Afghan Stories
Former investment banker Taran Davies lives off of his bloated bank account on a sight-seeing trip of Afghanistan following the World Trade Center attacks. Oh right, and he brought his camera. Shows with the one of the most heart-racing pieces of footage unearthed post-9/11: a clairvoyant 1998 interview with the head of security at the World Trade Center called Voice of the Prophet. 911 Media Arts Center, Fri at 8 pm.
Casablanca
Humphrey Bogart plays a Dancing Bear in this thinly veiled adaptation of The Autobiography of P. T. Barnum. Ingrid Bergman co-stars as a trampoline. Renton Outdoor Cinema, Sat at dusk.
The Cremaster Cycle
This week of the Cycle offers a double feature of Cremaster 1 (a football stadium, Goodyear blimps, Vaseline sculptures, dancing girls, and stewardesses) and Cremaster 2 (Houdini, serial killers, Norman Mailer, a drumming cameo by Slayer's Dave Lombardo, and the singer from Morbid Angel covered in a swarm of bees). Aren't you in line yet? Varsity, Thurs-Wed at 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:40 pm.
Lucky Bum Tour
See Blow Up. Jem Studio, Thurs at 8 pm.
Mad Max
"That scag and his floozie, they're gonna die!" Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.
Mule Skinner Blues
Mapping the American Movie premise with a path a little deeper into the trailer park, filmmaker Stephen Earnhart showcases the 60-year-old dream of Beanie Andrew, a man with a dream--a dream of a movie--a movie about an ape amputee. Little Theatre, Thurs-Sun at 9 pm.
Nudism In Film vs. Nudism in Reality
See Blow Up. Mercer Island Community Center, Sat at 7:30 pm.
Rebel Without a Cause
"You're tearing me apart!" Fremont Outdoor Movies, Sat at dusk.
The Reluctant Astronaut
The second film in the Grand Illusion's Three Sides of a Square retrospective on the transcendent career of Don Knotts, The Reluctant Astronaut takes the insect-headed actor to new heights (god, that didn't feel good) with a job in the space program. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.
Searching For Asian America
A soon-to-be-released PBS documentary on the work of brave explorers desperately attempting to locate the lost republic of Asian America. Wing Luke Asian Art Museum, Fri at 8 pm.
* SILENT MOVIE MONDAYS
This week: Outlaws and funny hats dominate the Tumbleweeds, King Baggot's 1925 film about the Cherokee Strip land rush. Paramount, Monday at 7 pm.
SNEAK
After six years of success in the Bay Area as the Camera Cinema Club, this film preview series returns as SNEAK in Seattle. For more information check out the website www.sneakfilms.com. Pacific Place, Sun at 10 pm.
Southern Gothic Series
See Stranger Suggests. Northwest Film Forum exploits the Yankee fear of our Southern brethren with two weeks of Kentucky-fried celluloid in the Southern Gothic film series. This week's offerings: Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, and the otherwise unavailable Phenix City Story. Grand Illusion, see Movie Times for details.
Stan Brakhage Film Festival
See Blow Up. University of Washington HUB Auditorium, see Movie Times for details.
The Thin Man
"I haven't the time. I'm much too busy seeing that you don't lose any of the money I married you for." Seattle Art Museum, Thurs at 7:30 pm.
NOW PLAYING
2 Fast 2 Furious
John Singleton directs 2 Fast 2 Furious on autopilot. Gone is the sense that anyone here has an offscreen life, that anything you see could actually happen, that anything surprising or interesting will take place in the computer-generated plot. Hell, most hiphop videos have better plots and stronger female characters than this movie, which makes for one boring road trip. (ANDY SPLETZER)
* 28 Days Later
How do you like your pop-apocalypse, sci-fi horror? If you like it loud, smart, and scary as all get out, you cannot miss this. Animal activists accidentally release a rage virus on London that turns the population into cannibalistic predators who could outrun a zombie anytime, anywhere. The unaffected few band together and end up in a military compound where the soldiers are as bad as the infected. Yes. This film kicks ass. (SHANNON GEE)
Bad Boys 2
See review this issue. Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12
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. (SANDEEP KAUSHIK)
The Bread, My Sweet
There are about 50 ways this little ethnic romantic drama could have gone awry, but writer/director Melissa Martin deftly sidesteps most of them to produce an effective debut. Scott Baio (!) stars as Dominic Pizzola, a man leading a double life. By day he's a "designated asshole," firing people for a corporate efficiency department. By night, he's a passionate baker, firing the ovens in a biscotti kitchen he runs with his two brothers. The bakery is downstairs from an elderly couple, Bella and Massimo, who have more or less adopted the brothers. When Bella falls ill, Dominic decides to fulfill her greatest wish and marry Luka, her wild daughter. Naturally, the quest runs aground of both Luka's independence (she's never even met her would-be groom) and Dominic's solitary nature. Just as naturally, their romance rises like a loaf of magical realism. More surprising than the plot, however, are the touches of warm neighborhood naturalism that suffuse the storytelling. Most surprising of all are the performances of Baio and Rosemary Prinz as Bella, the kind of role that Joan Plowright would normally play. Prinz has a face like an angel, and it's in her eyes, which tear up with joy at the sight of her wayward daughter's return, that The Bread, My Sweet proves transcendent. (SEAN NELSON)
Bruce Almighty
Just when you thought there was nothing worse than an earnest Jim Carrey comedy, it hits you like a sack of shit in the kisser--there is something worse, and that's an earnest Jim Carrey comedy that casts the overacting, overarching comedian as God. If I wanted religion and the importance of prayer shoved down my throat like a giant morality tampon sucking up every last bit of patience until I'm suffocating on it, I'd be on my knees in a pew already. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
* Capturing the Friedmans
To watch the Friedman family fall apart after the father and youngest brother are accused of molesting kids in the family basement is like watching a Greek tragedy unfold, five people inexorably pulled down by their flaws, by personality, fate, and human failing--the angry elder brother, the bitter mother, the passive, tired father. This doesn't mean that Capturing the Friedmans is simple; you'll spend hours afterward arguing what really happened, and who behaved, in the end, the worst. Those arguments might surprise you. (EMILY HALL)
Charlies' Angels: Full Throttle
What I wanted to see was a parable about the power of an older, wiser woman striking back at the young, naive, and pert-breasted. And Demi Moore looks amazing, it is true. But it isn't possible to read anything into this movie: If you try to apply your brain to it, it snaps back like a rubber band. (EMILY HALL)
Dumb and Dumberer
This movie is stupid. You'd only expect as much considering this film is about how Dumb and Dumber stars Harry and Lloyd came to be best friends during their high-school years. Its saving grace is that it's the kind of stupid that the majority of Americans like--every joke is about farting, poo, special education students, and short buses. (MEGAN SELING)
* Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo proves yet again Pixar's current chokehold on big-screen animation. From the facial expressions of the fish and background shots of gently swaying sea grass, to expansive harbor shots of Sydney and the continual mist of plankton wisping by, every frame has been so detailed and obsessed over that the film stuns. Add in Pixar's gift for scripting, a gift that always makes their films tolerable for adults, and the end product is a flower of a movie, exceedingly well imagined, that is more than worth the multiplex gouging. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Garage Days
See review this issue. Varsity
Hollywood Homicide
Gawdawful. Seriously. Watching Hollywood Homicide, two questions flared up: 1) What has happened to Indiana Jones? and 2) Why have so many critics--Roger Ebert and Slate's David Edelstein, among them--found this insipid, unfunny, clumsily constructed "buddy cop movie" worthwhile? (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
How To Deal
Though I feel that I should have some conception of pop singer Mandy Moore as a distinct living entity, for some reason I just can't seem to separate her toothy mug from that of Jessica Simpson's. In order to emphasis Moore's individualism, I spent a little time on the Internet--where I learned that Moore is the proud owner of three cats: Milo, Zoe, and Chloe. Please meditate on this fact as you consider dropping nine dollars on her latest opus How To Deal. (ZAC PENNINGTON) Factoria, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12
* The Hulk
Whether or not you buy the beast onscreen is dependent upon just how far you yourself are willing to leap--but the old tale has been given a modern overhaul by Ang Lee and writers James Schamus, John Turman, and Michael France for The Hulk. It may in fact be the most grown-up--and most emotionally fucked-up--comic-book movie ever assembled. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
The Italian Job
Pompous jackass (Edward Norton) and inflection-handicapped pretty boy (Mark Wahlberg) team up in The Italian Job, a remake of the 1969 heist comedy starring Michael Caine and Noel Coward, and somehow, shockingly, the result is not completely fucked--a sturdy, if unsurprising, summer fluff piece. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Johnny English
The once-brilliant Rowan Atkinson (Black Adder, Mr. Bean) dumbs it down for America once again. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Guild 45th, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Woodinville 12
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
A lame exercise in myth-historical revisionism in which the action is dull, the dialogue witless, the effects absurd (Mr. Hyde looks like the Hulk; Nemo's Nautilus looks like a binary code ejaculation), and the story about as lucid as Ronald Reagan. While they may never run out of comics to make into would-be summer blockbusters, they certainly appear to have run out of good ones. (SEAN NELSON)
Legally Blonde 2
More than any other actress, 27-year-old Southerner Reese Witherspoon embodies American ideals at their most... idealistic, representing the beauty, altruistic savvy, and awesomely fine-tuned dental hygiene we so admire in our finest citizens.That's why we believe she can and will change the world through animal rights in Legally Blonde 2, in which Witherspoon reprises her amazing role as Elle Woods, whose desire for truth, justice, and the American way equalizes her unapologetic materialism. (JULIANNE SHEPHERD)
Man On the Train
The French are a great people, with a great cinema; but when they stink, they really stink. This film is an utter waste of your time and mine. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
The Matrix: Reloaded at IMAX
Okay, so an already bloated movie is about to gain mucho weight, which means über-geeks will get a chance to see Trinity's PVC-clad heart-shaped ass in three-story-tall glory. This is an enhancement, to be sure, but much like Attack of the Clones' stint at IMAX, The Matrix: Reloaded's transition from big screen to really fucking big screen seems completely unnecessary. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
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. (SEAN NELSON)
Pirates of the Caribbean
Watching Pirates of the Caribbean, I realized how supremely disappointing it is that in the 108 years since the Lumière brothers first fumbled with their primitive cinematograph, we are only just now being given a zombie pirate movie. And even if the film's story is fairly irrelevant (a quick summation: cursed pirate ship, kidnapped maiden, much swordplay), the action is solid, the CGI intricate, and the writing adequate--and what more could you want from a summer blockbuster, especially when Johnny Depp is a such sight to behold in the film? (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
The Sea Is Watching
This was to be Akira Kurosawa's last film, but before he could get started, he had an early call to that great studio backlot in the sky. Though sadly bereft of samurai, Kurosawa's script explores a red-light district in 19th century Japan, and the star-crossed lovers that meet on its seedy streets. Seven Gables
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
Tyler Durden, some gay ass prince, and the chick from the T-Mobil commercials with the speech impediment run into big birds and big fish and big goddesses and after a whole lot of swinging and flying through the air, all ends well. In conclusion: it's dumb. No one over 10 years old ever needs to see a DreamWorks animated film. Pixar is totally cooler. And Bradley Steinbacher can suck it for sending me to this film. (MEGAN SELING)
Spellbound
See Stranger Suggests.
The Swimming Pool
François Ozon's latest tribute to the sexy superiority of French women. Starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Question: Why would a team of futuristic Cyberne-ticians create an "ultimate killing machine" in the form of a 56-year-old slab of Austrian porkloin? (ZAC PENNINGTON)
* Whale Rider
Audiences at Toronto and Sundance loved this film and so will you if you like triumphant tales of charismatic youngsters who defy the stoic immobility of old-fashioned patriarchs. I like it because it captures traditional Maori ceremonies and songs on film while also showing that New Zealand is not just a backdrop for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Shannon Gee)
The Winged Migration
Following geese, cranes, swans, puffins, penguins, pelicans, and gulls, the makers of the insect documentary Microcosmos spent four years capturing impossible images of birds, via a bevy of methods and a gaggle of cinematographers, for Winged Migration, a documentary that is as much about the wonders of flight as the migration of birds.
