Film

Film Shorts

Count of Monte Cristo, I Am Sam, Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, Lantana, Metropolis, The Mothman Prophecies, A Walk to Remember

Black Hawk Down
See Stranger Suggests. Ridley Scott's effort to tell the story of Somalia, 1993, without dealing with all the messy politics. Ain't that America? Metro

Brotherhood of the Wolf
It's not just that the plot (about a superwolf laying waste to the French countryside in the 1700s and a scientist with amazing fighting prowess sent to track it down) grows less and less sensible; not just that the lead actor is a second-rate Christopher Lambert; not just that the sex scenes are lurid and yet untitillating; not just that everyone (including a transplanted Iroquois and scuzzy French mercenaries) knows kung fu--Brotherhood of the Wolf is all of this and more, a special French fusion of the pretentious and the inane. Were it not so long, this would be camp fun. But it is long. So very long. So very, very, very long. (BRET FETZER) Pacific Place 11

Depth of Focus
A monthly screening series of short films with free food and a pay-as-you-exit policy, curated by the Puget Sound Cinema Society. For more info: www.scn.org/pscs. University Heights Center

* FANTASTIKA
NWFF presents a program of films by Russian visionary Aleksandr Ptushko. This week: Stone Flower, a fable set in the Ural Mountains. Grand Illusion

* The Great Uncle Jimmy
See Stranger Suggests. A special glimpse of a new work-in-progress from Seattle's most lovable rogue of an independent filmmaker. 911 Media Arts Center

* JAZZ ON FILM
This week: Shadows and Too Late Blues, two early works by John Cassavetes. The former is his 1960 debut, a masterpiece of rambling improv and smoky cinematography. The latter was his first attempt at a studio picture, a folly he would repeat on A Child is Waiting. Cassavetes may be unfairly fetishized by a public too eager to overlook the incredibly mannered affectations of his so-called naturalism, but his best work truly is stunning, and should be seen in the posh environs of a great theater like the JBL. (SEAN NELSON) JBL Theater at EMP

* 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) Egyptian

MOUNTAINFILM IN TELLURIDE
In a state lousy with film festivals (Colorado), Mountainfilm stands out as being a "climbing-related" event, which is to say that the shorts presented here all have something to do with rocks or climbing them, to which I say: Chomp on, granolas! (SEAN NELSON) Town Hall

Not For Sale
Just in time for our Yes Logo issue comes this television documentary about anti-globalization activists and their struggle to battle against the inevitable and make the world a more hospitable place for "the environment, our food supply, and human rights." Produced by NW filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, who will attend the screening. Independent Media Center

Snow Dogs
A new Disney comedy starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and James Coburn about a city slicker (the former) who inherits a pack of sled dogs and is antagonized by a gruff Alaskan (the latter). Woof. Metro

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

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, Majestic Bay, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Behind Enemy Lines
Ugly as sin, badly lit, poorly acted, logically untenable, and possibly not even written, Behind Enemy Lines is a total fucking travesty in which even the makeup is incompetently applied. Do not see it, please, for the love of all things holy. (SEAN NELSON) Pacific Place 11

* Charlotte Gray
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 Devil's Backbone
A sun-baked gothic ghost story with a moving Marxist allegory buried in its gory heart. In the last death throes of the Spanish Civil War, newly orphaned Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is dropped off at an imposing school for leftist children. There is very little to eat, an unexploded bomb ticks away half buried in the dusty courtyard, and Jaime (Inigo Garces)--the ad hoc leader of these traumatized youngsters--tortures Carlos mercilessly. But worst of all, a ragged, pale apparition of a missing student haunts the school hallways, begging Carlos to bring his killer to justice. Genuinely frightening, 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
Ever wonder what the auteur behind Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video has been up to for the last 20 years? Me neither. But somehow I'm not surprised by the revelation that in addition to cranking out music videos and commercials, Bob Giraldi has also become a big-shot restaurateur in New York City. So, I suppose his decision to make a feature film about--what else?--being a big shot restaurateur in New York City shouldn't come as a shock. Who else could so fully articulate 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? Like the nouveau-fusion confusion cuisine he so lovingly prepares, this movie has 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, which wound up, as we all know, with an icebound vessel full of starving crewmen reduced to smoking penguin feathers. Lucky for this documentary that they had a camera crew with 'em.... 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. Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11, Seven Gables

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, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

Impostor
Gary Fleder directs Gary Sinise and Madeleine Stowe in this sci-fi thriller (about aliens and mistaken identity and so forth), the release of which has been delayed since last year. That must mean it's pretty good! Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, 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

* Kandahar
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

* 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). The actors are all outstanding, and they have to be, because the film's real challenge (beyond making a credible Balrog; accomplished, btw) lies with its faithfulness to the subject of the book: It's an epic adventure about ambivalence. Right down to Frodo's face on the poster, Fellowship is all about rising above doubts (rather than stepping up to convictions), and all the special effects in the world can't convey that. Even though it's not perfect, this movie still kicks fucking ass. (SEAN NELSON) Cinerama, Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

The Majestic
It wasn't long ago that Jim Carrey burst onto the screen with the unpredictable and vaguely menacing charisma of a true trickster. But like ultimate antihero Jack Nicholson and the fantastically misguided Kevin Spacey before him, he's turned his back on difficult or even unlikeable characters in favor of a one-way ticket to Sapville. Carrey could have been something special. But at least we still have Christopher Walken. (TAMARA PARIS) Aurora Cinema Grill, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, 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, Metro

* Mulholland Drive
This new work from David Lynch is confounding and bizarre (for a change). Originally conceived as a network TV pilot, Drive takes a long time establishing its characters--an aspiring actress, a glamorous amnesiac, a luckless Hollywood producer, and a mysterious gang of Mafiosi who are dead set on making sure a certain woman gets a certain part. Like all of Lynch's post-Wild at Heart work, Drive is more concerned with atmosphere and suggestion than linear meaning. But like all Lynch, period, it's beautifully constructed, bizarre, and funny. It's just impossible to say definitively whether this is good or not. (SEAN NELSON) Broadway Market, Metro

* 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

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. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Varsity

* 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

SUPERFLAT CINEMA
There is something inherently cinematic about The Fuccon Family, despite the fact that the camera never moves and the actors are mannequins. Editing to the dialogue, Yoshimasa Ishibashi takes a family that's happy on the surface, with big plastic smiles, and throws them into a series of soap opera plots, from kidnapping to infidelity to demonic possession. The disjunct is hilarious. Preceding the series of three-minute episodes are other examples of Ishibashi's twisted sensibility. These include music-driven shorts that feature sexy girls in absurd situations, and titles include Buttocktica, Dr. Phero, and Six Singing Girls. Come out and see these shining examples of Japanese nonsense humor. (ANDY SPLETZER) Little Theatre

Vanilla Sky
Tom Cruise and Penélope Cruz star in Cameron Crowe's inferior remake of Alejandro Amenábar's nonetheless overrated Abre los Ojos. If the rather long film is shrill and largely humorless for its first two hours--during which we are subjected to all manner of unreliable narration and circuitous plotting (not to mention cloying acting from Cruise and Cruz, the criminal squandering of the great Jason Lee, and some serious filmmakerly self-congratulation from Crowe), it makes amends with an impressive final 30 minutes. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Varsity, Woodinville 12