Concessions

WASHINGTON GROWN

Grand Illusion

Recommendation Level: Medium Recommended

This three-week showcase of local films probably could have been two
weeks (there are some industrial staples in the creamed corn, if you
know what I mean), but I ain’t mad atcha, Washington Grown! The first
week’s shows are divided into two separate programs: “Local Laughs” and
“Fringe Favorites.” Local Laughs is entertaining but slow, though it
features some fantastic conceptual business from Cro-Magnon
Pictures (Man Talk!). Fringe Favorites is the correct choice
here—comedic shorts from the eminently recommendable Kevin and
Travis, Black Daisy, and Paste Dogg Animation—though you also
have to sit through Far Too Gone, an endless, ENDLESS “short”
about a really boring guy in a bathrobe who thinks he’s Tori Amos.
Hmm.

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE

Central Cinema

Recommendation Level: Accio Movie Ticket—Am I
Right, Nerds?!

Remember when Daniel Radcliffe did that play and we had to see his
penis?

VACUUM

Northwest Film Forum

Recommendation Level: FREE CAKE!

Tired of paying too much for cake? How would ZERO DOLLARS
suit you?

EFFING BRUTAL

Grand Illusion

Recommendation Level: Certainly Not

Effing Brutal is obviously a labor of love: a full-color,
full-length graphic novel based on that guy-who-thinks-he’s-Tori-Amos
thing from earlier (seriously? Is MORE necessary?), which has now been
“made” into a feature-length “film.” Basically what
writer/director Brian Labrecque did here is film each page, sliding
from panel to panel, while a dry British-ish narrator and miscellaneous
actors read the words out loud. It is slow, it is overblown, it
involves ketamine. On the DVD case, Labrecque declares himself an
“indie film god.”

HALLOWEEN II TWO: THE HALLOWEENENING OF CURLY’S GOLD TO DEATH
WITH A KNIFE

Wide release

Recommendation Level: I’m Going to Stab You in the Face with a
Knife

Dude, what a useless, steaming bucket of solid waste this franchise
is. And by “franchise,” I actually mean “GENRE.” Maybe it’s time for
slasher films to be deceased? Thoughts? Since, you know,

we kind of already have 45,000 identical movies in which the main
plot point is a woman getting stabbed in the face with a knife to
death? Do you really not have a handle on what that looks like yet?
Because if—like in Roman times—we used “a woman getting
stabbed in the face with a knife to death” as currency, you would
already be a fucking gold-plated gazillionaire, with a
woman-getting-stabbed-in-the-face-with-a-knife-to-death-shaped swimming
pool at your summer palace. Get over it.

But, to be more specific, here’s why I hate Halloween II Two.
First of all, Laurie “Avril Lavigne” McBoohoo is the most
limp and helpless female protagonist in the history of vaginas.
Second of all: MICHAEL MYERS, WHAT THE FUCK?! Questions: Why are you so
mad? Why do you have to stab everyone? Also, why are you magic? Why are
you unkillable? Why do you have superstrength? And how come it takes
six men to lift you? I’m going to do some quick math here—even if
those are the world’s six most shriveled Dickensian orphans (which
they’re not), they can still definitely lift 100 pounds each. WHY DO
YOU WEIGH 600 POUNDS?! What are you eating, man?!

If I had to pick one good thing about this movie, it’s that several
of the people in it are on the television show Deadwood, which
reminded me pleasantly of two places I’d rather be: melting into
my own couch watching the television show Deadwood or in the
actual city of Deadwood, circa 1872, wiping a rotting cowpoke’s
smallpox lesions with this tuft of Indian hair I bought. THAT WOULD
HAVE BEEN BETTER. Also I would like to say that I think Rob Zombie is
kind of hot.