Film

Film Shorts

BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE

HAMLET

RUNNING FREE

ANATOMY OF SAUL BASS--Little Theatre

FILMS BY CHARLES AND RAY EAMES--Little Theatre

THE FILMS OF LUIS BU--UEL--Seattle Art Museum

THE FILTH & THE FURY--Varsity

THE INCREDIBLE MR. LIMPET--Fremont Outdoor Cinema

THE LITTLE MERMAID--Fremont Outdoor Cinema

TERROR FIRMER--Grand Illusion

TROUBLE IN PARADISE--Grand Illusion

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT--West Seattle Walk-In

June 9--Seattle International Film Festival, Gone in 60 Seconds, Kikujiro

June 16--Titan A.E., Love's Labour's Lost, Shaft, Groove, 8 1/2 Women, Grass, Fantasia 2000, Boys and Girls

American Beauty
Entertaining fluff. Take your typical suburban satire (midlife crisis, bitchy wife, disaffected youth), throw in some admittedly excellent performances, and what you get is an Oscar-winning film, for better or worse. (Andy Spletzer)

American Psycho
Based on the much-reviled book by Bret Easton Ellis, the movie is actually pretty good. Really. Set at the height of the Reagan '80s, Psycho deftly satirizes the deadening effect of unchecked corporate wealth and power. (Andy Spletzer)

Anatomy of Saul Bass
A comprehensive look at the work and creative genius of Saul Bass, movie title designer extraordinaire. With films like Anatomy of a Murder, Psycho, and Vertigo under his belt, it's no surprise that Bass' impressive cinematic resume has resulted in Bass-errific shorts like Why Man Creates, Bass on Titles, and Titles by Elaine and Saul Bass (a retrospective of the designers' contributions to film).

Battlefield Earth
So John Travolta is this 10-foot-tall alien who wants every living human to take the Scientology test. When the humans balk, it's goodnight planet... until a few rebels rise up against his tyranny and fight back, that is. As anyone who has seen the trailer to this howling dog can attest, it might be time for Travolta to fade back into obscurity.

*Being John Malkovich
It's the best film of 1999, and it has a monkey in it. Coincidence? We don't think so.

The Big Kahuna
Kahuna, starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito as a couple of crappy salesmen, is a play adaptation, which means that the filmmakers face the eternal challenge: how to make three people talking for 90 minutes into an actual movie. They fail. The problem isn't the subject matter--your basic wounded-business-male confessional boilerplate--nor the performances, which are pretty good (even DeVito manages a few affecting moments). No, the problem is the inherent pomposity of American theater; the degree to which playwrights are so enamored of their own language that they simply refuse to say what the hell they're saying. In this case, it's that even industrial-lubricant salesmen can retain a shred of humanity if they allow themselves to shed their reflexive bullshit bluster. Despite about 20 excellent minutes toward the end, the movie's not worth the ride it takes to get to the point. (Sean Nelson)

Big Momma's House
Martin Lawrence is back, and he's got a big old prosthetic ass. Where do I sign?

BOSSA NOVA
Watching this simple tale of a small group of people becoming entangled with one another is a task of sweet, comic relaxation. Set against the shocking mountains of Rio De Janeiro, everything leads to romance in this Latin film; everyone and everything is beautiful. Even the hospital room has a sweeping view of the Brazilian coast. The strong acting proves this story's good nature. (Paula Gilovich)

Center Stage
Teenybopper dance movies are such a delicate, easily bruised genre that it hardly seems fair to judge them using the unwieldy tools of the critic. Center Stage, Hollywood's newest celebration of dance ("Dance!"), offers the usual story of underdog versus system, the strictures of ballet versus the creativity of modern dance, and love expressed via high art. It's campy, it's corny, and it's the feel-good movie of the year. (Traci Vogel)

Dinosaur
A heroic muddle of pre-history, computer animation, and talking monkeys, this entertaining flicker posits that dinosaurs might have survived if only they'd learned to work together. If you're the kind of person who wished Jurassic Park had dispensed with all that plot and character crap and just made with the giant reptiles, this might be the one for you.

Dolphins
Everyone knows that dolphins are the smartest animals on the planet; Dolphins proves they're the coolest as well. (Gillian G. Gaar)

East is East
This decent little movie is set in the early '70s, in an English town called Salford. The great Om Puri plays a fanatical father married to a British woman (Linda Basset). They own a small chip shop and a small house, which is packed with seven rebellious kids. With the exception of one boy, all the children are headed one way (toward total assimilation of British culture), and the father the other (preservation of Pakistani values); all that's left is a big showdown in the end. A rather ordinary story, you will agree. But Puri saves the day by doing what he does best: deepening and extending his character's emotional and psychological range. (Charles Mudede)

Erin Brockovich
Despite having been directed by indie superstar Steven Soderbergh, Erin Brockovich is just what it is: another big-budget Hollywood film starring Julia Roberts. In fact, because this is a Hollywood film, we suddenly notice aspects of Soderbergh's filmmaking that are harder to detect when he has complete control over his material: namely, how brilliant he is working with supporting actors, most notably men. In this case, it's Aaron Eckhart and Albert Finney. Without this, all you have left is a stupid plot and the dentiglorious spectacle that is Julia Roberts. (Charles Mudede)

Everest
The first IMAX footage ever shot on top of the world.

EXTREME
Don't try this at home, folks. An entire film bursting and soaring with EXTREME sports, EXTREME risks, and the ULTIMATE in EXTREME challenges.

*Films by Charles and Ray Eames
Besides brilliant contributions to modernist architecture, furniture, and industrial design, this overachieving couple also produced "artful films" that focused on modern ideas and revolutionary methods of visual presentation. Includes Powers of Ten, one of their best-known works.

*The FILMS OF LUIS BUÑUEL
This retrospective series devoted to the sensitive and satirical European/ Spanish filmmaker ends this week with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), featuring Buñuel regular Fernando Rey as an uptight widower who becomes consumed with lust and adoration for Conchita (surrealistically played by two different actresses to emphasize the different shades of "female allure"), his nubile live-in maid. Thurs June 8 at 7:30; call 625-8900 for details.

*The Filth & the Fury
Julien Temple (The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle) compiled this portrait of the infamous Sex Pistols, with exclusive interviews with Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, and of course Sid Vicious. Includes boatloads of unseen live footage, and an amazing capacity to energize even the most cynical viewer. Odds are that if you have preconceptions about the band, they'll at least be tested, especially once you've seen the images of Johnny Rotten serving up slices of cake to needy working-class kids on Christmas Day, 1977, or crying over the death of his mate, Sid. (Sean Nelson)

The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty: the early years. Yabba dabba don't bother.

*Fremont Outdoor Cinema
Get your lawn chairs ready for the return of Fremont's Outdoor Cinema, with its usual mixed bag of double features, shorts, live music from local bands, and contests. This weekend, watch the adorable Ariel and her seafood friends in Disney's The Little Mermaid, along with The Incredible Mr. Limpet (with the incredible Mr. Don Knotts) and a live show from the Manatees. Sat June 3 at 7; $5; call 767-2593 for details.

Frequency
A hodgepodge about time travel, ham-radio enthusiasm, the hazards of firefighting, baseball, mother love, and a father-son tag-team tracking down a nurse-butchering psychopath. This utterly confused film is a perfect example of Hollywood's shameless tendency to pillage the graveyard for the spare parts of its own schmaltzy genres. The result is a Frankenstein monster that bumbles and stumbles across the thin emotional terrain of an Americanized (and therefore totally false) idea of nostalgia and redemption. (Rick Levin)

*Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
When he was young, Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) was saved from a group of street thugs by Louie (John Tormey), a low-level Mafioso who just happened to be passing by. In thanks, Ghost Dog pledged to serve Louie for the rest of his life, as faithful to him as any ancient samurai was to his master. Director Jim Jarmusch infuses Ghost Dog with the deadpan humor of his earliest films. (Andy Spletzer)

Gladiator
Director Ridley Scott tramps through the standard gladiator movie plot like a tipsy party host, embracing each and every cliché like a dear old friend. War hero General Maximus (Russell Crowe) is stripped of his position by a scheming new Caesar (Joaquin Phoenix). Escaping too late to save his family, Maximus falls into the hands of a slaver (the late Oliver Reed), and with the help of a former love and his rough-but-likable gladiator pals, seeks his revenge by finding glory within the Coliseum. Scott then uses all the technical advantages of modern filmmaking to make the details as lavish as possible. (Tom Spurgeon)

*Hamlet
Ethan Hawke stars as the angsty Dane in this updated version of Shakespeare's magnum human drama, directed by Michael Almereyda. Against all odds, it's incredibly good. Reviewed this issue.

*High Fidelity
A romantic comedy for guys. John Cusack plays the cynically introspective Rob Gordon, the owner of a small record store who, for various reasons, has shit luck with women. He's a jerk, basically, but he's not altogether clueless about his jerkiness. He struggles and obsesses and makes lists that he thinks define his life, but he's no closer to understanding women than he was in the fifth grade--which happens to be when he got dumped for the first time. Based on the popular novel of the same name. (Kathleen Wilson)

*Island of the Sharks
There are SHARKS on the IMAX screen, and they're rickety RAW!

*Keeping the Faith
Any film that begins with a drunken priest staggering through the streets of New York and tumbling into a garbage pile is automatically fine by me. Edward Norton (who also directed) is the drunky priest and Ben Stiller is a confused rabbi. They love the same girl, a rad chick they hung out with back in the fourth grade. The film is genuinely funny and sweetly romantic as it focuses on all aspects of this not-so-holy trinity. And surprisingly enough, co-star Jenna Elfman doesn't bug. (Kathleen Wilson)

Love and Basketball
Boy meets girl. Boy plays hoops with girl. Girl takes boy to hole.

*Michael Jordan to the MAX
See the greatest basketball player in history as nature intended: on a 3,500-square-foot movie screen!

*Mission: Impossible 2
I loved this movie. I loved the vertiginous helicopter swoops as Tom Cruise scales an impossibly sheer cliff to receive his impossible mission. I loved the profligate back flips in the fight choreography as he takes out villain after glass-jawed villain. I loved the preposterous motorcycle chase/joust. I loved the human touches, too: the love triangle set against the backdrop of global intrigue; the lascivious slo-mo close-ups of Thandie Newton; the villain's Scots accent. But most of all, I loved the giddy sense of hyperbole and spectacle that coarsed through the whole enterprise. It may not last too long after the credits roll, but pleasures like this aren't meant to. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to make part 3. (Sean Nelson)

Return to Me
A guy (David Duchovny) falls for a girl (Minnie Driver) who has received his dead wife's heart in a transplant. No, really.

*Road Trip
Road Trip takes the 15-minute road-trip sequence from Animal House and expands it to feature length. In this case, "University of Ithaca" college student Josh (Breckin Meyer) accidentally mails his long-distance girlfriend Tiffany a videotape of him having sex with another woman, forcing him and a trio of college buddies to drive 1,800 miles to recover the tape and save his relationship. Relating the tale of this Odyssean quartet is Benny (Tom Green), the first unreliable narrator figure in what must be the first humanist teen sex comedy. Why "humanist"? This genre of comedy is generally predicated on fear and repulsion toward "the other." This movie parades a sea of creepy or scary archetypes past its travelers (the only one missing is a predatory homosexual)--and then allows them nuanced responses. The foot-fetishist and food molester are just creepy, but the large, horny black woman is allowed a dose of humanity, as is the likable, boner-bearing Grandpa. Josh's sidekick E. L. (Seann William Scott) discovers the joys of prostate stimulation, while dorky Kyle (DJ Qualls) wins over an all-black frat house with his dancing before bedding the aforementioned BBW. Repulsion executes a complicated dance with attraction, and we (and by we, I mean oversexed, underaged boys) emerge from the movie theater better people for it. (Eric Fredericksen)

Running Free
The original title of this movie was Hoofbeats, which should clue one in that it's about the inner life of wild African horses.

*Seattle International Film Festival
Our annual cinematic behemoth is back, this time with more movies and probably longer lines than ever. This year's exclusives include premiere screenings of Sunshine, with Ralph Fiennes, and Rumor of Angels, with Vanessa Redgrave. Archival treats include a remastered print of Raging Bull, an all-day Cinerama showcase (with the 1962 classic How the West Was Won), and post-revolutionary Russian films (The Young Lady and the Hooligan, 1918; Eye of Glass, 1929). There will also be a festival within the festival: "Passport to the World" offers foreign-film buffs a marathon of subtitles from 19 different exotic locales. Call SIFF's info line at 324-9997; or see the Stranger's SIFF Bible for details.

Sex & Death, Part I
Who needs outdoor seating at trendy restaurants when 2nd Ave Pizza--Belltown's finest pizza joint--provides delicious slices and free movies all summer long? This week, get ready for deep 'n' heavy (but FUN!) subject matters and rhetorical existential questions with films like The World According to Garp (1982), Thundercrack! (1975, a campy cult classic), Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959, based on the Marguerite Duras novel), and others, as you munch and contemplate about sex, death, and everything in between. See Movie Times for details. Thurs-Sat June 1-3; 18+ ONLY for this particular series.

Shanghai Noon
Even the presence of Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson can't save this revisionist Western action comedy from the musty odor of the second-rate. Its plot unfolds like a fifth-generation Xerox. Some princess has to be saved from some clumpy, labor-driven railroad/mining concern, and the male leads must shed their current roles and embrace new, dimly conceived identities. Wilson and his co-star are to be credited for occasionally rising above the material, but there are much better ways to spend a summer afternoon. (Tom Spurgeon)

Small Time Crooks
Woody Allen's 2000 entry is one of his unambitious, hoping-only-to-amuse movies. Too bad it's unoriginal, not very amusing, and a near waste of some of this world's greatest comic talent: Tracey Ullman, Elaine May, and Jon Lovitz. Allen casts himself against type as Ray, a poor dopey szchlub married to an equally dim former exotic dancer, Frenchie (Ullman). He plans an ambitious bank heist--he and some buddies will buy a storefront two doors down from a bank and run a cookie shop as a front while tunnelling underground to reach the bank vault. The heist is a flop, but Frenchie's amazing cookies turn the front operation into a multi-million dollar business. At this point, a series of tired themes--money can't buy happiness or sophistication or taste, you know--clamp down on the movie, the plot conveys some typical twists, and the movie ends. (Eric Fredericksen)

Terror Firmer
For a full-fledged 114 minutes of trash, raunch, schlock, and the "highest of the lows," check out this "gleefully offensive" gem from indie-junk-film experts Troma Films. The very basic plot--a blind director (Lloyd Kaufman) faces obstacles as he makes a film--is merely a gloriously skimpy excuse to show graphic killings, bizarre accidents, cheap jokes about farts and sex, freak cameos, severed limbs, boobs, and a random fat, naked guy. Guest appearances by South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Motörhead's Lemmy.

*Time Code
The screen is cut into quadrants. Four films on one screen. No editing. Story takes place in Hollywood; is about Hollywood. No script. Cast wears synchronized digital watches. Fortunately, the experiment is founded on a formidable story--the four films unfolding simultaneously onscreen are all facets of one large narrative, dealing with the quotidian emotional reality of showbiz folk. (Paula Gilovich)

Trouble in Paradise
A rare, not-available-on-video 35mm print of Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated 1932 comedy, with Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall as a couple of elegant thieves who plot to rip off a rich widow.

U-571
One of the most important turning points in World War II was the Allied capture of the German code machine, Enigma. U-571 is an attempt to show us modern folks what this dramatic event must have been like. The only thing not historically accurate is the damn story. A British destroyer was responsible for capturing the machine, not Matthew McConaughey! Better you should watch Das Boot. (Juan-Carlos Rodriguez)

Up at the Villa
Sean Penn and Kristin Scott Thomas star as ill-fated lovers in the newest entry in the sex-leads-to-tragedy-leads-to-a-woman's-self-knowledge genre, based on the novella by W. Somerset Maugham. The fine supporting cast includes Anne Bancroft, Derek Jacobi, the great Sir James Fox, Jeremy Davies, and the dappled flora of Tuscany.

*The Virgin Suicides
The most consistent element of The Virgin Suicides is a steady stream of images that echo the feminine-hygiene commercials of the 1970s. Considering the material--five teenage sisters growing up in a repressive home and headed for funerals rather than graduations--the lightness of touch is surprising. But to juxtapose suicide with buoyant innocence might be uniquely appropriate; if the film has a message, it seems to be that a mythologized purity of youth can't survive into adulthood. (Monica Drake)

*WEST SEATTLE OUTDOOR CINEMA
West Seattle's own version of al fresco cinema and family fun is in full swing for the summer, with films, shorts, live music, and contests. Everybody's redneck favorite, Smokey & the Bandit, will be screening this week, but make sure to stick around for the watermelon-eating contest, plumber's crack show(!), and live music. Yee-haw! Fri June 2 at 7, $5; call 767-2593 or visit www.westseattlewalkin.com for details.

Where the Heart Is
Attention Wal-Mart shoppers! Natalie Portman is giving birth on aisle 3. Clean up!