Film

Film Shorts

About Adam, Angel Eyes, The Golden Bowl, Shrek, Signs & Wonders, Time and Tide

ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL TOUR
The cream that rose to the top of this year's 16-mm only Ann Arbor Film Festival is available for the viewing pleasure of non Michiganites at the Bellevue Art Museum. The program includes animation, narrative, documentary, and experimental films. 'Cause it's a film festival. Thurs-Fri May 10-11. Bellevue Art Museum

Beach Blanket Bingo
A film in which a bunch of 25-year-old teenagers with big hair and small bathing suits get together to tantalize one another's raging hormones. The presence in the film of the great Timothy Carey (as well as Don Rickles and a basically dead Buster Keaton) demands a recommendation to an audience beyond the set of people who still connect with camp. Fri-Sat May 11-12. Egyptian

*Bookwars
911 presents this intense documentary about the rival merchants who sell books--paperback, coffee table, philosophy, new, used, rare, worthless--from tables in Manhattan. It kind of looks like The Rhythm Thief for people who can read. Except it's a documentary. Fri May 11. 911 Media Arts

*Calle 54
Reviewed this issue. A documentary on Cuban jazz that has nothing in common with Buena Vista Social Club except a desire to tell the untold story of great musicians. Directed by Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque), and featuring performances by Tito Puente, Eliane Elias, Gato Barbieri, and many others. Opens Fri. Broadway Market

*Forbidden Games
René Clément's mournful 1952 tale about a little girl in war-torn France. When her parents and her dog are killed in an air raid, she is befriended by a peasant boy. She finds shelter with his family, and common cause with the boy himself. Confronted on all sides by death and horror, the two children contrive to make an animal graveyard. Jeux Interdits is a quiet, beautiful masterpiece of the type the French have always excelled at making: the kind where incredibly cute little waifs must endure life's hardest lessons, and persevere anyway. Thurs May 10. Seattle Art Museum

Gay Cuba
Is there any other kind? Apparently so, according to this documentary, which examines the complex reality of queer life under Castro that Before Night Falls only suggested. Sat May 12. Broadway Performance Hall

*The Gleaners and I
A new documentary by the venerable Agnes Varda, godmother of the French New Wave, that examines that segment of French society that picks things up off the ground. Some are bums, some intellectual dilettantes, some poor children, and some just responsible chefs who insist on harvesting their own herbs--they all fall within Varda's dynamic frame. And as she gleans the lives of the gleaners, experimenting with form and content, the grande dame ruminates on her own mortality. Opens Fri. Grand Illusion

A Knight's Tale
Reviewed this issue. Closer in spirit to the video game Joust than to the Chaucer book from which it takes its name, this Heath Ledger vehicle makes ample use of '70s anthem rock and other anachronisms to create a really long, boring teenager movie. Opens Fri. Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro

Man in the Sand
See Stranger Suggests. Holy folk! Another Woody Guthrie-related documentary at the EMP! This one isn't about the man himself, exactly, but rather about the recording of that Mermaid Avenue record where Billy Bragg and Wilco took a bunch of his leftover lyrics and made them into songs. Wed May 16. JBL Theater at EMP

*MEDIA ARTS HISTORIES NW
There once was a Bellevue Film Festival. For 14 years it ran ('67-'91) as the experimental film segment of the Bellevue Arts & Crafts Fair. Now, 10 years later, come to the Bellevue Art Museum to see a one-time screening of the films that won the festival's grand prize. Wed May 16. Bellevue Art Museum

*ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, PARTS I & 2
See Stranger Suggests. The ancient Chinese didn't start defying the laws of physics in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. As the indefatigable Jet Li proves in this genre classic, directed by Tsui Hark, they've been doing it for centuries. For the hardcore, Part I includes 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage. Opens Fri. Egyptian

*Open Screening
The monthly screening series at 911 is one of the most hit-or-miss events in town: no curators here, merely willing hosts to whoever submits a film. (For only $1, however, it's also one of the best deals.) In a way the very unevenness of the presentation reflects quite favorably on the best filmmakers, whose works truly stand out as fresh and inspiring after you've sat through three or four duds. (Bruce Reid) Mon May 14. 911 Media Arts

*Orphans of the Storm
A rare screening of one of D.W. Griffith's lesser-known silent epics. If you've never seen the eye-gougingly beautiful Dorothy and Lillian Gish onscreen together-as they are here, playing orphans afloat in the quagmire of pre-revolutionary France--you really really really should. If you have, then you probably also should, because how often does anyone play a Griffith that isn't Birth of a Nation or Intolerance, really? Thurs May 10. Little Theatre

*Roll On, Columbia
See Stranger Suggests. A documentary about the time Woody Guthrie was hired to write 30 songs in 30 days for the Bonneville Power Association. Guthrie only managed to write 26 of the songs; the film offers a listen to several of them, alongside interviews with people who were there at the time. You know you love Woody Guthrie. Wed May 16. JBL Theater at EMP

*Simon Magus
An odd, curiously hypnotic film about a village idiot savant who cleans outhouses and receives regular visits from the devil (Ian Holm), in 19th-century mitteleurope. Cast out cruelly by his fellow Jews, Simon (Noah Taylor, hurray!), is enlisted by an evil merchant to betray his people, who are competing with the merchant for the right to buy a few acres of muddy land near a railroad. A creepy folktale well worth checking out. Opens Fri. Varsity

Tree-Sit: The Art of Resistance
A documentary about self-appointed Lorax-touting hippies who think forests are more important than crude oil, parking lots, and the timber industry. Also, though, the film takes on the sticky world of free market economics, reaching beyond tree-hugging archetypes to touch on more important global matters. Fri May 11. Independent Media Center

The Wolves of Kromer
See Stranger Suggests. A couple of posh, randy poofs scouse about London looking for a fook and finding greed and homophobia. Narrated by Boy George. Preceded by Jeffrey Hollywood's Screen Trick, a savage parody of that other gay movie with the annoyingly ingratiating drama queen. This one stars dolls. Fri-Sun May 11-13. Little Theatre

Wolves, Pigs, and People
No, it's not another WTO documentary, it's the latest installment of the Kinji Fukasaku retrospective at the Grand Illusion. This one, from 1964, concerns some Yakuza who try to double-cross one another. Stars the legendary Ken Takakura as a middle-sibling gangster who enlists his younger brother to try and swindle their older brother. Spoiler alert: it goes wrong. Sun May 13. Grand Illusion

The Adventures of Joe Dirt
A mullet stars as David Spade's hairstyle in the story of a down-and-out redneck in search of his parents. (Jason Pagano) Pacific Place 11

Along Came a Spider
Along Came a Spider is a prequel to Kiss the Girls. Again, Morgan Freeman plays Dr. Alex Cross, a detective who deals with the most psychotic white men in America. Though Kiss the Girls is the better of the two thrillers, I still enjoyed Along Came a Spider because Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman. (Charles Mudede) Meridian 16, Northgate, Redmond Town Center

*Amores Perros
Amores Perros begins at a screaming dead run and maintains one kind of intensity or another over the next two-and-a-half hours. Pungently translated as Love's a Bitch, Amores Perros comprises three stories of life, love, and aggressively twisted fate in the most polluted metropolis on the planet. Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga have enrolled in the Tarantino school of storytelling, but González Iñárritu's own style and vision is so distinctive and assured in this directorial debut that no one should dwell on that point. This is a breakthrough work for Mexican cinema, and for a bold and powerful new talent. (Richard T. Jameson) Harvard Exit

*Best In Show
The latest from the folks who brought you Waiting for Guffman follows several dog owners on their quest for the blue ribbon at the 2000 Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. Dogs are always funny. (Jason Pagano) Broadway Market

Blow
Blow is Hollywood all the way to the bank. But despite all its predictability--young man (Johnny Depp) rises to the top of the international drug trade and then falls to the bottom of the prison system--its portrayal of Mexicans, Central Americans, and middle America is unexpectedly sympathetic. (Charles Mudede) Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Varsity

Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary features a successful career woman (Renée Zellweger) with a personal life that leaves one wondering how she attained any success at all. She desires a boyfriend, sets her sights on the office cad (Hugh Grant), and moans when he dumps her. The film banks on "the eye-rolling sisterhood of solidarity," the notion that girls love to grumble over a lying, dog-ass guy. (Kathleen Wilson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Factoria, Majestic Bay, Metro, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

*Center of the World
Richard (Peter Sarsgaard), an Internet millionaire, hires Florence (Molly Parker), a stripper, to accompany him for a weekend in Las Vegas, "to get to know you better," he says. She scoffs, but agrees, adding the following conditions: no talk about feelings, no kissing on the mouth, no penetration, separate rooms, and all contact shall be confined to between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am. What ensues is a bold, graphic, often hard-to-watch examination of what passes for love among the ruins of prosperity. In conflating the Internet (where, Richard reckons, he sits at "the center of the world," connected to everyone) and the culture of strip bars, Wang and his collaborators (novelist Paul Auster and NW performance artist Miranda July) argue that as we grow more certain that everything is available to those who can afford it, we grow further and further apart from one another. In trying to buy what he lacks the heart to try and earn, Richard settles for a false connection. In pretending she can keep her body and spirit separate, Florence sinks into despair. Both find out that the center of the world is, in fact, a devastatingly isolated place. (Sean Nelson) Broadway Market

Chocolat
My straightforward review will open with a detailed plot summary ("The movie is about a French village whose serenity is shattered by a mysterious woman who moves into town with her illegitimate daughter and opens a sexy chocolate store."), and then state the truth ("The movie is unremarkable!"). (Charles Mudede) Metro, Uptown

The Circle
The Circle is the essence of the city: motion, circular motion. Nine or so distressed women enter and leave the plot; walking here, running away from there, being transported to some destination by taxi, bus, or private car. We get lost in the swirling city of Tehran with its cluttered alleyways, busy thoroughfares, and flights of rickety stairs. The Circle is not simply a successful work of cinematic art, but a scathing study of how women are criminalized in Iranian society. Unlike the American study of women in national politics, The Contender, The Circle isn't hindered by a broad political agenda; the art and message dissolve smoothly into the motion of the women, as they desperately attempt to improve their impossible circumstances. (Charles Mudede) Varsity

Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
The film is a likable old dog. Crocodile Dundee winds up in L.A., gets in a couple of pickles, gets out, and goes home. Nobody gets hurt, nobody dies. (Riz Rollins) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Southcenter

*Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The film is an attempt to wed emotionally reticent drama with the exhilarating freedom of Hong Kong-genre filmmaking, but director Ang Lee can't quite pull off the combination. The film finds its rhythm and earns the accolades it has received once it leaves the stars behind and gives its heart over to the young and engaging Zhang Ziyi. (Bruce Reid) Metro, Uptown

The Dish
Here at last is a film that is about a radar dish and it really is about a radar dish! The huge dish overwhelms even the stars (Sam Neill, Patrick Warburton) and the plot (which is about Australia's participation in the Apollo 11 moon mission of 1969). (Charles Mudede) Meridian 16, Metro

Driven
A race car movie guilty of tantalizing, but not satisfying the prurient interest. With Sylvester Stallone AND Burt Reynolds. (Kudzai Mudede) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11

Enemy at the Gates
Enemy at the Gates is the story of a Russian World War II sniper (Jude Law) and the German sniper (Ed Harris) who is sent to eliminate him. When the dueling snipers embark on a cat-and-mouse chase to assassinate each other, the movie becomes genuinely exciting. And if the film is at times rather silly... well, it's from Britain and its a minor miracle that they even have running water out there let alone significant movies. (Kudzai Mudede) Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center

Eureka
The latest and final entry in this year's Shooting Gallery series is a 217-minute, black and white Japanese epic that launches with the hijacking of a city bus; follows with murder, alienation, and despair; then lands somewhere near the cinema's favorite destination: redemption. Uptown

The Forsaken
You know you're in for a really smart, clever film when the first 30 seconds are spent lingering on a disoriented topless girl in the shower rinsing blood off her breasts. And when she's helplessly dragged around in her panties for an hour before she finally speaks? One word: cinema. P.S.: The movie is about a guy driving from California to his sister's wedding who runs into some hipster vampires along a particularly evil stretch of Southwest highway; 90 minutes later, the vampires are dead. (Jason Pagano) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Pacific Place 11

Freddy Got Fingered
The scene where Tom Green's paralyzed-from-the-waist-down girlfriend started to orgasm from being whacked in the shins with a bamboo cane made me realize Freddy Got Fingered, Tom Green's directorial debut, was so offensive on every level that it is either dangerous or important. Fingered isn't all-the-way great, but it works far more often than it doesn't. (Sean Nelson) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

Heartbreakers
Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play a mother-and-daughter con team with a fervent understanding that men will screw them over, and that they must beat those suckers at their own petty game. But as every cool-headed dealer knows, the revenge con never works. Heartbreakers is certainly amusing, but its unimaginative approach will disappoint viewers who want to feel the wicked cinch of the complex con. (Traci Vogel) Grand Alderwood

Himalaya
Himalaya is a groundbreaking, genuine portrait of the Dolpo region of Nepal. The story revolves around Tinle, an old chief who loses his eldest son. What follows is a mesmerizing adventure that evokes the forces of ancestral strife and nature at its most treacherous. Says director Eric Valli: "This film is a love story, a love story between this place, these people, and me. It's very simple." (Kudzai Mudede) Egyptian, Guild 45th

Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come should have been a television sitcom. A movie about an African American family (played by a superb ensemble cast, LL Cool J, Jada Pinkett, Whoopi Goldberg) from the South coming together to mourn the death of a despised relative should have been a surer bet, unfortunately this movie just wasn't nearly developed thoroughly enough. (Kudzai Mudede) Lewis & Clark, Pacific Place 11

The Long Run
Somewhere between Personal Best and A Dry White Season lies this examination of contemporary South Africa and the middle distance runner who somehow comes to embody it. Stars Armin Mueller-Stahl. Broadway Market

The Luzhin Defence
Those who love Nabokov's novels, and are outraged when filmmakers fail to capture the master's intellectual essence on film, must do their best to avoid this film, which adapts Nabokov's least cinematic novel. But those who want to watch an atmospheric film about love, sunlight, and beautiful Italian lakes will not be disappointed. (Charles Mudede) Seven Gables

*Memento
Telling the backwards tale of Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a vengeful investigator suffering from short-term memory loss trying to hunt down his wife's murderer, Memento effectively mines the rich soil of the film noir mystery with universally corrupt characters and a watertight, intricate plot. (Jamie Hook) Aurora Cinema Grill, Guild 45th, Meridian 16

The Mummy Returns
The first (or, rather, the last) Mummy--the one that came out in 1998 and seemed like it just couldn't be good--actually kind of was thanks to its updating of the classic matinee combo of bad special effects, silly situations, and cheesy actors (except r-r-r-Rachel Weisz) coming together to create a movie that just by not being terrible managed to seem really charming. The sequel--in which not just the mummy, but the whole cast, plot, several lines of dialogue, the m.o. of ripping off every movie ever made, and most of the stunts return--fails to pull off the same trick. The first 30 minutes of the film are excruciating; the rest is better, thanks mostly to the appearance of John Hannah, but writer/director Stephen Sommers trumps himself with a ceaseless parade of god-awful digital effects. Digital mummy, digital scarabs, digital scorpions, digital armies, digital waterfall, digital river, digital dirigible... even the city of London is digital. It's not the worst summer movie ever, it's just that by being only not that good, it manages to seem terrible. (Sean Nelson) Cinerama, Factoria, Majestic Bay, Neptune, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

*O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Set in Depression-era Mississippi, George Clooney stars as Everett Ulysses McGill, a suave and well-groomed petty criminal doing hard time on a chain gang. Shackled to Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson), he convinces them to join him in escaping by promising to split a fortune in buried treasure. (Andy Spletzer) Aurora Cinema Grill, Broadway Market, Majestic Bay

One Night at McCool's
In the pursuit of material possessions, Liv Tyler, playing an irresistible woman (duh) exploits her curvaceous anatomy in order to lasso the men she meets (Andrew Dice Clay, Matt Dillon, Michael Douglas, etc.) into becoming the accomplices in her illegal schemes. This movie soon escalates into a riot of contrivances that unexpectedly sparkles and undulates like an overweight Tuesday in New Orleans. (Suzy Lafferty) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

Pollock
Pollock is actor Ed Harris' directorial debut (he also stars), and seems in too big a hurry to establish the iconic events of painter Jackson Pollock's life without letting any of these moments achieve any natural resolution. (Emily Hall) Metro

Shafted
Seattle needs to watch more race films. Here is a great place to start: Shafted, a movie about a white man who thinks he is Shaft. (Charles Mudede) Grand Illusion

Someone Like You
In the lead role, Ashley Judd chews, licks, and snacks her way through nearly every scene, all the while remaining trim and fit despite no apparent exercise regime. So much for empowerment. As for the rest of Someone Like You's message, don't expect anything more than feisty Judd getting a bee in her bonnet after getting dumped. (Kathleen Wilson) Meridian 16

Spy Kids
Fellow earthlings, I regret to inform you that even now as we speak, it is too late. Spy Kids is headed towards us like a juggernaut and only the childless have means of escaping. (Suzy Lafferty) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro

Standing on Fishes
Kelsey Grammer and Jason Priestley star in this 1999 film that one Internet Movie Database customer reviewer called "cute." I think I maybe saw this on an airplane one time, but then, every movie I see on airplanes seems to star Kelsey Grammer, so it's difficult to say. (Sean Nelson) Meridian 16

The Tailor of Panama
Brit superspy Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) has been banished to Panama for overindulging his appetites. He sizes up the tense, complicated international scene at the Canal and finds himself a hapless expat British tailor (Geoffrey Rush) to squeeze for information. Boorman's film is far too awkward and self-conscious to allow the audience to sink into spy fantasia; as a result, Brosnan's absurdly dashing spy becomes utterly grotesque, even sickening. (Evan Sult) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro

Town and Country
Somewhere in this indecisive jumble lies what might have been a really sharp, sweet film. What you actually see, however, is a morass of class smugness, emotional smarminess, and a sense of humor as thick as an old man's prostate. Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Garry Shandling, and Goldie Hawn play two upper middle-age couples who, 20 years into friendship and marriage, start to fumble around with infidelity and mid-life crisis. Aside from Diane Keaton's immutable greatness, what's good about it is the stuff that must've gotten cut--the scenes you have to imagine. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Pacific Place 11

Traffic
All the flashy directorial touches and sterling performances in the world can't cover the fact that Traffic is just another example of Hollywood tackling a complex problem with the simplest and most conservative of solutions. (Bradley Steinbacher) Metro, Varsity

*With a Friend Like Harry
This Hitchcockian thriller took France by storm last year, winning several Cesar awards (France's version of the Oscar). The blackest hue of comedy tints the tale of Harry (Sergi Lopez), a wealthy bon vivant with an unshakable affinity for Michel (Laurent Lucas). Harry, firm in his belief that Michel's child-strewn, moneyless life could be made more easy, begins to use his influence--and cash--to remove various obstacles to Michel's happiness. A new car here and a case of champagne there escalates to a predictably absurd degree. The film is plain in comparison its obvious inspiration, Hitchcock's oeuvre. But a deft French wit, and that oh-so-well-done trick of Euro-allegory (this film is about the difficulty of making art) rise like cream to the top of this film: The first taste is awfully sweet, even if it doesn't linger long. (Jamie Hook) Harvard Exit