8 1/2 WOMEN--Egyptian

BOYS & GIRLS--Metro, Pacific Place

FANTASIA 2000--Metro, Cinerama

GRASS--Varsity Calendar

GROOVE--Neptune

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST--Harvard Exit

SHAFT--Metro, Oaktree, Meridian

TITAN AE--Metro, Meridian, Oaktree

AIR: EATING, SLEEPING, WAITING, AND PLAYING--Little Theatre

ANIMATOR'S SOCIAL--911 Media Arts

CALIFORNIA DREAMING: SHORT FILMS BY MIKE MILLS--Little Theatre

COMIC ARTISTS MAKE MOVIES--Little Theatre

SILENT FUNNIES--Little Theatre

June 23--Chicken Run, Me, Myself & Irene, Beau Travail, Sunshine, The Butterfly, Long Night's Journey into Day

8 1/2 Women
Peter Greenaway's latest potboiler. See review in this issue. Reviewed this issue. Egyptian

*AIR: Eating, Sleeping, Waiting, and Playing
Existential filmmaker Mike Mills' homage to the French band AIR, with interview clips, concert footage, music videos, and Mills' own unique and funny interpretation of a "rockumentary." With random, intercut scenes of people on the street and "life on the road," this film shows the absurdity of life during concert tours. Thurs June 15 only. Little Theatre

American Psycho
Based on the much-reviled book by Bret Easton Ellis, the movie is actually pretty good. Really. Set at the height of the Reagan '80s, American Psycho deftly satirizes the deadening effect of unchecked corporate wealth and power. (Andy Spletzer) Crest, Uptown

Animator's Social
911's gathering/screening for local animators, filmmakers, and doodlers returns--this time with curated works from Cal Arts, Evergreen State College, and other regional stuff in the spotlight. Bring your own animation (VHS only!) for an open screening. Fri June 16 at 8, $3. 911 Media Arts

The Big Kahuna
Kahuna, starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito as a couple of crappy salesmen, is a play adaptation, which means that the filmmakers face the eternal challenge: how to make three people talking for 90 minutes into an actual movie. They fail. (Sean Nelson) Uptown

Big Momma's House
In this weak comedy, Martin Lawrence plays the good guy, and handsome Terrence Howard, from The Best Man, plays the bad guy. The story is this: Sexy Nia Long is a single mother and lover of a heartless bank robber the FBI desperately wants to catch. When she suddenly disappears, the FBI stakes out her Georgia grandmother's home with the hope that she, the bank robber, and the money will show up there. But when her grandmother is suddenly called out of town on an emergency, special agent Martin Lawrence assumes her role (her bed, her clothes, her big butt, her Southern drawl) and deviously attempts to lure Nia Long and her lover into prison (if not death row). True, it is a bad movie, but it is the most creative retelling of Little Red Riding Hood I have ever seen. (Charles Mudede) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11

Bossa Nova
Watching this simple tale of a small group of people becoming entangled with one another is a task of sweet, comic relaxation. Set against the shocking mountains of Rio de Janeiro, everything leads to romance in this Latin film; everyone and everything is beautiful. Even the hospital room has a sweeping view of the Brazilian coast. The strong acting proves this story's good nature. (Paula Gilovich) Harvard Exit

Boys and Girls
With a title that covers just about everyone, this movie is sure to appeal to the entire human race. Starring the lovely Freddie Prinze Jr. as one of the boys (too bad!). Metro, Pacific Place 11

*California Dreaming: Films by Mike Mills
A trio of contemporary shorts (the suburban angst-heavy Architecture of Reassurance; Deformer, a profile of skater Ed Templeton; and Harmelodics, featuring Ornette Coleman) from director/designer/ Southern California hipster Mike Mills, whose pedigree includes skateparks and album art for Sonic Youth and the Beastie Boys. See Stranger Suggests. Fri-Sun June 16-18. Little Theatre

Center Stage
Teenybopper dance movies are such a delicate, easily bruised genre that it hardly seems fair to judge them using the unwieldy tools of the critic. Center Stage, Hollywood's newest celebration of dance ("Dance!"), offers the usual story of underdog versus system, the strictures of ballet versus the creativity of modern dance, and love expressed via high art. It's campy, it's corny, and it's the feel-good movie of the year. (Traci Vogel) Redmond Town Center

*Comic Artists Make Movies
A fail-proof mission for Seattle's most brilliant comic artists, commissioned by the adventurous WigglyWorld studios: What if comic book artists made Super-8 films? Featuring the talents of Ellen Forney, Jim Woodring, Pat Moriarty, and Brian Sendelbach. See Stranger Suggests. Wed June 21 only at 6, 8; artists will be present. Little Theatre

Dinosaur
From the beginning of time, this has been the drama of the dinosaurs. They are oppressed by the mighty and terrifying Tyrannosaurus; they are always searching for water or a green paradise; their big eggs are always eaten or crushed just moments before they hatch; their social order is rigidly patriarchal; and they are always ignorant of their pending doom. What more can this $100 million-plus animation add to this immemorial drama? A group of horny little monkeys, who one supposes are our ancestors. (Charles Mudede) Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Southcenter

Dolphins
Everyone knows that dolphins are the smartest animals on the planet; Dolphins proves they're the coolest as well. (Gillian G. Gaar) Pacific Science Center IMAX

East is East
This decent little movie is set in the early '70s, in an English town called Salford. The great Om Puri plays a fanatical father married to a British woman (Linda Basset). They own a small chip shop and a small house, which is packed with seven rebellious kids. With the exception of one boy, all the children are headed one way (toward total assimilation of British culture), and the father the other (preservation of Pakistani values); all that's left is a big showdown in the end. But Puri saves the day by doing what he does best: deepening and extending his character's emotional and psychological range. (Charles Mudede) Broadway Market

Erin Brockovich
Despite having been directed by indie superstar Steven Soderbergh, Erin Brockovich is just what it is: another big-budget Hollywood film starring Julia Roberts. In fact, because this is a Hollywood film, we suddenly notice aspects of Soderbergh's filmmaking that are harder to detect when he has complete control over his material: namely, how brilliant he is working with supporting actors, most notably men. (Charles Mudede) Admiral, Crest

Everest
The first IMAX footage ever shot on top of the world. Pacific Science Center IMAX

EXTREME
Don't try this at home, folks. An entire film bursting and soaring with EXTREME sports, EXTREME risks, and the ULTIMATE in EXTREME challenges. Pacific Science Center IMAX

Fantasia 2000
The latest Walt Disney sweeping-animation-and-classical-music extravaganza. Cinerama, Metro

*Fight Club
With Fight Club, David Fincher has made his best film yet, taking a bleak story--written in the first person with a detached sense of humor--and matching its tone perfectly. Fri-Sat June 16-17. (Andy Spletzer) Egyptian

*FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE PEOPLE
2nd Ave Pizza's summer mini-festivals (always FREE!) continue with this collection of shrimpy cinema, including Under the Rainbow (1981), Little Cigars (1974), Terry Gilliam's dwarf-errific Time Bandits (1981), Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small (1969), and the bizarre cult favorite The Terror of Tiny Town (1938), a "miniature Western" featuring an all-midget cast, musical numbers, and Shetland ponies. Thurs-Sat June 15-17; see Stranger Movie Times for details. 2nd Ave Pizza

Frequency
A hodgepodge about time travel; ham-radio enthusiasm; the hazards of firefighting; baseball; mother love; and a father-son tag-team tracking down a nurse-butchering psychopath. This utterly confused film is a perfect example of Hollywood's shameless tendency to pillage the graveyard for the spare parts of its own schmaltzy genres. The result is a Frankenstein monster that bumbles and stumbles across the thin emotional terrain of an Americanized (and therefore totally false) idea of nostalgia and redemption. (Rick Levin) Aurora Cinema Grill, City Centre

Gladiator
Director Ridley Scott tramps through the standard gladiator movie plot like a tipsy party host, embracing each and every cliché like a dear old friend. War hero General Maximus (Russell Crowe) is stripped of his position by a scheming new Caesar (Joaquin Phoenix). Escaping too late to save his family, Maximus falls into the hands of a slaver (the late Oliver Reed), and with the help of a former love and his rough-but-likable gladiator pals, seeks his revenge by finding glory within the Coliseum. Scott then uses all the technical advantages of modern filmmaking to make the details as lavish as possible. (Tom Spurgeon) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Guild 45th, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

Gone in 60 Seconds
To protect his little brother from an injurious limey, master car thief Nicolas Cage comes out of retirement, recruiting his old friends (Robert Duvall and Angelina Jolie among them) to help him steal 50 fancy cars in one night. Though all the ubiquities of the Jerry Bruckheimer production--unlikely explosions, garish minorities, stupid character names (like "Memphis" and "Sway"), and flagrant product endorsements--are firmly entrenched, this film manages to succeed on the charm of its actors (Robert Duvall is the greatest man alive), the stealth of its chase scenes, and the immutable allure of the against-the-clock heist plot. It's not that the film is actually good, but it's so much better than you expect it to be that it seems good, or feels good. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Northgate, Pacific Place 11

*Grass
A documentary about the history of marijuana in the United States. Reviewed this issue. Varsity Calendar

GROOVE
Saturday Night Fever for the Techno set. Reviewed this issue. Neptune

*Hamlet
Michael Almereyda's new adaptation of Hamlet, starring Ethan Hawke of all people, is a thrilling surprise; a contemporary reading of the play that comes closer to tapping its potential as a paradigm for human conflict than any other film that's tried. The deft intrusions of contemporary life--Hamlet is an amateur film/videomaker; Claudius' ghost appears on a security camera; the "what a piece of work is man" speech is interrupted by a cell phone; "to be or not to be" is spoken in a Blockbuster Video store, Hamlet surrounded by placards reading "ACTION"--play not as clever-clever transpositions, but as perfect illustrations of the play's immortal truth and infinite mutability. (Sean Nelson) Varsity

*High Fidelity
A romantic comedy for guys. John Cusack plays the cynically introspective Rob Gordon, the owner of a small record store who, for various reasons, has shit luck with women. He's a jerk, basically, but he's not altogether clueless about his jerkiness. He struggles and obsesses and makes lists that he thinks define his life, but he's no closer to understanding women than he was in the fifth grade--which happens to be when he got dumped for the first time. (Kathleen Wilson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Broadway Market, Guild 45th

The Idiots
The Idiots follows a group of young adults who share a large house outside Copenhagen, a tendency toward over-education, and a fondness for pretending to be mentally deficient in public--"spassing," as they call it. Despite the cries of alarmist critics, The Idiots never degenerates into poking fun at the mentally handicapped--but that doesn't mean I liked it. On the contrary, while there are some nice moments here and there, and a handful of very funny scenes, ultimately boredom settles in to stay, primarily because the film is never offensive enough. (Bruce Reid) Grand Illusion

Island of the Sharks
There are SHARKS on the IMAX screen, and they're rickety RAW! Pacific Science Center

*Keeping the Faith
Any film that begins with a drunken priest staggering through the streets of New York and tumbling into a garbage pile is automatically fine by me. Edward Norton (who also directed) is the drunky priest and Ben Stiller is a confused rabbi. The film is genuinely funny and sweetly romantic as it focuses on all aspects of this not-so-holy trinity. (Kathleen Wilson) City Centre

KIKUJIRO
Japanese director "Beat" Takeshi Kitano's most recent film, Kikujiro, again features the charismatic Kitano in the lead role as an ill-tempered thug who escorts an abandoned nine-year-old boy on a quest to find his mother. A modern Japanese variant of the curmudgeonly-adult-tramsformed-by-the-innocence-of-a-child genre, Kitano's film, while streaked with brilliance, is nevertheless disappointing for those expecting the bold originality of Kitano's last film, Fireworks. Lacking narrative drive, Kikujiro unfortunately ends up feeling overly long and slightly self-indulgent. (Caveh Zahedi) Metro

*LINDA'S SUMMER MOVIES
Back again for a sixth season, it's the original outdoor drinking/film-watching extravaganza, presented, as always, FOR FREE!! By the time the plot falls apart, you'll be too drunk to care!! The series starts out on a truly weird note with the very rare trash horror classic, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daugher, in which a titular daughter finds a leftover brain in the closet, and decides to put it in somebody's head. Linda's Tavern

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
Ten years ago Kenneth Branagh, the world's leading effete ponce, made Henry V, one of the finest Shakespeare movies there is. Everything he's done since has been a precious drag, the kind of thing they lynched you for in the Old West. This time out, he takes a minor Shakespeare comedy and makes it a musical by adding Cole Porter and Irving Berlin songs. The problem: His actors can't really sing very well. The other problem: They're not really such great actors either. A third problem: The story is dumb. A fourth: Branagh's getting a little long in the tooth to be playing Matthew Lillard's college chum. The biggest problem of all: Alicia Silverstone. Despite one or two moments that seemed memorable at the time but which I now can't remember, LLL is a colossal, self-satisfied abortion of a film. Avoid it at all costs. (Sean Nelson) Harvard Exit

Michael Jordan to the MAX
See the greatest basketball player in history as nature intended: on a 3,500-square-foot movie screen! Seattle IMAX Dome Theatre

*Mission: Impossible 2
I loved this movie. I loved the vertiginous helicopter swoops as Tom Cruise scales an impossibly sheer cliff to receive his impossible mission. I loved the profligate back flips in the fight choreography as he takes out villain after glass-jawed villain. I loved the preposterous motorcycle chase/joust. I loved the human touches, too: the love triangle set against the backdrop of global intrigue; the lascivious slo-mo close-ups of Thandie Newton; the villain's Scots accent. But most of all, I loved the giddy sense of hyperbole and spectacle that coarsed through the whole enterprise.(Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Neptune, Oak Tree

PASSION OF MIND
Alan Berliner futzes about with Demi Moore in this star-studded film from the director of Ma Vie en Rose. With two parallel lives, one in France, one in New York, Demi is growing a tad confused: should she choose hunky Stellan Skarsgaard, or button-down William Fincher as her main man? Broadway Market

*Rear Window
Voyeur in a wheelchair gets his comeuppance when he witnesses a murder and tries to do something about it. Full of "that Hitchcock touch," and boasting one of the best opening shots of any film ever. Crest

*Road Trip
Road Trip takes the 15-minute road-trip sequence from Animal House and expands it to feature length. In this case, "University of Ithaca" college student Josh (Breckin Meyer) accidentally mails his long-distance girlfriend Tiffany a videotape of him having sex with another woman, forcing him and a trio of college buddies to drive 1,800 miles to recover it. Repulsion executes a complicated dance with attraction, and we (and by we, I mean oversexed, underaged boys) emerge from the movie theater better people for it. (Eric Fredericksen) Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center

Rules of Engagement
When a movie is titled Rules of Engagement, I'm there. Too bad this one implodes like a giant star after a promising start. The performances of Samuel L. Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones, Blair Underwood, Guy Pearce, and Anne Archer are sucked into the resulting black hole. In the end, we are left with nothing--absolutely nothing. (Charles Mudede) Admiral

Shaft
Samuel L. Jackson, whom some think has always been Shaft, is Shaft in this update of the classic Blaxploitation film. Reviewed this issue. Metro

Shanghai Noon
Even the presence of Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson can't save this revisionist Western action comedy from the musty odor of the second-rate. Its plot unfolds like a fifth-generation Xerox. Some princess has to be saved from some clumpy, labor-driven railroad/mining concern, and the male leads must shed their current roles and embrace new, dimly-conceived identities. Wilson and his co-star are to be credited for occasionally rising above the material, but there are much better ways to spend a summer afternoon. (Tom Spurgeon) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center

*Silent Funnies
A treat for those who are sick and tired of Disney's pristine, computer-heavy, too-perfect characters. This batch of rare silent shorts are derived from early-20th-century comic strips, and boast silly appearances from retro characters like Krazy Kat, Felix the Cat, Mutt & Jeff, Little Nemo, Gurtie the Dinosaur, and Andy Gump and the Family. Thurs-Sun June 22-25. Little Theatre

Small Time Crooks
Woody Allen's 2000 entry is one of his unambitious, hoping-only-to-amuse movies. Too bad it's unoriginal, not very amusing, and a near waste of some of this world's greatest comic talent: Tracey Ullman, Elaine May, and Jon Lovitz. Allen casts himself against type as Ray, a poor dopey schlub married to an equally dim former exotic dancer, Frenchie (Ullman). He plans an ambitious bank heist--he and some buddies will buy a storefront two doors down from a bank and run a cookie shop as a front while tunnelling underground to reach the bank vault. The heist is a flop, but Frenchie's amazing cookies turn the front operation into a multi-million dollar business. (Eric Fredericksen) Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Seven Gables

Terror Firmer
For a full-fledged 114 minutes of trash, raunch, schlock, and the "highest of the lows," check out this "gleefully offensive" gem from indie-junk-film experts Troma Films. Guest appearances by South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Motörhead's Lemmy. Fri-Sat June 16-17. Grand Illusion

Titan AE
Titan AE (After Earth) was about--well, we didn't exactly see it because our editor didn't tell us the right theater to go to for the press screening. Anyway, we think it's about the end of Earth and how humans survive in the galaxy, but we don't know what it's really about, or how many stars it gets--we're guessing about three. From the commercial, the animation looks really cool; some things even look real. Well, we think Titan AE is a good movie for your whole family to see. P.S.: Don't blame us if you hate it, we're just guessing it's good. (Sam & Maggie, crack 9-year-old reviewers) Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree

Up at the Villa
Sean Penn and Kristin Scott Thomas star as ill-fated lovers in the newest entry in the sex-leads-to-tragedy-leads-to-a-woman's-self-knowledge genre, based on the novella by W. Somerset Maugham. The fine supporting cast includes Anne Bancroft, Derek Jacobi, the great Sir James Fox, Jeremy Davies, and the dappled flora of Tuscany. Uptown

*The Virgin Suicides
The most consistent element of The Virgin Suicides is a steady stream of images that echo the feminine-hygiene commercials of the 1970s. Considering the material--five teenage sisters growing up in a repressive home and headed for funerals rather than graduations--the lightness of touch is surprising. (Monica Drake) Broadway Market

*WEST SEATTLE WALK -IN CINEMA
West Seattle's own version of al fresco cinema and family fun is in full swing for the summer, with films, shorts, live music, and contests. The cradle-robbing, suicide comedy Harold & Maude (1971) will be screening this week, and the Straw Dogs will be providing live music. Fri June 16 at 7, $5; call 767-2593 or visit www.westseattlewalkin.com for details. West Seattle Walk-In Cinema