LIMITED RUN
Auntie Mame
A GLAMN! (Gay Lesbian Alternative Movie Night) showing of the classic camp flick starring Rosalind Russel. Central Cinema, Thurs-Sun 6:30, 9:30 pm.
Bone
From director Larry Cohen (Black Caesar) comes this strange 1959 film about race, class, extortion, and hostage taking. Starring the great Yaphet Kotto! Also known as Beverly Hills Nightmare! Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Sat 11 pm.
Genesis
"To be alive is to weave a story from a beginning we do not remember to an end we know nothing of." So starts Genesis, from Winged Migration directors Claude Nuridsany and Marie PĂŠrennou. But while that earlier foray enhanced the migratory habits of birds with visual digressions to make the central concernâgetting from one place to anotherâall the more charming, Genesis has no such humility, and therefore little of its predecessor's charm. The nature footage is still gorgeous (the lumbering giant tortoise is serene and spectacular), but it's put in the service of such a hackneyed and self-important narrative that the beauty is little more than facile. The conceit of the film is nothing less than the beginning of life (insert shots of vibrating fetuses looking like sunflared dashboard bobbleheads), and it's pretentiouslyâand hilariouslyânarrated in French by an African elder. The images are mostly treated as mere illustrations to the monologue, when they aren't just surreally wrong: After two frogs fuck the narrator says, "In love the shortest path is always the most sinuous." That really should be embroidered on a pillow. (NATE LIPPENS) Varsity, Fri-Sun 2:30, 4:45, 7:10, 9:10 pm, Mon-Thurs 7:10, 9:10 pm.
Happy Birthday Ray!
The Grand Illusion's celebration of Ray Harryhausen continues. All films screen at the Grand Illusion. 20 Million Miles to Earth, Fri 7, 11 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 7 pm, Mon-Thurs 7 pm. Mysterious Island, Weekdays 9 pm, Sat 5, 11 pm, Sun 5, 9 pm.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Alfonso CuarĂłn, who has taken the directing reigns from Chris Columbus this time around, has not turned the Potterheads' god into bullshit. Early word on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was that it was the best of the series, and for once early word was correct; for the first time in the franchise's existence, a film has achieved the level of art. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.
Hush!
Hush! is a film about an apparently Japanese lady who wants to get it on with an apparently gay Japanese engineer, for the purpose of having his baby. What subtleties of plot will she deviseâthe secret theft of sperm by way of exquisite technological devices, an open war on his homosexual psyche, the donning of transgendered attire? And just how does the word "hush" fit into this unsettling picture? Savery Hall Room 239, UW campus, Thurs July 14 at 7:30 pm.
L.A. Confidential
Kevin Spacey and Kim Basinger star in the neo-noir set in 1940s L.A. Central Cinema, Wed 6:30, 9:30 pm.
Linda's Summer Movie Madness
This week: Westworld, which is about robots. Suspiciously human-looking robots. Linda's, Wed July 20 at dusk.
School Of Rock
Like Kindergarten Cop, the concept behind Rock is one of those near-hokey ones where "kids teach us more than we teach them," and where, in the end, everybody wins in some way because everybody loosens up a bit. What makes this movie different though is that it tackles the parts of rock culture where people take themselves way too seriously, a subject that could use a little unwinding of its panties. (JENNIFER MAERZ) Fremont Outdoor Movies, Sat July 16 at dusk.
Tell Them Who You Are
There's a lot of unrequited yearning in the film, mainly coming from Mark Wexler, who uses his directorial aegis to both flatter and damn his father and subject, the legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler. And despite the somewhat cloying habit of cutting to photos of himself as a sad-looking kid every time his dad says something shitty, there's an unmistakable pathos at work, too. Mark waits until Haskell's ugly side emerges before he allows the talking headsâincluding Conrad Hall, Michael Douglas, and other Hollywood royalsâto support the notion that the celebrated cinematographer is also, to borrow a phrase from Haskell himself, a "14-carat prick." But it's also one of these same talking heads, Jane Fonda, who dispenses the only real nugget of wisdom in the whole movie: that to get anywhere in a relationship like this, it's incumbent upon the son to come to the father with humility, because the father is an immovable force. Before the words even leave her mouth, you can see that's exactly what this film is trying to do. (SEAN NELSON) Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Sun 7:15, 9 pm.
The Two of Us
This sweet, slightly disturbing 1967 film by Claude Berri is preceded by an earlier Berri short with exactly the same themes (cute kids, vegetarians in the French countryside), which gives me hope that the sympathetic fascist vegetarian in The Two of Us isn't, strictly speaking, a stand-in for Hitler. Set in France during the German Occupation, The Two of Us tells the story of a trouble-making Jewish boy (Alain Cohen) named after Berri himself, who at age eight, still sucks his thumb and is spoon-fed by his mother. Whatever Freudian blockages these habits might indicate, they definitely portend difficulty in adjusting to his new life alone with a foster family in the countryside. But adjust he doesâto the bullies at school, to pretending to pray to a Catholic God, and to his jolly, ferociously anti-Semitic new grandpa (L'Atalante's Michel Simon). The Two of Us is smart about the relationship between the little boy and the old man, if somewhat sentimental about the beauty of the French countryside; and the ending is left poignantly unresolved. But perhaps the best thing about the movie is the attention paid to the bit characters: The cheerily sadistic schoolteacher, the pinched but frisky niece, and even the angelic tomboy next door are all delightfully engrossing. (ANNIE WAGNER) Varsity, Fri-Sun 2:10, 4:30, 7, 9:20 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9:20 pm.
The Wages of Fear
A 1953 Henri-Georges Clouzot film about four South American men hired to transport a dangerous nitroglycerin shipment. Movie Legends, Sun July 17 at 1 pm.
Walk on the Wild Side
Northwest Film Forum's Summer Camp series continues with this movie about a wayward slut (Jane Fonda) and a lesbian madam (Barbara Stanwyck) and all manner of deliriously dubious behavior in Depression-era New Orleans. Northwest Film Forum, Daily 7, 9:15 pm.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
"Snozzberry? Who ever heard of a snozzberry?" Central Cinema, Sat-Sun noon, 2:15, 4:30 pm.
NOW PLAYING
The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D
Robert Rodriguez's latest kid movie explores the inherent sadness of childhood. Though the ending is happy, the substance of the film is sad, which is why it's the best kid's movie Robert Rodriguez has so far made. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Batman Begins
Christopher Nolan and David Goyer's scenario circles back to the basics and has a ball reinventing the mythos. The defining elements are still there: boy loses parents, devotes life to fighting crime, becomes creature of the night. What's new is the filmmakers' attention to the inner life of their 2-D main character, devoting fully half their time to recounting Wayne's training and motivations for spending the nights all done up in batsuit. For the first time in a live-action recounting, the title character is actually allotted more attention than the inevitably showy villains. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Bewitched
This Bewitched, by queen-of-cute writer/director Nora Ephron, is not a remake of the television show. It's a movie about making a remake. You'd think this would lend the film some degree of ironic distanceâor at least the opportunity to comment on the cultural significance of the originalâbut no. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Cinderella Man
If a gnarled creature were grown in a lab, bred and designed by unfeeling scientists to spend its soulless existence craving and consuming only Oscars... well, it would still come up short to Ron Howard's latest film. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Crash
Crash certainly doesn't want for hubris, but ultimately stands as a case of laudable ambition overwhelming still-developing narrative abilities. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Fantastic Four
Sometimes previews lie. Preemptively clobbered by fanboys and much maligned by critics, this easygoing adaptation of Marvel Comics' oldest superhero team (Earth, Wind, Fire & Rubber) is actually sort of... neat. More explicitly kid-friendly than the rest of the recent wave of comic adaptations (no Batman Begins gravitas here), Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost's zippy origin script benefits mightily from splash-panel perfect performances by Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans. The action set pieces suffer from below-par special effects (pity Mr. Fantastic), and a director (Barbershop's Tim Story) clearly out of his comfort zone, but the linking material still manages to capture the retro, slightly dorky charm of Stan Lee's squabbling nuclear-radiated family unit. 'Nuff said, true believers. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Heights
Based on a play, set among the idle rich, produced by Merchant/Ivory in unfamiliar modern-day mode: the early indicators of a tendon-stretching yawn are bodacious. Still, that old chestnut about initial impressions can occasionally be true. Heights, the fiercely entertaining, hugely precocious feature debut for 28-year-old director Chris Terrio, treads on some very familiar turf, but with enough style and unusual empathy to make the trip feel, if not quite new, well worth taking. And then there's Glenn Close. Man alive, what a performance. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Herbie: Fully Loaded
Rumors of star Lindsay Lohan's overly active social life and digitally reduced cup size may have led to toxic levels of advanced snark, but the rather unfortunately titled Herbie: Fully Loaded proves to be considerably less of a disaster than the Web buzz would suggest. What's more, as with Disney's previous Lohan-led retrofits from the vault, the results are honestly pretty entertaining; while not quite on a Freaky Friday level of surprise quality, the return of the beloved possessed Volkswagen should be a more-than-acceptable timewaster for both the jungle-gym set and their captive chaperones. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I am not a Hitchhiker's Guide nerd, but even I know that Ford Prefect is no American rapper, sir. Mos Def isn't the only grossly miscast actor in this adaptation of Douglas Adams' beloved novels; even the great Sam Rockwell is too much to take. The film suffers from the same problem as planet Earth: too many Americans. Still, whenever there are at least two British actors on-screenâespecially Martin Freeman, AKA Tim from The Office, or the film-stealing Bill Nighyâthe movie version mines big, warm, absurd laughs alongside its hyper-imaginative graphics, and quasi-mystical pop metaphysicality. How ironic that this, of all movies, would suffer from not being British enough. SEAN NELSON
Howl's Moving Castle
When it comes to animation gods, there's Hayao Miyazaki, and then there's everybody else. Although reportedly considering retirement after completing the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, Miyazaki was apparently intrigued enough by the prospect of adapting a novel by children's author Diana Wynne Jones to return to the drawing board. Now that the collaboration has finally made its way to the States, the results show that the material might actually have been too perfect a match for the director's patented sensibilities. For the first time, the Master's wondrous imagination feels slightly...familiar. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
The Interpreter
The Interpreter turns what could have been a smart and twisty political thrillerâwith heavy emphasis on politicalâinto a bogged-down and bland mulling over of wounded souls and suppressed sexual attraction. It's hard to care about the characters played by Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, since the actors seems to care very little about the characters themselves, and with their brooding relationship (kept chaste, thankfully) routinely burying the intricacies of the plot, interest easily wanes. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Ladies in Lavender
In this assemblage of implausible vignettes , Maggie Smith is the proper sister Janet, concerned with privacy and appearances. Judi Dench plays Ursula, a fragile little biddy stuck in a permanent state of childish desperation becauseâthis is actually in the scriptâshe's never been properly fucked. Then, a hot teen boy (Daniel BrĂźhl) washes up on the shore. Ursula goes crazy; Janet huffs and acts a little weird herself, and the movie ends with a rousing concert, which (like everything else in this film) is flimsy and unintentionally sad. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Land of the Dead
In the two decades since director George Romero last ventured into the realm of the undead, his original vision has been overtaken by a horde of fleet-footed, gut-munching pretenders. Big Daddy is back, and he's still got his teeth. Romero's genius for depicting the undead as alternately tragic, pathetic, comedic and ultimately terrifying remains intact. The shambling hordes still just want to get ya, but they also drag along the shopping carts and tubas from their former lives. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Mad Hot Ballroom
In terms of scope, the first-time director and writer may have bitten off a bit more than they can comfortably chew, as the scenes of the kids' ballroom dancing contest come off as alternately long-winded and confusing. The ability to fashion anything even remotely comprehensible out of hundreds of hours of footage is admirable, but a slightly heavier hand in the editing bay could have worked wonders. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
March of the Penguins
I have never liked penguins, and now that I've watched this documentary I like them even less. March of the Penguins has one great moment: when it shows a group of female penguins going into the sea and swimming through the water in the way their featured relatives fly through the air. The water is clear blue, the surrounding ice forms a majestic architecture, and the penguins zip here and there, chasing fish and avoiding sea lions. But when they're back on the land, back on their ugly feet, all of the grace is gone and once again the penguin is a dull and clumsy creature. (CHARLES MUDEDE )
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Miranda July's feature-film debut is delicate and tense, a movie with a visual language so powerful that it seems to expand out of the movie theater and onto the sidewalk. Against a waterlogged electronic score by Michael Andrews, her characters bubble-wrap belongings, eulogize goldfish, draw ASCII tigers, tap quarters against bus stop poles, wear inspirational shirts that can only be read in the mirror, press dot stickers for good luck, flash their underwear at leering guys, and light themselves on fire. The movie is set in Portland (characters refer to Burnside Street and Laurelhurst Park) but it was shot in L.A. (witness the palm trees), and the discrepancy serves to displace the story from either setting. July's is a fantastical world where the most important contours are human shapes, where intense sexual longing collides with the paradoxical wish to escape your own skin, where those who have power try to abdicate it, and those who are powerless act out in agonizing, self-deceiving ways. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Millions
Danny Boyle has crafted a kid-friendly fable with enough sly modern-day relevance to keep adults from checking their watches. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Monster-in-Law
The beginning of this movie is so horrible, so bland, so curdled, so... well, typical, as romantic comedies go, that once the prospective mother-in-law (Jane Fonda) digs her claws into the bride-to-be (Jennifer Lopez), you can't help cheering wildly. It's like watching a bad movie eat itself. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
All Mr. & Mrs. Smith does is build to a fiery conclusion it never even attempts to earn, with both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie reduced to mere prop status along the way. Director Doug Liman still knows how to shoot actionâhis loose, even careless style brought a surprising amount of realism to Bourne Identity, and here it adds a sense of playfulness to all the gunplayâbut this time action is all he has to offer. Pretty people making pretty explosions does not a good movie make. Just ask that ultimate hack Michael Bay. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
My Summer of Love
Loosely based on Helen Cross' award-winning novel, the film focuses on Mona, a lower-class lost Yorkshire soul who lives in the upstairs of a grotty pub. Languishing one day in the tall grass, she stumbles across the path of Tamsin, a disdainful upper-crust spending the summer in the cavernous mansion of her zombified parents. Emotions soon run high, to the chagrin of the straight-laced community, personified by Mona's newly born again brother (Paddy Considine), an ex-con whose dangerous, raging ape temper is never more than one ill-advised word away. Inspired largely by the director's time spent researching small town religious zealotry for an aborted documentary, Considine's wild card of a character serves to wonderfully up the illogical attraction ante. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Rebound
Not all that funnyâunless you're 12, then it's fucking hilarious. (MEGAN SELING)
Saving Face
Seattle native Alice Wu's amiably low-key debut suffers a bit from the standard crowd-pleasing rom-com conventions, but stays afloat due to some effective wisecracks and the unforced, charming lead performance of the gorgeous Michelle Krusiec. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Episode III will, indeed, be impossible to resist. The epic many of us grew up with has reached its end; a moment of silence, please, for both what was and what could have been. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
War of the Worlds
Though I usually take his side, if only for sport, the first hour of War of the Worlds had me convinced that Steven Spielberg had finally proven his detractors right. Before the bad things start happening, the stage is set for the kind of soulless, CGI-driven family redemption saga that could only happen in a grillion dollar movie. But then something happens. The supreme achievement of the effects seems to galvanize Spielberg into earning them. The drama enters some very dark territory, always motorized by the unimaginable terror of the invincible invadersâit's like the material is daring the director to show us what he's got. (SEAN NELSON)
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
On paper, this documentary about the five-year relationship between a gentle, sporadically homeless hippie with no visible means of support and an unruly flock of birds sounds like a recipe for instant tooth decay. Darned if it doesn't work, though. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
