Seattle Jewish Film Festival

Various directors

As per the usual for Seattle special-interest film festivals, this year's Jewish Film Festival is like an artificially stocked lake: It comes packed with plump, recognizable movies that have already had a theatrical release here or will show up shortly. Of those, only one is really spectacular: Ushpizin is strange and wonderful. Part fertility fable, part broad prisoners-on-the-lam comedy, the film is set in an insular Hasidic neighborhood in Jerusalem, and the writers and stars are all ultra-Orthodox (although director Gidi Dar is secular). Some of its values are a little off-putting (most Westerners don't see infertility as a divine judgment), but others—tolerance, hospitality, forgiveness—are all pretty irresistible. As for Oscar-nominee Sophie Scholl, I vote yes, but the anti-anti-Semitic agitdoc Protocols of Zion is pretty numbing.

Whisky, the best film in the festival, is an obscure Uruguayan movie about a man who owns a shabby sock factory. (Though it's not likely to receive a local theatrical run, it screened once last year at the Global Lens series at Northwest Film Forum; the SJFF screening is Monday, March 13 at 8:45 p.m. at MOHAI.) Jacobo follows the same gray routine every day, from drinking tea prepared by floor supervisor Marta in the morning to closing up shop in the evening. When his brother Herman, who owns a bigger sock factory in Brazil, visits on the anniversary of their mother's death, Jacobo asks Marta to pose as his wife. The consequences are melancholic and amusing.

An Israeli entry in the overcoming-adversity genre, 39 Pounds of Love is a documentary about Ami Ankilewitz, a man in his 30s who was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy when he was a year old. (The SJFF screening is Wednesday, March 15 at 6:30 p.m. at MOHAI.) The movie is subtitled in an infantilizing font, and it takes little actual interest in the flirtatious Romanian caretaker Ami is in love with, but it's inspiring if you like that sort of thing.

Next week, the festival wraps up with some solid narrative films. Set in 1981, Campfire (Joseph Cedar, Time of Favor) is about a family—a widow and her two daughters—who are applying to join a settlement in the West Bank. (It screened at SIFF last year.) The film has drawn criticism in Israel for portraying early settlers as cliquish busybodies who were looking for bigger yards, not Zionist laurels. But Cedar's relentlessly personal focus keeps the national politics at a distance. What you'll really remember is the unnecessary scene in which a sexually curious teenage girl is groped by some punks at a bonfire. The less ambitious Joy, about a mall employee whose lonely life can be traced back to her father's philandering, is Sundance-y but enjoyable. And I was amused by the water-drop sound effect that (unintentionally, I assume) made everything sound as though it were taking place in a cave. Then there's Go for Zucker, a German comedy that plays with Jewish stereotypes. (That makes it sound more dangerous than it is.) The main character is a former East German celebrity and gambler who doesn't like to be reminded he's Jewish—until his mother dies and he stands to gain from her will. ANNIE WAGNER

The Libertine

dir. Laurence Dunmore

Of the actors of his generation, Johnny Depp is perhaps best suited to don the Brando lapel. While this comparison is mostly a good thing, the younger actor may be a little too enamored with the elder's fallow period—that pre-Godfather comeback era when Brando apparently chose his scripts via dartboard, aiming for whatever vehicle would allow his eccentricities fullest rein. However indisputable the talents of both men, there's this nagging feeling that, too often, other concerns pale beside the opportunity to goof around in a false nose and a silly voice.

Depp (and his plastic schnoz) may very well have had a ball making The Libertine, but you'd never know it from the results. Almost ridiculously dour, this oft-delayed account of one of the 17th century's most notorious party animals trips the pretension alarm from frame one. For all of Depp's celebrated inventiveness, he can't rise above the relentless thud of High Art.

Stephen Jeffery's script (adapted from his play) concerns itself with the final few years of John Wilmot (AKA the second Earl of Rochester), a poet, playwright, and occasional political prisoner who managed to raise a number of royal stinks before dying of syphilis at the age of 31. Debuting director Laurence Dunmore knows well his Barry Lyndon, and crams each frame full to bursting with flickering candlelight, decaying wigs, and all matter of muck. Historically accurate, yes, but such a consciously weighty approach commits the cardinal sin for a story about a man who sold his soul for carnal rock 'n' roll: For all the overstuffed corsets and garters snapping to and fro, it's about as bawdy as a C-Span appropriations committee meeting. Back in the day, any self-respecting groundling would have chucked a tomato or two. ANDREW WRIGHT

Winter Passing

dir. Adam Rapp

Zooey Deschanel is made of magic. Zooey Deschanel can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile. I love Zooey Deschanel. Pardon the mash note, but with a less transcendent actress in the lead, Winter Passing—another in the Generation-Y-fraught-emotional-homecoming genre—might have totally blown. Instead, the film (the first from playwright Adam Rapp, whose Finer Noble Gases had its Seattle premiere at Washington Ensemble Theatre last winter) maintains a pleasant balance between maudlin and amusing, shrieking misery and playful froth.

Deschanel is Reese Holden, emotionally dead New York actress and daughter of two legendary literary recluses (read: Salinger and Salinger), who self-medicates with cocaine, Jameson's, and unfulfilling sex, and by repeatedly slamming her hand in a drawer. (I said the movie was fraught.) When a book publisher offers big bucks for a box of her parents' love letters, Reese heads to her childhood home where she finds her father (a frighteningly aged Ed Harris) in an alcoholic puddle, cohabitating with two young strangers (Amelia Warner and Will Ferrell). And since there's no coke in Michigan (apparently), she's got nothing to do but dig through the detritus of her parents' stormy relationship, and come to terms with why they seemed to love their typewriters more than their daughter.

Deschanel, like I said, is funny and affecting, and holds Winter Passing steady above the sentimental doldrums. If you don't like Will Ferrell, you'll probably find him distracting, but his character—Christian rocker Corbit, who says he had to quit his band, Punching Pilate, because "they were starting to get all ska"—has a gentle, if silly, believability. Winter Passing is a dark movie with a happy wrap-up—the kind of movie that haters love to write off as contrived or inauthentic or boring. But why can't it just be nice? LINDY WEST

The Hills Have Eyes

dir. Alexandre Aja

For a guy who doesn't talk much, Leatherface sure has a lot to answer for. Of the hundreds of entries in the post–Texas Chainsaw slasher boom of the '70s and '80s, only a rarefied few—Cronenberg's Rabid, say, or the still dumbfounding I Spit on Your Grave—managed to follow its lead and lurch into the realm of what Stephen King once termed Please, Make It Stop cinema: movies where the combination of grainy film stock, amateurish actors, and the aura of relentless sadism conspired to ooze through the fourth wall and effectively fuck up your dreams. Catch one of these grotty suckers under the wrong set of circumstances (ideally, Cinemax at 3:00 a.m.) and you'd walk funny for weeks.

Much like the MTV-ized Chainsaw remake from a few years ago, the new version of Wes Craven's 1977 desert-mutants-vs.-dumbass-tourists saga The Hills Have Eyes utterly trumps its source material on a technical level. When it comes to getting your primal ya-yas out, though, the combination of state-of-the-art effects and actors who can actually act makes it somehow easier to shrug off. Craven's film has, to put it charitably, not aged well (the feral cannibals all seem to be clad in pleather Jazzercise outfits, for starters), but the core theme of utter helplessness, particularly in the notorious RV rape sequence, remains tough to shake. This reimagining certainly amps up the unpleasantness (to the point of filling the screen with photographs of actual birth defects), but that coveted nightmare vibe remains elusive.

This marks the second film from director Alexandre Aja, whose earlier Haute Tension sparked hopes among the internet set that he might be a grindhouse renaissance man. Based on his output so far, I'm not entirely convinced. He's got enthusiasm out the wazoo and can certainly sling the red stuff, but for all Aja's chops, pinging that elusive reptile part of the brain still seems beyond him. ANDREW WRIGHT

Failure to Launch

dir. Tom Dey

Did you hear? Total nonsense is the new not total nonsense. Case in point: Failure to Launch. Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) is an incredible babe who sells boats, fears commitment, and lives with his parents (the uncomfortable-with-each-other Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw). Tripp is 35 years old. Instead of, I don't know, asking nicely, the 'rents hire Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker, looking more and more like Kathy Griffin every day) to date their son and convince him to move out.

A few quibbles: Granted, there are 35-year-old men who live at home, but they're usually less McConaughey and more BTK, if you know what I mean. And how does Paula make a living in the full-time coaxing-manboys-out-of-the-nest business? And what is it, exactly, about dating Paula that makes this happen? Don't expect answers from Failure to Launch. Do expect oodles more nonsense, a horribly unfunny series of slapstick animal attacks, and several full minutes of Terry Bradshaw's gleaming, bare buttocks (Dad celebrates his freshly emptied nest by creating a long-desired Naked Room, which is, unfortunately, just what it sounds like).

There are two spheres at work in Failure to Launch—performance and plot—and, fortunately, they rarely make contact. For most of the movie, the actors maintain a loose orbit, gleefully disregarding the impossibly strained premise grinding along beneath them. The result is a slow, erratic mishmash of absurd doo-doo interspersed with flashes of comedy magic.

Bradley Cooper, as Tripp's granola sidekick, Demo ("Deceptions are poisonous, like margarine. I can't have that in my body"), proves that he should be in every movie. In her disinterested drone, everything Zooey Deschanel says is the funniest thing I've ever heard ("I smell fun. You are a dirty little fun-haver!"). Alterna-comedy heroes Patton Oswalt and Rob Corddry cameo. And love him or hate him (love him), McConaughey's Southern, couldn't-give-a-shit weirdness is perfect for this not-worth-a-shit movie.

I'd totally date him, even if I had to sleep in the Naked Room. LINDY WEST

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

dir. Dan Ireland

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is a not-very-good movie about old ladies: cute ones, nice ones, grumpy ones, dead ones. Joan Plowright (thoroughly charming) is Mrs. Palfrey, an upper-crusty English widow who moves into London's Claremont Hotel, a retirement home for elderly oddballs. She's just settling into her new lonely independence when she takes a tumble—kismet!—outside the apartment of 26-year-old Ludovic Meyer (Pride and Prejudice's beautiful Rupert Friend), who just happens to be a writer ("I am a writer") in search of muse and bosom buddy. The two embark upon an odyssey of emotions, guitar ballads, and creepy, sexually charged transference (Ludo's fave poet is William Blake—same as Mrs. P's dead husband's!)—and learn that grandsons are unreliable, British food is bad, and D. H. Lawrence is terribly naughty. And seriously, what is up with answering machines?

Only a zombie could resist the emotional low blow of faded youth—of an old lady sitting by a photo of yesteryear's handsome lost love. Yes, it's sad, but it's also easy, and Mrs. Palfrey (directed by SIFF cofounder Dan Ireland) might be the chewiest, cheesiest corncake ever to hit the screen. Hey, Mrs. P, what about the things that matter in life? "Most of the things that mattered to me aren't around anymore. They live in here [points to head] and here [points to heart]." Hey, Ludo, what's it like talking to Mrs. P? "She danced around her memories with the agile step of a young girl." Hey, what's that in my lap? Oh, it's barf.

If I were old—which I'm not—I'd be offended by patronizing drivel like Mrs. Palfrey. Why do we pander to the elderly the way we pander to children? Aren't old people just young people who've been hanging around longer? Does the human animal biologically outgrow good taste? LINDY WEST

The Shaggy Dog

dir. Brian Robbins

In minor ways it seems as though the five writers behind this idiotic remake of the '50s Disney movie The Shaggy Dog had precisely me in mind. I know I'm being solipsistic, but it's really eerie.

First, the film takes pains to demonstrate the difference between a monkey and a chimp. This is a major preoccupation of mine. Second, it contains a pivotal product placement for Scrabble, the Hasbro-brand crossword game, which is the best board game ever. And finally, it teaches parents the valuable lesson that one should "love and support" one's son, even if it turns out he prefers musical theater to football. What's not to appreciate?

Tim Allen, for one. Also, Tim Allen lifting his leg to pee in a urinal. Tim Allen licking a pretty lady's face. A grotesquely elongated CGI tongue lolling out of Tim Allen's mouth. Unlike the original, which had the sense to give the mutant dog-person role to a small boy (who cares if kids run around on all fours?), this version is all puffy-baked-potato man Tim Allen, pretending to be a canine. It's an intense relief when his character fully shifts into the fur ball, allowing six trained dogs and an animatronic team to take over—but even then the Tim Allen voiceover won't shut up.

Basically, the plot is this: An evil pharmaceutical company steals an ancient Tibetan monk-dog named Dog of Ageless Wonder (insert Joan Rivers joke here) and formulates an immortality serum. Tim Allen is a prosecuting attorney and his daughter (Zena Grey, a redheaded Lindsay Lohan-in-waiting) is a cute high-school animal-rights activist. Tim Allen gets bitten by the Dog of Ageless Wonder, and... hey, there's a man-dog! And a frog-dog! And a snake-dog! And a monkey-dog! And a chimp-dog! They all drive a car, the end. ANNIE WAGNER