Film

Film Shorts

Billy Elliot, Bittersweet Motel, Chain of Fools, Meet the Parents, Ring of Fire, Smiling Fish and Goat On Fire

Barenaked in America
Barenaked Ladies are the quirky Canadians who scored radio hits with "One Week" and "It's All Been Done"; Barenaked in America is the befuddling popumentary (directed by Jason Priestley) that would indicate This is Spinal Tap isn't being re-released north of the border. Not entirely a concert film, not a road film... it's not much of anything, really. Then there's the sad story of longtime keyboardist Kevin Hearn, unable to take part in BNL's phenomenal American success due to his recuperation from having beaten leukemia, given short shrift by Priestley in favor of the Ladies' seemingly endless self-obsessed, juvenile banter. Then again, maybe he's a genius with a keen understanding of audience. (Jason Pagano) Opens Fri Sept 29.

Beautiful
The day Gwyneth Paltrow was cast as a Brit in Shakespeare in Love, the floodgates were sprung for British actresses to play American tropes--hence, everyone's favorite Anglican "bird" Minnie Driver portrays a girl gunning for the title of Miss America in this confection from everyone's favorite post-Gidget, Sally Fields! Opens Fri Sept 29. Metro

Chasing Buddha
A documentary chronicling the life of the Tibetan Buddhist nun Robina Courtin, former Catholic, communist, and militant feminist currently providing spiritual direction to inmates. Courtin will be present for a question-and-answer period following the screening. Seattle Central Community College

*Dark Days
First-time director Marc Singer's stunning documentary of a community of homeless people inhabiting abandoned rail tunnels beneath Manhattan. With music by DJ Shadow. Opens Fri Sept 29; see review this issue. Varsity Calendar

El Sur
A young girl grows up in chilly Northern Spain with a beloved father as remote and mysterious as Seville, an imagined land of party-colored postcards and driving tango rhythms. Between its perceptive, quietly powerful portrait of a child learning to understand life's confusions (as well as its loving understanding of the power movies have on the imagination) on the one hand, and its poetic sensitivity to the shifting nature of light and shade on the other, El Sur marks a perfect transition between Victor Erice's debut Spirit of the Beehive and his magisterial Dream of Light. If the second film in Erice's career lacks the final dollop of magic that makes the movies that bookend it flat-out masterpieces, it's still an inordinately fine and lovely work, with many moments of patiently observed beauty. (Bruce Reid) Opens Thurs Sept 28. Little Theatre

*Gimme Shelter
The cucumber where Mick Jagger's business should be is on proud display in this classic rockumentary. Opens Fri Sept 29; see Stranger Suggests. Egyptian

Girlfight
Punchy Diana wants nothing more than to kick some ass, but nasty Daddy pooh-poohs the idea. Opens Fri Sept 29; see review this issue. Neptune

*The Lost World
The Paramount's great Silent Movie Mondays are back for the month of October, with a collection of sci-fi/action films from the dawn of time. Mon Oct 2; see Stranger Suggests. Paramount Theatre

Muriel
The fragmented, staccato editing of Alain Resnais' Muriel hasn't lost any of its potency with the years--the jump-cuts and interstitial daylight shots as a couple walks down the street at night are as bracing as ever. The story and characters, however, remain cold, even frozen. Not that it isn't clever to gather the sad quartet of two men and two women, two young people and two old, in a Northern French town trying to rebuild from the war, a town living as uncomfortably with the past as three of the four do with their separate memories of Algeria (glimpsed only in faded, sun-flared 8mm film, the canniest and loveliest move Resnais makes). As she did in Marienbad, Daphne Seyrig ennobles the proceedings with her touching desperation, and Hans Werner Henze's modernist score is a kick, but Resnais is too intellectual an artist to give Muriel the pained emotionalism it cries out for. (Bruce Reid) Sat-Sun Sept 30-Oct 1. Grand Illusion

*The New Eve
This French comedy replaces older, similar comedies with a giggly, cinematic confection. Opens Fri Sept 29; see review this issue. Grand Illusion

Open Screening: The Breast
Northwest Film Forum helps keep Super-8 alive with a lovely evening of lovingly made Super-8 films. This month's assignment: the breast. Films must be submitted by Mon Oct 2; call 329-2629 for info. With a live performance by the Typing Explosion--and rumor has it they may only be in their bras! Wed Oct 4. Little Theatre

Place Vendôme
Catherine Deneuve stars in this French film that examines the most terrifying of all careers--diamond salesman! Opens Fri Sept 29; see review this issue. Harvard Exit

Remember the Titans
The great democratic tradition of football takes center stage in this tale of a small Virginia town struggling with a sudden influx of those pesky superior Negro athletes. With Disney producing, you can be sure this based-on-real-events story packs the same kind of historical punch we've seen in such searing works as Mulan and Leave It to Beaver. Opens Fri Sept 29. Metro

Silent Cinema Classics
An evening of silent films, including Walt Disney's Alice Rattled by Rats, and Laurel and Hardy in Habeas Corpus. Professor Hokum W. Jeebs provides musical accompaniment on the mighty Wurlitzer organ. Tues-Wed Oct 3-4 . Hokum Hall

*Wattstax
Look at the picture of Isaac Hayes and then try to avoid heading out to see this long-out-of-circulation concert film, in a gorgeous new 35mm print at the lovely little JBL Theater at EMP. The titular 1973 concert, hosted by a then spring-chicken Jesse Jackson and with comic relief by a daisy-faced Richard Pryor, features performances by Hayes, the Staple Singers, the Dramatics, and Rufus Thomas, among others. Director Mel Stuart--who, curiously, also directed the quite excellent, deeply psychedelic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory--will be on hand for the screening, and promises to titilate with a litany of anecdotes from the concert. Wed Oct 4. (Jamie Hook) JBL Theater at EMP

*Wonderwall
What a great film! This indulgent, aimless, thorougly enjoyable relic of the High Age of Psychedelic Culture in Swinging London tells the tale of the bowler-wearing biologist Professor Morris, and the strange occurrence behind the wall of his study that slowly derail his life. No doubt inspired by the true story of chemist Albert Hoffman--who accidentally invented LSD--Wonderwall unfolds as a series of unexpected hallucinations of Professor Morris, most of which include lots of swirly colors, nude "birds," and sitar music. As the psychedelic world behind the professor's "wonder wall" grow more and more alluring, his tight little world predictably crumbles. Utterly inane but deliciously psychedelic, this is great late-night stuff. (Jamie Hook) Fri-Sat Sept 29-30. Egyptian

Almost Famous
The truth of the matter is that this movie is nothing more and nothing less than a light and entertaining crowd-pleaser. Which is fine. Good, even. It's just that for a rock 'n' roll tour film set in 1973, the content comes across as so... clean--like R-rated content in a PG-13 package. (Andy Spletzer) Factoria, Guild 45th, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

*The Art of War
This is a dazzling film. A dizzying film. Its structure is so baroque, so complex, so color-bright that it's totally incomprehensible. All we understand and enjoy is the fluid movements of the hero (Wesley Snipes) through underground sex clubs, rainy streets, corporate lobbies, office spaces, and cyberspace. Vertiginous, delirious, unstable, beautiful--this is the best action film you'll watch this year. You'll not, however, understand it. (Charles Mudede) Pacific Place 11

Autumn in New York
The most compelling question this movie begs is not one about the moral solvency of having sex with someone young enough to be your daughter, it's the one about the moral solvency of having sex with your daughter. You see it, and tell me Ryder's character, Charlotte, isn't Gere's character's daughter. Ewww. (Jamie Hook) Pacific Place 11

Bait
Jamie Foxx is a petty thief who is sent to prison for stealing shrimp from a Seafood warehouse. While serving time, his cell mate leaves Jamie Foxx with a coded message, which, when deciphered, will lead him to a secret stash of gold worth $42 million. Meanwhile, the government wants to do two things: (a) catch an arrogant and amoral computer hacker who is a national security threat; (b) recover the missing money. To accomplish these goals they use Jamie Foxx as bait. I refuse to say anything more about this film. (Charles Mudede) Aurora Cinema Grill, Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16

Bless the Child
The Christ child has been snatched by Scientologists! Quick! Call in the hardened homicide detective who dropped out of the seminary! Lurk around a casting call for the next Street Fighter CD-ROM and hire anybody with a facial piercing! Rent a stage in Studio City that has spraypainted bricks so we'll know it's the Big Apple. Lure Christina Ricci into playing a junkie who gets decapitated four minutes into the movie! Hurry, there's little time left! (Tamara Paris) Pacific Place 11

*Bring it On
Universal Studios' marketing goons have not a goddamn clue what a great movie they've got on their hands. It's so sad--they keep playing it off like it's some nasty jiggle-fest (which in part it is) with no redeeming qualities (which it has plenty of). Best of all, the film is funny in a pre-postmodernist way--remember what that was like? When irony was just a brand of humor instead of a cynical philosophy? It was (and is) funny! (Jamie Hook) Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Redmond Town Center

But I'm a Cheerleader
Shorts director Jamie Babbitt's feature debut is a disappointment--strenuous stuff that seldom rises above frail, second-rate camp. There should be a few more inspired laughs in its tale of Megan (Natasha Lyonne), a topnotch student cheerleader thought to be lesbian who's sent to a camp where homosexuality is "cured." (Ray Pride) Broadway Market

*Cecil B. Demented
Armed with guns, a 16mm camera, and an Otto Preminger tattoo, Cecil and his crew kidnap Hollywood starlet Melanie Griffith and force her to appear in their underground opus, about the revenge unleashed upon Baltimore theaters by a ragtag group of cineastes disgruntled by the commercial failure of a Pasolini festival. It's John Waters' most gleefully anarchic work in years--and if the film's characters aren't seen with the same indulgent fondness Waters displays in his best films, it's still a suitably ridiculous delight. (Bruce Reid) Varsity

The Cell
The succulent Jennifer Lopez and the ever-more dissolute Vince Vaughn disappear into the mind of serial killer Vincent D'Onofrio, who is building an interesting career exploiting his rubbery anonymity. The stunning visuals are lifted whole from Damien Hirst, Mathew Barney, the Bros. Quay, and others, but remain creepily potent. (Tamara Paris) Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

Coyote Ugly
I'm going to list all the great things about this latest "Jerry Bruckheimer feel-good flick": (1) Melanie Lynskey (who plays the "goofy best friend") does a fabulous New Jersey accent. (2) John Goodman is adorable as Funny Dad. (3) There's a cute cat in one of the scenes. (4) The outfits are pretty. (Min Liao) Pacific Place 11

Crime and Punishment in Suburbia
I could have sworn Crime and Punishment had something to do with sin and redemption and Stinking Lizetta, the pawnbroker's sweet-natured half-wit sister, getting an axe in the face. I must have been drunk! It's actually all about a cheerleader getting fucked by her stepfather before goring him with an electric carving knife. I also thought the book was written before movies were invented--but this Dostoyevsky guy must have watched American Beauty and Election before writing this script. Plus, I didn't know that Ellen Barkin's career was officially over. See? I really learned a lot from watching this movie. (Tamara Paris) City Centre

*Croupier
A bottle-blond exponent of God's lonely man takes a job in a private London casino and gets embroiled in some serious heist-related trouble. Mike Hodges, who directed the semi-obscure British new wave classic Get Carter, brings grace and severity to what could have just been neo-pulp. Instead, like the best pulp, Croupier becomes high lowbrow, thanks to a seasoned director's eye for detail, pneumatics, and sexy actors. (Sean Nelson) Metro

Duets
Why see this mishmash of cheesy product placements and a dozen contradictory genres? Not for Gwyneth as a skinny showgirl doing karaoke--see what I mean about contradictions? For Paul Giamatti. You may have forgotten his name, but his head and jowls make a figure eight, bags like eggcups under his eyes--first-rate comic apparatus. If he had two solos instead of one, I would recommend the movie. (Barley Blair) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Pacific Place 11

*The Exorcist
Though the re-release of The Exorcist is unlikely to leave the same mark it did in 1973--when audience members purportedly vomited and ran screaming from theaters across the globe--it is nevertheless a great excuse to see the film in a dark theater, with the surround-sound effects of a remastered soundtrack. Plus, it's wonderful to be reminded how deeply terrifying a film can be without the use of the latest computer-aided effects. (Melody Moss) Cinerama, Factoria, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Southcenter

The Five Senses
True, the masseuse, the man going deaf, the baker of cakes, the man with the sensitive sniffer, and the ophthalmologist account for each physical sense, but the film isn't about senses at all; it's about sensuality beyond the senses... a delicate, lovely portrayal of the spaces between people. (Evan Sult) Metro

Godzilla 2000
A stumbling mime in a kick-ass rubber monster suit battles a 65-million-year-old silver nasal inhaler. Godzilla, after a bout of anorexia and a makeover into an enormous iguana (in the unfortunate movie that need not be named), is back with a vengeance in this pitch-perfect homage. (Tamara Paris) Pacific Place 11

Goya in Bordeaux
A dull, laughably pretentious attempt to portray the painter's twilight reminiscences, Goya in Bordeaux marks a definite nadir in Carlos Saura's career. The elder, barrel-bellied Goya smugly pontificates to his daughter about the tragedies and obligations of being an artist; his younger self mulls over the compromises inherent in being a court painter and the agonies of loving a notorious mistress. Neither appears smart enough to paint a bathroom wall, let alone the masterpieces that are liberally scattered throughout the film. Bruce Reid) Egyptian, Seven Gables

Hollow Man
Kevin Bacon delivers another fine, nuanced performance as the megalomaniacal scientist who uses his newfound invisibility to act out his sick, twisted sexual desires. Hey, it's a Paul Verhoeven film... what did you expect? Not a good time, I hope. (Bruce Reid) Pacific Place 11

Human Resources
The film would be a real treat on TV: Telling the simple tale of an eager young idealist trying to reform management at a small-town factory while his working-class family and upbringing crumble around him, Human Resources is well acted and admirably realistic. But the film is lost on the big screen--too humble, too simple, visually uninspired. (Jamie Hook) Uptown

Nurse Betty
Betty, a diner waitress, settles comfortably into a thick confusion after accidentally witnessing her sleazy husband's murder. She instantly blocks out reality, and decides to drive from Fair Oaks, Kansas to L.A. in pursuit of her favorite soap-opera character, whom she believes is her long-lost true love. On paper, this all sounds so great--interesting, silly, action-packed, dramatic, full of potential. But what director Neil LaBute produces onscreen is surprisingly disappointing. (Min Liao) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Varsity

Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps
Eddie Murphy deserves some kind of special award for playing six characters, all of whom interact with (and even perform oral sex on) one another, but the screenwriters deserve to be banished for all the lame gross-out jokes that litter the story. With Janet Jackson as "something pretty to look at." (Bradley Steinbacher) Pacific Place 11

The Original Kings of Comedy
True comedic greats have an ability, much as great drummers have, to maintain a solid underlying rhythm while impetuously improvising the tempo and pace, and the fusion of the two dynamics must appear effortless at all times. The Kings, on the other hand, toil and labor for every laugh, for every moment of comedic sincerity. For the neutral looking to experience royalty, there is nothing here that HBO or Comedy Central will not readily offer, minus the price of admission. (Kudzai Mudede) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

The Replacements
What do I think about this fucking film? It's impossible to believe all that money went into it. Now, my parents were in town from Africa last week, and they told me things are getting worse, people are hungry and starving. Well, what does this have to do with this film? Waste! That's what. Waste. Waste of time, waste of food. Waste of money. (Charles Mudede) Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11

Saving Grace
If you've seen a Cheech and Chong film, you've seen every gag here: absentminded cops oblivious to the cloud of smoke around an acquaintance's head; balding, potbellied hippies lighting up to the strains of a sitar; two sweet old ladies, inadvertently stoned and gorging themselves on candy bars. If these situations sound remotely amusing to you, you might as well go. (Bruce Reid) Aurora Cinema Grill, City Centre, Metro

Scary Movie
Scary Movie is largely a satire of the Scream films--which are already satires (go figure). Though it certainly has some knee-slappers, most of the infantile jokes simply go on way too long. (Melody Moss) Grand Alderwood, Uptown

Shower
Contrary to what the lady's bottom in the advertisement promises, this film is populated almost exclusively by melancholic old men who predictably complain about youth and argue among themselves. Shower is comfort food for the cinema--bland, but soothing. (Jamie Hook) Crest

*Space Cowboys
Alongside voting and worrying about your body, one of your duties as an American is to see every Clint Eastwood film released, regardless of individual failures, hyperbole, plot holes, or any other misdeeds whatsoever. He alone has earned that right. Aurora Cinema Grill, Lewis & Clark, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

The Tao of Steve
Chunky, attitudinal Dex (an extraordinarily charming Donal Logue, a prizewinner at Sundance) teaches kindergarten. He's great with women and drifting a decade out of college when an old college friend shows up and doesn't fall for his line. Hyperarticulate and hypersexed, Dex must learn the meaning of his words and his heart. Funny stuff. (Ray Pride) Harvard Exit

*Time Regained
Time Regained is Chilean director Raúl Ruiz's brillliant adaptation of the final volume of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and arguably the best adaptation of Proust to date. (Bruce Reid) Broadway Market

Urban Legends: Final Cut
The teen slasher genre continues to chuckle in the face of obsolescence with relative impunity. Why? Because it is a genre that has managed to exempt itself from standard expectations of quality. How? Primarily by abandoning it's potential for originality in order to remain rigorously faithful to even the most circumstantial details of the genre's formula, a formula which has found a lucrative niche within the pockets of the nation's youth. For those who create teen-slasher flicks it is acknowledged that effort needn't necessarily be at a premium, but it is also ackowledged that one should do as best as one can do anyway. Why? Common fucking human decency--obviously not on the agenda when this fetid offering spluttered off the mill. (Kudzai Mudede) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree

Urbania
Midway through Urbania things finally get better. The hero (Dan Futterman) leaves his apartment and starts cruising the streets for flesh. During this night journey, he has an erotically charged conversation with a heterosexual bartender. Later, he meets the man he wants, and the two drunkenly descend into the underworld of human desire. But just as you're about to forgive the director for the slow start and raise the grade of his effort from an E- to a C+, the horrible ending arrives and ruins everything. In a million lifetimes, I could never imagine a worse ending. Really, it's that bad. (Charles Mudede) Broadway Market

The Watcher
It's refreshing to see Keanu Reeves in a movie that is so beleaguered by its own faults that it can hardly blame the mercurial acting talents of the slow-motion-bullet-dodger for its own miserable shortcomings. The Watcher is a frightfully unimaginative, by-the-numbers thriller with no plot twists, no clever bits, horrendous slow-motion dance sequences, few thrills, and anemic character development, successfully leaving Reeves well within his depth. (Kudzai Mudede) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Northgate

The Way of the Gun
Christopher McQuarrie's The Way of the Gun is an evil film, though not for the self-conscious reasons it would have you accept. Rather, it is evil because secretly it does not know what it is; because it is adrift in a world that is too opiated to confront its soulless convictions; because it comes from a place that has confused the fantastical and the realistic. (Jamie Hook) Meridian 16, Varsity

What Lies Beneath
A well-preserved pair of thoroughbred movie stars find that all is not well in their gorgeous New England home, what with the dead girl in the tub and all. The whole damn thing is ripped right out of the Hitchcock how-to manual, so of course it succeeds fantastically at its admittedly simple goal: scaring you so badly you throw your popcorn all over the people in the row behind you. (Tamara Paris) Uptown

Woman on Top
Penélope Cruz is Isabella, a Brazilian chef with severe motion sickness who leaves her small fishing village in Brazil for San Francisco in order to escape her two-timing husband, then employs voodoo to get over her chronic, masturbatory obsession with him. Meanwhile, her spurned husband proceeds to the Big Gay City, accompanied by a group of guitar-strumming musicians at all times. All that and it still sucks. (Rachel Kessler) Grand Alderwood, Guild 45th, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree