The 6th Day, Bounce, The Grinch, Me & Isaac Newton, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, The Specialist, The Wall

Call for Filmmakers--Trailer Training
WigglyWorld Studios presents an opportunity for King County artists to create an original trailer for the Grand Illusion or the Little Theatre through the Northwest FilmForum's Trailer Training program. Budget and honorarium included. Call 329-2629 for information. Application deadlines are Nov 30, 2000 and March 30, 2001.

*The DECALOGUE
Krzysztof Kieslowski's Dekalog is something akin to a testament. Created in 1988 for Polish television, Dekalog seeks to translate the Ten Commandments into hour-long increments of cinematic equivalents. Kieslowski brilliantly transmutes the abstract ethical dilemmas implied by a breaking of a Commandment into specific dramatic terms, so that each economical hour feels like an epic traverse of the landscapes of the soul. But it doesn't stop there! Indeed, while each episode stands strong on its own, it is only as a full series that Dekalog acquires its requisite, sublime impact. When this film played at the Grand Illusion two years ago, men got into fistfights over limited tickets and women had to be turned away crying. If you miss this, you will go to hell. (Jamie Hook) Varsity Calendar

Fear of Fiction
From the director of Wild Style comes this 1999 film about a novelist and a recent college graduate who meet an odd assortment of characters while on a classic road trip. Score by Evan Lurie of the Lounge Lizards and Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth. Plays as part of the Little Theatre's Unseen Screen series. (Jamie Hook) Thurs Nov 9; the director will attend this screening. Little Theatre

Just Looking
A sitcom about a boy in 1955 who wants to watch people screwing as his summer vacation project, tells adults about his plan, and lives. In other words, so surreal that I kept waiting for the dream sequence to stop--but it never did. Accurate period recreation it is not. Go only if you really like Jason Alexander, of Seinfeld fame. He directs--oh boy, does he direct. All the actors are the same, and that sameness is Jason Alexander. Ryan Merriman, that annoying kid from The Deep End of the Ocean? Jason Alexander. Peter Onorati, usually a fine character actor? Jason Alexander. Patti LuPone, whom I regard as one of our greats? Jason Alexander. Not unlike the all-Malkovich scene in Being John Malkovich. (Barley Blair) Opens Fri Nov 10. Varsity

Little Nicky
Adam Sandler stars as the son of Satan in the 35th Devil-themed film of the year. Could it be that the true millennium is really scheduled for New Years Eve, 2001--like the Quakers said? God help us! Opens Fri Nov 10. Metro

*The Lovers on the Bridge
Excessive, overblown, hyperbolic, Leos Carax's 1991 romance between a street performer (the amazing Denis Lavant) and an artist (Juliette Binoche) going blind from, as far as I can tell, a disease brought on by unrequited love, won't win any awards for subtlety. But then what's the advantage of being modest when your heart is bursting with passion? The astounding set, a recreation of Paris's Pont-Neuf and environs whose creation was forced upon Carax when government officials withdrew their previously agreed license to film on the real bridge, gets most of the attention. But it's the film's swooning obsession that makes it a masterpiece, an outrageous, unapologetic wallowing in the bitter bliss of l'amour fou. And then there's that scene. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about; if not, prepare to be amazed. (Bruce Reid) Fri-Sun Nov 10-12. Little Theatre

Men of Honor
Why are you even thinking of seeing this movie (A biopic about the first black underwater salvage expert that soaks Robert De Niro, sinks Cuba Gooding Jr., and drowns the audience with every cliché of the military movie genre, never mind that they all contradict each other.) when you haven't seen Bamboozled, the Spike Lee about the TV show with the guys in blackface? Bamboozled is a lead balloon, but interesting leaden. Bamboozled gives Damon Wayans an unlikable, peculiar role that he inhabits fully. Bamboozled has a few minor characters that aren't pure cliché, most notably Paul Mooney as Wayans's father. Bamboozled has Savion Glover in a hideously underwritten role, but he dances--Lawsamighty, do he dance! Bamboozled ... oh, it closed already? Well, whose fault is that? (Barley Blair) Opens Fri Nov 10. Metro

*Ninth Annual Polish Film Festival
The annual Polish film festival wraps up this weekend with some great screenings, including two from the great Krzysztof Zanussi, Hidden Treasure and the standout-titled film of the series, Life as a Lethal Disease Transmitted Sexually. Also on the schedule: Master Andrzej Wajda's The Young Ladies of Wilko and Hunting Flies. All films presented at the Broadway Performance Hall. For specific program information, contact Scarecrow Video at 524-8554.

No Smoking
I can't help but admire the perverse absolutism and indifference to the thresholds of audience boredom it took Alain Resnais to grind out his unedited adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn's Smoking/No Smoking; whether that means you should sit through any of it, let alone this second film in the series, is another matter. Once again, the two performers (Sabine Azéma, Pierre Arditi) enact every variation permitted in Ayckbourn's branching structure; once again, the unrelieved monotony of the project drives the viewer insane with boredom. After all, the entire point of the play is that you are only seeing one of a dozen or so possible outcomes. Here you get them all, following each other in lockstep, which makes the entire endeavor pointless. Even the charmingly artificial sets inspired by schoolbook illustrations grate after you're forced to stare at them for an hour or so. Plays as part of the Grand Illusion's Alain Resnais Retrospective.(Bruce Reid) Sat-Sun Nov 11-12. Grand Illusion

*Non-Stop
Japanese maverick Sabu's film is so good, we don't even want to talk about it. Opens Fri Nov 10; see review this issue. Uptown

Open Screening
Screen your VHS work at 911 for a measly dollar. Bring tapes cued up and ready to go. Mon Nov 13. 911 Media Arts

Paisan
Filmed immediately after WWII, Rossellini's early masterpiece Paisan takes a half-dozen simple stories of tragic miscommunication and lost chances--an Italian girl leads an American patrol through occupied territory; a U.S. soldier meets up with a prostitute, never realizing she's the women he fell in love with six months earlier; a black M.P. has his shoes stolen by a war orphan with whom he's tentatively bonded; a nurse braves gunfire to find the painter she'd met years ago on a trip to Italy; the residents of a monastery are thrown into distress when they learn that one of the visiting Army clergyman is a Protestant and the other a Jew; OSS members and partisans stand futilely against the Nazis--and orchestrates them into a portrait of Italy's liberation every bit as humane and heartbreaking as the image his previous Rome: Open City gave of occupation. The acting and direction are artless in the best sense of the word, never drawing attention to themselves so that the film's sympathetic understanding of people shines through all the more brightly. Plays as part of Consolidated Works Imagined Landscapes series. (Bruce Reid) Fri-Mon Nov 10-13. Consolidated Works

*Pola X
Leos Carax's interpretation of the impenetrable Melville novel, Pierre, or the Ambiguities. Opens Fri Nov 10; see review this issue. Grand Illusion

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The travails of two drag queens and a transsexual (Terence Stamp!) on a trip across the Australian outback are the basis for this fabulous comedy. Fri-Sat Nov 10-11. Egyptian

Red Planet
The scariest thing about this movie by far is that the premise--Earth has become so polluted that humanity needs to terraform Mars as a last hope--is actually endorsed in the press kit by scientists! Help us! Opens Fri Nov 10. Metro

Side Street
The great Farley Granger stars in this noir thriller, about a man who, in a moment of weakness, steals $30,000 from the wrong people. Plays as part of SAM's Shadowlands film noir series. Thurs Nov 9. Seattle Art Museum

Smiling Fish and Goat On Fire
This forgettable pseudo-romantic fable about two brothers differentiated by Tonto-Indian nicknames is seriously sick about food. In scene after scene, people chew and lick and drop what they're eating and stick it into each other's mouths and slobber over it. They use food to slam each other in the face (messy) and ultimately to commit suicide--death by doughnuts. The blond brother is cute; Bill Henderson, an actor of immense dignity and humor, is given slightly more scope than usual; Rosemarie Addeo's Italian accent is wicked funny. Just don't go on an empty stomach. You won't want to eat afterwards. (Barley Blair) Opens Fri Nov 10. Varsity

Style Wars
Style Wars is actually a bad documentary. It doesn't bother to name the writers and breakdancers it interviews (thus Crazy Legs or Seen or Case 2 are reduced to street anonymity), and it spends too much time talking to crazy Mayor Ed Koch, who wants to use wild wolves to guard the New York city's trains from graffiti writers. But despite all of its failings, Style Wars is still a must-see for anyone who is a real hiphop head, because it does have rare footage of great break dance crews and legendary graffiti writers; and though it takes place in the early years of modern hiphop, it's really about the twilight years of graffiti writing as a public art form. In a word, this documentary is about death. (Charles Mudede) Wed Nov 15.

Suddenly I Burst Into Another
A psuedo-documentary about a farmer and his dog after a nuclear holocaust. Plays as part of Consolidated Works Imagined Landscapes series. Fri-Mon Nov 10-13. Consolidated Works

*The Wind Will Carry Us
The newest, and, to date, best film from the best director in the entire world, Abbas Kiarostami. Honest to God. Opens Fri Nov 10; see related article this issue. 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) Aurora Cinema Grill, Meridian 16, Metro

*Bedazzled
Stumbling across Bedazzled is like finding a bucket full of moonshine in the woods. It's not that the film is great, but it's awfully nice to meander into something that is simply, confidently good. Plus, I never knew that Brendan Fraser was HILARIOUS! His goofy, unrestrained performance as a schmuck making Faustian deals with the devil is a joy to behold. It helps that the film is underpinned by the wit of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, who wrote and starred in the original British version in 1967. (Jamie Hook) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

*Best In Show
Christopher Guest's latest with Eugene Levy follows several dog owners on their quest for the blue ribbon at the 2000 Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. A well-executed, ridiculous little film lovingly mining ridiculous little people's ridiculous little lives. (Jason Pagano) Broadway Market, Grand Alderwood, Redmond Town Center, Seven Gables

*Billy Elliot
When I watch British films it is with the full intent of hating them and then later using my reviews to deliver mini-blows to my former colonizers. But 30 minutes into this film, I gave in; there was no way I could hate it. As the BBC put it, "you are heartless if you don't love every minute of this film"--and I'm not heartless. I must make a confession: I almost cried during this film--yes, it's that touching. (Charles Mudede) Guild 45th, Harvard Exit

Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows
A bunch of Blair Witch Project groupies pay to go on a tour of the infamous Black Hills of Burkittsville, Maryland, to see the sites from their favorite movie. Just like in the first film, though, the characters' obsession with documenting their experiences eventually turns against them, and the film ultimately becomes something akin to a dream sequence, where no one knows what's real and what's not. This film is so bad, no amount of high-priced marketing tools, glitzy trailers, live webcasts, or star-studded soundtrack CDs can save it. (Melody Moss) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Northgate, 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? It was (and is) funny! (Jamie Hook) Crest

The Broken Hearts Club
Let's be frank: This film is so profoundly awful that it inadvertently succeeds in performing the tremendous social service of euthanizing the subgenre of the once-viable "gay film." God, it's bad. I will waste your time by telling you that the film is about a group of gay men in L.A. looking for meaning in their lives. But I can write no more. This film simply doesn't deserve it. (Jamie Hook) Broadway Market

*Charlie's Angels
Completely brainless, God bless its heart. Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu kick, chop, giggle, and dance their way through some sort of story involving technical thievery or...something. It doesn't really make sense, but then again, it doesn't really matter because director McG has created a world of lunacy where people levitate with relative ease, and there is absolutely no explanation for it. Hot chicks kick ass and fly, and either you accept it and have fun, or you don't. People may complain that it's merely one long music video, but why complain when that's the whole point? If you can't enjoy ludicrous fun once and a while, you may as well be dead. Choose life. (Bradley Steinbacher) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

The Contender
In this Hollywood version of the Lewinsky affair (with the Clinton character recast as a woman), the Democrats make all the great speeches you wish they'd made during the 104th Congress, and the Republicans are as simply evil and as plainly hypocritical as you wish they were. The first hour of the movie--featuring murders, behind-the-scenes White House meetings, strong-arm politicking, and secret memos--is actually a blast, but once the trite sermonizing kicks in, you'll start wishing they'd just cut to more footage of the sex scandal. (Josh Feit) Aurora Cinema Grill, Bay Majestic, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

Dancer in the Dark
Dancer in the Dark is a wonderful film in theory. In exposition, however, it suffers gravely from director Lars von Trier's ingrained contrarian aesthetic and growing avant-garde laziness. When the film is not wantonly sadistic, it is simply sloppy in a poorly thought-out way. While von Trier maintains his unique facility for the direction of small, crying women, his other tricks seem woefully inadequate for pulling off the feat he sets out to accomplish. (Jamie Hook) Harvard Exit

Dr. T & the Women
Robert Altman's newest film is a mishmash of the most frustrating variety. There is a great intro set in the lobby of Richard Gere's gynecological practice, and the coda at the end is amusing, but overall the picture is uneven (this is Altman, after all), and the joke--a man surrounded by the multiplicitous insanity of women--wears thin a bit too soon. (Jamie Hook) Meridian 16

*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. (Melody Moss) City Centre

The Ladies Man
This loose and loopy extended sketch about lisping Lothario Leon Phelps has all the slippery charm of a circa-'70s polyester shirt. Carried by the unlikely but undeniable charisma of SNL regular Tim Meadows and a script that seems almost accidental, this cinematic equivalent of a bag of bar nuts manages to coax forth just enough laughs to make a matinee viewing worthwhile. (Tamara Paris) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

The Legend of Bagger Vance
Bagger Vance opens with Jack Lemmon having a heart attack on a golf course, which sets the tone for the whole movie. Lying in the rough, Lemmon starts to narrate a story about how, when he was 10 years old, he and a mystical caddy named Bagger Vance (Will Smith) helped keep local golfer Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon) from embarrassing himself in an exhibition match against the two greatest golfers in America. Unlike Space Cowboys, Clint Eastwood's practical take on old age and death, Robert Redford's film about death and dying is chock full of nostalgia but not mortality. Maybe he needs a little more experience before he takes on his next project. (Andy Spletzer) Cinerama, Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Southcenter

*Legend of the Drunken Master
Jackie Chan's best film is his 1979 breakout Drunken Master. This sequel from 1994 captures much of the high energy and goofy humor of that classic, and adds a greatly expanded budget that allows for some impressive sets, The fight scenes are remarkable, but as always it's the throwaway bits that really blow your mind. Check out Chan's nimble leap up a wall and through an open transom; when you've picked your jaw up off the floor, remind yourself that's what movies are all about. (Bruce Reid) Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

The Little Vampire
The Little Vampire is a magical and funny movie but I wouldn't recommend it to children under seven because it is pretty scary. The movie is about a kid that finds vampires and helps them find a certain stone so they can turn into humans. The only thing stopping them is the vampire killer. He is a pretty freaky guy and his truck is freaky, too. It has lights all over it because the vampires are scared of light. It also has a cross on it and a coffin on the side. The vampires do all they can to defeat the vampire killer and get the stone before he does. Opens Fri Oct 27. (Sam Lachow, nine years old) Meridian 16, Metro, Redmond Town Center

Lucky Numbers
The simmering misanthropic narcissism that has curdled Nora Ephron's every attempt at romantic comedy is finally brought full boil, and the result is far and away her best film as a director. It probably helped that she had nothing to do with the screenplay, whose very funny twists and turns can be credited to Adam Resnick, late of Get a Life! and Cabin Boy. To be sure, the smarmy self-absorbed presence of Chris Elliott would have helped enormously, but John Travolta is just fine as the low-rent Harrisburg weatherman who decides to fix the state lottery, while the fine supporting cast are all up to his level. An unrelieved blast of bilious, mean-spirited, utterly hateful disgust; I enjoyed it immensely. (Bruce Reid) Factoria, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

Meet the Parents
Ben Stiller plays Greg, a male nurse living in an unnamed metropolis, about to pop the question to Pam, his kindergarten-teacher girlfriend. But he realizes in the nick of time that he must first ask her father (played with vicious delicacy by Robert De Niro) for permission. Happily, a trip home to attend her sister's wedding presents the perfect opportunity. But wait! Complications invariably ensue, and each new catastrophic development drives a wedge ever deeper twixt Greg and his beloved. (Tamara Paris) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Guild 45th, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11

Mercy Streets
The latest in Christian-made thrillers. Identical twins, separated in their youth, have grown up with wildly divergent lives. One's a criminal, in and out of jail. The other is studying to be a preacher. It's the kind of movie where the "bad" brother can somehow fit seamlessly into the "good" brother's life, even fooling his fiancée and best friend. Bad guy Eric Roberts comes across as the most honest character in the film, and he's a cold-blooded killer! Aside from a few scenes in church and a cameo by Stacy Keach as a wacky but wise priest, there's nothing to distinguish Mercy Streets from any other boring, predictable, post-Tarantino Sundance crime movie. (Andy Spletzer) Grand Alderwood, 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 Los Angeles in pursuit of her favorite soap-opera character, "Dr. David Ravell," 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) Uptown

Pay It Forward
After having been instructed by his social studies teacher to make the world a more benevolent place, Haley Joel Osment starts at the bottom, where the bums live amid burning oil cans, of course. About five minutes into his effort, Osment thinks he's failed and that the world is, in fact, shit. It's a performance that'll probably earn somebody an Oscar, but it just made me feel like kicking a kid in the teeth. (Kathleen Wilson) Factoria, Majestic Bay, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

Remember the Titans
Remember the Titans is set in the early '70s and based on real life, real people, the real America. It's a "problem film"--a movie about a black man (a football coach, in this case) who has to win the trust and love of angry, white racists. Incredible as this may sound, the movie is actually fascinating--not because it's well done or acted (nothing stands out in that regard), but because it has the manic pace of The Rock coupled with the content of Do the Right Thing. Now how in the world can you top that? (Charles Mudede) Aurora Cinema Grill, Bay Majestic, Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Pacific Place 11

Requiem For a Dream
In Requiem for a Dream (based on the Hubert Selby Jr. novel of the same name, about the downward spiral of a trio of Brooklyn junkies), Darren Aronofsky opts to assault us with self-righteous imagery masquerading as some sort of daring bohemian technique. It is a conceit that manages to obliterate the few promising moments in the film. In the end, Requiem for a Dream comes off as so much high-school posturing: puerile; craven; and, in hindsight, embarrassingly tacky. (Jamie Hook) Neptune

A Time for Drunken Horses
Here's a carefully understated little melodrama about the bleak lives of children in Kurdistan--a chance to see into a world otherwise unknown (or at best mysterious) to us, handsomely photographed with a great soundtrack. And yet I know that most American moviegoers won't watch a foreign movie that ends on only the faintest note of hope, no singing violins, no jeweled sunset. (Barley Blair) Uptown

Two Family House
An inoffensive romantic comedy set in the '50s, with racial stereotypes as broad yet bland as any sitcom, Two Family House portrays how even a perpetual loser harried by a shrewish Italian wife can find happiness with a fetching Irish girl. Michael Rispoli, an appealing schlub who is battered but not beaten by life, dreams of opening his own bar, but his wife does her best to squash this latest scheme. When upstairs tenant Kelly Macdonald gives birth to a half-black baby, she's thrown out in the street; guilty Rispoli chases after her with cash and advice. What happens from there is predictable, albeit in a charmingly laid-back and easygoing way. (Bruce Reid) Broadway Market

The Yards
Leo Handler (Mark Wahlberg) is a street kid freshly released from prison after taking the fall for his friend Willie Gutierrez (Joaquin Phoenix). He wants to get his life back on track, and appeals to his influential Uncle Frank (James Caan) for work at his train repair company, then finds himself drawn into a downward spiral of corruption, violence, and familial betrayal. The return of the prodigal son is far from a fresh theme, but director James Gray has assembled an outstanding cast and had the good sense to stay out of their way. It is only in the last few minutes of the film that Gray's minimalist instinct derails, as each plot point is rushed ruthlessly toward completion. Opens Fri Oct 27. (Tamara Paris) Meridian 16