Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Evolution, Fast Food, Fast Women, Tomb Raider
Bad Blood
Reviewed this issue. Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche star in Leos Carax's last remotely hopeful film before his resigning to soul-eating despair. Fri-Sun June 8-10. Little Theatre
BIG EDEN
Henry, a gay urbanite artist, returns to the quaint home of his youth to care for his sick grandfather, where a cast of lovable, quirky locals are eager to help him get laid. Who will it be? The old high school crush, or the guy who runs the general store? This movie will teach you how to love. (Jason Pagano) Broadway Market
The Language You Cry In
An examination of the connection between African Americans and their cultural history, tracing a Mende burial hymn from its roots in 18th-century Sierra Leone to its remembrance by a Gullah woman in a present-day Georgia fishing village. Wed June 13. Little Theatre
Linda's Summer Movies
See Stranger Suggests. Back again for a seventh season, Linda's Summer Movies is 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!! This week: Classroom Classics, a program of social engineering shorts made for public schools in thee old days. Wed June 13. Linda's
Man With a Movie Camera
One day in the life of Moscow (circa 1929), as filmed by Dziga Vertov's "kino-eye." Introduced by UW professor Jennifer Bean. Thurs June 7. Little Theatre
Migrating Forms
More Negative Space in the Cinema of Transgression series, this award-winning film examines a Last Tango in Paris-style affair between two strangers who meet regularly for passionless sex in an otherwise empty room. Who could ask for anything more? Thurs-Sun June 7-9. Consolidated Works
Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud
An old man and his young, beautiful nurse develop an emotional but restrained bond, tinged with eroticism and longing. Starring French actress (and Mission Impossible hottie) Emmanuelle Beart. The last screening in the Seattle Art Museum's film series "Springtime in France." Ah, bon. Thurs June 7. Seattle Art Museum
* Open Screening
The 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. (Bruce Reid) Mon June 11. 911 Media Arts
Reel Grrls
Reviewed this issue. 911 presents an evening of short videos made by and for local teenage girls. Fri June 8. 911 Media Arts
Still Doing the Safety Dance
See Stranger Suggests. A lip-sync band from the '80s reunites ('cause it feels so good) and aims for first prize in some contest. Let's assume that someone is going to make the "S" arms from the Men Without Hats video at some point during this locally-produced feature. Tues June 12. Seattle Art Museum
Swordfish
John Travolta (whom my late grandmother always used to call "John Revolting") stars with Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and the great Don Cheadle in this bloaterrific heist number. Opens Fri. Metro
TROMATIC CINEMA
This chunk of Satellites 2001 explores the artful cinematic vomitorium that is Troma Films, where the bad masquerades as the intentionally bad in order to create something... actually kind of good. Week two includes Tromeo and Juliet, Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town, and Cannibal! The Musical. Grand Illusion
* Troublemakers/Shop Talk
Two top-flight documentaries from Robert Machover (of the now-defunct New York Newsreel collective). The first, from 1966, follows two members of Students for a Democratic Society as they attempt to radicalize Newark, which was had not yet devolved into the hellish slum it is today. The second, from 1980, looks at the difficulties faced by printing press workers seeking to form a union. Fri June 8. Consolidated Works
About Adam
About Adam is an Irish comedy with a madcap premise and a morally corrupt punchline. The premise, in which three sisters, and one brother, all fall for the same man--Adam--results in a candy-colored tale of narrowly missed confrontations, misunderstandings, hilarity, and sex sex sex. Oddly, Adam is revealed as an unapologetic hedonist, and is held up as the family's salvation. (Traci Vogel) Broadway Market
Along Came a Spider
Along Came a Spider is a prequel to Kiss the Girls. Again, Morgan Freeman plays Dr. Alex Cross, a detective who deals with the most psychotic white men in America. Though Kiss the Girls is the better of the two thrillers, I still enjoyed Along Came a Spider because Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman. (Charles Mudede) Meridian 16
* Amores Perros
Pungently translated as Love's a Bitch, Amores Perros comprises three stories of life, love, and aggressively twisted fate in the most polluted metropolis on the planet. Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga have enrolled in the Tarantino school of storytelling, but the style and vision is so distinctive and assured that no one should dwell on that point. This is a breakthrough work for Mexican cinema, and for a bold and powerful new talent. (Richard T. Jameson) Broadway Market
Angel Eyes
Jennifer Lopez stars as a Chicago cop ("Stop, or my publicist will shoot!") whose life is saved by a mysterious stud who seems eerily familiar. Factoria, Meridian 16
The Animal
Rob Schneider stars as a man about whom nothing is funny, especially when he pretends to be a dolphin or a monkey or a dog. Factoria, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center
Blow
Add an "s" to this film's title for a one-word review. Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16
* Bread and Roses
Set in the other Los Angeles--that of the working poor--Bread and Roses is the rare partisan, political film that doesn't proselytize. Maya (Pilar Padilla) is a Mexican girl who lands a job cleaning office towers through her older sister. Almost immediately, she gets a crush on the handsome gringo agitator, Sam (Adrien Brody), who's organizing a strike to demand the right to unionize. Ultimately the film is a winning romantic adventure/comedy in the tricky context of the protest film; and though sympathetic to unions, director Ken Loach doesn't let them off easy. (John Roderick) Broadway Market
Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary features a successful career woman (Renée Zellweger) with a personal life that leaves one wondering how she attained any success at all. She desires a boyfriend, sets her sights on the office cad (Hugh Grant), and moans when he dumps her. The film banks on "the eye-rolling sisterhood of solidarity," the notion that girls love to grumble over a lying, dog-ass guy. (Kathleen Wilson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Guild 45th, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center
* Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
This attempt to wed emotionally reticent drama with the exhilarating freedom of Hong Kong-genre filmmaking finds its rhythm and earns its accolades once it gives its heart over to the young and engaging Zhang Ziyi. (Bruce Reid) Lewis & Clark, Uptown, Varsity
The Dish
Here at last is a film that is about a radar dish and it really is about a radar dish! The huge dish overwhelms even the stars (Sam Neill, Patrick Warburton) and the plot (which is about Australia's participation in the Apollo 11 moon mission of 1969). (Charles Mudede) Meridian 16, Metro
The Golden Bowl
The last of three Henry James adaptations by Merchant Ivory Productions, The Golden Bowl stars Uma Thurman as Charlotte and Nick Nolte as "America's first billionaire," Adam Verver. The Golden Bowl is, in part, a drama of manners, but the filmmakers seem to think that a well-appointed costume drama with the weight of Henry James behind it doesn't need any creative help to succeed. (Traci Vogel) Metro
Himalaya
Himalaya is a groundbreaking, genuine portrait of the Dolpo region of Nepal. The story revolves around Tinle, an old chief who loses his eldest son. What follows is a mesmerizing adventure that evokes the forces of ancestral strife and nature at its most treacherous. (Kudzai Mudede) Varsity
A Knight's Tale
To spruce up a jousting story with a modern soundtrack (well, kind of modern), is hardly a reinvention. It's just a cute contrivance, unsuccessfully masking the deep hollow that lies at the heart of this club-footed attempt to foist a Teen Gladiator on historically malnourished summer audiences. (Sean Nelson) Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree
The Luzhin Defence
Those who love Nabokov's novels, and are outraged when filmmakers fail to capture the master's intellectual essence on film, must do their best to avoid this film, which adapts Nabokov's least cinematic book. But those who want to watch an atmospheric film about love, sunlight, and beautiful Italian lakes will not be disappointed. (Charles Mudede) Metro
The Man Who Cried
With a list of characters that should end with "...all walk into a bar," and scenes that often seem like they've been taken from romance novels, The Man Who Cried tells the story of a Gypsy (Johnny Depp), a Jewish Refugee (Christina Ricci), and a Russian Dancer's (Cate Blanchett) attempts at love in World War II Paris. Heavy on the pregnant pauses and aggressively poignant violin music, the whole two hours is an exercise in well acted depression, i.e. children kidnapped, villages burning, horses dying. (Nathan Albee) Seven Gables
* 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) Aurora Cinema Grill, Guild 45th, Meridian 16
* Moulin Rouge
To the list of great musicals, we can now add Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, a spectacular whose vernacular is well beyond contemporary--it's practically hypertext. Like Luhrmann's past work, Rouge isn't so much a feast as a food fight for the senses. Throughout the film, Luhrmann batters us with a collage of fractal stimuli, which, like Disneyland, you can't see all of in a single visit. But amid the relentless digression, the things you need to know--"truth, beauty, freedom, and above all, love"--are repeated again and again. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Neptune, Oak Tree, Southcenter
The Mummy Returns
The first (or, rather, the last) Mummy--the one that came out in 1998 and seemed like it just couldn't be good--actually kind of was thanks to its updating of the classic matinee combo of bad special effects and silly situations coming together to create a movie that just by not being terrible, managed to seem really charming. The sequel--in which not just the mummy, but the whole cast, plot, several lines of dialogue, the m.o. of ripping off every movie ever made, and most of the stunts return--fails to pull off the same trick. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Varsity
One Night at McCool's
In the pursuit of material possessions, Liv Tyler, playing an irresistible woman (duh) exploits her curvaceous anatomy in order to lasso the men she meets (Andrew Dice Clay, Matt Dillon, Michael Douglas, etc.) into becoming the accomplices in her illegal schemes. This movie soon escalates into a riot of contrivances that unexpectedly sparkles. (Suzy Lafferty) Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is everything the preview led you to believe: overlong, overlit, overwrought, and overpaid. It's nationalism porn, delivering all the basest flag-waving heroism with none of the meat and mettle of actual history or conflict. And as with real porn, your blood surges in the heat of the moment--with digital bombing raids over phallic turrets standing in for cum shots--and then, the second it's over you feel dirty for having let yourself watch. (Sean Nelson) Cinerama, Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center
* Seattle International Film Festival
Um, they're like showing a bunch of movies and movies are good (even though sometimes they're bad). Consult The Stranger's monumental SIFF Notes supplement for full details. Broadway Performance Hall, Cinerama, Egyptian, Harvard Exit, Pacific Place 11
Shrek
Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is the name of an ogre who lives by himself in a swamp; he takes great pride in his job, which mainly consists of being nasty at all times to all things. After he sends one particular batch of terrified knights packing, his swamp is overrun by the entire cast of traditional Western fairy tales, from Pinocchio to Aesop's talking donkey (Eddie Murphy). He finds the local lord, one Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), and demands his swamp back, but gets hoodwinked into rescuing a princess (Cameron Diaz) instead. This film is both terrible and great. (Evan Sult) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Northgate, Pacific Place 11
Spy Kids
Fellow earthlings, I regret to inform you that even now as we speak, it is too late. Spy Kids is headed towards us like a juggernaut and only the childless have means of escaping. (Suzy Lafferty) Meridian 16
The Tailor of Panama
Brit superspy Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) has been banished to Panama for overindulging his appetites. He sizes up the tense, complicated international scene at the Canal and finds himself a hapless expat British tailor (Geoffrey Rush) to squeeze for information. (Evan Sult) Uptown
What's the Worst That Could Happen?
There is nothing quite so unsatisfactory for a movie viewer than to be hoodwinked by a dazzling preview that turns out be the authoritative oeuvre for what is otherwise a rather rank piece of motion picture making. Oddly enough, this movie has opted for a complete reversal: a capable film that suffers the promotion of a preview which humiliates both studio and viewer. Anyway, an evil tycoon (Danny Devito) steals a tacky good luck ring from a small time crook (Martin Lawrence). Mr. Lawrence does not take kindly to this state of events and spends the rest of the movie robbing Mr. Devito blind. (Kudzai Mudede) Aurora Cinema Grill, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center, Varsity
* With a Friend Like Harry
The blackest hue of comedy tints the tale of Harry (Sergi Lopez), a wealthy bon vivant with an unshakable affinity for Michel (Laurent Lucas). Harry, firm in his belief that Michel's child-strewn, moneyless life could be made more easy, begins to use his influence--and cash--to remove various obstacles to Michel's happiness. A new car here and a case of champagne there escalates to a predictably absurd degree. But a deft French wit, and that oh-so-well-done trick of Euro-allegory (about the difficulty of making art) rise like cream to the top of this film. (Jamie Hook) Harvard Exit
