Film

Film Shorts

American Pie II, The Crimson Rivers (Les Rivières Pourpres), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Greenfingers, The King is Alive, Osmosis Jones, The Others, The Short Attention Span Film and Video Festival

* ELKCREEK CINEMA REVUE
Elkcreek is a cinema collective that has been rocking the Catskills with underground films--making 'em and showing 'em anywhere they can (on barn walls, bridges, deer)--for seven years now. Every so often they go on tour, and this Friday only, 911 Media Arts Center is hosting them, screening Elkcreek's two new 16mm projects. The first, Flamingo Meringue, is director Chris Dapkins' tale of a chef on a quest for his mother's recipes, who soon finds himself in a spiritual battle with the head of Mom's nursing home, the Beaver Pond Geriatric Correctional facility. Number two is a short called American Primitive, in which images of contemporary economic ruin in upstate New York are combined with nature's winter freeze to create a speculative portrait of post-apocalyptic life. 911 Media Arts

* Faat-Kine
Reviewed this issue. Ousmane Sembene's latest film is about a businesswoman, Venus Seye, who by her own will and means rises to the top of the new society. Successful, modern, fiercely independent, and honest, Venus is posited as Africa's true salvation, as the one who will finally awaken the continent from the nightmare of post-colonialism. (Charles Mudede) Little Theatre

FREMONT OUTDOOR MOVIES
The summer tradition of movies viewed in parking lots continues; this one is at N 35th and Phinney (across from Redhook Brewery). This week--Them, a movie that features two of nature's most horrible man-eating freaks: giant ants and Joan Collins. Sat July 28.

* Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Reviewed this issue. With an alternately raucous and poignant story that would make trannie rocker Jayne County proud, John Cameron Mitchell brings his acclaimed off-Broadway rock musical to the screen. Hedwig offers up the psychodrama of her life: her origins as East Berliner Hansel, who dreamed of rock and roll stardom but ended up stranded in America after a botched sex-change operation. Hence the "angry inch," and one of the most inventive musicals ever. Egyptian

Jackpot
From the makers of Twin Falls Idaho comes this gritty tale of a would-be country troubadour and his manager (played by former SNL also-ran Garrett Morris), in which the road--in all its rustic brutality--is "bery bery good" to no one. A side note: karaoke haters, consider yourselves warned. Puttin' on the Hits fans take heart: host Allen Fawcett makes a rare screen appearance! Other stars include Daryl Hannah and Peggy Lipton. Harvard Exit

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 49th Man, no, not a sequel to The Third Man, nor The Fourth Man, nor The Tenth Man, nor The Tenth Victim, nor The 49th Parallel. No. This is a spy thriller from 1953 starring John Ireland as a G-Man looking for the commie thugs who want to bring an A-Bomb into the U.S. to blow some shit up. Look closely and you may see a young Peter Marshall. Wed Aug 1. Linda's

Original Sin
This psychoeroticsexualogical thriller starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas dares to ask the question: Can nude flesh prevail over plot, character, and relevance? Though at press time there had been no critics screening, it seems fair to assume the answer, as always, is "k'duh!" Metro

The Princess Diaries
In this G-rated Pygmalion, bespectacled, curly-haired, Doc Martens-sporting wallflower Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) discovers she's heir to the throne of Genovia and, courtesy of "princess lessons" from her queenly grandmama (Julie Andrews), blossoms. When will Hollywood learn that girls with glasses aren't ugly? Diaries suffers the flaw that makes teen transformation flicks such as She's All That unbelievable: the swan looks worse than the ugly duckling. Even her best friend (Heather Matarazzo) shouts, "Who destroyed you?!" when she sees the new look. Mia, however, still has trouble fitting in, thanks to a bitchy clique led by Lana (pop princess Mandy Moore). The nine-year-old in your life will breathe a sigh of relief when Mia gets to have her tiara and wear her Docs too. (Heather Muse) Metro

Rush Hour 2
Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan reteam as a black cop and a Chinese cop whose racially charged antics infuriate multiculturalists on two continents. This sequel to the occasionally funny original (beware: the trailer offers exactly zero laughs) features the very attractive Zhang Ziyi, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Varsity

Spy Kids
This is something like a director's cut of Robert Rodriguez's wildly successful franchise mustard seedling. Spy Kids Redux boasts 20 minutes of new footage, including several new scenes of Marlon Brando improvising, and a long sequence set in a French plantation that never made the original cut. Opens Wed Aug 8. Metro

* Under the Sand
Reviewed this issue. While on holiday at their summer home in western France, Jean vanishes during a swim, leaving his wife Marie, played by the indefatigably beautiful Charlotte Rampling, to be ravished by loneliness. Upon her return to Paris she is encouraged to begin dating again, but can't shake the feeling that Jean is still alive, refusing to come to terms with the "closure" her friends demand of her. Varsity

* A.I.
Steven Spielberg wrote and directed this fascinatingly flawed 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 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. Another warning: If you like this film, you will be the only person you know who does, so prepare yourself for some abuse. (Sean Nelson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Factoria, Majestic Bay, Metro, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

America's Sweethearts
As far as romantic comedies go, there is only one formula: Two people are perfect for each other, one of them secretly is aware of that fact while the other is oblivious, and eventually, they get together. Apparently, however, Hollywood has run out of ways to tell that same story over and over again by simply incorporating new characters. Proof? America's Sweethearts, starring Julia Roberts and John Cusack as the unwitting couple, is a romantic comedy centered around a film's PRESS JUNKET, for crying out loud. First of all, nothing is even remotely romantic about a press junket, even one centered around an onscreen duo (Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones) who no longer speak to one another and whose guise of reconciliation is being counted upon to sell the film, which even the producers haven't yet seen. Roberts' part is flat as the pancakes she scarfs in a fit of lovelorn anxiety, and Billy Crystal, as the most evil press agent ever, is wholly unfunny. This film is a total gyp. (Kathleen Wilson) Factoria, Guild 45th, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

* The Anniversary Party
Though it skirts the edges of a dozen poisonous pitfalls (vanity production, written and directed by actors, movie about movie people, et al.), this party actually winds up being a very good, maybe even great examination of the inner life of a gaggle of rich, famous, and beautiful people who spend a day and night at the titular celebration of Leigh (playing a fading actress) and Cumming (her emotionally promiscuous novelist husband). P.S. The extended sequence where all the characters take Ecstasy contains the most accurate onscreen drug consumption of any movie I've ever seen. (Sean Nelson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Uptown

Brother
This ninth film by Takeshi Kitano--his fourth in the gangster genre--is an awkward tale of brotherhood, real and/or symbolic. Beat Takeshi must flee Tokyo when his ruthlessness and impassivity begin to creep out his yakuza clan. He joins his half-brother in L.A. and quickly turns little sib's small-time drug operation into a pan-gang turf war, forcing the naïfs to bond in the face of all the trouble that soon rains down on them. Sluggish pacing and an oppressive piano soundtrack tip the scales toward a rating of dull. (Sarah Sternau) Meridian 16, Varsity

Bully
Highly recommended to those who love to masturbate to images of oversexed, underfed, shirtless teens, this is the latest installment in Larry (Kids) Clark's ongoing cinematic exploration of the moral vacuum which surrounds contemporary youth, and the murderous, drug-addled, emotionally bereft impulses that sprout there. Young hotties Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Michael Pitt (soon to be of Hedwig fame), and Kelli Garner team up to murder Nick Stahl, who plays the titular bully despite possessing not a thumbnail of menace in his entire being. This bully is a bastard (and a rapist, and a closet gay... "aren't they all?" Clark seems to ask) in addition to being the only one of these pitiless, self-hating stoners with any prospects. If the film is a metaphor for what society does to kids, and what kids do to kids as a result, it fails, mainly because it's really about what Clark wants to do to kids (the boys especially), which is light them luxuriantly and then fuck them blind. Bully operates in a hollow sphere, where the deck is so stacked against reality that all you can do is pray for the credits. (Sean Nelson) Egyptian

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) Aurora Cinema Grill, 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 at work that you are gay, 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. (Bradley Steinbacher) Guild 45th

* Crime Wave
Writer-director John Paizs perfectly captures the look and feel of '50s propaganda films in this surreal 1985 movie (not to be confused with Andre de Toth's 1954 work of the same title). Paizs himself stars as Steven Penny, a mute screenwriter obsessed with "colour crime films." Assisting him in his quest is Kim, the daughter of the family from whom he rents his room above the garage. What cements this movie's late-night charm is Paizs' surreal dedication to the '50s filmmaking style (from the music to the acting, wardrobe, film stock, and especially the overblown narration) and Penny's obsession with success in every script he writes (tossed off scripts include the rise and fall of Allway representatives, tribute bands, and self-help gurus, all of which we get to see played out) makes this the most successfully funny film you've never seen. (David Manning) Grand Illusion

Dr. Dolittle 2
In his second outing as the only man on Earth who can communicate with animals, Eddie Murphy 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. The scenario is the standard American comedy insult, but some of the jokes are really good. (Sean Nelson) Meridian 16

* Enlightenment Guaranteed
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, hands less skilled than those of director Doris Dörrie, might have grown tendentious. Hurry to see it. (Sean Nelson) Broadway Market

* Everybody's Famous
An out-of-work factory laborer kidnaps a pop star and demands as ransom that a song he's written be performed on national television. You know where this is going, but you'll enjoy getting there. Remember Zero Mostel in The Producers? Werner De Smedt is in the same class as the sleazy but oh-so-brilliant promoter. (Barley Blair) Harvard Exit

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. Watching this film at the Meridian late on a Saturday night was exactly what I imagine hell must be like. (Sean Nelson) Meridian 16

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Fantastic worlds, crackpot mysticism, and spectacular animation--Final Fantasy may, at first glance, seem like just another cartoon blockbuster, 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 (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 to just 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) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Northgate

* Ghost World
Fans of Daniel Clowes' epochal comic novel about the listless inner teen life have been awaiting this adaptation by Crumb director Terry Zwigoff for years now, and the film delivers, though not in the direct way you might have anticipated. Clowes' super-detached geek queens Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) have graduated from high school, and, bored, they answer a personals ad placed by über-dork vinyl junkie Seymour (an R. Crumb surrogate played brilliantly by Steve Buscemi). As an experiment, Enid decides to educate Seymour in the ways of love, and her world begins to crumble. (Sean Nelson) Neptune

Jump Tomorrow
Much more than just a multiethnic Forces of Nature, Joel Hopkins' feature debut concerns a Nigerian New Yorker whose prearranged nuptials are contravened by the interposition of a sensual Latina, her limey beau, and, most troublingly of all, a Citroen-driving Frenchman, hell-bent on playing cupid. Broadway Market

Jurassic Park III
Though the 20 minutes it spends in expository build-up--Sam Neill is back as the skeptic hero paleontologist, lured into going to the dinosaur island by some "rich adventurers" (who are actually middle-class Ohioans looking for their son)--are nigh on interminable, once the dinosaurs show up and start screaming and chomping and smashing people and each other, this movie makes its worth known. I don't know if part three, directed by Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer), is genuinely better than parts one and two (mainly because I still can't tell if those movies were good--I just know they had big-ass dinosaurs in them, and that's enough), but it clearly raises the dino stakes, delivering the ferocious predatory business of the monsters themselves more convincingly than Spielberg ever could. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Oak Tree

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) Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

* Kiss of the Spider Woman
From the novel by Manuel Puig, the acclaimed drama (also a stage play) concerns two cellmates in a South American prison, one a political revolutionary and one a gay crossdresser. Tender, literary, and powerful, with dense, character-revealing dialogue that makes this film fully absorbing. (Stacey Levine) Varsity

Legally Blonde
In Legally Blonde, Reese Witherspoon plays a Southern California Barbie doll named Elle Woods. Elle possesses charming, asexual, lobotomized good cheer and an encyclopedic knowledge of shoes and hemlines. When her boyfriend dumps her (she's "not serious enough"), she decides to win him back by attending Harvard Law School, getting in even though her brain operates, with the savantish exception of matters of fashion, at the level of a 10-year-old. The movie isn't much, but Witherspoon, before whom all living young actresses should cower, owns every frame of it. (Michael Shilling) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11

Made
Walking out of Made, I tried to conjure the perfect phonetic sound to properly describe it. The winner: "nyeh," as in "whatever." Here is a film that exists for no other reason than to revisit the "magic" between Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, and your admiration for Made may depend on just how brilliant you found Swingers, their first project. If you thought it was great, then by all means go. But, if like me, you found it vastly overrated, only marginally entertaining, and more than occasionally annoying (especially that Vaughn fucker), you'd be better served elsewhere. That said, it's a comedy about the mob, and there are some good moments. (Bradley Steinbacher) Broadway Market

* 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

* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The funniest movie ever returns with a pristine new print, in anticipation of the forthcoming DVD, with "23 seconds of never-before-seen material." Harvard Exit

* 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

Planet of the Apes
At first glance, Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake has everything you could wish for in a summer blockbuster--i.e., massive budget, marginal script, entertaining result. But, upon further inspection (a.k.a. actually watching it), it turns out to be the stupidest film of the year. Sure, sure, it's fun to watch good actors frolic about in brilliant chimp makeup, but the story--which the credits list as being based upon a book by Pierre Boulle (although I doubt the book was nearly as stupid as this film)--is so ridiculous, so unnecessarily convoluted to the point of inanity (not to mention poorly thought out), that the end result actually becomes an insult to the audience. The "scientific mindfucks" created for the film don't make a lick of sense (as opposed to the original), and the very notion that the film's creators, Burton included, even thought that we would find it plausible is insulting. For years now I have been struggling to keep from simply writing off the vast majority of America as stupid, but if Planet of the Apes becomes the top-grosser of the year, I may simply give in. (Bradley Steinbacher) Cinerama, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11

* 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) Varsity

* 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) Harvard Exit

Scary Movie 2
As a champion of the uneven but undeniable comic brilliance of Scary Movie--a film I stumbled into stoned and staggered out of sore from shock and laughter--it pains me to tell you that Scary Movie 2 sucks. Scary Movie was a whore for laughs: shameless, sick, and stupid--but never desperate. The chaos was contained by the script's mocking adherence to high-school and horror-movie clichés, and punctuated by some truly inspired performances. But in Scary Movie 2, chaos reigns. This sounds funnier than it is. Without a unifying target for its humor, this "over-the-top horror spoof!" almost immediately devolves into the same compulsive desperation for laughs that's tainted the life's work of that unbearable freak Robin Williams. (David Schmader) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16

* The Score
This is a fully functional, if perfunctory heist film that benefits greatly from its attention to the procedure of safecracking and breaking and entering, to say nothing of the utterly relaxed brilliance of its three lead actors, Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton, and best of all, Marlon Brando. It feels like these three pros took one look at the script and threw it away, realizing it was derivative trash (DeNiro plays a master thief who agrees to "one last job"--it's kind of like Ronin lite--in cahoots with fence Brando, and young buck Norton), but then realizing they could pull it off with the improvisational ease of a master acting-class exercise. Though it's legitimately sad to see Brando (who now makes Sydney Greenstreet look like Kate Moss) as enormous as he is, the comic grace with which he glides through this otherwise inferior work--and again, it's totally watchable and entertaining--makes you remember that he really is the best of all time. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

* 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) Seven Gables, Uptown