From the Feb 19 – Feb 25, 2004 issue

Film

Film Shorts

LIMITED RUN


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.

Adam's Rib
Before Ally McBeal, there was Amanda Bonner. SAM's Katharine Hepburn series continues with this witty battle between a spunky defense attorney (Hepburn) and her prosecutor husband (Spencer Tracy). Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Feb 26 at 7:30 pm.

Afro-Punk Fundraiser
This Tuesday's Clinic night at the Re-bar is a benefit for 911 Media Arts--along with the usual round of bands (this week it's Blacknight Crash, the Femurs, and BlackBelt), there'll be a screening of Afro-Punk: The "Rock n Roll Nigger" Experience plus a bunch of short films. Re-bar, Tues Feb 24 at 7 pm.

* Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
"This is my happening and it FREAKS ME OUT!" Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert collaborated on this intentionally dizzy mess of a movie, which, as my friend recently pointed out, is the closest Hollywood has ever come to Bollywood (without going over). Beyond offers a little T, a little A, and a whole lot of "Oh!", featuring a guest appearance by the great Strawberry Alarm Clock (performing "Incense and Peppermints" and "I'm Coming Home"). (SEAN NELSON) Sunset Tavern, Mon Feb 23 at 8 pm.

Charade
Audrey Hepburn stars as a Parisian widow who is pursued by money-grubbing bad guys... and Cary Grant. Rendezvous, Wed Feb 25 at 7:30 pm.

The Count of the Old Town
See Blow Up. The Nordic Heritage Museum's Ingrid Bergman Film Festival launches with Bergman's first-ever speaking role, in a 1934 film about the denizens of a seedy Stockholm district. Nordic Heritage Museum, Thurs Feb 26 at 7 pm.

The Knack and How to Get It
This 1965 film by Richard Lester (best know for Beatles films) deals with strange behavior in swinging London. Movie Legends, Sun Feb 22 at 1 pm.

Langston Hughes Film Festival
See Blow Up. The inaugural Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival is packed with movies of all genres, lengths, and subjects. Festival runs Fri Feb 20-Sun Feb 22 at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. Highlights include the short films Hairpiece and Four Women, screening Fri Feb 20 at 6 pm, the engrossing documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, screening Fri Feb 20 at 8 pm, and Wild Women Don't Have the Blues (about blues legends like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith), screening Sun Feb 22 at 7:30 pm. The Seattle premiere of Afro-Punk: "The Rock n Roll Nigger" Experience, about race and punk rock, takes place Sat Feb 21 at 8 pm. Director James Spooner will be in attendance. See Movie Times for details.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Parody is a rather thin tightrope, and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra nearly makes it to the end of the line. A spoof of cheesy B-movie monster movies from the '50s, the film revolves around two scientists, a pair of aliens, a monster, and a cursed skeleton bent on ruling the world. Some of the jokes in the film ring true, such as the scientist constantly proclaiming that he must "get to work on science," but the overall result is fairly tame and, on many occasions, uninspired. And though the black and white footage is wonderful to behold--especially the constant shifting between different film stocks--director Larry Blamire relies on far too many close-ups for the spoof to ever fully ring true. Varsity, Fri-Sun 12:50, 3, 5:10, 7:30, 9:40 pm, Mon-Thurs 7:30, 9:40 pm. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Rana's Wedding
It's hard to say exactly what Rana's Wedding is about, or to determine the idea it wants to communicate. It is a confusing effort. Ostensibly the movie concerns the marriage of a young Palestinian woman to a young Palestinian actor; both live in the militarized zones and maze of apartments, small roads, and temples that make up the ancient city of Jerusalem. Rana's marriage to the actor is not what her father desired; he had prepared for her a list of eligible men, and required her to select one before he left for Egypt. She did not want any of the men on the list, who, like her, are middle-class; she instead wanted the lean, silly, and sad-eyed actor of indeterminate class. The pressure from his daughter and the actor was too much for the father; he surrendered, permitted the marriage, and promptly left for Egypt. Though Rana challenges her orthodox father, wears Western clothes, and is equipped with a cellular phone, she is far from liberated in any real way, and the director, Hany Abu-Assad, is ultimately sympathetic to the very traditions that frustrate Rana--a fact made abundantly clear by the movie's happy ending. In sum, the complexity of Rana's situation is too difficult for the director to resolve or confront in a cinematically rewarding way. Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5, 7, 9 pm, Tues-Thurs 7, 9 pm. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* The Shining
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.

Sneak
The Sneak series of film previews continues its third season. For more information, see www.sneakfilms.com. Pacific Place, Sun Feb 22 at 10 am.

Spirited Away
SAM's Hayao Miyazaki series wraps up with this visually astounding and thematically unsettling fairy tale. Seattle Art Museum, Sat Feb 21 at 1:30 pm.

State of the Union
This Frank Capra film from 1948 is 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.

* Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
See Blow Up. This 1971 blaxploitation classic stars Melvin van Peebles as a bouncer who was raised in a brothel. Central Cinema, Fri-Sun 8 pm.

UnPrecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election
Everybody knows that the Florida portion of the 2000 presidential election was all kinds of fucked up. Hanging chads, butterfly ballots, faulty recounts--we're all pretty damn tired of hearing about it, actually. Filmmakers Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler try to overcome election-coverage fatigue by looking into the voting irregularities in depth, and it helps. The movie still carries the tone of left-wing whining, but some of the facts it presents are amazing. Someday, Jeb Bush's railroading of this election will get the same respect that Richard J. Daly's corrupt Chicago Democratic machine has achieved. The way that Jeb excluded thousands of potential Democratic voters through faulty and purposely vague searches for convicted felons in order to take away their voting rights? Genius. Sure, it's evil, corrupt, and no way to run a fair election, but it worked. Pure genius. Pérez and Sekler will be at the screening to talk about making the movie, provide specifics on the election, and hopefully rebuke people like me who don't take politics seriously on any level. (ANDY SPLETZER) 911 Media Arts, Fri Feb 20 at 8 pm.

* Weird Science
"You two donkey dicks couldn't get laid in a morgue!" Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.

* You See Me Laughin'
Nothing is more moving than the ruins of something that was once great. This is why Fat Possum Records fascinates us; for the past 14 or so years it has documented a world, a type of music (the blues) that's on the verge of vanishing. R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Cedell Davis, T-Model Ford--true blues musicians who were signed to the label late in their careers. Some are now dead, the rest are barely alive, and You See Me Laughin' captures the point at which they and their music leave twilight and enter night. Interviewing the bluesmen, and their famous admires (Iggy Pop and Bono), the subject and content of Mandy Stein's film (young, white, middleclass hipsters reviving/exploiting dying, dirt-poor, black musicians) is excellent, but visually it hits the eyes hard--the production needed more funds. But then again, the rawness of the footage and editing certainly reflects the rawness of the blues distributed by Fat Possum Records. Little Theatre, Fri-Sun 7, 9 pm. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

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* 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
After suffering a head injury, Lucy (Drew Barrymore) has lost her short-term memory. She wakes up every morning with a clean slate, remembering everything up until her accident, but nothing after that. Henry Roth (Adam Sandler) is a commitment-fearing man-whore, taking advantage of Hawaii's plethora of tourists looking for hot one-night stands. It's a match made in heaven. But stupid emotions get involved (they always ruin every perfect plan), and Henry falls for Lucy. In order to continue a relationship, he has to come up with new ways to get her attention every day. Sounds silly, for sure. But know what? It's cute and funny too. (MEGAN SELING)

Against the Ropes
See review this issue.

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) 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 being 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
Director Gillo Pontecorvo manages to re-create the fighting in the streets of Algiers with breathtaking honesty. Shot in stark black and white, the camera often handheld, the film achieves a level of realism that is really quite startling. It is not documentary-like, but it feels as if it were living and breathing history; the film is so masterfully assembled that it is a perfect piece of cinematic art--one of the most vital and important films to come along in years, and one that just happens to have been released nearly 40 years ago. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Big Bounce
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, so I'll keep things simple: This movie is about go-carts. (MEGAN SELING)

* 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 Zé (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. (EMILY HALL)

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
NYC girl moves to the Jersey suburbs; popularity wars ensue. Starlet Lindsay Lohan apparently has no problem with being typecast: her next two movies are called Mean Girls and Dramarama.

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. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Dreamers
See review this issue.

Eurotrip
Teens, don't get the wrong idea, but intercontinental online dating can be loads of fun--and German girls are hot!

* 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. Which is to say this: It is a well-made but nonetheless empty and, quite often, outright dull affair. (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. (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)

* Lost In Translation
Lost in Translation is a tiny movie, as light as helium and draped upon the thinnest of plots. It is as close to a miracle as you're likely to get this year. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* 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
My Architect isn't really about architecture, nor even about Louis I. Kahn himself, except insofar as the late master builder and his immortal buildings remain an enigma to his son Nathaniel, the filmmaker behind this extraordinary documentary. 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. Complicating matters is the (well-documented, apparently unarguable) fact that, unlike most fathers who abandon their wives, lovers, and kids for the sake of their art, Louis I. Kahn actually was a genius. (SEAN NELSON)

Mystic River
For all the "inexorability" and "meditation" of its violence, Mystic River feels desperately contrived. (SEAN NELSON)

* Osama
See Stranger Suggests and review this issue.

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)

Torque
A shit-eating redux of that golden cinematic nugget known as The Fast & the Furious, Biker Boyz puts our urban heroes atop whining Hondas... wait, this isn't Biker Boyz? Could've fooled me.

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)

Welcome to Mooseport
Coming down off a presidency can be hard, especially if your hometown is Mooseport, Maine (or--cross your fingers--Crawford, Texas).

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
In an attempt to clean up his blemished image, Tad (a totally dreamy Hollywood star!) agrees to go on a date with a contest winner from Wisconson or Virginia or Montana or some other stereotypical small-town state. This winner just so happens to be one of the hottest girls in America, Kate Bosworth, the blond surfer chick from Blue Crush. Win a Date 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)