Film

Film Shorts

The Closet, Cure, Kiss of the Dragon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Swimmer

* A.I.
See Stranger Suggests. Steven Spielberg wrote and directed this cautionary futurist fable about a robot boy programmed with the capacity to love, following 20 years of development by the late Stanley Kubrick. It's the best work in years by both filmmakers, the weaknesses of each overmatched by the magnanimous strengths of the other. The film is a visual wonder (wait till you see what New York looks like!), featuring a stunning central performance by Haley Joel Osment (and only slightly lesser ones by Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson, and William Hurt), and speaks to the profound sadness that rests at the literal and figurative heart of technological advance. A full review will follow in next week's issue. (Sean Nelson) Opens Fri. Neptune

Baby Boy
After forays into poetry, academia, and the civil war, John Singleton returns to the "hood" for this story of a young man trying to navigate the risks and temptations of deep urban living. While Singleton hasn't proven himself to be much use as an auteur, this film features Ving Rhames, who is almost always worth seeing. Opens Fri. Metro

* Beauty and the Robot
The great schlockmeister Albert Zugsmith directed this 1960 curio about a robot named Thinko (!) who selects a stripper (the voluptuous Mamie Van Doren) to chair a university science department. Also starring Tuesday Weld, John Carradine (who had already begun his slide into B-picture hell in 1960; was Satan's Cheerleaders far off?), Vampira, Conway Twitty (and his jazz band), and Brigitte Bardot's sister. You know you want it. Fri-Sat June 29-30. Grand Illusion

Bride of the Wind
Reviewed this issue. "The loveliest girl in Vienna was Alma, the smartest as well...." Sarah Wynter stars as Alma Schindler, a beauty who managed to marry, divorce, inspire, and ruin three giants of turn-of-the-century European arts: composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel. Directed by Bruce Beresford, the film picks up where Tom Lehrer's eulogy left off some 40 years ago. "The first one she married was Mahler, whose buddies all knew him as Gustav. And each time he saw her, he'd holler, 'Ach, dat is de freulein I must haff.'... While married to Gus, she met Gropius, and soon she was swinging with Walter. Gus died and her teardrops were copious; she cried all the way to the altar.... While married to Walt she met Werfel, and he, too, was caught in her net. He married her but he was care-fell, 'cause Alma was no Bernadette." (Sean Nelson) Opens Fri. Broadway Market

* BYDESIGN 2001
Reviewed this issue. The second annual exploration of of the relationship between design and film is held at the Little Theatre, itself a triumph of design and film. This week: The Films of Charles and Ray Eames and Phase IV, the one and only film directed by title designer Saul Bass (Anatomy of a Murder, North by Northwest). The result: a movie about ants that organize and attack a small southwestern town. No flies on that. Thurs-Sun June 28-July 1. Little Theatre

Cats and Dogs
Freaky looking digital pets go paw to paw in this sterling monument to commerce. One word: woof. Opens Wed. Metro

Crazy/Beautiful
Reviewed this issue. Jay Fernandez stars alongside Kirsten Dunst and her rack in this gratuitously lusty teen romance film about a rich girl (crazy) and the poor boy (beautiful) who teaches her about love. Despite a camera that feels Dunst up at every possible moment, the movie's much better than your average teen fare. Opens Fri. Metro

Divided We Fall
Set in Czechoslovakia in the last years of WWII, this black comedy, which recently played well at SIFF, tells the story of a childless couple who hide their Jewish neighbor David from the Germans. As their old friends become Nazi sympathizers, the couple must face the task of keeping David from the concentration camps. Opens Fri. Broadway Market

FREMONT OUTDOOR MOVIES
The summer tradition of movies viewed in parking lots returns. This week: The Matrix. Wheeee! Sat June 30. Fremont Outdoor Movies

* Independent Exposure
This monthly program of rare (and sometimes wonderful) independent shorts by underground artists from around the world has found a new home, after a fire destroyed the beloved Speakeasy. The new location is at Vital 5 Productions, and can be found at 2200 Westlake Avenue (at Denny). This month's offering seems to focus on design, as geometric shape shifting, '50s pulp novel covers, epileptic erector sets, and derelict auto graffiti artists trade places with narrative pieces like "Sally and Angela." IE is always a gamble, but it's usually worth it. Note the new start time of 9 pm. (Sean Nelson) Thurs June 28. Vital 5 Productions

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
A cartoon about an imagined (i.e. post-apocalyptic) post-WWII Tokyo, where freedom fighters fight for freedom against corrupt power factions and counter-rebel uprisings while star-crossed lovers try to uncross their stars. Though a philosophical and artistic notch or two above your typical anime fare, it's still a Japanese cartoon movie, and as such can only be recommended to people who can stand to watch them. (Sean Nelson) Opens Fri. Varsity

LINDA'S SUMMER MOVIES
Back again for a seventh season, Linda's Summer Movies is the original outdoor drinking/film-watching extravaganza, presented, as always, FOR FREE!! By the time the plot falls apart, you'll be too drunk to care!! This week: the impossibly great On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, and Eva Marie Saint. Wed July 4. Linda's

* Negative Space/The Falconer
Two video profiles of cult artists made for the BBC by British novelist/filmmaker Chris Petit. Negative Space examines the career of American renaissance man Manny Farber, a film critic/painter/teacher/carpenter. Falconer takes experimental liberties in its exploration of British filmmaker Peter Whitehead. This presentation rounds out the "Cinema of Transgression" portion of Consolidated Works' Negative Space installation. If you haven't been down yet (and you haven't), you oughtta. Fri-Sun June 29-July 1. Consolidated Works

* Pootie Tang
See Stranger Suggests. A film about a folk hero who speaks in a kind of ghetto Esperanto so thick that no one has any idea what he's saying. But everyone knows what he's talking about. Based on the character from The Chris Rock Show, and featuring Rock, Lance Crouther (as Pootie himself), Dave Attell, David Cross, Todd Barry, Andy Richter, and Conan O'Brien. Will it be good? Sa da tay! Opens Fri. Meridian 16

* The Princess and the Warrior
Reviewed this issue. From the director-actress team who brought you the beloved Run Lola Run comes yet another visceral thriller. This time, a thief and a nut house orderly cross paths, then take turns putting each other in--and rescuing each other from--life-threatening danger. Opens Fri. Harvard Exit

The Producers
Trying to make a money-losing musical, theater scammers Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel fail with Springtime for Hitler. Neither theater people nor Nazis have ever been as funny since. Since tickets for the Broadway musical are going for a couple thousand bucks apiece (and by the time you get to see it, Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane will have been replaced by Adrian Zmed and Willard Scott), this late night screening of the original source might be a safer bet. Fri-Sat June 29-30. Egyptian

Scary Movie 2
If you thought the first one was funny... you were wrong. Opens Wed. Varsity

Summer in La Goulette
La Goulette is a Tunisian suburb where folks of different religions live together peacefully, even quite happily in this film set in 1967. Three neighbors--a Muslim, a Jew, a Catholic, thick as thieves--have three gorgeous daughters, also thick as thieves, who vow to lose their virginity by the day of the procession of the Madonna. What follows is a kind of Tunisian Melrose Place, with intrigue, gossip, and misunderstanding. But somehow the easy sensuality that the film leans on (the girls' fresh, young breasts, a woman biting into a bursting ripe fig) is charming and funny, instead of tired and predictable. Written and directed by Férid Boughédir. (Emily Hall) Opens Fri. Grand Illusion

* 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

The Animal
Rob Schneider stars as a man about whom nothing is funny, especially when he pretends to be a dolphin or a monkey or a dog. Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

* The Anniversary Party
I asked the spritely, gracious Scot Alan Cumming, co-director/writer (with Jennifer Jason Leigh) of The Anniversary Party, if he was at all anxious about the pitfalls of making a movie about movie people. This was his response: "Umm, yeah. I think I'm always conscious with everything I do--whether I'm playing or writing--about the art of not making everyone seem disgusting. You know, cause it's a fine line and people can misinterpret things and people with a heightened sense--I mean the public--when it comes to artists, so you have to be even more aware. I think that umm, actually, that [consciousness] came to us later because really, in a way, Hollywood is just a setting; it's kind of a backdrop for the story of people's relationships. Really that was uh, it didn't concern us that much. It concerns us more now, in the latter part of the whole process just because people are talking about it that way and we want to make sure that they're actually more concerned about the actual st ory. But I mean yeah, definitely. It's about real people, you know, yeah, so these people can come from that world, but they are real. My motto, which is born of insecurity more than anything else, is: 'You can be as big as you like as long as you mean it.'" (Sean Nelson) Guild 45th, Meridian 16

Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Once upon a time there was a great and mighty kingdom where enlightenment reigned and the citizenry was blessed with wisdom and alacrity of spirit that surpassed those of even the most evolved of modern nations. Then, for reasons no one has ever understood, the great and mighty kingdom fell, its very existence relegated to the annals of apocrypha. But enough about Disney. This movie is about some island or whatnot. It's a cartoon. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Metro

Big Eden
A gay urbanite returns to the quaint country home of his youth to care for his sick grandfather, where a cast of lovable, quirky locals are all to eager to help him get laid. Who will it be? The old high-school buddy? Or the guy who runs the general store? This movie will teach you how to love. (Jason Pagano) Broadway Market

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) Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

Dr. Dolittle 2
Surpirses of all welcome surprises: a genuinely funny Eddie Murphy movie! In his second outing as the only man on Earth who can communicate with animals, Murphy (who has been relegated to the puzzling role of straight man to make-up and special effects in treacly Disney garbage for far too long; this is Eddie Murphy, don't you Hollywood fucks remember anything?) finds himself a reluctant spokesman for a forestful of fuzzy creatures (including a mafia of beavers and raccoons) about to face the bulldozers of an evil logging company. To save the critter company--and, as fate would have it, his ailing family--Dolittle must coax a wussy circus bear (Steve Zahn, hilarious) to mate with a nature bear (Lisa Kudrow). The scenario is the standard American comedy insult, but the jokes are really good. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro

Evolution
Ivan Reitman reworks the story of Ghostbusters around two small-town professors, Dr. Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and Harry Block (Orlando Jones), who are hot on the trail of an alien infestation. The plot is entirely superfluous, but to his credit, Reitman is stupid enough to use plot only as a structural mechanism, allowing his film to live in the moment with a goofy dedication that verges on the downright poetic. (Jamie Hook) Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

The Fast & the Furious
Photographed lavishly, edited epileptically, and acted with virile abandon (Vin Diesel is obviously action star material), this movie about street racers who have a tidy little sideline of jacking Mack trucks full of electronic equipment, is breakneck garbage. Fast is designed to reach straight into the hearts and minds of 12-year-old boys and make them want to buy ugly, fast cars they'll never afford and equip them with outlandish nitrous oxide systems. Everything else--plot, score, dialogue, romance--is but cinematic parsley to garnish the main course: conspicuous consumption. Watching this film at the Meridian late on a Saturday night was exactly what I imagine hell must be like. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro

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. (Kudzai Mudede) Broadway Market

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
The Tomb Raider series of loosely cinematic action games has gotten lots of attention for its busty main character, Lara Croft. Some people have even tried to interpret Croft's popularity as having a kind of Charlie's Angels postfeminist import--she is supposed to be a polylingual and kickass (if voluptuous) adventurer--but one look at the video game leaves little doubt that her primary appeal is in the "if voluptuous" department. Even the incredibly curvy Angelina Jolie needs some costuming help to portray Croft in the movie version of Tomb Raider, in the form of a padded bra. Thus hefted, Jolie seems to have trouble forgetting about her chest and imbuing her character with more personality than a little swagger can convey. It's hard to blame her much, though, since the plot offers all the motivation of a five-cent allowance raise. Tomb Raider isn't even kind of good. (Traci Vogel) Cinerama, Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Northgate, Pacific Place 11, Varsity

* 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, Meridian 16, Metro

* Moulin Rouge
To the list of great musicals, we can now add Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, a spectacular whose vernacular is well beyond contemporary--it's practically hypertext. Like Luhrmann's past work (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet), Rouge isn't so much a feast as a food fight for the senses. Throughout the film, Luhrmann batters us with an absurd collage of fractal stimuli, which, like Disneyland, you can't see all of in a single visit. But amid the relentless digression, the things you need to know--"truth, beauty, freedom, and above all, love"--are repeated again and again. It's hard to deny that Moulin Rouge is a flawed gem. What's harder to deny, however, is the heart that beats at the center of the elephantine spectacle--the rapturous love for the possibilities of movies and romance that once made musicals matter. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Neptune, Oak Tree, Southcenter

Pearl Harbor
Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor--and that's really what it should be called (as with Fellini's Roma or the George Foreman Grill, the vision expressed could only belong to one man)--is everything the preview led you to believe: overlong, overlit, overwrought, and overpaid. It's nationalism porn, delivering all the basest flag-waving heroism with none of the meat and mettle of actual history or conflict. And as with real porn, your blood surges in the heat of the moment--with digital bombing raids over phallic turrets standing in for cum shots--and then, the second it's over you feel dirty for having let yourself watch. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

* The Road Home
Yusheng's mother Di has called him home with an ancient request: he must gather a party of villagers to walk the body of his dead father home. Over the snowy mountains and all the way to their remote village, the bearers must tell the dead Mr. Luo, "This is the road home," so that he will always know. Some love stories could have happened anywhere. Others, like The Road Home, belong to their settings like the view from a particular hillside. The story of Di and Luo is

communal territory, like the schoolhouse, and as necessary to the life of the village. Where director Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern was sweeping, The Road Home is tiny--and it's still completely overwhelming, especially when staring into Zhang Ziyi's doe eyes. (Evan Sult) Seven Gables

* Sexy Beast
Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) is a retired gangster, living high on a hill in the Costa del Sol, enjoying a lethargic existence. But he is as out of place here as the heart-shaped ceramic tiles on the floor of his pool. Bad news arrives in the shape of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley, so great), there to coax Gal back to England for a job. Gal resists, but Don won't take no for an answer, setting in motion a verbal boxing match so artful and intense it turns the sprawling Spanish vista into a pressure cooker in which Gal is forced to reckon for his ill-had comforts. A voice buried deep within Gal tells him and us that this can't last. Don is that voice, given brutal, relentless human form. In the fallout of their confrontation lies one of the finest films in recent memory. (Sean Nelson) Guild 45th, Uptown

* 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, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11

Songcatcher
Janet McTeer stars as Dr. Lily Penleric, an early 20th-century musicologist trapped as an associate professor in a man's university. Passed over for professorship, she retreats to the foothills of Appalachia, where her sister (Jane Adams, always great) runs a progressive remedial school with her Gertrude Steinesque mentor. Within minutes, Dr. Lily discovers that the hillbillies can not only sing, but have a vast catalog of pure English folk songs in their repetoire. As she goes about collecting them, her initial academic condescension is overcome by the humble beauty of the melodies and the rubes (Aidan Quinn and the great Pat Carroll, in particular) themselves. The film verges a bit towards the Hallmark Hall of Fame, but a few narrative wrinkles rescue it from the land of cloy. Plus, the music is so great (Iris DeMent and Taj Mahal both appear as musicians), you can't help but sit back and revel. (Sean Nelson) Harvard Exit

* Startup.com
The very American story of Govworks.com--two friends hang out a virtual shingle that makes them rich, and then makes them enemies--might read merely as an illustration of capitalism's grinding gears. But in the hands of directors Jehane Noujaim and collaborator Chris Hegedus, who employ the time-honored technique of standing back and letting the subjects incriminate themselves, the desire of Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman to build "the brand of the century" becomes a jeremiad about the insidious intermingling of pride and greed. What Herman and Tuzman miss, and what the film captures so effectively, is how their brio makes them look like total chumps, dangling in the whirlwind of an insane socioeconomic aberration where, for a brief moment in history, walking the walk and talking the talk were the same thing. (Sean Nelson) Egyptian

Swordfish
In Dominic Sena's Swordfish, which is a delightful mess of a blockbuster, John Travolta plays a white Negro whom America employs to maintain global hegemony. Travolta steals money and uses it to kill dangerous international terrorists. Don Cheadle plays an FBI agent who is trying to arrest this evil but necessary American and restore some kind of order in the judicial and political systems. But he is powerless in the face of Travolta's (and the film's) inhuman dimensions. Indeed, Cheadle is dwarfed by the big explosions, bombastic black/pimp Travolta, and hypervoluptuous sister/whore Halle Berry. (Charles Mudede) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree

* The Widow of Saint-Pierre
A sailor, after getting drunk and killing a man as a kind of stupid prank, is sentenced to death by guillotine. And the nearest one is far to the south. While waiting for it to arrive, Neel is taken under the wing of "Madame La" Pauline (Juliette Binoche) and a kind of love grows not only between them, but between Neel and the community as well. (Richard T. Jameson) Aurora Cinema Grill

* With a Friend Like Harry
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) Aurora Cinema Grill, Harvard Exit, Metro