Film

Film Shorts

Big Trouble, Down From the Mountain, Glitter, Haiku Tunnel, Our Lady of the Assassins, Sidewalks of New York, Together, Training Day

2001 Super-8 Celebration
Happy first anniversary to the Super-8 open screening! In commemoration, this month's installment has no theme. Little Theatre

* Cinema Rocks
A head-on collision of film and the rocky roll: featuring bands Nod and Smile and Wimbledon, with a look at work-in-progress Polterchrist, and Fist Pumpin' Shorts. 911 Media Arts Center

Come Undone
While on a seaside family vacation, teenager Mathieu falls for Cédric, a free-spirited boy who is his emotional opposite. Mathieu begins a journey of self-discovery that leads him to painful choices about his family and his future. Broadway Market

* Crash Fans
See Stranger Suggests. A locally produced documentary about the world of the demolition derby. (Sean Nelson) Seattle Art Museum

* FIRST PERSON CINEMA SERIES
An ongoing series of films that risk subjective indulgence in an attempt to yield objective truth. This week: Double Identities, with shorts by Deanne Borshay Liem (First Person Plural) and Serge Gregory (Oma); and Portraits of Romance, with short features by Nina Davenport (Always a Bridesmaid) and Caveh Zahedi (In the Bathtub in the World). Little Theatre

The Glass House
Leelee Sobieski, the gossamer young beauty queen who now looks less and less like a young Helen Hunt and more and more like human beauty given form, stars with Diane Lane and Stellan Skarsgard in this psychological thriller about an orphan whose adoptive parents just might be EVIL! Metro

Happy Accidents
Was Marisa Tomei a fluke? Find out when she meets, woos, and beds Vincent D'Onofrio in this cinematic charmer tinged with science fiction. Is D'Onofrio really from 500 years in the future? And, more importantly--if she sleeps with him, will she become her own grandmother? Broadway Market

Hardball
What do Keanu Reeves and Walter Matthau have in common (besides absolutely nothing, I mean)? They've both been in movies where they coach a no-talent ragamuffin Little League team. Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

RESFEST 2001 Digital Film Festival
Reviewed this issue. A festival of the good things that come out of computers. Egyptian

* The River
See Stranger Suggests. A difficult but rewarding film from Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang (The Hole), in which a young man's exposure to a polluted river leads to a throbbing neck pain and a look inside a very fucked-up family. (Sean Nelson) Grand Illusion

* Roman Holiday
Gregory Peck (again!) and Audrey Hepburn star in this breezy little trifle about a slumming princess and an undercover reporter in one of the world's most beautiful cities. Egyptian

* Spellbound
One of Hitchcock's most transparently silly thrillers, this film still works because of Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, who pass through the film's didactic Freudenfreude (five minutes of Dali sets and all) unscathed. (Sean Nelson) Egyptian

* To Kill a Mockingbird
As part of the Talking Pictures lecture series, local film scholar Kathleen Murphy will introduce this Robert Mulligan classic, a film which truly needs no introduction--unless you stop to consider the Southern high school that recently banned the source novel for fear it might cause some students to feel "uncomfortable." Jesus. (Sean Nelson) Egyptian

Vengo
From the director of Latcho Drom comes this Euro potboiler, which opens audaciously with a 10-minute flamenco-party sequence that leads one to believe it's another film about music. Not so, as the film then leaps off into a fairly conventional variation on the Mob vendetta genre, at the center of which sits a club-owning Capo trying to protect his retarded nephew from a death sentence issued by a rival family in lusty Seville. Much brooding atmosphere, tempestuous music, and swarthy masculinity is on view. (Sean Nelson) Varsity

When Girls Take Over
Bikinis and revolutionary politics; 'twas ever thus in the world of sexploitation. Grand Illusion

* The Yearling
More fun with Gregory Peck at the Egyptian. You'll want to bring a hanky for this postbellum tale of a boy and his pet baby deer. A double feature with To Kill a Mockingbird. Egyptian

All Over the Guy
Sensitive Eli (Dan Bucatinsky, who also wrote the screenplay) and commitment-phobic Tom (Richard Ruccolo) are thrown together by their straight friends. In one quirky, spunky little scene after another they laugh, kiss, and bicker, struggling against what the audience knew during the opening credits: that this unlikely duo will fall in love. Duh! (Tamara Paris) Broadway Market

America's Sweethearts
This film is a total rip-off. (Kathleen Wilson) Pacific Place 11

American Pie II
The first American Pie was all about male humiliation, with each male character enduring some sort of horrific trauma--accidentally drinking someone's come, explosive diarrhea, premature ejaculation broadcast over the Internet, etc.--before the film was through. But what kept the film from sinking completely into the toilet was the fact that the filmmakers actually had something to say about sex and adolescence, even if it was fairly simplistic. American Pie II, unfortunately, has very little to say, which doesn't make it all bad, just not as surprising as the original. (Bradley Steinbacher) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Redmond Town Center

* Apocalypse Now Redux
Seeing Redux is akin to hearing the Beatles' Anthology: You have to, if only out of curiosity. And with the refurbishment and digital remastering of Walter Murch's inestimably powerful sound design, you really have to see it--in a great theater, right now, today. Among the new bits are a few minutes more of vintage Marlon Brando as the vainglorious Kurtz, some nice moments of masculine camaraderie on the boat, and a long, gorgeous sequence set in a ghostly French plantation. While none of these new scenes are at all necessary, all but one are interesting extensions of thematic concerns running through the original. What Redux amounts to is less a director's cut than a revisitation of a work so massive in scope as to have been heretofore not only unfinished, but unfinishable. (Sean Nelson) Cinerama

Bread and Tulips
Saddled with a loud, bombastic, plumbing-fixture-selling husband with a hair-trigger temper and two disaffected teenage boys, Rosalba (the utterly lovely Licia Maglietta) seems all but eclipsed by her family. When, on a summer vacation in the south of Italy, her tour bus leaves a rest stop without her, she seizes the opportunity to head home to Pescara for some quality time alone. Instead, she ends up in Venice: prime romantic real estate, yes, but also a superior place to lose yourself. Which she promptly does after falling in with an eccentric crowd that includes an aging anarchist florist, a wacky masseuse straight out of Ally McBeal, and Fernando Girasole, a sad, suicidal maitre d'. Sweet, dopey, predictable, and still charming, Bread and Tulips is the story of a housewife discovering why freedom is so much more romantic than life at home. (Emily Hall) Seven Gables

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
From its winding, ancient cobblestone streets to its gorgeous Adriatic vistas, the Greek island of Cephallonia is disarmingly beautiful. This beauty lords over Captain Corelli's Mandolin, an adaptation of the Marquez-ian (if I may) novel by Louis de Bernieres, to the point that there's little room left in the camera's eye for matters of story or character. Which is fine, because in those areas, not much is going on. The cast are like a bunch of conscripted waiters, and as head waiter, Nicolas Cage states everything like it's the special of the day. It's especially sad to watch Cage, who, after a brief respite of quality in The Family Man, uses Corelli to continue his brutal downward slide as an actor. (Michael Shilling) Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11

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, Uptown

* The Crimson Rivers (Les Rivières Pourpres)
Though this film takes its cues from American thrillers of the most manipulative variety, being French, it does so with a certain élan. The plot follows two detectives--Jean Reno as a gruff Parisian and Vincent Cassel as the hippest of provincials--whose separate investigations dovetail at an elite school high in the French Alps. Someone is torturing and brutally (but beautifully--the cinematography's gorgeous!) murdering key school administrators and planting their bodies to force discovery of the motive and then the identity of the vengeful killer. Tension builds and story accelerates as the trail of frozen corpses turns to fresh kills, and the detectives themselves are caught by the slippery murderer. (Sarah Sternau) Broadway Market

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
Woody Allen and Helen Hunt play bitter rivals at a 1940s insurance agency who, under post-hypnotic suggestion, turn into thieves, liars, and lovers. The supernatural contrivance is one Allen has used before, to better effect, in his very funny chapter "Oedipus Wrecks" from the underrated trilogy New York Stories. In that film, the device makes a schzlubby guy come to his senses, ditch his shiksa goddess, and take up with a nice, albeit crazy, Jewish girl. In Scorpion, it makes a busty, powerful blonde fall head over heels for a man twice her age. In that difference lies the sad truth about Woody Allen's movies: though they will always be beautifully crafted totems of cinematic design and crack comic timing (even when the jokes fall flat), the human side of their universe is growing less and less tethered to a recognizable universe every time. Poorly cast (Hunt is awful, Charlize Theron is squandered, and what the hell is Dan Aykroyd doing there?), awash in discomfitting dirty old mannishness, and after all that, still gorgeously directed, Scorpion is a pretty sad comedy. (Sean Nelson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, Guild 45th, Meridian 16

* The Deep End
Though it comes dressed in the icy blue clothes of a suspense thriller, The Deep End is a far more interesting creature. Using its intricate plot as shrewd camouflage, the film serves as an examination of the evolving relationship between a lonely mother and her gifted teenage son, whose sexuality (homo) is such an impenetrable subject that Mom (the ineffable Tilda Swinton) would rather navigate a murder cover-up, blackmail, and death threats than talk to the lad directly. Throw in a hunky, menacing Croatian (Goran Visnjic, very good) who appears--demanding a hefty paycheck--with a very private videotape linking the son and the murder victim, and you have the ingredients of a deceptively engrossing (or engrossingly deceptive?) potboiler, where the plot takes many an implausible turn, but the real action takes place in the lead character's mind. (Sean Nelson) Grand Alderwood, Harvard Exit

Gen-X Cops
A high-style martial arts swashbuckle through Hong Kong, Gen-X Cops follows three jejune police academy students who must infiltrate a Japanese crime lord's gang. With dynamic stunts and cinematography, the film even features a surprise appearance by Jackie Chan (well, not a surprise now, I guess). (Traci Vogel) Varsity

* 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

Ghosts of Mars
Where have you gone, John Carpenter? Time was you could count on Carpenter to churn out A-plus B-grade genre pictures like Halloween, Escape From New York, and later, They Live and In the Mouth of Madness. His latest effort--which stars the great Ice Cube as the Snake Plisskenesque "Desolation" Williams, a convict on the matriarchal colony of Mars who becomes a guerilla hero when a bunch of Marilyn Manson-looking creeps starts killing up everything in sight--is just tired. With a few exceptions, the dialogue is stiff, the acting forced, and the villains (always Carpenter's weak spot) completely silly. Even for a Carpenter fan (and I am), this is hardly worth bothering with. (Sean Nelson) Pacific Place 11

* Hedwig and the Angry Inch
With its charming pop-art magical realism, cinematic flashbacks, and the ability to present intimate documentary-style footage of Hedwig's misfit band on tour with their charlatan business manager (an excellent character addition), the movie version of Hedwig emphasizes the rich plot far better than the stage version did. (Josh Feit) Broadway Market

Innocence
Andreas and Claire were once young lovers in post-WWII Belgium. Now, half a century later, they find themselves neighbors in Melbourne, where Andreas has been a widower for 30 years and Claire is in an agreeable though passionless marriage. Unable to resist the tug of nostalgia, they resume their tempestuous affair, much to the chagrin of their loved ones. A big hit at Cannes and SIFF alike. Harvard Exit

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is intended to be Kevin Smith's swan song to the characters (and universe) he created starting with Clerks. But as it turns out, it's more of an off-key jingle than a song. Ridiculously juvenile and often painfully unfunny, it shows Kevin Smith's true talent as a filmmaker: entertaining himself, his friends, and 13-year-old Internet geeks who think he's a god. Despite whatever protests those folks may loft to the contrary, the fact still remains that this film is a piece of shit. There are a handful of funny moments, sure, but in the end, all that is left is a steaming pile of fag jokes, numerous variations of the word "fuck," and direction so completely void of inspiration it often stuns. (Bradley Steinbacher) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree

Jeepers Creepers
A brother and sister on a road trip are hunted down by a force of evil for no particular reason. Jeepers Creepers is a welcome break from all those self-aware teen horror flicks of the '90s. Instead of trying to be clever, this movie attempts to sustain a creepy mood throughout its running time, and it nearly succeeds. With a church made of corpses, references to Duel and The Birds, and a demon villain who never explains himself, Jeepers Creepers has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, I did not find the banter between the brother and sister endearing, so I didn't care if they died or not. But maybe that's just me. Maybe you should see this movie and judge for yourself. (Andy Spletzer) Factoria, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

Legally Blonde
The movie isn't much, but Reese Witherspoon, before whom all living young actresses should cower, owns every frame of it. (Michael Shilling) Pacific Place 11

The Musketeer
Reviewed this issue. The story of the Three Musketeers, done up with Crouching Tiger-style rope-and pully-acrobatics. A silly idea? Indeed. So silly it just might be brilliant. Tim Roth stars. Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

* O
This intelligent, effective film transposes the plot and characters from Shakespeare's Othello to an American high school. This time, Othello (Odin--a very convincing Mekhi Phifer) and Iago (Hugo--Josh Hartnett, very good) are not soldiers embroiled in a war with the Turks, but the star and utility players, respectively, of a prep-school basketball team bound for the state championship. When the coach (Martin Sheen in full coronary mode), who's also Hugo's dad, favors Odin over his son, the tragic course of events is set in motion. All the big Othello themes--jealousy, love, manipulation, hearsay, and betrayal--are in the paint. (Sean Nelson) Grand Alderwood, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Varsity

* The Others
A well-executed gothic horror film in a Jamesian vein, starring Nicole Kidman as a postwar mom on a tiny British isle desperate not to let her new servants (including the great Fionnula Flanagan) expose her "photosensitive" children to daylight. The claustrophobic tension of the incredible house (the film's only set, and its true star) mounts through the eerie film as the truth, and like the characters' lives, unfurls methodically in this truly frightening endeavor from Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar. As an added bonus, the always-gripping Christopher Eccleston (Jude, Elizabeth) has a supporting role. (Sean Nelson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Metro, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

* Our Song
A smart, sensitive little movie about the small emotional transitions that comprise the tumult of adolescence for three young girls growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Though it risks sentimentality at times, the film ultimately avoids its pitfalls by allowing the extraordinary lead actresses (all of whom make their debuts here) and a 100-member-strong marching band live and breathe in the subtlest, most affecting of ways. (Sean Nelson) Varsity

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. (Bradley Steinbacher) Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11

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? (Heather Muse) Aurora Cinema Grill, Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro

Rat Race
Rat Race should not be considered an actual chase comedy, but a clone of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Cannonball Run I and II, and Million Dollar Mystery, brought to you by a movie industry so short on ideas it's now peddling third-generation photocopies of itself to an audience raised on replicas (apologies to D.C. Berman). (Jason Pagano) Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

Rock Star
Reviewed this issue. Mark Wahlberg returns to his Marky Mark roots as a cover-band singer who lives the ultimate cover-band singer's dream: The real band calls and asks him to join. Based loosely on the true story of that one dude who replaced Rob Halford when his Judas Priest bandmates discovered Halford was gay. Um, duh.... Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Metro

Rush Hour 2
Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan reteam as a black cop and a Chinese cop in this sequel which, being exactly as funny and entertaining as its predecessor, transcends all critical inquiry. Zhang Ziyi, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is in it, though. (Bradley Steinbacher) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Northgate, Redmond Town Center

* 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. (Sean Nelson) Meridian 16

* 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. (Sean Nelson) Uptown

Summer Catch
No, not a story of hot, Generation-Y fishmongers... this is a baseball movie starring the charismatic Freddie Prinze Jr. as a minor league pitcher who dreams of the majors in between trying to get laid with trashy townies. Redemption, love, and copious K's ensue. (Sean Nelson) Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11

Two Can Play That Game
A.k.a. The Sistas. This movie has the single most laughable trailer since Kevin Costner's The Postman. Audiences have been howling and hissing for months now at the cloying teaser for this tale of upscale black women turning the playa tables on a bunch of emotionally shallow black men. The movie might be fine, but it looks like an affront to all people, regardless of color, gender, or social stratum. Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

Wet Hot American Summer
The people behind the the State are responsible for this Meatballs-to-the-wall lampoon of the pubescent summer-camp comedy. It seems hard to imagine anyone doing it better than that Mr. Show sketch about the Tibetan Monks and the rich fat kids, though. I'm just saying. Cast includes Janeane Garofalo. (Sean Nelson) Broadway Market