy sword--a thought sure to excite fans of childish metaphor, but they may be the only ones. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
After greeting the first two films with slack-jawed reverence, I found myself viewing the third with a kind of grumpy anticipation. What I soon discovered, however, was that the begrudging-ness of my affection for the film was no match for Peter Jackson's swashbuckling craft. If this is just a fantasy, Jackson seems to say, it's going to deliver on every level available. (SEAN NELSON)
* Master and Commander
If Master and Commander sounds soundly square, that's because square is exactly what the film is; massive and solidly made, Peter Weir's picture is a throwback, of sorts, to the works of David Lean, delivering the sort of rousing, smart, and earnest adventure rarely delivered nowadays. Big and loud, thrilling and expensive, it is the type of film that only major Hollywood studios can produce. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Miracle
The prominent display of muscular young men achieving glory through physical exertion is not the only way in which sports movies are like pornography. The other big similarity lies in audience expectations; because the destination is a foregone conclusion in both forms, the pleasure of watching has got to be all about the journey. Miracle is a good sports movie because it delivers a solid 90 minutes of credible buildup to a finale that is a matter of public record. (SEAN NELSON)
* Monster
There are many things that work in Monster, beginning with the much-praised performance by its lead, Charlize Theron. Saddled with 20 extra pounds, buried beneath grime and makeup, Theron is outright amazing in the film, and her performance as killer Aileen Wuornos will surely rank high on lists this year. However, on the whole, the picture is so bleak and depressing that it is nearly intolerable. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* My Architect
Nathaniel Kahn's film is about the void created by a father's absence from his children's lives, and the way that void is continually filled and depleted by the father's reputation. More specifically, My Architect questions the conceit that artistic genius needn't be beholden to petty human strictures like family. (SEAN NELSON)
Mystic River
For all the "inexorability" and "meditation" of its violence, Mystic River feels desperately contrived. (SEAN NELSON)
The Perfect Score
Did you know that SAT no longer stands for anything? Not scholastic, not aptitude, not assessment--not even test. It's just the SAT. This is the kind of incomprehensible behemoth that Scarlett Johansson and her band of Ivy League-wannabes must face in their quest for world domination.
Pieces Of April
Starring Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, and Oliver Platt, Pieces of April has a look and feel that I hesitate to label "documentary-like." Gritty due to its transfer of digital to celluloid and mainly handheld, there is a certain spontaneity in the film, almost an improvised feel, that is enhanced by the sharp cast. Clarkson is particularly good, becoming the heart of the film that the rest of the group rotates around. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
The Same River Twice
This unique documentary cuts between footage of a group of friends working as river guides in the 1970s and those same men and women as middle-aged adults in the 21st century. As nudism gives way to button-down shirts, and youthful strength to the first signs of physical decline, the film traces those qualities of personality and belief that leave no visual mark on their bearers.
Something's Gotta Give
Do you really want to see Jack Nicholson's bare ass? (EMILY HALL)
* The Station Agent
What director Tom McCarthy has captured in his debut feature is a sense of happy loneliness--those times when it feels right to go for a walk and just look around and not talk to anyone. (ANDY SPLETZER)
Touching the Void
I'm not sure if Joe Simpson and Simon Yates are still active mountaineers, but it is clear that just speaking about their famous climb in this drama-documentary, detailing it in that near-formal language which distinguishes professional mountaineers from amateurs, gives them a pleasure that is satanic in its size and intensity. This is the double thing that they live for: the actual climb and, be it in a pub, or over supper, or in front of a movie camera, recounting the experience of that climb. But if you are not interested in mountaineering and happen to be in this pub, or sitting at the supper table, or in the movie theater, listening to the story, you will be bored to death. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
* The Triplets of Belleville
Writer-director-animator Sylvain Chomet invokes the same absurdly entertaining and overwhelmingly brown nostalgia that Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro tapped into for Delicatessen and City of Lost Children (all three filmmakers are indebted to Terry Gilliam's Brazil). The world Chomet has created contains the same deadpan sadness that lies at the base of those films--the world may be a cold and lonely place, but with a little inventiveness you can not only survive, but prosper. (ANDY SPLETZER)
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! is cute and funny and playful. Like a puppy. And who doesn't love puppies? (MEGAN SELING)
You Got Served
You Got Served wouldn't be a bad and boring movie if it weren't for the hour and 20 minutes of crappy dialogue and unnecessary (not to mention uninteresting) drama that existed between scenes of some very badass break-dancing sequences. (MEGAN SELING)
The Young Black Stallion
Are you an 11-year-old girl who loves horses? No? Then, I'm afraid to say, this might not be the movie for you. Sorry. (AMY JENNIGES)
