Coming Soon

Black Hawk Down, Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, Snow Dogs


New This Week

* Charlotte Gray
Reviewed this issue. Just when you thought Cate Blanchett couldn't get any sexier, she goes and joins the French Resistance! Sacre bleu! Harvard Exit

* Dead or Alive
Those first 10 minutes. Wow. Gangsters, strippers, and cocaine all blown to hell in a rhythmic tapestry of murder and mayhem. Even if you leave after this over-the-top opening (after the knife-throwing clown performing in the strip club!), you would still have gotten your money's worth. But then you would miss an ending that answers the question: How can the violence become even bigger and more absurd than what has come before? In between is a sometimes send-up of your standard policier, where the ambitious gangster goes up against his opposite, the workaholic cop with a wife and critically ill daughter. Director Takashi Miike (Audition) proves to be better at mood and movement than plot, but what remains constant is his desire to sacrifice innocence and purity for perversion and violence. Even a giant bird mascot is felled by a hail of bullets. It's THAT kind of movie. (ANDY SPLETZER) Grand Illusion

* The Films of Jack Smith
This screening of works by infamous NYC kinkmeister Smith is a benefit for Jonas Mekas' NY Filmmakers' Co-op, which was hobbled by the events of 9/11. Films to be screened include Flaming Creatures and shorts Scotch Tape, Overstimulated, and I Was a Male Yvonne DeCarlo (she was Lily Munster, y'all). Tues Jan 15. Little Theatre

* JAZZ ON FILM
This week: Mingus 1968 and Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog, two films about the greatest jazz bass player of all time. JBL Theater at EMP

* Kandahar
Reviewed this issue. One woman's harrowing journey through modern-day Afghanistan to try to prevent her sister, maimed by landmines and oppressed beyond consolation, from killing herself. Broadway Market

LOST HIGHWAY
David Lynch horror film featuring "desperate men, faithless women, expensive cars and cheap motels." Lost Highway is infamously difficult to follow, but watching it is a wonderful kind of confusion, as it aims for emotional impact. Perfect for a midnight movie. Egyptian

* Open Screening
This monthly screening series at 911 is one of the most hit-or-miss events in town: no curators here, merely willing hosts to whoever submits a film. (For only $1, however, it's also one of the best deals.) In a way, the very unevenness of the presentation reflects quite favorably on the best filmmakers, whose works truly stand out as fresh and inspiring after you've sat through three or four duds. And there are few viewing spaces as pleasant as 911, with its series of offices and studios just behind you and to your right as you watch the films. Even quiet and dark, you can tell it's a place where work, much good work, gets done. (BRUCE REID) 911 Media Arts Center

Orange County
If this movie is half as good as two-thirds of the records that come out of the titular region (or should we say, the "show us your tits"-ular region?), then you'll be twice as relieved as we were not to have to see it. The math: It is physically impossible for this film not to be horrendous. Jack Black should really start reading the scripts they send him. With cameos by Chevy Chase, Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis, John Lithgow, and Lily Tomlin. Sigh. Directed by the son of the famous Lawrence Kasdan. Metro

* Post Concussion
A vicious corporate type is forced to take stock of his life after being dealt a MASSIVE HEAD WOUND by a speeding automobile. We haven't seen this Canadian indie (which, you will note, is screening at the finest coffee shop in Seattle), so we don't know if it has a happy ending. Sounds like it at least has a happy beginning! Victrola

SUPERFLAT CINEMA
See Stranger Suggests. A young monkey becomes king of all animals in the beginning of Alakazam the Great (1961), and he turns out to be an awful ruler, too selfish and self-involved. It takes the love of a good woman to straighten him out, which begs the question: Why do women always fall for powerful assholes? An early anime adaptation of a Japanese comic book, Alakazam shares some of the same traits of its successors. Namely, an episodic nature and surreal, out-of-the-blue plot twists. This'll be followed, on Saturday and Sunday, by early examples of '60s TV anime, including episodes of Ken the Wolf Boy, Prince Planet, and an episode of Speed Racer so violent I'm beginning to understand why my mom wouldn't let me watch it as a boy (heck, people die in the opening credits!). (ANDY SPLETZER) Little Theatre


Continuing Runs

Ali
I heard Michael Mann's next film would star Calista Flockhart as Mama Cass. Factoria, Guild 45th, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

* Amélie
A beautifully kinetic testament to human sweetness that has audiences lining up around the block and contrarians carping about its artificiality. I'm not saying you have to be an asshole not to like Amélie, but it would probably help.... When director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was in Seattle recently, I asked him if the criticism of the film's fairy-tale aesthetic bothered him. "In France," he laughed, "sometimes if you have too much style, they crucify you. They prefer films about men and women fighting in ugly kitchens. They think if you have style, if the film is lit well, or is poetic, then you are not making something true. The reverse is true. The style is important. I love to play with everything. I can't avoid it. You need the style to get to the emotion. It's actually more realistic, dans un certain sense. When you do a film, it's for you. Very egoist. But you can please people if you are sincere." (SEAN NELSON) Egyptian

A Beautiful Mind
Stories about the insane are an inherent paradox. Because for a story to be compelling, it has to have rules, and an inner logic, whereas mental illness doesn't have rules, and treats logic as just another way of seeing. In the case of John Nash (Russell Crowe), the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia, there is the added irony that a man of quantitative genius could lose all control of quantitative reality. With a deft directorial touch, the paradox of Nash's world could really come to life. But that would take more of a talent than Ron Howard, whose interest is to make an uplifting Christmas movie, and to provide an easily digestible tale of overcoming adversity--as if insanity was something you just get through, like a bad hair day. (MICHAEL SHILLING) Factoria, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Behind Enemy Lines
THERE IS NOTHING GOOD ABOUT THIS FILM. NOTHING. AT ALL. EVER. AT ALL ALL ALL!!! (SEAN NELSON) Pacific Place 11

* Burnt Money
This is a beautiful film, and between the poetic narrative (derived from the book, Plata Quemada), the subtitles, and the voluptuous backgrounds, it feels more like reading a National Geographic about South America rather than watching a movie. I'd call it great, even if only from a literary standpoint. (MEG VAN HUYGEN) Broadway Market

The Business of Strangers
Stockard "Stockyard" Channing and Julia Stiles star in this reverse gender corporate revenge drama, cut from the same cloth as In the Company of Men. (SEAN NELSON) Harvard Exit

* The Devil's Backbone
A sun-baked gothic ghost story with a moving Marxist allegory buried in its gory heart. Deeply moving and gorgeously shot, this is a horror movie that will engage your intellect even as it sends shivers of icy dread crawling down your spine. Directed by Guillermo del Toro. (TAMARA PARIS) Harvard Exit

Dinner Rush
A film about the smug, snobby, unpleasant, and insular world of a trendy Tribeca eatery populated with degenerate line cooks, promiscuous hostesses, prima donna chefs, and underworld thugs with all the flash of a grease fire but is so sorely lacking in substance you'll leave the theater famished. (TAMARA PARIS) Broadway Market

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
A documentary of Seattle's new favorite tragic failure of a sea voyage, Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914 quest for Antarctica. Broadway Market

Gosford Park
Robert Altman's latest is an Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery set in the posh environs of a late 19th-century English mansion, where the swells and scousers surmount class boundaries to answer the question "Whodunnit?" Recent Altman work (that's Short Cuts onward, inclusive) has declined in sharp, inverse proportion to his ability to attract big-name movie stars--a.k.a the Woody Allen syndrome--but this one is apparently a lot better than the last few howling dogs he has unleashed. Starring Bob Balaban, Alan Bates, Stephen Fry, Michael Gambon, Richard E. Grant, Derek Jacobi, Kelly Macdonald, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam, Clive Owen, Ryan Phillippe, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Emily Watson. Pacific Place 11, Seven Gables

Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Fans of the novels won't be disappointed by Chris Columbus' adaptation, which is so faithful that it often feels like they just pointed a camera at the book and said "Action!" (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12

How High
Both Redman and Method Man are charismatic and irreverent performers with massive vitality who consistently bring marijuana into the themes and lyrics of their music: it is natural that they'd make a movie together. The film's creative starting point is a completely goofy blend of fantasy and reality, but the stars' tremendous enthusiasm makes nearly every dumb joke funny. (RAPHAEL GINSBERG) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Varsity

* In the Bedroom
This langorous, beautifully acted film about erotic and familial entanglements in a small Maine fishing town one summer builds up to three moments of utter emotional brutality so severe that the long moments in between them thrum like high tension wires. A college boy (Nick Stahl; never liked him before, but he's great here) having a fling with a townie single mother (Marisa Tomei, back from the dead and in excellent form), the boy's parents (Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson, who carry the picture with a realistic melancholy gravitas), and the mistress's ex-husband (William Mapother, who is related to Tom Cruise, but a fine actor nonetheless; he recalls Eric Roberts in Star 80, the creepiest creep in movie history) form the locus of Todd Field's insidiously gripping adaptation of Andre Dubus' deeply moral short story. (SEAN NELSON) Metro, Uptown

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
This digital claymation for the under-10 set concerns a young man who likes to invent things like rocket-powered toothbrushes and what not, but whom everyone thinks is a dork. Until the aliens invade, that is. Then, come the wet-ass hour, he's everybody's fucking daddy. Well fuck you, world! FUCK YOU! Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Northgate, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12

Joe Somebody
Instead of re-creating the minor success he had with director John Pasquin (The Santa Clause), Tim Allen has produced one of the most undercooked Everyman sketches I've ever seen. (HANNAH LEVIN) Grand Alderwood, Northgate, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12

Kate and Leopold
Crocodile Dundee crossed with Sleepless in Seattle, if your mind can wrap itself around that horror. (TAMARA PARIS) Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Woodinville 12

* Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Director Peter Jackson's adaptation of part one of Tolkien's tale of Hobbits, Wizards, Orcs, Elves, Black Riders, and Dwarves has finally made it to the screen with real live humans, including heavyweights like Ian McKellen (Gandalf!) and Christopher Lee (Saruman!), and middleweight contenders like Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins) and Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn). (SEAN NELSON) Cinerama, Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

The Majestic
Sitting through this movie was like watching a four-hour long Coke commercial or eating a pound of frosting roses or submitting to a high-fructose corn syrup enema. (TAMARA PARIS) Aurora Cinema Grill, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Metro, Woodinville 12

* The Man Who Wasn't There
The new film by the Coen Brothers, shot in glorious black and white, recalls the low-budget, slow burning, postwar noir of directors like Edgar G. Ulmer, and features Billy Bob Thornton's uncannily Bogartlike performance (In a Lonely Place-era) as the eponymous Man. (SEAN NELSON) Broadway Market, Varsity

Monsters, Inc.
The first two-thirds of this film are pleasant to watch, though the narcotizing currents of confused cultural allegory that run through modern Disney films course just as strongly through this one. But the final third of the movie is excellent and beautiful, arriving suddenly at one of those gorgeous imaginary landscapes that legitimately become a part of a child's dream fabric. (EVAN SULT) Meridian 16

* Mulholland Drive
Beautifully constructed, bizarre, and funny. It's just impossible to say definitively whether this is good or not. (SEAN NELSON) Aurora Cinema Grill, Broadway Market, Metro

Not Another Teen Movie
Yes, it is another teen movie. (HANNAH LEVIN) Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12

* Ocean's 11
Steven Soderbergh remakes the classic (though turgid) Rat Pack heist film. This time, instead of Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and Angie Dickinson, we get George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Julia Roberts. Ain't that a kick in the head? Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

* The Royal Tenenbaums
The most important movie of the year has finally arrived. Wes Anderson's follow-up to the beloved Rushmore, the most important movie of that year, stars Gene Hackman, Angelica Huston, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Owen Wilson, and Bill Murray (rocking a Professor Barnacle beard) as an extended family of neurotic geniuses whose bastard of a patriarch (Hackman) wants to bring closer together. Too bad they hate his guts. The film is hilariously funny, dryly tender, and impeccably designed. A worthy successor. (SEAN NELSON Neptune, Redmond Town Center, Uptown

The Shipping News
The film is full of shit on every level--every word it says is a lie. It should be avoided like fruitcake. PS: Whoever it was that told Kevin Spacey to stop playing charismatic bastards and to start playing cosmic naifs should be dipped in tar. (SEAN NELSON) Guild 45th, Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center

The Spy Game
A mass-market espionage thriller starring Robert Redford as a CIA agent on the verge of retirement and Brad Pitt as his rogue protégé. (SEAN NELSON) Aurora Cinema Grill, Meridian 16

Vanilla Sky
Tom Cruise and Penélope Cruz star in Cameron Crowe's inferior remake of Alejandro Amenábar's nonetheless overrated Abre los Ojos. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Varsity, Woodinville 12