dir. Neil Jordan
Looking like his drunk-driving mug shot come to life, Nick Nolte plays a heroin-addicted gambler named Bob who once was a talented thief. He's not a good gambler, but he is well liked (he and Tchéky Karyo's police inspector are friends despite being on opposite sides of the law), and he's hooked on the lifestyle that keeps him out past six in the morning. Once Bob loses all his money he's drawn back into the life with a plot to break into an impossible casino safe in Monte Carlo. Because there's a snitch in his midst, he plans a second heist so if one goes bad the other can work.

The Good Thief is based on the 1955 French classic Bob le Flambeur by Jean-Pierre Melville, whose assured direction and cash-poor location filmmaking are widely considered precursors to the French New Wave. Neil Jordan directs the remake as a sort of tribute to the stylings associated with later New Wave films, with effects like freeze-frame cuts that make you aware that you're watching a movie and a cast of actors for whom English is not the primary language, so the dialogue is also awkward and self-aware. Jordan is commenting on Melville's film as much as remaking it, so if you can see the original first, do so, but either way you should have a good time. ANDY SPLETZER

A Man Apart

dir. F. Gary Gray.
A Man Apart, which stars beefy Vin Diesel as a streetwise DEA agent who rolls with real niggaz, is to Traffic what crack is to cocaine. Traffic was inspired by a noble idea--to examine the intricate physical and social borders between drug-producing Mexico and drug-consuming America--and instead of pointing a finger at who is wrong and applauding who is right, it implicated everyone, from the street dealer to America's drug czar. According to Traffic, the only real solution to the pervasive drug problem is that we each admit our guilt and accept our evil role in the drug war, even if we are unaware of the evil role we are playing. A Man Apart starts with the same noble premise--a sober/somber breakdown of the international and local levels of the drug war--but instead of matching or going beyond Traffic's unsatisfactory conclusion (bad conscience, admission of guilt) it soon dispenses with the noble concept, kicks into reverse, and returns to the old opera of cowboy vs. the others. America, the consumer, is ultimately Good; Mexico, the producer, is ultimately Bad. And to prevent the total corruption of what is at heart Good, the Good must relentlessly pursue (The Searchers) and gun down to death (High Noon) the Bad. The Bad in this film is even called El Diablo. I rest my case. CHARLES MUDEDE

Visual Music Festival

dir. Various

Thurs-Wed April 10-16 at the Little Theatre, EMP, and Consolidated Works (see Movie Times for schedule).
With eight days of programming stretched between four venues, the third annual Visual Music Festival promises a brand new circle of hell for epilepsy sufferers--a flashing, hiccupping, trance-inducing headache of ocular and aural stimulation. Including programs dedicated to such notables of the late '60s as Nam June Paik (whose collaborators included everyone from John Cage to the Beatles), Jud Yalkut, and Velvet Underground cohort Tony Conrad, Northwest Film Forum has compounded a fairly well-rounded representation of the "visual music" medium. Which is to say, it features the most important players in the "Dude, let's get really baked and watch shit spin around for a few hours" genre of filmmaking.

In theory, music and film seem like perfect bedfellows for cross-genre experimentation (given the similar historical trajectory of film and recorded music, their specific sensory divisions, etc.), but more often than not, an equal balance of the two forms comes off feeling a little top-heavy. With music as an art of repetition, films made with music in mind are typically a yawning loop of abstract shape and form, which hardly results in captivating (sober) viewing. The shorts screened were of varying quality; technical proficiency was pretty universal, but it's hard to see through all those sitar solos and screensaver swirls. Sort of like a highbrow laser show. ZAC PENNINGTON

Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation

dir. Various

Fri-Thurs April 11-24 at the Neptune.
I am not an 18-year-old boy, nor do I smoke large (or any) amounts of marijuana--so there were already two strikes against me when considering whether or not I would enjoy this year's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. But I watched the video of collected shorts with an open mind, thinking maybe there'd be some funny shit in there, even for a straight-laced young woman like myself. But there wasn't. It was just sick and twisted (duh). Venereal disease, incest, death, farts, burps, vomit, murder, blood... I guess there's an audience for that stuff? Apparently so, since Spike and Mike's festival has been around for over a decade (the first volume was released in 1991). It wasn't bad; it was just boring. But maybe you like this sort of stuff--the sick and twisted stuff, I mean. And if you do, you're probably going to really enjoy this year's collection. MEGAN SELING

Six Brand Spanking New Shorts

dir. Karl Krogstad

Fri April 11 at Seattle Art Museum.
I watched Do the Math, one of six shorts by the grand old man of Seattle independent film to be shown at this event, and it looked like your basic "experimental" film: a cleverly crafted montage of stock footage, stolen clips from old films, and video shots of the World Trade Center, all adorned with subtitles that cryptically and/or didactically make reference to God, all set to the tune of "Cathy's Clown." Pretty much par-for-the-course irony with surrealist leanings. SEAN NELSON