The Adventures of Felix, Chopper, Enlightenment Guaranteed, Jurassic Park 3, Legally Blonde, The Score
* Blazing Saddles
Mel Brooks' masterwork about a black sheriff in the old West rides again. At midnight, even. Sat July 7. Egyptian
The Closet
Reviewed this issue. Auteuil charmingly plays François, an accountant who fears for his job security in this farcical French comedy. Omnipresent Depardieu is his neighbor Daniel, who hatches a scheme to smear the queer, spreading a rumor that François is gay to spook management with visions of a discrimination lawsuit. Opens Fri. Guild 45th
* Confessions of an Opium Eater
More fun from Albert Zugsmith, this time starring the great Vincent Price in an adaptation of Thomas De Quincey's 1962 novel about a good man caught in the druggie underworld of female slavery in turn-of-the-century S.F. Chinatown. Fri-Sat July 6-7. Grand Illusion
Cure
Following in the wake of David Fincher's Seven, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film covers much of the same ground at a more languid pace, and without the benefit of variety in its murders. A young drifter with the ability to mesmerize is all that links a series of gruesome slayings, all committed by people who can't seem to remember their motivation--or the drifter--when the deed is done. Eventually the drifter leaves a trail of witnesses who aid in his capture. His identity, past, and modus operandi are discovered, but not before the lead investigators' good cop-bad cop act places the tediousness of the case--and the film--in sharp relief. (Sarah Sternau) Opens Fri. Varsity
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
It's 2065. Digital warriors (with movie-star voices) must confront the aliens (no, not to be confused with Aliens) who are laying waste to our precious Earth after a meteor crash. Opens Wed. Metro
FREMONT OUTDOOR MOVIES
The summer tradition of movies viewed in parking lots returns. This week: James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein with live improv. Sat July 7. Fremont Outdoor Movies
The Homosexuals
They're a problem, as we now understand. Mike Wallace was on the case in 1966, when he made this special report about the rising tide of gayness in America. The report shows with the short Gay for a Day and a cartoon... for the kids. Thurs July 5. Little Theatre
Kiss of the Dragon
See Stranger Suggests. Jet Li teams up with Luc Besson for this tale of martial artistry and kinetic action in Paris. Li plays a Chinese government agent who travels to the city of lights to aid a dirty French cop. Betrayal ensues, and so does Bridget Fonda. Opens Fri. Meridian 16
LINDA'S SUMMER MOVIES
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: The People Next Door, a 1970 tale of suburban anomie starring Eli Wallach and Julie Harris. Wed July 11. Linda's
The Meat Rack
Once upon a time, gay films could be campy and sincere without resorting to histrionics and over-the-top caricatures. Such is the case with 1968's The Meat Rack, which (due to its limited budget and amateur actors) perfectly captures the tone of an Afterschool Special, albeit one with gay sex and self-hating homosexuals. Our hero, J.C., grew up in a broken home, then ran away and started turning tricks. That's all you need to know about the story. You should also know that there are bits and pieces that come out of nowhere, like the two gun-wielding drag queen pornographers who force him to have sex with a girl on camera. Yes, this is one strange piece of soft-core gay porn, indeed. (David Manning) Fri-Sat July 6-7. Little Theatre
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Reviewed this issue. The funniest movie ever returns with a pristine new print, in anticipation of the forthcoming DVD, with "23 seconds of never-before-seen material." Opens Fri. Egyptian
* SILENT MOVIE MONDAYS
In this year's first installment of the annual series, the impossibly great Lillian Gish stars in King Vidor's adaptation of the classic French tragedy, La Boheme. Hush up and get an eyeful of Gish's face, the very reason movies were invented. Mon July 9. Paramount Theatre
* SPARKLE: Shorts from the 2000 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The greatest hits of SLGFF 2000's shorts selections, in anticipation of this year's festival, coming this fall. Part of Home Alive's Awareness Week 2001. Wed July 11. Little Theatre
* The Swimmer
See Stranger Suggests. Burt Lancaster stars as a man who decides to "swim home" by visiting each of his neighbor's swimming pools in succession, usually stopping for a Proustian cocktail and some sort of dewy epigram about faded glory. As he progresses, we inch ever closer to discovering his mysterious secret, something his well-to-do Connecticut friends seem all too willing to keep sub rosa. Easily one of the weirdest mainstream movies ever, The Swimmer is camp existentialism at its 1968 best, from the man who would go on to direct Mommy Dearest. Opens Fri. Grand Illusion
* A.I.
Reviewed this issue. Steven Spielberg wrote and directed this cautionary futurist fable, about a robot boy programmed with the capacity to love, following 20 years of development by the late Stanley Kubrick. It's the best work in years by both filmmakers, the weaknesses of each overmatched by the magnanimous strengths of the other. The film is a visual wonder (wait till you see what New York looks like!) featuring a stunning central performance by Haley Joel Osment (and only slightly lesser ones by Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson, and William Hurt), and speaks to the profound sadness that rests at the literal and figurative heart of technological advance. (Sean Nelson) Cinerama, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Neptune, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center
* 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) Varsity
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. Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11
* The Anniversary Party
I asked the sprightly, gracious Scot Alan Cumming, co-director/writer (with Jennifer Jason Leigh) of The Anniversary Party, if he was at all anxious about the pitfalls of making a movie about movie people. This was his response: "Umm, yeah. I think I'm always conscious with everything I do--whether I'm playing or writing--about the art of not making everyone seem disgusting. You know, 'cause it's a fine line and people can misinterpret things and people with a heightened sense--I mean the public--when it comes to artists, so you have to be even more aware. I think that umm, actually, that [consciousness] came to us later because really, in a way, Hollywood is just a setting; it's kind of a backdrop for the story of people's relationships. Really that was uh, it didn't concern us that much. It concerns us more now, in the latter part of the whole process just because people are talking about it that way and we want to make sure that they're actually more concerned about the actual story. But I mean yeah, definitely. It's about real people, you know, yeah, so these people can come from that world, but they are real. My motto, which is born of insecurity more than anything else, is: 'You can be as big as you like as long as you mean it.'" (Sean Nelson) Guild 45th, Meridian 16
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Once upon a time there was a great and mighty kingdom where enlightenment reigned and the citizenry was blessed with wisdom and alacrity of spirit that surpassed those of even the most evolved of modern nations. Then, for reasons no one has ever understood, the great and mighty kingdom fell, its very existence relegated to the annals of apocrypha. But enough about Disney. This movie is about some island or whatnot. It's a cartoon. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Metro
Baby Boy
Like all of John Singleton's work, this film is very pleased with its good intentions. Unfortunately, it's also a rambling, basically structureless melange of moist moralism and phony struggle. The main character, Jody, spends the whole film in a quandary about how to best be a man, spouting philosophical breakthroughs and pledging to change, even though he lives with his mama and has two kids by two different women, both of whom he manages to cheat on. Revelations hit Jody (and his friends) when no one, least of all the camera, is looking--they have unmotivated life-altering epiphanies in between scenes, then spend their time onscreen verbalizing them. When his mom brings home a new boyfriend (played by Ving Rhames, without whom the film would be worthless), who's lived ten times the life that Jody could even dream of, the baby boy finds his hollow up against an immovable force. It's almost enough to make Baby Boy work. Almost. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro
Big Eden
A gay urbanite returns to the quaint country home of his youth to care for his sick grandfather, where a cast of lovable, quirky locals are all to eager to help him get laid. Who will it be? The old high-school buddy? Or the guy who runs the general store? This movie will teach you how to love. (Jason Pagano) Broadway Market
Bride of the Wind
What better way to grab a little high culture than by watching a movie about a classical composer? In this case, there are many. The walk to your local library holds more surprises than this flat, by-the-numbers biopic of Viennese socialite Alma Schindler, who was famous first for marrying composer Gustav Mahler and then for sleeping around with some of the best artists in Vienna. (David Manning) 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) Pacific Place 11
Cats and Dogs
Reviewed this issue. Freaky looking digital pets go paw to paw in this sterling monument to commerce. One word: woof. Metro
Crazy/Beautiful
Of all the reliable teen film tropes, none is more rugged than the star-, race-, and class-crossed high-school love affair. Crazy/Beautiful comes swaddled in the skintight half-shirts and thin-wale cords of teenage sexuality. Kirsten Dunst plays Nicole, the emotionally unstable daughter of a congressman (Bruce Davison); she cavorts through her privileged life, oozing aggressive California sexuality and ribald naughtiness. She meets Carlos (Jay Hernandez), a poor, industrious Latino football player who rides the bus two hours just to get to the posh high school Nicole takes for granted. It's not long before Nicole's overt carnality is revealed as the symptom of deep wounds that prevent her from loving or trusting anyone... except Carlos, whose moral sturdiness and ambition are put to the test by his hot white girlfriend's devil-may-care behavior. The film is better than it probably sounds. (Sean Nelson) Aurora Cinema Grill, Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Redmond Town Center
Divided We Fall
Set in Czechoslovakia in the last years of WWII, this black comedy, which recently played well at SIFF, tells the story of a childless couple who hide their Jewish neighbor David from the Germans. As their old friends become Nazi sympathizers, the couple must face the task of keeping David from the concentration camps. Broadway Market
Dr. Dolittle 2
Surprise of all welcome surprises: a genuinely funny Eddie Murphy movie! In his second outing as the only man on Earth who can communicate with animals, Murphy (who has been relegated to the puzzling role of straight man to makeup and special effects in treacly Disney garbage for far too long; this is Eddie Murphy, don't you Hollywood fucks remember anything?) finds himself a reluctant spokesman for a forestful of fuzzy creatures (including a mafia of beavers and raccoons) about to face the bulldozers of an evil logging company. To save the critter company--and, as fate would have it, his ailing family--Dolittle must coax a wussy circus bear (Steve Zahn, hilarious) to mate with a nature bear (Lisa Kudrow). The scenario is the standard American comedy insult, but the jokes are really good. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center
Evolution
Ivan Reitman reworks the story of Ghostbusters around two small-town professors, Dr. Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and Harry Block (Orlando Jones), who are hot on the trail of an alien infestation. The plot is entirely superfluous, but to his credit, Reitman is stupid enough to use plot only as a structural mechanism, allowing his film to live in the moment with a goofy dedication that verges on the downright poetic. (Jamie Hook) Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16
The Fast & the Furious
Photographed lavishly, edited epileptically, and acted with virile abandon (Vin Diesel is obviously action star material), this movie about street racers who have a tidy little sideline of jacking Mack trucks full of electronic equipment, is breakneck garbage. Fast is designed to reach straight into the hearts and minds of 12-year-old boys and make them want to buy ugly, fast cars they'll never afford and equip them with outlandish nitrous oxide systems. Everything else--plot, score, dialogue, romance--is but cinematic parsley to garnish the main course: conspicuous consumption. Watching this film at the Meridian late on a Saturday night was exactly what I imagine hell must be like. (Sean Nelson) Factoria, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center
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) Broadway Market
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
The Tomb Raider series of loosely cinematic action games has gotten lots of attention for its busty main character, Lara Croft. Some people have even tried to interpret Croft's popularity as having a kind of Charlie's Angels postfeminist import--she is supposed to be a polylingual and kickass (if voluptuous) adventurer--but one look at the video game leaves little doubt that her primary appeal is in the "if voluptuous" department. Even the incredibly curvy Angelina Jolie needs some costuming help to portray Croft in the movie version of Tomb Raider, in the form of a padded bra. Thus hefted, Jolie seems to have trouble forgetting about her chest and imbuing her character with more personality than a little swagger can convey. It's hard to blame her much, though, since the plot offers all the motivation of a five-cent allowance raise. Tomb Raider isn't even kind of good. (Traci Vogel) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Northgate, Pacific Place 11, Varsity
* 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, Metro, Uptown
* 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 (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet), Rouge isn't so much a feast as a food fight for the senses. Throughout the film, Luhrmann batters us with an absurd 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. It's hard to deny that Moulin Rouge is a flawed gem. What's harder to deny, however, is the heart that beats at the center of the elephantine spectacle--the rapturous love for the possibilities of movies and romance that once made musicals matter. (Sean Nelson) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Southcenter
Pearl Harbor
Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor--and that's really what it should be called (as with Fellini's Roma or the George Foreman Grill, the vision expressed could only belong to one man)--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) Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center
* Pootie Tang
Like an answer to a prayer, writer/director Louis C.K. has delivered a rare treasure: a brilliant, hilarious comedy whose sole intention is to be as ridiculous and silly as possible. Pootie Tang (Lance Crouther) is a hero to all--one-third John Shaft, one-third Michael Jackson, one-third Mr. T--a holy black dude born cool, strutting around with his shirt open, dodging bullets with casual ease, and making public service announcements telling kids not to eat fast food, smoke cigarettes, or drop out of school. This enrages Corporate America, which tries to destroy Pootie by stealing his magic belt. Here's the thing, though: Pootie doesn't speak English, nor any other recognizable tongue. He talks in gibberish syllables ("tippi tai on my cappatown") that everyone understands. It pulls the film--which, to be fair, starts struggling around the 45-minute mark--into the realm of pure absurdism every time Pootie opens his mouth. And pure absurdism, with one eye trained on bitch slapping the racist, misogynist, and just plain dumb conventions of Hollywood, is right where I want to be. (Sean Nelson) Meridian 16
* The Princess and the Warrior
Somewhere between dream and reality is Wuppertal, Germany, whose buildings, streets, and stairs form the stage for the story of Sissi and Bodo--the shy princess and the sad warrior. Sissi works in a mental institution, the home for those who cannot "bear too much reality." Bodo (Benno Furmann) is an unstable and unemployed ex-soldier who lives with his brother Walter (Joachim Król). Walter and Bodo are planning to rob a bank and flee to Australia (the land of the dream time, according to native Australians). Fate brings the princess and the warrior together; they're a match made in heaven. But there are numerous knots and plots to sort out before the pure beings (air, the princess; water, the warrior) can fuse into a perfect and complete whole. (Charles Mudede) Harvard Exit
* The Road Home
Yusheng's mother Di has called him home with an ancient request: He must gather a party of villagers to walk the body of his dead father home. Over the snowy mountains and all the way to their remote village, the bearers must tell the dead Mr. Luo, "This is the road home," so that he will always know. Some love stories could have happened anywhere. Others, like The Road Home, belong to their settings like the view from a particular hillside. The story of Di and Luo is communal territory, like the schoolhouse, and as necessary to the life of the village. Where director Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern was sweeping, The Road Home is tiny--and it's still completely overwhelming, especially when staring into Zhang Ziyi's doe eyes. (Evan Sult) Seven Gables
Scary Movie 2
If you thought the first one was funny... you were wrong. Varsity
* Sexy Beast
Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) is a retired gangster, living high on a hill in the Costa del Sol, enjoying a lethargic existence. But he is as out of place here as the heart-shaped ceramic tiles on the floor of his pool. Bad news arrives in the shape of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley, so great), there to coax Gal back to England for a job. Gal resists, but Don won't take no for an answer, setting in motion a verbal boxing match so artful and intense it turns the sprawling Spanish vista into a pressure cooker in which Gal is forced to reckon for his ill-had comforts. A voice buried deep within Gal tells him and us that this can't last. Don is that voice, given brutal, relentless human form. In the fallout of their confrontation lies one of the finest films in recent memory. (Sean Nelson) Guild 45th, Uptown
* 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. The film is both terrible and great. (Evan Sult) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11
Songcatcher
Janet McTeer stars as Dr. Lily Penleric, an early 20th-century musicologist trapped as an associate professor in a man's university. Passed over for professorship, she retreats to the foothills of Appalachia, where her sister (Jane Adams, always great) runs a progressive remedial school with her Gertrude Steinesque mentor. Within minutes, Dr. Lily discovers that the hillbillies can not only sing, but have a vast catalog of pure English folk songs in their repertoire. As she goes about collecting them, her initial academic condescension is overcome by the humble beauty of the melodies and the rubes (Aidan Quinn and the great Pat Carroll, in particular) themselves. The film verges a bit towards the Hallmark Hall of Fame, but a few narrative wrinkles rescue it from the land of cloy. Plus, the music is so great (Iris DeMent and Taj Mahal both appear as musicians), you can't help but sit back and revel. (Sean Nelson) Harvard Exit
* Startup.com
The very American story of Govworks.com--two friends hang out a virtual shingle that makes them rich, and then makes them enemies--might read merely as an illustration of capitalism's grinding gears. But in the hands of directors Jehane Noujaim and collaborator Chris Hegedus, who employ the time-honored technique of standing back and letting the subjects incriminate themselves, the desire of Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman to build "the brand of the century" becomes a jeremiad about the insidious intermingling of pride and greed. What Herman and Tuzman miss, and what the film captures so effectively, is how their brio makes them look like total chumps, dangling in the whirlwind of an insane socioeconomic aberration where, for a brief moment in history, walking the walk and talking the talk were the same thing. (Sean Nelson) Egyptian
Swordfish
In Dominic Sena's Swordfish, which is a delightful mess of a blockbuster, John Travolta plays a white Negro whom America employs to maintain global hegemony. Travolta steals money and uses it to kill dangerous international terrorists. Don Cheadle plays an FBI agent who is trying to arrest this evil but necessary American and restore some kind of order in the judicial and political systems. But he is powerless in the face of Travolta's (and the film's) inhuman dimensions. (Charles Mudede) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree
* 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. The film is plain in comparison to its obvious inspiration, Hitchcock's oeuvre. 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) Broadway Market, Metro
