* 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.
The Count of the Old Town
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.
Fistful of Dynamite
This 1971 Sergio Leone movie, set during the Mexican revolution, launches "Classics & Oddities of Italian Cinema" at the Rendezvous. Rendezvous, Wed March 3 at 7:30 pm.
Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality
The documentary opens by directly confronting the final fact of life, that being comes to an end. We see graveyards and tombstones as somber Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, the documentary's narrator (who successfully played Satan in a 1999 apocalyptic film that starred the governor of California) explains that since the dawn of civilization humans have searched for immortality and, inevitably, failed to find it. Death undoes us all. Psychologists from prestigious institutions around America are interviewed and their explanations and conclusions about death are the same as that of Ernest Becker, the author of The Denial of Death: The Human Species--it won a Pulitzer in 1974, the year Becker died. A cultural anthropologist, Becker's basic idea was that humans solved "the existential problem of death... by constructing and maintaining what [Becker] calls culture," as one professor explains. Ultimately, death is what drives us to form religions, political parties, nationalistic ideals, and traditions. The documentary's point of view about death is very scientific; none of the thinkers believes in God, or gives the idea of an afterlife any value save the role it plays in a given culture. As an atheist, I agreed with the documentary's sober opinion about death; as an aesthetician, I couldn't help but feel that the documentary is perfect for a university psych class examining what is impressively called The Human Condition. I also found the documentary's uplifting, Zen-positive ending disagreeable. After convincingly showing us how death is the cause of so much evil and misery in the world, and how there is nothing we can do about it except wait for it to arrive and return us to the void from which we came--after all this, why did the director, Patrick Shen, suddenly have the sun come out and leave us with a happy picture? HUB Auditorium, University of Washington campus, Sat Feb 28 at 1 pm. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
* Frontier Life
The title of this splendid documentary is incorrect. It's not about a frontier city, like Vancouver, BC, but a border one--a city not at the end of all possibilities but one in the very middle of a process of becoming something entirely new. The city in question is Tijuana, which is beloved by young American tourists for its easy access to drugs, booze, and prostitutes. Frontier Life looks at another Tijuana; a Tijuana not from the perspective of American desires, but Mexican ones, as illustrated by its underground car culture, its massive management of wastewater, and its emerging electronica scene. From those who are part of the legal and illegal drag racing scene, we learn how mechanics build their powerful machines from junked American car parts. It is a culture that recycles, that uses whatever is at hand. This resourcefulness is a point of pride for the mechanics, one of whom claims to ejaculate in his pants when driving one of his modified beasts. From the square engineer who manages Tijuana's water treatment plant, we see the digestive system of the city--an internal organ that ingests water polluted with used condoms, restaurant refuse, papers of all kinds, and injects purified water into the life of the city. At the middle of the border city is Nortec, a collective of artists, filmmakers, and electronic musicians who are digitizing and globalizing the local traditions of music. Nortec has been around since the mid-'90s, and became recognized recently in North America and Europe. Frontier Life interviews the collective's founding members, the musicians; they are handsome, 30ish and articulate, expressing theories or telling stories in fluent Spanish or English. For Nortec and their followers, Tijuana is less a city and more a cultural laboratory, a new zone that experiments with American junk, Mexico's past, and new communication and computer technologies. Little Theatre, Fri-Sun 7, 9 pm. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Ghost in the Shell
My God, this is what happens when anime storyboards from dyslexic, Japanese screenwriters in poorly ventilated crackhouses get translated into English. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the hell this movie is about except that it's set in 2029, and it's got some cyborg fighting team in it. However, none of this is relevant because you'll only be watching this film for its fantastic visual effects. Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight. (KUDZAI MUDEDE)
Intermission
The debut feature from John Crowley launches the Irish Reels Film Festival with a story about the process of breaking up. Plays with short Yu Ming is Ainm Dom. Harvard Exit, Thurs March 4 at 7 pm.
Meet John Doe
Frank Capra's 1941 story of an imaginary social crusader whose creators inadvertantly launch a political movement. Movie Legends, Sun Feb 29 at 1 pm.
Pat and Mike
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy team up again, this time as a lady's golf champ and her shady manager, respectively. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs March 4 at 7:30 pm.
* The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun 1:20, 3:20, 5:20, 7:30, 9:30 pm, Mon-Thurs 7:30, 9:30 pm.
Schoolhouse Rock
These animated TV shorts screen as part of Music for America Monday, a movie and voter-registration night. Sunset Tavern, Mon March 1 at 8 pm.
Swedenhielms
A 1935 film with a small role for 20-year-old Ingrid Bergman as a member of a family that is headed toward financial trouble unless the father scoops up a Nobel Prize. Nordic Heritage Museum, Thurs March 4 at 7 pm.
Tiny Plastic Rainbow
See Blow Up. Jennifer Reeder's film aims to investigate states of aloneness, but doesn't rise above them. Instead it suffers from the mimetic fallacy, a dull movie about dull people. It's filled with extraordinarily long shots of people looking off to the side, a British-inflected voice reading a list of abstract and slightly pretentious rules ("an airplane is a bad restaurant but is good sculpture"), uncomfortable confrontations, and claustrophobic rooms. The overlap of seven characters' lives is meant to demonstrate possibilities lost, and there is some odd transference of activity (one man's dream shows up in an actor's monologue), but the effect is less intriguing or sad or even Paul Auster-style coincidental than lifelessly irritating. You want to shake these affectless people until their teeth chatter. Consolidated Works, Fri-Sun at 8 pm. Director Jennifer Reeder will be in attendance at each screening, and will deliver an additional talk about creating and distributing short films on Sat Feb 28 at 3 pm. (EMILY HALL)
Twisted Flicks: The Lost Continent
Stranded in the Sargasso Sea, the passengers and crew of the Corrilta are pursued by scary monsters such as man-eating seaweed. With dialogue and sound effects by Jet City Improv. Historic University Theatre, Thurs-Sat at 8 pm.
* Two Towns of Jasper
In June of 1998, when I read what three men in Jasper, Texas, had done to James Byrd Jr. (killed him by dragging him for three miles from a pickup truck), my heart sank, my body hurt, and I almost started crying while still holding the newspaper. Now, after watching the documentary which followed the trial of the three men, there was no almost about it--I cried like a baby. (Cinema Diaspora fundraiser and screening, $25 minimum donation.) Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, Sat Feb 28, reception with directors Marco Johnson and Whitney Dow from 6-7:30 pm, screening and Q&A 7:30 pm. (MEGAN SELING)
Up Thornton Creek
See Blow Up. Part of Central Cinema's "Pie and Politics" series, Up Thornton Creek is a doc about the controversy over the local waterway. Director Peter Vogt will be in attendance. Central Cinema, Sat Feb 28 at 7 pm.
* The Weather Underground
See Blow Up. 911 Media Arts, Fri Feb 27 at 8 pm. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
NOW PLAYING
* 21 Grams
Though fragmented and seemingly random, 21 Grams is musical; it feels, moves, and concludes like a massive musical composition. (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
Against the Ropes is a dull, bland, and obvious piece of tripe. I beg of you: Stay far, far away. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Along Came Polly
You know a movie can't be all bad when Phillip Seymour Hoffman falls down within the first 20 seconds. (EMILY HALL)
The Barbarian Invasions
Really, I can't understand how this film has gotten any good reviews at all. (ANDY SPLETZER)
Barbershop 2: Back in Business
This 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. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Big Fish
Tim Burton's Big Fish is an ungainly, rambling piece of work built upon a bed of lies. Sappy and cluttered, the entirety of Big Fish doesn't quite hold together. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Broken Lizard's Club Dread
A serial killer is on the loose in a swanky club for swingers.
The Butterfly Effect
The latest feature-length advertisement for Ashton Kutcher's bone structure, this film is so stultifyingly poor 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, so I'll keep things simple: This movie is about go-carts. (MEGAN SELING)
* City of God
Set in hell (a heated Rio de Janeiro ghetto) and narrated by a young newspaper photographer named Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), Cidade de Deus (City of God) describes the rise and fall of the legendary, psychopathic gangster Li'l Zé, who, after murdering every obstacle in his way, mercilessly rules the ghetto's turbulent drug trade. 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 steers the film into a few minor rough spots, but the picture as a whole delivers a big, heartfelt epic. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* The Company
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
Mary (Lindsay Lohan) is a New York City teenager forced, by the will of her mother, to move to New Jersey, where, displaced, she can't understand how she's supposed go about her goal of becoming world-famous. Every teenager, like every fag, wants to become world-famous, but what Mary (who demands that everyone call her Lola) has going for her is, yes, the exotic nickname, but also a thin teenage figure and giant, heaving balloons for breasts, which the costumers for this movie have accentuated to the point of indecent exploitation. The story of Mary clawing her way to the top of the ranks of the New York City pop music megastar echelon while simultaneously enduring the daily doldrums of high school (one heavily make-upped, thickly stockinged teacher is played by Carol Kane) is basically retarded, and the actor playing Mary's high-school love interest is clearly a fag-in-waiting, but this quasi-musical (it's for kids) is riveting because, again, Lohan's breasts are really, really juicy. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
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)
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
See review this issue.
The Dreamers
Bertolucci's film fails on nearly every front it engages; messy and confused, the picture annoys when it should inspire, frustrates when we wish it would fascinate, and its NC-17 release, though splendid to see, will most likely flounder. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Eurotrip
A recent high-school graduate gets dumped by his slutty and evil girlfriend, so he spends the summer shambling across Europe with his chums searching for his Internet pen pal, a slutty and nice German chick. Both homophobic and homoerotic (there are more penises in this movie than you'll find in a straight porno ), this playful teen comedy is actually funny at times, throwing a bevy of gags at the wall (incest jokes, Hitler jokes, Pope jokes, fag jokes, S&M jokes, and even a little mime skit). Some stick and keep things moving at a pleasant clip. (JOSH FEIT)
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. 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. (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. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Japanese Story
Japanese Story 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. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
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 his spoof of cheesy '50s flicks to ever fully ring true. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* Master and Commander
Quit possibly the best film of 2003. (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 good 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. 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. (SEAN NELSON)
Mystic River
For all the "inexorability" and "meditation" of its violence, Mystic River feels desperately contrived. (SEAN NELSON)
* Osama
The Taliban in Osama are relentlessly cruel to women, and this is why the film is so impressive and courageous; the director, Siddiq Barmak, so wants to get to the essence of suffering--to precisely what a moment in suffering feels like to the accursed--that it never seems to have a border, a point at which it began and will end. Suffering is, by its nature, eternal. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
The Passion of the Christ
See review this issue.
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. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
The Triplets of Belleville
Writer-director-animator Sylvain Chomet invokes the same absurdly entertaining nostalgia that Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro tapped into for Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. 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 prosper. (ANDY SPLETZER)
Twisted
Uh oh--all the murder victims Officer Ashley Judd has been coming across lately happen to be her old boyfriends. What could possibly be at the bottom of this monstrous coincidence?
Welcome to Mooseport
Coming down off a presidency can be hard, especially if your hometown is Mooseport, Maine (or--cross your fingers--Crawford, Texas).
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 exists between some very badass break-dancing sequences. (MEGAN SELING)
