America's Sweethearts, Baise-Moi (Rape Me), Bully, Everybody's Famous, Ghost World, Lost and Delirious, Made, Smell of Camphor Fragrance of Jasmine

10th Annual PXL This
Take an obsolete toy camera that uses cassette tapes to capture ghostlike images, the will of 22 artists and one curator, and an excellent pizza place, and VOILA! A mini film festival, highly recommended. Sat July 14. Second Avenue Pizza

The Adventures of Felix
A cute little comedy about an HIV-positive half-Arab gay man who gets fired and decides to traverse France on the lookout for his father, whom he never knew. With all its soap opera asides, breezy vistas, and clever dialogue, the film has all the sunny, airy qualities of Northern France, and despite a vaguely smarmy quality (also to be found in France), the story is touching. Opens Fri. Egyptian

Bringing Up Baby
Cary Grant (archaeologist) and Katharine Hepburn (mankiller) find out that adopting an infant leopard isn't all fun and games--or rather, that it is--in this madcap screwball from the lens of the great Howard Hawks. Thurs July 12. Seattle Art Museum

* Chopper
Reviewed this issue. Completely heartless, but in a good way. The true story of Mark "Chopper" Read, Australia's most infamous career criminal, is brought to life with cold, unblinking--but stylish--realism. The fact that Read is such a charismatic subject only adds to the film's creepiness, as he maims himself and others during and between his stints in prison, eventually arriving at an absurd level of celebrity that even he finds confusing. (Bradley Steinbacher) Opens Fri. Varsity

the english sheik and the yemeni gentleman
This documentary seeks to explore contemporary Yemen from the dual, perhaps parallel, perspectives of a Yemeni exile (a descendant of the last ruling King) who lives in Britain, and his guide, a British emigre who has been living as a Yemeni for the past 18 years. Sat-Sun July 14-15. Seattle Center House

* Enlightenment Guaranteed
See Stranger Suggests. This super-engaging story of two German brothers waylaid in Tokyo on their way to a Japanese Zen monastery is a study in unclassifiability: elements of farce (their travel fiasco lands them in lederhosen before long) mingle with serious human drama and an abiding desire for spiritual credence, though the hapless brothers are basically foolish, a Teutonic Laurel and Hardy. The video photography gives the film a guileless quality, not unlike a demo recording, that lends immediacy to the proceedings which, in hands less skilled than those of director Doris Dörrie, might have grown tendentious. (Sean Nelson) Opens Fri. Broadway Market

Grease
The summer tradition of movies viewed in parking lots continues. This week: Grease. Sat July 14. Fremont Outdoor Movies

* Hamlet
Reviewed this issue. Grigory Konzintsev's 1964 Shakespearean adaptation doesn't have quite the critical cachet of his legendary King Lear, but those who've seen it still speak breathlessly of its brilliance. Opens Fri. Grand Illusion

Jurassic Park 3
I love digital dinosaurs as much, if not more than everyone else in this world. But I have a hunch this movie, which boasts a fine cast (Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni) might not be terribly good. In the previews, the dinosaurs are a little blurry, which is never a good sign. (Sean Nelson) Opens Wed. Metro

Legally Blonde
Reviewed this issue. Reese Witherspoon stars as a valley girl who gets revenge on her ambitious boyfriend by joining him at Harvard Law after he dumps her for not being serious enough. Opens Fri. Metro

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: Reefer Madness. Wed July 18. Linda's

* LOCAL SIGHTINGS
See Stranger Suggests. The Northwest Film Forum opens its pearly gates and screens a host of locally produced shorts and longs all weekend at the Little Theatre. The weekend begins early, with a Home Alive Benefit screening of two documentaries that focus on sex workers, Not Even Ashamed, and Mirror Box Stories on Thursday. WigglyWorld Summer Shorts (Friday) boasts fine works by top local artisans like Jon Behrens, Michael Chick, John Jeffcoat, Dave Hanagan (whose Jack Strange, Literary Hero is particularly impressive and funny), Wendy Jo Carlton, and others. Immediately thereafter you can see The Short Films of Matt Wilkins, including the hilariously tragic picnic of The Gods Looked Down and Laughed. The Trouble with Boys and Girls plays Saturday, with Fritz Donnelly's Blue Lobster and "To the Hills," a short. Trouble also plays Sunday, as do three features: Michael Wilde's Running out of Time to Kill, about an AIDS victim who wants to take a homophobe with him when he goes; Erik Hammen's comix-suffused Love My Guts; and Chaz Lipp's Sour Apple Freeze Pop, recently picked up by the notorious Troma Films group. Fri-Sun July 13-15. Little Theatre

mahmoud darwich
In the Arab world, where abstract art is often the only safe way to express the truth, poet Mahmoud Darwich is a very famous and beloved figure. This documentary traces Darwich's history as a writer and man, following his exile from Israel and subsequent rise to rock star of letters status. Sat-Sun July 14-15. Seattle Center House

Manchild Unmasked
Is it real, social commentary, or both? A sweet-natured, witty documentary, Manchild Unmasked tells the story of Justin Callaway, a performance artist who was born with a disorder that causes his body to emit a foul smell. In order to function in a world filled with grimacing faces and plugged noses, Justin wears a giant prosthetic baby's head and dreams of making a Top 40 hit with his band the Manchild Four. Director Ted Jackson, the filmmaker behind the award-wining "the Truth" anti-tobacco commercials, infuses Manchild Unmasked with a subtle humor that lets his possible mockumentary avert the kind of slapstick that often renders the genre purely ridiculous. Portland's Jackpot! Studios and semi-famous indie-rockers Larry Crane and Ralf (ex-Feelings, Built To Spill) make appearances. (Kathleen Wilson) Fri July 13. 911 Media Arts

Run Lola Run
A young Berlin hipster named Lola has 20 minutes to find enough money to stop her boyfriend from being killed. German filmmaker Tom Tykwer tells the story three times, each with different but equally incredible twists, surprises, tangents, and endings--which is exactly what makes this movie fun to watch. (Charles Mudede) Fri-Sat July 13-14. Egyptian

The Score
Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, and Edward Norton play a bunch of crooks double and triple crossing one another. Like many a multi-star gumbo before it, this film (which was given no advance screening) bears the odor of too many cooks. Hopefully, it'll at least deliver on star power. Opens Fri. Metro

* SILENT MOVIE MONDAYS
This week: My Best Girl, in which Mary Pickford plays the humble clerk who catches the fancy of a popinjay whose father owns the store. Dad intends a more suitable wife for his boy, but he just hasn't seen Mary Pickford. With live organ accompaniment. Mon July 16. Paramount Theatre

* Strange Brew
Reviewed this issue. SCTV's own McKenzie Brothers, Bob & Doug (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, or is it Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis?), are cast as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in this very Canadian 1982 reading of Hamlet. Fri-Sat July 13-14. Grand Illusion

Zan Boko
A 1988 picture examining the effects of progress on a small village in Northwest Africa. Wed July 18. Little Theatre

* A.I.
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 word of warning: the film is LONG, and features multiple endings. (Sean Nelson) Cinerama, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Neptune, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

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, Meridian 16, Metro

Baby Boy
Like all of John Singleton's work, this film is very pleased with its good intentions. Unfortunately, it's also a rambling, basically structureless melange of moist moralism and phony struggle. The main character, Jody, spends the whole film in a quandary about how to best be a man, spouting philosophical breakthroughs and pledging to change, even though he lives with his mama and has two kids by two different women, both of whom he manages to cheat on. Revelations hit Jody (and his friends) when no one, least of all the camera, is looking--they have unmotivated life-altering epiphanies in between scenes, then spend their time onscreen verbalizing them. When his mom brings home a new boyfriend (played by Ving Rhames, without whom the film would be worthless), who's lived ten times the life that Jody could even dream of, the baby boy finds his hollow up against an immovable force. It's almost enough to make Baby Boy work. Almost. (Sean Nelson) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

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

Cats and Dogs
For once, a film centered around cats waging holy war against dogs breaks the mold, and makes the cats dumb and the dogs smart. Aspects of popular espionage films (most notably Mission: Impossible and The Matrix) are woven into this computer-enhanced, live-action film, and for the most part, it's pretty funny--much more so than one would expect from a cats-against-dogs story line for kids and dog lovers. (Kathleen Wilson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro

The Closet
An accountant at a condom factory realizes he's about to be fired. Divorced, alienated from his 17-year-old son, he contemplates suicide, but is instead given some rather odd advice from his neighbor, a retired psychiatrist: Announce that you are gay at work, and the powers that be will be too frightened to fire you, lest they get slapped with a nasty lawsuit. The accountant takes his neighbor's advice, and, well, hilarity ensues. Or, if not hilarity, at least a few laughs here and there. Actually, how well you like The Closet may in fact depend on just how high Three's Company ranked on your laugh-o-meter. If the answer is 10, then by all means, rush out and see it. If, on the other hand, the number is five (or four, or three), you might want to stay home. (Bradley Steinbacher) Guild 45th

Crazy/Beautiful
Of all the reliable teen film tropes, none is more rugged than the star-, race-, and class-crossed high-school love affair. Crazy/Beautiful comes swaddled in the skintight half-shirts and thin-wale cords of teenage sexuality. Kirsten Dunst plays Nicole, the emotionally unstable daughter of a congressman (Bruce Davison); she cavorts through her privileged life, oozing aggressive California sexuality and ribald naughtiness. She meets Carlos (Jay Hernandez), a poor, industrious Latino football player who rides the bus two hours just to get to the posh high school Nicole takes for granted. It's not long before Nicole's overt carnality is revealed as the symptom of deep wounds that prevent her from loving or trusting anyone... except Carlos, whose moral sturdiness and ambition are put to the test by his hot white girlfriend's devil-may-care behavior. The film is better than it probably sounds. (Sean Nelson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Meridian 16, Metro, Redmond Town Center

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. Broadway Market

Dr. Dolittle 2
Surprise 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 makeup 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) Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

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

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, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Varsity

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Fantastic worlds, crackpot mysticism, and spectacular animation--Final Fantasy may, at first glance, seem like just another animated blockbuster (like Shrek), but upon further inspection the film's true colors come to life: The end of acting is near. Call me an alarmist, but the animated characters in Final Fantasy are such a leap forward that the future may actually be visible. Here's how I think it will play out: 1) Directors will embrace realistic animuns (which is a word I just made up) in order to flesh out large crowd scenes cheaply; 2) Dangerous stunts will no longer be performed by stunt professionals, but rather, these same animuns; and 3) Tom Cruise (and his ilk) will eventually grow to be superfluous, as producers and directors will find it much, much easier just to conjure their leads rather than cast them. Still, despite the damage Final Fantasy may someday cause, it's definitely worth seeing if for no other reason than the fact that its main character, "Aki," gives a far more convincing performance than the entire cast of Pearl Harbor combined. (Bradley Steinbacher) Metro

Kiss of the Dragon
An incomprehensibly plotted, ultraviolent bloodstorm nearly redeemed by the elegance and inexplicably potent moral gravity of Hong Kong superstar Jet Li, who seems to be playing a frustrated acupuncturist turned government agent. Bridget Fonda is a whore with an imperiled child who weeps mascara tears and teeters around on high-heeled boots. Crooked Parisian cop Tcheky Karyo screams at his thuggish minions while all the blood vessels in his face threaten to burst. The only fun to be found here lies is in the details--a pair of severed legs falling onto the linoleum with a wet thwack, Karyo lovingly stroking his turtle, and the luminescence of Li who manages to remain lovable even as he's driving a pair of chopsticks deep into another human being's trachea. (Tamara Paris) Factoria, Pacific Place 11

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. (Traci Vogel) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11

* 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, Metro, Uptown

* Moulin Rouge
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) Meridian 16, Metro, 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) Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

* Pootie Tang
Like an answer to a prayer, writer/director Louis C.K. has delivered a rare treaure: a brilliant, hilarious comedy whose sole intention is to be as ridiculous and silly as possible. Pootie Tang (Lance Crouther) is a hero to all--one-third John Shaft, one-third Michael Jackson, one-third Mr. T--a holy black dude born cool, strutting around with his shirt open, dodging bullets with casual ease, and making public service announcements telling kids not to eat fast food, drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes, or drop out of school. This enrages Corporate America, which tries to destroy Pootie by stealing his magic belt. Here's the thing, though: Pootie doesn't speak English, nor any other recognizable tongue. He talks in gibberish syllables ("wa da tah," "tippi tai on my cappatown") that everyone understands. It pulls the film--which, to be fair, starts struggling around the 45-minute mark--into the realm of pure absurdism every time Pootie opens his mouth. And pure absurdism, with one eye trained on bitch slapping the racist, misogynist, and just plain dumb conventions of Hollywood, is right where I want to be. (Sean Nelson) Meridian 16

* The Princess and the Warrior
Somewhere between dream and reality is Wuppertal, Germany, whose buildings, streets, and stairs form the stage for the story of Sissi and Bodo--the shy princess and the sad warrior. Sissi works in a mental institution, the home for those who cannot "bear too much reality." Bodo (Benno Furmann) is an unstable and unemployed ex-soldier who lives with his brother Walter (Joachim Król). Walter and Bodo are planning to rob a bank and flee to Australia (the land of the dream time, according to native Australians). Fate brings the princess and the warrior together; they're a match made in heaven. But there are numerous knots and plots to sort out before the pure beings (air, the princess; water, the warrior) can fuse into a perfect and complete whole. (Charles Mudede) Harvard Exit

* 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

Scary Movie 2
Reviewed this issue. If you thought the first one was funny... you were wrong. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Northgate, Varsity

* 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

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 repertoire. 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) Broadway Market

* 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) Broadway Market

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) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16