Film

Film Shorts

Animal, Bread and Roses, Fucked in the Face, The Man Who Cried, Moulin Rouge, Streetwise, What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Alligator People
First a mad scientist creates a mutant species of alligator men in the Bayou, then Jet City Improv adds their own dialogue. Discounts for students and people who bring canned food. Fri-Sat May 25-26. University Heights Center

*Independent Exposure
Satellites 2001 was all set to kick off with the monthly installment of Independent Exposure, a series of underground, experimental, and otherwise impossible-to-see-elsewhere shorts. Until the Speakeasy--IE's home for the last several years--tragically burned to the ground that is. Now curator Joel Bachar is trying to figure out if and where it will show. He plans to do an outdoor screening in Belltown, for spiritual reasons. That would actually be appropriate for more than just symbolic value: the best thing in this month's program is Harry Potter Parking Lot, a variation on Heavy Metal Parking Lot made by the same people. While it's become a trite line, seeing all these little kids--who are eloquent, dorky, and charming--getting so amped up over a book, is really amazing. The faithful are instructed to call 322-0282 around sunset on Thurs May 24 to determine whether the screening will occur. And pray for no rain, if you pray at all. (Sean Nelson)

*Jacques Demys World
Just as the title promises, this is a peek into the oeuvre of the late French filmmaker made by his equally legendary widow, the great Agnes Varda. It is not, however, the same film as Jacquot, by the same director, on the same subject. Wed May 30. Little Theatre

Les Bonnes Femmes
Claude Chabrol's rarely seen New Wave film from 1960, about four working girls on the dingy side of Paris. Thurs May 24. Seattle Art Museum

NORTHWEST FOLKLIFE FILMS
Did you know that Folklife has a film festival? You certainly can't fault their timing. This year's will feature films from the Margaret Mead Traveling Film Festival (including a focus on Indian director Mira Nair, an examination of the effects of Christianity on cultural practices in Brazil and the Cape Verde Islands), a selection of Korean films in conjunction with Han Madang, and films about labor, including a WTO documentary and a couple about the great Woody Guthrie. Fri-Mon May 25-28. JBL Theater at EMP

Pearl Harbor
Reviewed this issue. Judging from the trailer, this is a film about the racial superiority of whites, the intrinsic evil of the Japanese, and Levi's Jeans. But we hear Pearl Harbor is in Hawaii, and that's pretty nice. Opens Fri. Metro

*Seattle International Film Festival
Um, they're like showing a bunch of movies and movies are good (even though sometimes they're bad). See The Stranger's monumental SIFF Notes supplement in this issue for full details. Opens Fri. Broadway Performance Hall, Cinerama, Egyptian, Harvard Exit

Super Super-8 2001 World Tour
See Stranger Suggests. Like the Tiny Picture Club, but one day later, this Super-8 festival celebrates the beautiful and archaic mini-medium with shorts from all over the world, Seattle to Singapore. Also part of Satellites 2001. Sat May 26. Little Theatre

Tiny Picture Club
See Stranger Suggests. As part of the Satellites 2001 kickoff, Portland's finest Super8 filmmakers come up to kick it sci-fi style. With live music. Fri May 25. Little Theatre

*Weekend
See Stranger Suggests. One of the greatest films of all time opens in this week crammed with important stuff. I think it's some kind of conspiracy to make life really interesting in Seattle. It'll never work! Pay close attention to the scene in which the horrible main characters set fire to Emily Bronte because she insists on speaking poetry. It's so true.... Opens Fri. Grand Illusion

About Adam
About Adam is an Irish comedy with a madcap premise and a morally corrupt punchline. The premise, in which three sisters, and one brother, all fall for the same man--Adam--results in a candy-colored tale of narrowly missed confrontations, misunderstandings, hilarity, and sex sex sex. Oddly, Adam is revealed as an unapologetic hedonist, and is held up as the family's salvation. (Traci Vogel) Broadway Market

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. (Charles Mudede) Aurora Cinema Grill, Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center

*Amores Perros
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 the style and vision is so distinctive and assured 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) Broadway Market

Angel Eyes
Jennifer Lopez stars as a Chicago cop ("Stop, or my publicist will shoot!") whose life is saved by a mysterious stud who seems eerily familiar. Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

Blow
Add an "s" to the film's title for a one-word review. Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

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

*Calle 54
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 like Tito Puente, Eliane Elias, Gato Barbieri, and many others. (Paula Gilovich) Broadway Market

*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 which we learn that the center of the world is, in fact, a devastatingly isolated place. (Sean Nelson) Broadway Market

Chocolat
I 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) 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) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, 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. Until then, it's rather silly. (Kudzai Mudede) Meridian 16

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. (Sean Nelson) Uptown

The Forsaken
You know you're in for a really 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. It's about vampires. (Jason Pagano) Pacific Place 11

The Golden Bowl
The last of three Henry James adaptations by Merchant Ivory Productions, The Golden Bowl stars Uma Thurman as Charlotte and Nick Nolte as "America's first billionaire," Adam Verver. The Golden Bowl is, in part, a drama of manners, but the filmmakers seem to think that a well-appointed costume drama with the weight of Henry James behind it doesn't need any creative help to succeed. (Traci Vogel) Guild 45th

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) Varsity

Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come--a movie about a Southern African American family (played by a superb ensemble cast, LL Cool J, Jada Pinkett, Whoopi Goldberg) coming together to mourn the death of a despised relative--should have been a television sitcom. (Kudzai Mudede) Lewis & Clark

A Knight's Tale
To spruce up a jousting story with a modern soundtrack (well, kind of modern), is hardly a reinvention. It's just a cute contrivance, unsuccessfully masking the deep hollow that lies at the heart of this club-footed attempt to foist a Teen Gladiator on historically malnourished summer audiences. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree

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 book. 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 and silly situations 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. (Sean Nelson) Cinerama, Factoria, Majestic Bay, Neptune, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

*O Brother Where Art Thou
George Clooney stars as Everett Ulysses McGill, a suave and well-groomed petty criminal doing hard time in a depression-era 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) Metro

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. (Suzy Lafferty) Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

Shrek
Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is the name of an ogre who lives by himself in a swamp; he takes great pride in his job, which mainly consists of being nasty at all times to all things. After he sends one particular batch of terrified knights packing, his swamp is overrun by the entire cast of traditional Western fairy tales, from Pinocchio to Aesop's talking donkey (Eddie Murphy). He finds the local lord, one Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), and demands his swamp back, but gets hoodwinked into rescuing a princess (Cameron Diaz) instead. The film is both terrible and great. (Evan Sult) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Northgate, Pacific Place 11

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) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, 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. (Evan Sult) 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. (Sean Nelson) Pacific Place 11

*Wattstax
This legendary, unavailable-on-video film documents an early-'70s all-day L.A. black music festival commemorating the anniversary of the Watts riots of 1965. Featuring performances by titans like Isaac Hayes, Rufus Thomas, Luther Ingraham, and Mavis Staples; as well as between-song monologues by Richard Pryor in his absloute prime. (Sean Nelson) Grand Illusion

*With a Friend Like *arry
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 to its obvious inspiration, Hitchcock's oeuvre. But a deft French wit, and that oh-so-well-done trick of Euro-allegory (about the difficulty of making art) rise like cream to the top of this film. (Jamie Hook) Harvard Exit