LIMITED RUN
Anatomy of a RelationshipNWFF's Luc Moullet series continues with this intimate look at Moullet's problems in bed. No, really. Moullet himself stars, with actress Christine Herbert standing in for his partner (Antonietta Pizzorna, who co-directs). Plays with Attempt at an Opening, a really great short about trying to open a bottle of Coke with your teeth. And a buzz-saw, and a gas range, and a freezer, and... It goes on for 15 minutes, and it's hilarious. (ANNIE WAGNER) Northwest Film Forum, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.
Born Into BrothelsRare is the documentary that feels too short, but this wrenching, multiple award-winning look at kids growing up within the squalid red-light sector of India begs for a more detailed exploration. Filmed in an arresting mix of handheld video and Kodachrome stills, the film follows the efforts of co-director/photographer Zana Briski to save the children of Calcutta's sex workers, initially by encouraging their photographic skills, and then navigating through unbelievable levels of bureaucratic quicksand in an attempt to get them out of the slums and into boarding schools. Briski's struggle is worthy of sainthood, but her resulting document, after an absolutely engrossing first reel, follows a slightly frustrating route. Unintentionally or not, as she concentrates increasingly on getting passports and HIV tests processed, the focus shifts to a more conventional individual-versus-the-system story, and away from the fairly miraculous day-to-day existence of the kids, where it feels like it belongs. As it stands, the glimpses we see of them and their all-too-knowing interactions with their hellish surroundings are somehow both too much, and not nearly enough. (ANDREW WRIGHT) Keystone Church, Fri July 21 at 7 pm.
Breakfast at Tiffany'sSeattle Art Museum (in residence at MOHAI) continues its Audrey Hepburn series with her iconic turn as Holly Golightly. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs July 20 at 7:30 pm.
Brigitte et BrigitteThis funny little movie about two girls from rural France trying to make it as students in Paris is the first in Northwest Film Forum's series on director Luc Moullet—a Cahiers critic and New Wave contemporary whose vehemently unstylish films bear little resemblance to Godard et al. NWFF is calling him the "French King of Comedy," but the laughs you get from Brigitte et Brigitte are sly sideways giggles, not guffaws. The Brigittes dress identically and espouse opposite politics, though neither seems to have a very firm grasp on the ideals they supposedly cherish. (One amusing sequence has the shorter, right-wing Brigitte glowing as she plows through hundreds of little slips of paper in the voting booth, picking candidates at random from the piles.) The film is shot in lackluster black-and-white, the camera mostly locked in static two-shots; but the nonprofessional actors keep the gags bumping right along. Cinephiles will eat up the sequences in which the Brigittes query obsessive film lovers about the best and worst American directors of all time (Hitchcock ends up on both lists). (ANNIE WAGNER) Northwest Film Forum, Fri 7 pm, Sat 5, 9 pm, Sun 5, 7 pm.
A Japanese thriller by Hideo Nakata (the original Ring). Central Cinema, Fri-Sun at 7 pm.
Audrey Hepburn stars as a Parisian widow who is pursued by money-grubbing bad guys... and Cary Grant. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs July 27 at 7:30 pm.
Seattle filmmaker B. J. Bullert's documentary on Seattle's first and most famous fucked-over citizen. A fundraiser for the Duwamish tribe. Environmental Learning Center at Camp Long, Thurs July 27 at 7 pm.
A Luc Moullet movie that would no doubt be funnier if you were subject to mindbending French bureaucracy every time you turned around. There's a girl (Sabine Haudepin) who's too good at her job, which is to get people jobs. Her bosses are afraid she'll get so many people jobs that unemployment will disappear and they'll lose theirs. Haudepin is wacky and entrancing, even when she shakes loose her hair like a clichéd stripper librarian. Those in her orbit, including an overqualified workaholic and a chronically unemployed mountaineer, are somewhat less absorbing. (ANNIE WAGNER) Northwest Film Forum, Wed 7 pm, Thurs 9 pm.
The quarterly discussion series reconvenes with a panel entitled "I Have Quit/Am Quitting/Will Never Quit This Town!" Can you make it in Seattle as a filmmaker? Dom Zook of GadZook Films (Muffed by Pastry) and Andrew McAllister (Shag Carpet Sunset, Urban Scarecrow) present. Representatives from The Film Company, however, are conspicuously absent. Northwest Film Forum, Wed July 26 at 7 pm.
A Girl Is a Gun, aka An Adventure of Billy the KidThis purposefully ill-dubbed Western by Luc Moullet wasn't screened before we went to press, but it's reportedly the most fun of all his work. Starring the New Wave darling Jean-Pierre LĂ©aud. Northwest Film Forum, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.
Iron IslandSomewhere off the coast of the Persian Gulf, an outcast group of Arab refugees commandeer a rusty oil tanker, retrofitting its abandoned bulk into a perilously self-sustaining society. As the number of salvageable parts diminish, however, romantic entanglements and a series of unwelcome visits from the long-vacant owners threaten to end of its decade-spanning closed ecosystem. (That ominous bubbling near the waterline doesn't help matters much, either.) Although an understanding of the region's politics would undoubtedly help clarify things on an allegorical level, director Mohammad Rasoulof's film is absorbing even when taken straight, with a disarming mixture of pie-eyed optimism and cold, hard reality. A potent, occasionally poetic downer of a melodrama, featuring a wonderful performance by Iranian mainstay Ali Nasirian as the ship's resident kingpin/cheerleader/prophet. Jimmy Swaggart ain't got nothing on this guy. (ANDREW WRIGHT) Grand Illusion, Weekdays 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5, 7, 9 pm.
Kaleidoscope Eyes: Songs for Busby BerkeleySee Stranger Suggests. Northwest Film Forum, Thurs-Sat 8 pm. Continues through July 30.
Is there a gayer name than Maurice? No. Thus, there is no gayer movie than a movie called Maurice. All hail the Merchant-Ivory production about two Cambridge boys in love. Central Cinema, Wed-Thurs at 9:30 pm. (All shows 21+).
Mongolian Ping PongMongolian Ping Pong contains shades of The Gods Must Be Crazy: A foreign object from the modern world upends the lives of rural people. But this film (last seen at SIFF 2005) is more about the friendship between three boys growing up on the steppes than the trouble the plastic wrought. Young Bilke finds the titular ball floating down the river by his parents' yurt and thinks it's a glowing pearl sent by the gods. Then he learns that the ping-pong ball is China's "national ball." Burdened by civic responsibility, he and his pals decide to ride their horses to Beijing and give it back. The pleasure is in watching the boys, who are good-hearted but badly behaved (they run away, hide from the state vaccination men, steal bottles of beer from their parents); and the great final scene, in which the film suddenly changes from a soft, charming Mongolian bildungsroman to a sharp parable about how modernity can steal all the magic out of life. (BRENDAN KILEY) Varsity, Fri-Sun 2, 4:30, 7, 9:20 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9:20 pm.
Plan 9 From Outer Space"Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!" A newly colorized version of the Ed Wood "classic" screens with several of Wood's home movies, MST3K goodies, etc. Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.
Shaun of the DeadA sharp, clever, and gory horror-comedy that manages to be as scary as it is hilarious, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Shaun of the Dead shows all the marks of becoming a cult classic (and yeah, I know that sounds clichéd—but in this case, it's actually true). In the recent glut of financially successful zombie flicks-from 28 Days Later to the remake of Dawn of the Dead-the UK-made Shaun is the clear spiritual and intellectual winner, a film that simultaneously respects and satirizes the zombie genre. (ERIK HENRIKSEN) Fremont Outdoor Movies, Sat July 22 at dusk.
The most recent entry in the Luc Moullet series, Shipwrecked on Route D 17 is a 2002 comedy about the Gulf War. Northwest Film Forum, Wed 9 pm, Thurs 7 pm.
NWFF's Luc Moullet series continues with this "non-adventure adventure film" about two scantily clad women capering over rocks and around warring nations. Northwest Film Forum, Fri 9 pm, Sat 7 pm, Sun 7 pm.
Stooges-A-Poppin!! Week 1A program of 3 Stooges shorts, including Disorder in the Court, Hoi Polloi, and No Census, No Feeling. Free! Grand Illusion, Fri 11 pm, Sat 12:30, 11 pm, Sun 12:30 pm.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-RabbitWallace and Gromit have invented the Bunny Vac 6000, a large vacuum that humanely sucks up the cutest frickin' bunnies in the whole wide world, and safely releases them to another location. Hooray! But you know how bunnies like to, ahem, breed, so of course the rabbit population keeps rising and rising despite Wallace's efforts. The humor is just as funny as the classic Looney Tunes (which were funny!) but even smarter. (MEGAN SELING) Films on the Wall (West Seattle), Sat July 22 at dusk.
Now Playing
With Pixar movies, you know the story is going to be bursting with loveable characters housing their own endearing little quirks. Toy Story had Buzz Lightyear, Monsters, Inc. had Mike Wazowski, Finding Nemo had Dory and those awesome stoner turtles—but who do we get in Cars? Just a bunch of stupid cars! Cars are machines. Metal, plastic, rubber... just machines. Even with a face painted on them, they're not warm. You don't want a car for a friend or even a pet. You kinda just want 'em all to drive themselves off of a cliff so they can be scrapped and turned into something cool. Like Transformers. (MEGAN SELING)
Everything about this movie is boiled until tough. Only Ian McKellen wrings any fun out of the plot, but then again, he gets two crutches to play with. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Is Meryl Streep afraid of Anna Wintour? There's something weirdly soft in her portrayal of "dragon lady" that completely contradicts the spirit of the movie. But to be fair, it's not her fault: Streep can't help but play a human being, and the characters in The Devil Wears Prada are not human beings. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Friends with Money atones for its shortcomings in the plot department by kicking unprecedented ass in the great-actress-triumvirate-of-delight department: Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, and Catherine Keener. But it's still a movie about the emotional pain of building an addition to one's house. (LINDY WEST)
Since being picked up by Miramax, The Heart of the Game has become a big, fat juggernaut modeled after Hoop Dreams and narrated by Ludacris—but it began as a scrappy, no-budget local movie about the girls' basketball team at Roosevelt High School. (ANNIE WAGNER)
An Inconvenient TruthAn Inconvenient Truth is workmanlike and clumsy at times—but it's also hugely invigorating. Tracking Gore's global-warming lecture as he schleps his Apple laptop across the country and to China, it's a collection of scientific facts and correlations made urgent through human drama and low-tech slide-show magic. It should be required viewing for every American citizen. And if it kicks up a storm of speculation regarding Al Gore's political prospects in 2008? So much the better. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves exchange love letters. Schmoopy, time-warped love letters. You call that a movie?
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your ManIt's one thing to hear longtime fans prattle on about how great Leonard Cohen's music is, and another thing entirely to hear him speak for himself. In this uneven music documentary, two movies fight for dominance—one full of cover songs and effusive testimonials, the other dominated by the man in the Armani suit. Loosely based around the "Came So Far for Beauty" concert at the Sydney Opera House in 2005, the music segments feature Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, Beth Orton, Antony, and the Handsome Family. But director Lian Lunson also includes interviews with Cohen, and this is where the documentary takes off. With his growling voice and bright eyes, Cohen brings the movie into focus. Self-deprecating where others are fawning, he talks about how long it takes to get a song just right, how "Chelsea Hotel #2" really was about a fling he had with Janis Joplin, and how his reputation as a ladies' man caused him "to laugh bitterly on the 10,000 nights I spent alone." (ANDY SPLETZER)
Mission: Impossible 3Clearly, in retrospect, what the Mission: Impossible franchise needed was a director young and hungry enough to shoot the moon, yet humble enough to work comfortably within the system. In short, a TV guy. Enter Alias/Lost creator J. J. Abrams, whose television work displays a genuine affinity for the ol' cloak and dagger, as well as a winningly snarky knack for subverting the dustier conventions of same. His feature debut lives up to his small-screen predilections. Abrams's script, cowritten with Alias cohorts Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, finds Tom Cruise's IMF hotshot semi-retired to instructor status and on the cusp of settling down with adorable nurse Michelle Monaghan. Before long, however, circumstances draw him back into the field, in the person of Philip Seymour Hoffman's sociopathic arms dealer with a grudge. Stuff goes boom. This rather A-to-B plot is fleshed out with a number of killer supporting acts, including Laurence Fishburne, Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg, and especially Hoffman, who makes for an amusingly direct, pissy supervillain. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Nacho LibreGosh! Rip off my frickin' movie why don't you, Jared Hess! This is pretty much the worst movie ever made. I mean, I guess it's an okay movie. It's pretty funny. Now that I think about it, it's pretty much my favorite movie ever. (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE)
This movie is about cartoon animals with feelings who learn lessons about junk food and waste and suburban sprawl. There are three funny parts. The rest—despite an all-hits-no-misses cast and an awesome Ben Folds soundtrack—is a shrill combo of recycled jokes, less than hilarious mayhem, and demonic porcupine babies. (LINDY WEST)
The first Pirates of the Caribbean film rose from the ashes of low expectations, dragged up from its dubious theme-park origins by a subversive and hilariously twisted performance by Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. What should have been un film stupide turned into one of the few surprises of 2003. Now comes the midsection of the trilogy, which picks up shortly after the first film ended. Capt. Jack remains a truly weird invention, but now everyone around him is trying desperately to keep up, and what's left is a film so amped up it flirts with being cartoonish. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the expected romp: swords are clashed, cannons are fired, and many a quip is unsheathed. But what's missing this go-around is the genuine surprise of the first film. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Police BeatFor those who haven't heard, Police Beat (which was written by Charles Mudede and is based on his column in this paper) is an engaging picaresque about a Seattle bike cop distracted from his job by a girlfriend who has gone camping with another man. The cop, known only as "Z," is Senegalese and he narrates the movie in Wolof, which we read in English subtitles. There are many reasons to admire Police Beat. It is beautifully filmed, the script brims with insights about love, and (despite its observation that "relationships are cruel, therefore the world is cruel") it is deeply optimistic. But what I admire most is the film's depiction of Seattle and, by extension, of the contemporary city. (MATTHEW STADLER)
It's sad to see Keillor making miscalculations about the nature and appeal of his own creations. Such are the perils of adapting a radio program to film. (ANNIE WAGNER)
What is the core truth of this film based on a Philip K. Dick short story of the same name? That capitalism is not progressive; it does not move from a lower condition to a higher and better one, but is circular. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Strangers With CandyStrangers with Candy is basically just an extra-long, perfectly passable bonus episode of the original TV series, which means, of course, that it's fucking hysterical. (LINDY WEST)
For a movie featuring a hero who can conceivably give God a wedgie, there's precious little zowie to be found. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Thank You for SmokingAs a work of satire, Thank You for Smoking is safely and securely dated. The book it's adapted from (by conservative novelist Christopher Buckley) was published in the mid-'90s, when tobacco lawsuits were flying fast and loose and the word "probe" was rampant in headlines in the Washington Post. But what the movie loses in relevance, it gains in absurd comedy. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Who Killed the Electric Car?If this lively agitdoc is any indication, early adopters of environmentally friendly technology are a bunch of stubborn children. When General Motors rolled out its ice-blue, all-electric car in California in 1996, celebrities and subcelebrities and dot-com arrivistes (including director Chris Paine) snatched them up like candy. But the EV1, as the model was called, was only available for lease, not for sale, and when GM decided (with the help of the state of California) that electric vehicles were not in fact the wave of the future, it took them all back. Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, washed-up Baywatch actress Alexandra Paul—all talking heads in this movie—were crushed. Systematically working through such potential "suspects" as SUV-minded consumers, battery capacity, oil companies, car companies, federal and state governments, and rival technologies (particularly the hydrogen fuel cell), the documentary crafts a compelling case that the decline of the electric car was misguided, collusive, and premature. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Compared to the several Scrabble documentaries that came out a few years ago, Wordplay is conspicuously lacking in crazy characters. But the interviews with Shortz are dorky-adorable. (ANNIE WAGNER)
It's a shameful way for the trilogy to end. Director Brett Ratner has given us the summer blockbuster he wants to see—unfortunately, most everyone who enjoys movies has better taste. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
