Elvira's Haunted Hills, Mostly Martha, Ram Dass: Fierce Grace, Serving Sarah, Simone

24 Hour Party People
Tracing the interminable 20-year history of some very annoying music indeed, this film follows the development of Factory Records and the Manchester techno scene. Hopefully, it will explain how some stoned Brits with big record collections got their last laugh on the American empire. A comedy from Michael Winterbottom, a man blessed with the most British-sounding last name of all time. Egyptian

The Adventures of Pluto Nash
The tragic collapse of Eddie Murphy's career appears to be trudging new humiliating lows with his latest--an action adventure disaster that finds our man Gumby in the role of futuristic nightclub owner (on the moon!) defending his claim against futuristic gangsters (on the moon!). Did I mention it was in the future? Just rent Coming to America. Hell, just rent Vampire in Brooklyn. Meridian 16, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Grand Alderwood

Bad Day at Black Rock
John Sturges' celebrated 1955 Western starring the great Spencer Tracy as a one-armed stranger confronting the xenophobic intolerance of a desert town. The Grand Illusion promises a new print of this grim CinemaScope classic. Grand Illusion

Blue Crush
See review this issue. It's like a two-hour vacation, especially for the part of your brain that does the thinking. (AMY JENNIGES) Meridian 16, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center

Childish Film Festival
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "childish" can mean either "of, belonging, or proper to childhood" or "not befitting mature age, puerile." Chalk this charming three week-long series up in Column One. Though the films, music, and door prizes are aimed at kids ages three and up, this week's selections all work more than one level. After Wednesday's Super-8 Open Screening, the festival presents the hallucinogen-laced puppet romp "Pufnstuf" (Thurs-Sat) and the classic environmentalist fable "The Lorax" (Sun). (ANNIE WAGNER) Little Theater

The Debut
The first major feature to treat the Filipino-American experience and aggressively court Filipino viewers, The Debut is a decent coming-of-age story with an engaging cast and a great dance sequence. As a director, Gene Cajayon could have pulled the reins on the excessive emoting of some of his younger actors, but his movie is serviceable enough. (ANNIE WAGNER) Meridian 16

Depth of Focus: Taking a Trip
Travel films as explored by Lynn Shelton, Omar Willey, Christoph & Wolfgang Lauenstein, and others. University Heights Center

Escuela
I'm a huge fan of POV, the PBS summer series that selects the cream of the new documentary crop for broadcast every Tuesday night at 10 pm. Admittedly, it was a crime to deny the Slamdance prize-winner Hybrid a proper theatrical run, but for most modest docs, POV is a great way to get the movies to the masses. In Escuela, director Hannah Weyer follows Liliana, the daughter of migrant farm workers, as she bounces between high schools in Texas and California. The storytelling verges on skimpy at times, but the charismatic Liliana makes a wonderful subject. This screening is a sneak preview of the television premiere later this month. (ANNIE WAGNER) 911 Media Arts Center

Films By Jon Behrens and Heavy Friends
Seattle Underground FIlm Festival co-founder (and longtime Linda's Outdoor Summer Films program director) Jon Behrens presents a series of his own shorts coupled with those of his no-doubt talented friends in this, the final presentation of this summer's series. Linda's

* Freeway
A little-recognized masterpiece, Freeway is an update of the "Little Red Riding Hood" story that finds Vanessa Lutz (Reese Witherspoon), a teenage trailer-trash hellion who's got a major anger-management problem and a juvie-hall history, on an Odyssean drive to get from Los Angeles to Stockton to see Grandmother. Along the way, she runs into the Big Bad Wolf, played by Keifer Sutherland, a Jack-the-Ripper type who spends his time two ways: scouring the racks for child pornography, and scouring the Evil Forest, played by the I-5 corridor, for young female hitchhikers. (MICHAEL SHILLING) Egyptian

* Girls Can't Swim
The dark tension of hormones gone haywire fuels this excellent directorial debut, which follows a pair of girls--best friends, for now--who are trapped in their homes and bodies for a particularly grim summer at the seashore. The film brilliantly captures the almost invisible vectors that send teens crashing into and away from one another. (SEAN NELSON) Varsity

Harvey
Jimmy Stewart and 6' 3 1/2" bunny wreak drunken havoc on a small American town in this 1950 classic. Seattle Art Museum

* Hedwig and the Angry Inch
With its charming pop-art magical realism, cinematic flashbacks, and the ability to present intimate documentary-style footage of Hedwig's misfit band on tour with their charlatan business manager (an excellent character addition), the movie version of Hedwig emphasizes the rich plot far better than the stage version did. (JOSH FEIT) Belltown Outdoor Cinema

Iraqi Film Series
Independent Media Center presents a duo of films that focus on America's nasty sanctions held over the noble people of Iraq. Featuring the works Killing the Children of Iraq and The Invisible War: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf. Independent Media Center

Kitch and Cult Films: Mind Benders
Despite their somewhat lean press release, I have been able to garner two simple facts about the Rendezvous' latest installment of Kitch and Cult: one, they will be screening, in some form, a series of educational shorts from the '60s and '70s; and two, the ghost of irony is alive and well in the hearts and minds of weeknight alcoholics all over the greater Seattle area. Rendezvous

Know the Score: Close Encounters
Warren Etheredge's continuing series designed to teach the public how to score. This time, Etheredge zooms in on the human cliché of orchestral accompaniment: John "maple syrup" Williams (Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., etc.). Benaroya Hall

The Mandate
Pat your smug, vegan-assed self on the back whilst surveying the apalling atrocities performed by Europe's largest contract animal testing laboratory, Huntingdon Life Sciences. For a small fee, Huntingdon will gladly poison, probe, mutilate, and infect hundreds of kittens, bunnies, hamsters, and puppies for the sake of your company's new self-curling mascara line. Hell, sounds like good old-fashioned entertainment to me....Independent Media Center

Possession
Reviewed this issue. Guild 45th

Sally of the Sawdust
Channel your politically correct contempt for director D.W. Griffith into an infinitely more entertaining hatred for drunken carnies (this one's played by W.C. Fields, in his debut film role). This 1925 silent film also features Griffith regular Carol Dempster. Paramount Theatre

* Secret Ballot
A comedy exploring that which unites all great nations, including ours, in this modern age: electoral fraud. This charmer from Iran features the traditional buddy-cop teaming of female voting official and male soldier-chauffeur as they travel to a distant island in order to rock the vote. Satirical targets include elections in general, Iranian elections specifically, and attitudes towards women most of all. Seven Gables

Sex and Lucia
The digital cinematography in this film is remarkable, but it's largely squandered on beach sunsets and early morning sex and other pretty, vapid things. Following the plot, which involves a very serious writer and his myriad romantic entanglements (all serving as grist for the proverbial mill), is like trying to figure out a single episode of a soap opera that's been broadcast for twenty years. But the girls are adorable and the high drama is quite absorbing, so it's not a complete waste of time. (ANNIE WAGNER) Harvard Exit

* Some Like it Hot
I have watched this movie a million times and still can't help but split into laughter when Tony Curtis pretends to be a playboy millionaire with a broken heart. Pure genius. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Fremont Outdoor Movies

* The Good Girl
See review this issue. Metro

Thelma Todd Night
One of a select few early Hollywood stars who successfully volleyed their silent film careers into speaking roles, former Miss America contestant Thelma Todd found herself starring alongside the likes of such notables as Cary Grant, Buddy Rogers, and the Marx Brothers before her brief, prolific career was brought to a mysterious halt with a suspicious "suicide" at the age of 30. Featured tonight is a screening of some of Todd's comedic works, including 1931's Rough Seas. Rendezvous

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
"COOPER, YOU REMIND ME TODAY OF A SMALL MEXICAN CHIHUAHUA!" Seattle Art Museum

AFEST 2002: Through the Lens
Northwest Asian American Theatre presents this "festival of Asian filmmakers." The annual festival celebrates new work by APA filmmakers here in Seattle, and beyond. Films playing over the twelve day festival include Rabbit in the Moon, Diwali, Revolutionary Love, Calling Tokyo, Yah Yah, and Vision Test. For ticket information or reservations, call 340-1049.

Austin Powers in Goldmember
There are chuckles here and there, but the prevailing wind is cynical, which my dictionary defines as "selfishly or callously calculating" and "skeptical of the motives of others." If there's a better way to describe Goldmember, I'd be happy to hear it. (SEAN NELSON)

* Blood Work
Blood Work is a total bore. I was hoping this would be Clint Eastwood's swan song to a life of vigilantism, a retrospective of themes that have run through his work. But that's wishful thinking. The plot is thin, the characters aren't believable, the pacing and lighting are totally Matlock, and the performances are tired. Except for Anjelica Huston, who is not so much good but just never bad. As for the old firebrand himself, Eastwood acts constipated and ill tempered, like there's some annoying key grip just off-camera holding up a sign that says, "Go ahead, make my day." It's just too bad that someone talked the Great Warrior into this. (MICHAEL SHILLING)

Full Frontal
The prospect of Steven Soderbergh having the budgetary freedom inherent in digital video was exciting. It turns out however, he goes the same route as many before him: He indulges his actors at the expense of a story. Full Frontal feels improvised, in the worst sense. (ANDY SPLETZER)

The Gong Show Movie
In a bold display of unbridled arrogance, Gong Show creator Chuck Barris acts as director, co-writer, star, and (of course) title-song performer in a film that amounts to little more than a sleazy personal homage to himself. This forgotten 1980 feature length train-wreck follows a fictional account of a-day-in-the-life of "Chuckie Baby"'s television production-combining censored outtakes from the television show with staged drama, and featuring such familiar faces as the Unknown Comic, Jaye P. Morgan, Jamie Farr, and Gene Gene The Dancing Machine. Grand Illusion

The Kid Stays in the Picture
The Kid Stays in the Picture is the kind of True Hollywood Story that E! network executives have filthy dreams about. Robert Evans' enchanted rise to the top of the Hollywood food chain as an actor (sort of), and then as a maverick producer was followed by failed marriages with glamorous movie stars, and an abrupt downfall that included drug abuse and murder. This is trash that isn't afraid to be trash--trash at its most glorious and mythic. It's the kind of vicarious entertainment that stays with an audience because it's so damn smart. Inventive as hell, the documentary is a collage of old film and photographs; the unobtrusive visual play and pitch-perfect rhythm are what made me fall in love with this lucky bastard's cyclical success story. (ADAM HART)

* Lovely & Amazing
This follow-up to the similarly graceful Walking and Talking is a shrewdly respectful character study of a fractured family of women trying to ride herd on their raging neuroses. Fantastic acting and sensitive writing underscore the simple DV directorial approach. (SEAN NELSON)

Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
Martin Lawrence attacks the "bullshit" (as he calls it) sensationalist media in this bullshit (as I call it) stand-up ego-a-thon. As Lawrence waxes philosophical, existential, and mental, offering "his side" to the weapons-and-drugs run-ins he's faced of late, his disingenuousness and palpable self-love become increasingly oppressive. Best to avoid Runteldat like you'd avoid jamming your fingers in a car door--at least until the self-destructive Mr. Lawrence winds up in an asylum, at which time the value of this movie's insights will have doubled. For now, it's just tragically unfunny. (KUDZAI MUDEDE)

Notorious C.H.O.
Comprised of footage compiled at her Paramount Theatre performance last fall, comedianne and fag hag figurehead Margaret Cho's latest concert opus and follow-up to 1999's I'm the One That I Want promises more shouting, less clothing, and a cacophony of "You go girl!" to rival a thousand Cher concerts.

Side Street
The great Farley Granger stars in this noir thriller, about a man who, in a moment of weakness, steals $30,000 from the wrong people. Plays as part of Grand Illusion's Anthony Mann retrospective.

Signs
Signs would have been exceptional if not for the necessity of elaborate surprises. All the things I like about M. Night Shyamalan's movies (the X-Files-like moodiness, the theological questions, etc.) are imprisoned by the necessities of plot twists. If liberated, this film, about a troubled man who is dealing not only with his wife's death but a massive alien invasion, would have been truly scary. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Spy Kids 2
Spy Kids 2 wasn't a bad movie. Really, it wasn't. And if you're an eight year-old who dreams of being a spy--something I always wanted to be when I was eight--then it's the perfect movie for you. There are some mildly funny parts (involving nose picking or camel poop) and it's a highly predictable kids movie (which means zero brain energy needed). At least I didn't hate myself for going. And that's always a good thing. (MEGAN SELING)

Tadpole
Judging by the premise--precocious 15-year-old gets the hots for an older woman (who happens to be his stepmother, who happens to be played by Sigourney Weaver)--it doesn't seem improper to assume that Tadpole will hark back to the values of early '80s classics such as Private Lessons and My Tutor, films that understood the lusty pulse of suburban adolescence. No such (bad) luck, though; Tadpole is a witty, intelligent, and unsentimental coming-of-age comedy in which the aforementioned lustful projections are part of a much larger picture, and the lusty boy is a too-smart-for-his-own-good kid who learns a lesson about snobbery and poseurdom. (SEAN NELSON)

XXX
Just how bad is XXX? Worse than you've imagined. Seriously. I would rather be catheterized by a Parkinson's-afflicted nurse than sit through it again. It's that bad. Don't believe me? Then go see it. Flop down the $10 at your neighborhood multiplex and slouch your way through the picture. You'll see--and afterward you'll say, "Shit, man, I wish I'd listened to that chump from The Stranger." (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)