Bound
"Ceasar, you don't know shit." Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.
A Celebration of Luis Bunuel
Why do I dislike Luis Buñuel? Because he was a surrealist, and I dislike surrealism because it takes all of its clues from dreams. And I hate dreams because they bother my sleep. In a word, I dislike Buñuel because I don't like dreams. Dreams are bad! They do nothing except bring life to sleep. And sleep should be unto death, with nothing on the mind's screen, or mind-dome (in the Truman Show sense), just blackness, emptiness--pure oblivion from which one awakes not traumatized by the dream-state/real-life transition, but reinvigorated by the journey to and from the land of the dead. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Crop Circles
Directed and produced by William Gazecki, who received an Oscar nomination for his documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement in 1998, Crop Circles is a dead- serious investigation of the relatively recent mystery of the geometric shapes that appear rather too frequently on wide stretches of farm land. These simple and complex shapes defy human explanation and understanding. Who makes them and why? Are they crafted by intelligent aliens who are trying to communicate with us? If so, why are rural areas preferred over other geographic possibilities, like tundra? The filmmaker interviews crop circle experts and aficionados, who all seem kind of mad and in desperate need of a vacation on a sunny Caribbean island that holds no mysteries and is visited only by human tourists. It's not the crazed experts that make this documentary worthwhile, but the crop circles themselves: They are beautiful works of art. As one who does not believe in anything, except a few basic Marxist concepts about the nature of society and reality, crop circles, particularly they way the are presented in this documentary, constitute something that not even Marx could explain. (Charles Mudede) 911 Media Arts, Fri at 8 pm.
* THE GAS MAN
Paul Willis (late of Printer's Devil Theater) directs this DV adaptation of a rock opera by the great Herbert Bergel about a couple with a gas leak in their apartment, some kids looking to start a rock band, and a love quadrangle between characters named Chainsaw, Feather Flower, John McGuane, and Susan Schnegelfoose. The all-local cast includes Dorothy Lemoult, Michael Seiwerath, Ron W. Bailey, Brian Culver, Stephen Hando, Tricia Rodley, David Gehrman, Juliet Waller, Carolyn Thompson, and Stranger Film Editor Sean Nelson. JBL Theater, Wed at 7:30.
The Green Man
Alastair Sim plays a part-time hitman having a touch of trouble with one of his targets in this 1956 British comedy. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs at 7:30 pm.
His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz
An ill-fated silent film produced in 1914 by Oz author L. Frank Baum himself, His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz is one of many low-budget productions that preceded MGM's horrifying little masterpiece. Hokum Hall, Fri at 7, 9 pm, Sat at 2 pm.
Iran: Behind Closed Cha-dors
The Seattle-based documentary film company Adventure Divas take a road trip to Iran. REI, Thurs at 7 pm.
Lilya 4-Ever
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun at 1:50, 4:20, 7, 9:30 pm, Mon-Thurs at 7, 9 pm.
Mothers/Daughters In Reaction
Spoiled, rich, and completely out of their heads: The Maysles brothers masterpiece Grey Gardens screens with Pie in the Sky, a recent documentary on Warhol heavyweight Brigid Berlin. Little Theatre, see Movie Times for details.
* Nights of Cabiria
Contrary to Fellini's conscious intention, the three early films he directed that feature his wife Giulietta Masina (La Strada, Cabiria, and Juliet of the Spirits) exist as a trilogy of sorts, half meditation on the mythology of the feminine and half testament to the unique talent of Masina. In Nights of Cabiria she plays a briny, frustrated whore, a victim of misplaced vulnerability, disposable almost unto death. Fellini caught a great deal of heat for his sexist portrayal of women in the course of his films. But in retrospect Fellini's characters are as much expositions of the values of the Italy he loved and fought with as they are extensions of his own personality and world view. Both novices and fans of the director will be well served in this pristine resurrection of a Fellini classic. (Riz Rollins) Rendezvous, Wed at 7 pm.
NORTHWEST
The creators behind the pool-skating documentary, Fruit of the Vine, present their latest Super-8 skate film Northwest. Rick Charnoski and Coan Nichols take a road trip all over the Northwest hitting some of this area's most impressive concrete skate parks (like Portland's Burnside) and hang out with the guys who design and craft them. Like any good skateboard flick, there's plenty of great skate footage and good music. If you like movies about skating, you'll like it. If you don't, well, you won't. MEGAN SELING
Rockaraoke: The More You Drink, The Better You Sound
A documentary on the popular and terribly ill-advised hybrid of rock band and karaoke. Rendezvous, Tues at 7:15, 8 pm.
Surfer Films
An evening of sand and sea with surf films My Wave and Shelter. Rendezvous, Fri at 8 pm.
Zombie
A 1979 classic from the apparently rich history of the "Italian Zombie genre," this late-night screening of Lucio Fulci's Zombie is a festival of flesh-eating fun. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.
NOW PLAYING
* Adaptation
Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze have created a rich entertainment, stuffing their movie with enough meta-plot twists to fuel half a dozen lesser movies and bringing it to the screen with brilliant performances by Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep. (DAVID SCHMADER)
Agent Cody Banks
Aa dumb movie about a smart teenager who leads a double life: He's both a regular kid and a top-secret CIA agent. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
Anger Management
It's unofficially recommended that one wear a helmet when viewing the Adam Sandler/Jack Nicholson comedy Anger Management, so as not to cause damage to the right frontal lobe due to repeated self-administered head slapping. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
Basic
Remember when the prospect of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta co-starring in a movie was exciting?
* Bend It Like Beckham
Essentially a traditional coming-of-age story, though with a spicy ethnic twist: A hot Anglo-Indian teenage girl in outer London pursues her dream of professional soccer stardom against the wishes of her traditional Sikh parents--immigrants who, still steeped in Indian culture, are only concerned with her educational and marriage prospects, and consequently just don't get it. Stuff happens and challenges are overcome, and Mummy and Papa come around in the end, as we know they will, but the predictable conventionality of the plot structure is expertly obscured by the pleasures of the journey. It is all charming fluff and captivating if improbable lightness, of course, but for a feel-good comedy, there is no higher praise. (SANDEEP KAUSHIK)
Better Luck Tomorrow
The story of a pack of overachieving Asian high-school students turning to crime for kicks in suburbia, the film is little more than Goodfellas and Boyz N the Hood spackled together with an Asian cast, directed with overly hyper flare by Lin, and purchased by MTV films for release to teens and tweens nationwide. Swapping out Italians for Asians is original enough to create a buzz, but it doesn't really make for a memorable picture. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Bowling For Columbine
For a while, Moore seems on to something--a culture of fear endemic to our country--but in the end, he shortchanges psychological complexity in favor of cheap shots. (SEAN NELSON)
Bringing Down the House
This is as expert as fluff gets. Queen Latifah and Steve Martin navigate the deeply familiar plot with enough wit and flair to keep the audience howling, stumbling only in the final quarter with--I wish I were kidding--the bumbling kidnap of a wealthy dowager. (DAVID SCHMADER)
* Bulletproof Monk
Finally, after all these years, Chow Yun-Fat has successfully translated his Hong Kong charm into the language of popular American cinema. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Chasing Papi
Some dumb schmuck is engaged to three women in three different cities, right? All right, so then, like, all of a sudden, they're all in the same city, okay? What happens next?
* Chicago
Basically, the last hour of Chicago is a mess. Nevertheless, I recommend it. You'll have to endure Richard Gere as Billy Flynn, of course, but it's a small price to pay to watch the Fosse-inspired choreography and Catherine Zeta-Jones' star turn as Velma Kelly. (DAN SAVAGE)
City of Ghosts
Opening. See review this issue. Metro
Confidence
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, every good con movie needs a good con. Unfortunately, Confidence is missing exactly that, inserting in its place yet another annoying performance by Dustin Hoffman. Starring Edward Burns and a bunch of other people nearly as irrelevant, Confidence moves at the kind of clip that can only be described as desperate. The story: A group of seasoned con men (led by Burns) pulls a job that, in the process, accidentally rips off a pseudo-shady L.A. underworld figure known as The King (Hoffman). To make good to The King, Burns and his cronies pitch another job, this time against The King's #1 nemesis. Unfortunately, said job is neither intricate nor exciting and, save for a performance from the always great Paul Giamatti, neither is the film. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* The Core
Is it smart? Not really. Scientifically sound? Hells, no. But what The Core does offer is a perfect example of mindless, escapist entertainment. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Daddy Day Care
Opening. The once-great Eddie Murphy hits us with yet another piece of middling excrement in the form of a Mr. Mom knock-off. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12
The Dancer Upstairs
Opening. See review this issue. Harvard Exit
* The Good Thief
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)
Holes
Based on the popular children's book by Louis Sachar, Holes is a family drama (starring Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Arquette, and Jon Voight) about kids in the chain gang.
* The Hours
I was prepared to hate this movie. I was so wrong. This is a really good movie. (BARLEY BLAIR)
House of a Thousand Corpses
First-time feature director Rob Zombie loads his debut with so many tricks of the music video trade, from split-screens to oversaturated video, the biggest shock is that he makes it work. There's even one murder sequence that's aesthetically beautiful and expertly executed (so to speak). The movie is a tribute to the straight-to-video slasher films from the '80s, where young adults are picked off one at a time. Zombie's film is more self-aware in its humor and its gore, which makes it better, but it ultimately errs on the side of setting up only four sacrificial lambs, and they're not enough to sustain the 88-minute running time. It starts to drag near the end, but fans of the genre should check it out anyway. The immoral of the story? Don't make fun of inbred-looking rednecks, particularly when they're putting on a Halloween talent show for you, because they'll likely kill you. (ANDY SPLETZER)
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
The film is touching in those brief minutes when Kate Hudson and Matthew McConnaughey realize they might have feelings for each other, so long as the idiot soundtrack doesn't swell in and ruin the mood. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
Identity
When a film is as close to Psycho as Identity is, you hope it will bring something new to the table. Ah, well. Identity won't go down in history as the clever spin on Norman Bates it wants to be, but because it borrows so heavily from Hitchcock, it's not without some taut suspense. Some will enjoy the thrill-kill ride. Others will easily dodge the plot twists. No one, however, will escape the shrieking music cues. (SHANNON GEE)
It Runs In the Family
It Runs in the Family features three generations of Douglases--Kirk, Michael, and Cameron--and needless to say, I bolted from the theater early. Until I fled, begrudgingly but nonetheless swiftly, I found the scenes featuring self-absorbed old coot Mitchell (Kirk) and his resentful, self-absorbed son, Alex (Michael), funny, especially when I could sense the real-life connection to the roles. Rory Culkin is the gem, however. As Alex's 11-year-old son, Eli, younger brother of perpetually stoned Asher (Cameron), Rory has perfected his family's skill for playing winningly aloof little boys. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
* Laurel Canyon
In Laurel Canyon, thoroughly modern young lovers Sam and Alex (Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale) are stranded at the home of Sam's mother, Jane, a famous record producer, played by Frances McDormand. During the course of the film, the couple's uptight romance is threatened by Jane's swinging lifestyle, which includes liberal pot-smoking and the free-ish love of her musician boyfriend Ian (Alessandro Nivola). Alex is tempted by both Ian and Jane, while Sam, still angry about his mother's loose parenting style, seethes. Though this description might lead one to believe Laurel Canyon is a bedroom farce between hippies and yuppies, the film is in fact a smart, emotionally insightful exploration of the multigenerational consequences of the quest to live free. (SEAN NELSON)
The Lizzie McGuire Movie
Disney's impeccable live-action legacy continues with a big-screen version of the impossibly saccharine children's television series. It's sort of like watching television--but you know, real big. AND you get to pay for it!
* Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The film resonates so deeply, despite its potentially embarrassing fantasy trappings, because the filmmaker recognizes that violence and sacrifice are unavoidable aspects of the survival of civilizations. (SEAN NELSON)
Malibu's Most Wanted
The wigga son of a wealthy politician is introduced to C.O.M.P.T.O.N. by Juilliard-trained street thugs. Sensitive treatment of complicated racial stereotypes follows. (ZAC PENNINGTON)
A Man Apart
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--instead of matching or going beyond Traffic it soon dispenses with its 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 and gun down the Bad. The Bad in this film is even called El Diablo. I rest my case. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
* The Man Without a Past
Aki Kaurismäki's latest has charmed audiences at film festivals around the world, and it's easy to see why. Bathed in the perpetual golden light of northern Finland, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous. The camera rarely moves, which emphasizes the strong compositions Kaurismäki set up with cinematographer Timo Salminen. The pacing is slow but confident, and once you lock into its rhythm it becomes completely engaging. Above all the movie is funny, eschewing the gross-out humor so popular today for the more gentle humor of silent films. (ANDY SPLETZER)
A Mighty Wind
As with Christopher Guests' other films, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, the results of A Mighty Wind are alternately hilarious and flat. So much of what makes these movies enjoyable rests on the rhythm of the improv, which is why the increasingly rigid formula is both troublesome and necessary: It's the skeleton that allows these world-class performers to let loose (Fred Willard once again steals the show). The problem is that it's become so familiar that, taken together, the three films feel like one long, predictable sketch. (SEAN NELSON)
* Nowhere in Africa
Nowhere in Africa follows a rich Jewish family that leaves Germany in 1938 and moves to Africa. There they can avoid the Nazis, but have to deal with some other issues like, oh, the lack of water. Naturally, the characters all experience guilt (you just can't have a Holocaust movie without guilt), but there are also things here you never see in any movie, such as the scene in which a swarm of locusts plunder a field of maize. The hazards of humanity and the hazards of nature are not dissimilar, this movie argues, though (at two and a half hours long) not very succinctly. Thankfully, the actor Merab Ninidze, who's very sexy, is in almost every scene. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
Old School
Here's a film that relies on a whole list of old clichés (marriage is a ball and chain; the school losers vs. the campus suits) to deliver comedy that's actually really funny in a dumb kind of way. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
Phone Booth
I swear I'm just as shocked by this as you are, but dig this: Phone Booth, the new film by Joel Schumacher--yes, that Joel Schumacher--is pretty damn good. Somehow--Grace of God? Shadow director?--the man who ruined Batman, the chump behind Bad Company and Flatliners, has managed to make a film worth seeing. A gimmick gone wild, it breezes past in 80 quick minutes, starting from a sprint and only stumbling somewhat at the very end. And Schumacher, notorious for soaking his films in style, keeps matters relatively grounded, apparently realizing (perhaps for the first time in his career) that tension does not need flash. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* The Pianist
Despite appearances to the contrary, the film is not about the indomitable spirit of a survivor. It's about how low a human being can sink in order to live, and the depths of abasement a race is capable of withstanding in order to avoid extinction. There's no heroism in the picture, and all redemption is tempered by the knowledge of what's coming next. It's here, in the deeply Eastern European black comedy of this knowledge, that the film and its maker mark their territory most boldly. (Reassuring the Poles that "the Russians will be here soon" is a classic Polanski irony.) For all the possible autobiography of the story, The Pianist is most personal when it stares into the abyss of the Holocaust and finds nothing looking back. (SEAN NELSON)
Piglet's Big Movie
From the fever dreams of Christopher Robin comes another exploration of the Jungian neuroses of Hundred Acre Wood's most unbearably anxious citizens.
The Quiet American
Michael Caine deserves all the praise he's received for his role as Fowler, while Brendan Fraser slightly overplays the wide-eyed idealism that inspired America's misguided involvement in Vietnam. The metaphor of the love triangle doesn't work here nearly as well as the more overt politics, but the movie is worth seeing if only because it shows how America can do the wrong thing with the best of intentions. (ANDY SPLETZER)
* Rabbit-Proof Fence
Director Phillip Noyce makes all the right decisions in telling what could have (justifiably) been a big slab of moist, liberal liver and onions; a tale of indomitable metaphor and sackcloth villainy. Instead it is a measured tale of a secret history, and of basic human desires asserting themselves in the most inspirational of ways. (SEAN NELSON)
Raising Victor Vargas
Victor lives on the Lower East Side and has no worldly ambitions; all he has to speak of is a crush on Juicy Judy, who wears hoop earrings and too much makeup and thinks all guys are "dogs." Neither one of them has a phone at home, which suggests a rather improbable courtship, though they manage to run into each other enough times on neighborhood rooftops and at public swimming pools, and to the surprise of no one in the audience it all works out--each character (even among the overbearing and richly caricatured families) comes to a sensitive, deeper understanding of one another's longings and insecurities, which is a clean, comforting way to end a movie, but it's never how things turn out in life. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
The Real Cancun
Sure to be a "scared straight" staple of alcoholism interventions for years to come, The Real Cancun finds MTV's Real World producers Bunim-Murray applying their trashily fascinating formula to the feature-film format, with deeply stupid results. The Real Cancun's only suspense comes from the personal musings of its unlucky audience: Did MTV keep its name off this crap for a reason? How many cast members flew directly from Cancun to rehab? And how long until that guy with the horse face asks someone else, "You wanna make out?" No fun, even if you're super high. (DAVID SCHMADER)
Rivers and Tides
Andy Goldsworthy, the subject of this documentary, makes things out of nature--icicles, shards of stone, leaf, thorn, tufts of sheep's wool--and lets nature take them apart. There is something both arrogant and humble at work here: the very Western wrestling of order out of chaos; the kind of acceptance of entropy associated with Zen. This is probably what makes Goldsworthy such a popular artist among the well-meaning; a glossy book of photographs of his work graces the coffee table of every super-liberal environmentalist you know. For the most part, director Thomas Riedelsheimer gives this wit room to breathe, although the New Agey plinka plinka music is truly awful. Silence, I think, would have been more respectful, more surprising, more Goldsworthian. (EMILY HALL)
Shanghai Knights
Here's a stupid idea: Take Owen Wilson, one of the funniest people on the planet, and completely dehumorize him. This seems to be the prevailing thought of Shanghai Knights' filmmakers during production. A sequel to the fairly entertaining Shanghai Noon, the 2.0 version re-teams Wilson and Jackie Chan (who is still brilliant, if a lot slower than he used to be) and sends them to London. Hilarity does not ensue, (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
The Shape of Things
Opening. See review this issue. Metro, Uptown
Talk to Her
Actions and craziness often overshadowed feelings in Pedro Almodovar's earlier films--but with Talk to Her, Almodovar gives us the most mature and deeply felt of his movies: the story of two comatose women (one a female bullfighter and the other a ballerina), the two men who care for them (Benigno, a male nurse, and Marco, a writer), and the friendships that grow between them. The movie unfolds with grace and still manages to shock while being funny, strange, morally complex, and moving. (NATE LIPPENS)
What a Girl Wants
Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, and Kelly Preston star in Girls Gone Wild: London Edition, in a film filed somewhere between "Coming of Age," "Fish Out of Water," and "Product Placement Opportunity."
* X2: X-Men United
The screenplay, by Michael Dougherty and Daniel Harris, is great; it would have been disastrous for the filmmakers not to rely on it. Forgoing excessive sweaty violence for richly imaginative narrative, X2's world is brought to life even more spectacularly than the first X-Men film, with very human elements of persecution, morality, and acceptance. (JULIANNE SHEPHERD)
XX/XY
XX/XY stands above its pack--that of Films about diffident men who have trouble with commitment--by virtue of both a fantastic central performance (by Mark Ruffalo) and a probing intelligence--it seems less concerned with the hang-ups of one not-so-bizarre love triangle than with finding some universal generational truth. It's also among the first in what I presume will become a subgenre of romantic agonies set in the newly ripe-for-nostalgia era known as the early '90s. (SEAN NELSON)
