LIMITED RUN


The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer
A screwball comedy about a teenage Shirley Temple and her big, fat crush on Cary Grant. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Aug 5 at 7:30 pm.

Battlefield Baseball
A sports movie, zombie flick, and musical comedy rolled into one absurdist Japanese package. Grand Illusion, Fri 5, 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9 pm.

Big Fish
Sappy and cluttered, the entirety of Big Fish doesn't quite hold together. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Seattle Center Outdoor Cinema, Fri Aug 6 at dusk.

Blood and Sand
Rudolph Valetino plays a would-be bullfighter in this 1922 film. Paramount, Mon Aug 9 at 7 pm.

* Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is audacious and ridiculous and completely fucked, both on the page and on celluloid, and for that its subject Chuck Barris should be recognized for what has long been ignored: his undeniable genius. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.

Dixie Queen Road Show
A drag show precedes this screening of Dixie Queen, a documentary about a 300-pound drag queen who grew up on a North Carolina tobacco farm. Paramount, Fri-Sat 8 pm.

* The Fucking Fabulous Film Festival
See review this issue. All movies screen at Oliwood Films. Thurs Aug 5 at 5 pm: a bunch of surreal short films collectively known as The Cannonball Series, plus Kung Fu Hamster and more. Thurs Aug 5 at 7 pm: Hillbilly Robot and Benny, Marty, & Jerkbeast. Thurs Aug 6 at 9 pm: animated shorts including a version of Oedipus Rex acted by vegetables and adaptations of cartoon strips by Kaz and Jim Woodring. Thurs Aug 5 at 11 pm: Polterchrist is the feature, and two short films by the same directors are among the opening numbers. Fri Aug 6 at 5 pm: short films, including one inspired by Sharon Stone and another riffing off Godard's relationship with Anna Karina. Fri Aug 6 at 7 pm: Milton is a Shitbag and Four Dead Batteries. Fri Aug 6 at 9 pm: short films, including yet another screening of Kung Fu Hamster. Fri Aug 6 at midnight: Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter and three shorts. Sat Aug 7 at 1 pm: Matt McCormick's The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal and a short about teenagers who still enjoy their local playground. Sat Aug 7 at 3 pm: Eating Out and Four Dead Batteries. Sat Aug 7 at 5 pm: shorts from Argentina, Germany, Cuba, Australia, and more. Sat Aug 7 at 7 pm: Elevator Movie and some shorts. Sat Aug 7 at 9 pm: Lonely Robot Duckling and Townies. Sat Aug 7 at midnight: an 18+ evening featuring one movie entitled Jouissance and two episodes of Diaper Dyke and Captain Boyfuck. For more information, see www.fuckingfabulous.org.

* Kind Hearts and Coronets
It is only the vagaries of stardom that gave the lead credit in Kind Hearts and Coronets to the stolid if handsome Dennis Price; there's never been any doubt that the whole show is Alec Guinness. The story is clever enough--almost a light-comedy Hitchcock in the way it elicits your support for a serial murderer--but it's Guinness' tour de force whirligig incarnation of all eight victims that elevates the film from dry English farce to an uproarious classic. Not the only film Guinness single-handedly dragged into greatness with his inventiveness and crack sense of timing. (BRUCE REID) Movie Legends, Sun Aug 6 at 1 pm.

* Lost Boys of Sudan
This documentary, made for the excellent POV series on public television, highlights one of the most ambitious (and perhaps reckless) refugee relocation programs currently in progress in the United States. The "Lost Boys" cited in the title were children in Sudan in the late 1980s, when the civil war between the Islamic North and the Christian and Animist South had reached a fever pitch. Men in Dinka villages throughout the South were slaughtered en masse, while the women and girls were sold into slavery and prostitution. Dinka boys, whose task it was to tend cattle away from the villages during the day, largely survived the attacks, and fled to form a roving band of 20,000 child refugees.

In 2001, the U.S. government permitted 4,000 of the boys, then in their late teens, to settle in the dismal suburbs of cities across the country. This documentary follows two of the boys, Peter and Santino, from a refugee camp in Kenya to the outer sprawl of Houston, Texas. From what we can tell from the film, the boys are introduced to individually wrapped pats of butter, the garbage disposal, and the grocery store in quick succession, and are then promptly abandoned to their night-shift factory jobs and monthly rent.

It is wrenching to watch Peter struggle to access the high-school education he has been promised. As he navigates roadblocks from standardized test registration to alien courtship rituals (in one scene, he catches wild birds in an abandoned lot and presents them to a confused girl), the film's aloof style works well. But the filmmakers reluctance to engage their subjects directly gives some issues--particularly the way the boys relate to the forms of Christianity they encounter in the U.S. -- short shift. (ANNIE WAGNER) Varsity, Fri-Sun 2:30, 4:40, 7, 9:10 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9:10 pm. Fri Aug 6 at 7 pm is a special screening, with several Seattle-area Lost Boys in attendance.

Lost in Space Night
Episodes from the '60s TV show, complete with vintage commercials. Linda's, Wed Aug 11 at dusk.

Lust for Life
A 1956 Vincent Van Gogh biopic, shown in conjuntion with SAM's current exhibition, Van Gogh to Mondrian. Seattle Art Museum, Fri Aug 6 at 7:30 pm.

Madeline
Madeline is, as you may remember, a mischievous French schoolgirl. U District Oudoor Cinema, Sat Aug 7 at dusk.

Monkey Business
Cary Grant and Ginger Roberts star in this story of a research scientist messing with a formula to preserve youth forever. (Chimps, which are not monkeys at all, but apes, are the reserach subjects.) Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Aug 12 at 7:30 pm.

Snatch
I remember reading that after he saw a screening of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels in London, Tom Cruise leapt to his feet and screamed, "This movie rocks!" I'm sure he'll probably scream the same thing about Snatch. So, there you go. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Fremont Outdoor Movies #1, Fri Aug 6 at dusk.

Star Wars
Who's the more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows George Lucas? Sidewalk Cinema, Fri Aug 6 at dusk.

Supercluster IV
An evening of experiemental shorts at Rendezvous, Thurs Aug 12 at 9 pm.

Twisted Flicks: Monster on the Campus
A co-ed beauty is held captive by a man-monster, and to add insult to injury, Jet City Improv puts words into her mouth. Fremont Outdoor Movies #2, Sat Aug 7 at dusk.

Westworld
Michael Crichton wrote and directed this 1973 movie about robots. Suspiciously human-looking robots. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat 11 pm.

* White Zombie
White Zombie is a defining, hilariously schlocky stab at the zombie genre. Bela Lugosi stars as a sugar baron on Voodoo Isle, Haiti, using the walking dead as laborers in his plant. From the opening shots of Bela Lugosi's eyes to the close-up of the black cab driver's face as he looks in the camera and yells "Zombies!," the entire film is wonderfully laughable. Madge Bellamy co-stars as the virginal bride, zombified by a jealous lover. Be sure to watch for the great scene in the sugar factory where a zombie falls into the threshing machine! (JAMIE HOOK) Rendezvous, Wed Aug 11 at 7:30 pm.

* Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Gene Wilder proves once again that he was indeed the greatest American actor of the 1970s with his titanic performance in this kinky, creepy, macabre, yet heartwarming musical classic. (SEAN NELSON) Seattle Center Outdoor Cinema, Sat Aug 7 at dusk.

* Wizard People, Dear Readers
Brad Neely loves Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone. Or maybe he hates it. Or maybe he's just a raving lunatic. Whichever of these choices is true, you're sure to enjoy his deconstruction of the first film in the mega-selling series. Wizard People, Dear Readers is not just a wacked titled, it's also a wacked experience: Neely, whose voice is gravely and almost cartoonish, has written an alternate audio track to the film, one that is less a commentary and more of a... well, I don't know what to call it. A narration? A spoof? A slap? Whatever it is, it's often funny, so ignore my blather and go see it. And here's a tip: Since it's showing at the Rendezvous, a lubrication certainly won't hurt matters any. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Rendezvous, Sun Aug 8 at 7 pm and Wed Aug 11 at 7 pm.

NOW PLAYING


Anchorman (Con)
Why does it always have to end this way? The idea sounds so amusing at first--making fun of a '70s news anchorman (Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy) who takes advice from his dog and drinks and smokes on the set. Add in funny guy cameos from Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, and Ben Stiller as rival television personalities, and you already have the pretense for a blockbuster comedy. But whenever there's a Saturday Night Live staffer (or ex-staffer) involved, there's always the chance for the jokes to be extra sluggish, sappy, or flat out stupid, and Anchorman unfortunately chokes on all three. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

* Anchorman (Pro)
I beg to differ. Anchorman is one of the most inspired pieces of comedic surrealism ever to be released in the guise of a mainstream summer movie. Will Ferrell, unmoored from the mediocrity of SNL, has been let loose to create a film whose absurdity extends far beyond the zany '70s fashions you see on the posters. Talking dogs? Extended four-part harmony? Jazz flute? Gang warfare among rival TV journalists? Yes on all counts. And though Ferrell is characteristically hilarious, it's Daily Show regular Steve Coryell who steals the show as the retarded weatherman. (SEAN NELSON)

* Before Sunset
The best romances force you to care unreasonably about their characters, and watching Jesse and Celine reunited, I couldn't help but feel a bittersweet twinge; I was 21 when Before Sunrise was released--just as dreamy and dewy as I could be--and now, nearly a decade later, their return feels like the arrival of beloved, yet somehow forgotten, friends. I fell in love with them then and, as I found out, I'm still in love with them. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
See review this issue.

* The Bourne Supremacy
The clock is ticking from the very first moment of this outstanding sequel, which meets the unenviable challenge of besting its predecessor, the fantastic Bourne Identity. (SEAN NELSON)

* Bukowski: Born Into This
It's not fair to blame an author, especially a dead one, for his cult. But in the case of Charles Bukowski, it's especially hard not to, since his hardcore admirers tend to be the most self-congratulatory, sub-literate bunch of idiots to squat on the face of literature since the Kerouac fan club. And to that end, this documentary serves up a retinue of ponytailed and be-mustached douchebags waxing romantic about their special relationship with the poet laureate of delusional drunks. If it's true that nearly everyone goes through a Bukowski phase, this documentary is a useful reminder of why that phase usually comes to an end: It's not the man, nor is it the fact that all his books tend to be essentially the same book; it's the people you have to identify with, the fellow fans, that ruin it every time. However, this film also reminds you that Bukowski was a unique and mighty talent. His poetry in particular betrays wit, emotional depth, and profundity that are all but lost in the idolization of his self-destructive habits. (SEAN NELSON)

Catwoman
Halle Berry said in an interview that the role of Catowman was "empowering." Now that's just embarrassing. (MEGAN SELING)

Collateral
See review this issue.

* Control Room
Like the recent documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Control Room offers us a look from the inside of the other side. Al Jazeera has 40 million viewers in the Arab world, and it shows its part of the world things that the American networks don't show their part of the world. The future may very well recognize Al Jazeera as the first genuinely global institution of the 21st century. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

The Corporation
Basically, the movie looks down upon the masses of people who thoughtlessly consume products made by corrupt corporations. But you know what? I identify more with the masses than I do with the filmmakers; if I want to spend 145 minutes being told I'm an idiot, I'd rather spend that time in the singles bars. (ANDY SPLETZER)

De-Lovely
De-Lovely is perfumed with preciousness, and ultimately suffers from the self-consciousness of its Hollywood gloss, as well as the difficult-to-swallow progressiveness of its characters. (SEAN NELSON)

* Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut
Having studied the film carefully a few times, I still can't tell if the plot's weird calculus--what actually happens, to whom, and where, and when--actually adds up to anything more than a semi-random sequence of related but unconnected events. What I can say, however, is that the film resonates with a uniquely American kind of sadness. (SEAN NELSON)

The Door in the Floor
There is a kind of quiet, airy, boring horror in the big houses and windy fields of Long Island. It's a fittingly indulgent (if obvious) setting for this indulgent, obvious movie. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)

* Facing Windows
Throughout the film, Ferzan Ozpetek's golden light conveys romance and elegy at once, and several times he brings striking images of great beauty and depth to the screen. The film's opening sequence depicts a bloody handprint fading over time as dawn light illuminates the wall that carries it, moving the narrative forward by 50 years. The handprint faded from the wall but replayed in my mind long after the film's screening. (MIKE WHYBARK)

* Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Moore is a propagandist, taking the fight to the opposition on their terms, and winning. Because of his motives and his audience, this propagandist is the most important filmmaker we have, and Fahrenheit 9/11 is the best film he's ever made. (SEAN NELSON)

* Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
Those who smoke pot will laugh, those who smoke pot before the show will laugh harder, and those who don't smoke pot at all will wonder why everyone around them is laughing. Personally, I laughed hard on more than one occasion--not that I'm admitting anything. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Alfonso Cuarón, who has taken the directing reigns from Chris Columbus this time around, has not turned the Potterheads' god into bullshit. Early word on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was that it was the best of the series, and for once early word was correct; for the first time in the franchise's existence, a film has achieved the level of art. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

A Home at the End of the World
The plot is simply rotten. With a real filmmaker, however, all of this shit might have been worked into something plausible, but in the absence of one, poor Colin Farrell is left wandering through the story like a clueless fool. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

I, Robot
I, Robot is not bad or good; it is what it is--a big summer movie with lots of special effects. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

King Arthur
Though the film is basically crap, it's tremendously entertaining and engaging crap: beautifully photographed, edited with masterful precision, and peopled by actors (Clive Owen, Ray Winstone, Stellan Skarsg'rd) whom I would walk a mile to see stuffing envelopes. (SEAN NELSON)

Little Black Book
See review this issue.

Love Me If You Dare
See review this issue.

* The Manchurian Candidate
The resulting film is far from flawless--silly flourishes include the painful cliché of the retired professor the hero turns to for advice, and a gross pantomime of mental illness that's lifted straight out of A Beautiful Mind--but it's just as mesmerizing and suspenseful as the original. Meryl Streep is brilliant in a role that's perhaps even more challenging than the twisted mommy caricature her counterpart Angela Lansbury blew out of the water in the original. And Liev Schreiber, who plays "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life" (or some permutation thereof), is perfectly cast and coiffed with a more-'50s-than-the-'50s 'do. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Maria Full of Grace
Following an angelic (i.e., stunningly gorgeous) young woman--pregnant and sick of life in her one-factory town--who joins up with the local drug lord for a single trip across the Colombian border, this first film from writer-director Joshua Marston is an admirably restrained, even-handed debut that wisely avoids making sweeping societal pronouncements, shrinking Maria's world--whether she's in rural Colombia or big-city New Jersey--to the small circle of people who directly impact her life. He lets the subject matter speak for itself, without too many direct embellishments--besides thankfully subtle comments linking various kinds of legal and illegal exploitation, and a few stabs at the very idea of a reactive drug policy. (ADAM HART)

* Napoleon Dynamite
In this charming new film, 24-year-old writer/ director Jared Hess mines the nebulous area between popular chic and weirdo freak, where outcast attributes are both quality, subtle comedy, and a charmingly dark part of our collective high-school unconscious. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

The Notebook
The Notebook, which was directed by Nick Cassavetes (talentless son of supremely talented John Cassavetes), is based on a Nicholas Sparks tome, and it bears the mark of all his work. That mark is complete and utter bullshit, and the end result is a bullshit film--a weepy, obvious, and painfully unromantic romance. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Open Water
See review this issue.

Princess Diaries II: Royal Engagement
Not only does Anne Hathaway have to be a pretty, pretty princess, she also has to be a bee-yootiful bride.

* Riding Giants
This fascinating exploration of the culture of big-wave surfing by the director of the skateboarding documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys is distinguished first by the quality of its footage. I have no idea how Stacy Peralta and his crew managed to get on top of the water the way they do, but the actual surfing in this movie is heroic. Your heart rises and your breath leaves you as the surfers take on waves of 20, 30, 80 feet, waves that could easily kill them, then go back for more, then go back again. (SEAN NELSON)

* Saved!
This film knows exactly what it is--a teen flick with a humanist agenda--and Brian Dannelly picks his battles to suit his aims. Even with its too-pat ending (complete with syrupy underscoring--a duet of Brian Wilson's "God Only Knows" sung by Mandy Moore and Michael Stipe, one of the film's producers), Saved! closes with a tableau that will leave unreformed fundamentalists gaping in horror. Score one for the good guys. (DAVID SCHMADER)

Spider-man 2
In Sam Raimi's vision of Spider-Man, his normally manic camera joins with CGI to create a work that is often completely fraudulent. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

The Stepford Wives
This bright and shiny new millennium edition not only completely changes the ending, it's also too campy, two-dimensional, and sanitized for what was a very chilling portrait of domination and control in a sci-fi war of the sexes. (JENNIFER MAERZ)

The Story of the Weeping Camel
Set in modern Mongolia, The Story of the Weeping Camel has two plots: one concerns humans, the other camels. The human side is about a nomadic family that, one day, happens to be in need of something from the city (batteries, I think). The family elders decide to send two boys to the city to buy this needed thing. The boys travel on camels, arrive in the city, and while looking for this thing (maybe it's not batteries, but a violin), they discover the pleasures of television. The human plot ends with the boys erecting a satellite dish next to their family's yurt. Considerably less interesting than the human plot, the camel plot concerns a mother camel who rejects her baby camel. The baby wants mommy to feed her but mommy refuses to open her legs and feed the starving baby. If the mother were not a camel then one would understand why she wouldn't want that ugly little creature sucking on her breasts. But she is a camel, and all camels are ugly--her rejection of her baby makes no sense at all. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

* Super Size Me
It is uncannily hard to watch the preparatory stages of Morgan Spurlock's diet experiment in Super Size Me, the stage during which he visits doctors and nutritionists who calibrate, in every thinkable way, the ways in which he is perfectly healthy. Watching this man--all happy, puppyish energy and handlebar mustache--prepare to throw himself under the wheels of the fast-food juggernaut has the eerie air of readying for sacrifice. Why would a person do such a thing? Don't we all know that fast food is bad for us? Well, apparently we don't know, or didn't know, precisely the horrifying extent. And lest you think that this film is only for Fast Food Nation types, that it's aimed only at those who already have the information, remember that Spurlock put his own body on the line to get your attention. That's why he did it. He did it for you. (EMILY HALL)

The Terminal
This is easily the worst film of Spielberg's career, surpassing even blemishes like Always, Hook, and A.I. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Thunderbirds
There are two important elements from the original TV series that the movie has retained. One is a distinctly sadistic bent, which requires that a member of the Tracy family has to pass out or suffer smoke inhalation or get thoroughly messed up before his brothers bring him to safety. The second element is the Thunderbirds themselves, which used to look like Hot Wheels on steroids (it was a puppet show, after all) and still look just like miniature models filmed in close-up. Fancy that. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Touch of Pink
Remember The Wedding Party? This is sort of like that, only the hapless, put-upon son is Muslim-Canadian, and his happy, super-gay life is in London. When his parents show up, absolutely intent on arranging a marriage for him, things get uncomfortable.

Troy
Bland, but pretty--a fairly solid description of Troy on the whole. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

* The Twilight Samurai
Twilight Samurai stands out because it takes the samurai genre out of the semi-mythic setting that Western audiences are used to. It depicts the unglamorous daily routine of a samurai who doesn't actually do much fighting, even if he does always carry his sword on his belt. Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada), the twilight samurai himself, embodies the opposite of nearly everything Japanese society values in its males, then and now. Iguchi is an ideal family man, who loves his family in ways that his fellow samurai don't understand. (ADAM HART)

What the #$*! Do We Know?!
I never got around to figuring out what a quantum leap is, but now I think I know: It's when you make a short jump from quantum mechanics to New Age self-help kookiness. That's what happens in this ungainly, inane film, which purports to be about quantum physics but is really about the power of positive thinking, with a midlife-crisis plot (starring Marlee Matlin) and some childish cartoon figures and a series of talking heads who can't stop using the word "paradigm." (EMILY HALL)

Word Wars
I'd say I'm fairly obsessed with Scrabble--I own an Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, I play it in bars, I use words like xi and ixia and ae and hm and qat (all legal)--but the four Scrabble players profiled on their way to U.S. Nationals in Eric Chaikin and Julian Patrillo's Word Wars are sinus-infected, jobless slaves to the game. Take the friendless college dropout "G.I." Joel Sherman, so nicknamed for a gastro-intestinal disorder that causes him to spit up into cups during tournaments. (He scrapes together an income based on betting over his wins.) Or Matt Graham, whose idea of a fun afternoon is to challenge someone to a best-out-of-50-games match. What's clear is that you don't have to even care about words to be good at Scrabble, but it's advisable to spend several years memorizing the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. (Though if you try to memorize the definitions as well as the words, one champ says, "It will slowly drive you insane.") It's a shame that the narrative of this documentary is so frequently disrupted by shoddy computer graphics and unfunny jokes by the directors, because the subject (and these four subjects in particular) is fascinating. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)