Limited Run

Back to the Future
"Why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here?" Central Cinema, Fri-Sun 3:30, 6:30, 9:30 pm. (9:30 shows 21+.)

Big Bucks, Big Pharma
An agitdoc about the pharmaceutical industry and its evil advertising ways. Keystone Church, Fri Nov 24 at 7 pm.

The Big Combo
SAM's film noir series picks up again after Thanksgiving with this slurpy 1955 B-noir about a police lieutenant named Diamond and a girl named Susan. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs Nov 30 at 7:30 pm.

recommendedThe Big Sleep
See Stranger Suggests, p. 25. 1946's The Big Sleep is top-tier Howard Hawks, which means that it's just about the most entertaining movie ever generated within the Hollywood system. The twisty gumshoe plot is fun enough in its own right, but what really sticks is the sight of Humphrey Bogart blowing through a bevy of willing dames until finally meeting his intellectual match in Lauren Bacall. The once-censored scene where they use a discussion about horseracing as a means of foreplay is still one of the most goofily sexy things to ever hit the screen. (ANDREW WRIGHT) Grand Illusion, Weekdays 6:30, 8:45 pm, Sat-Sun 4, 6:30, 8:45 pm.

Clue
This 1985 film, based on the board game and not vice versa, was originally distributed with three different endings. One will be screened Friday, one Saturday, and one will be left out in the cold. Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.

Darfur Diaries
A documentary about the displaced people of Darfur. Co-director Jen Marlowe in attendance. Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, Sat Nov 25 at 7 pm.

recommendedDays of Heaven
See Stranger Suggests, p. 25. Northwest Film Forum, Daily 7, 9 pm.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"We're knights of the Round Table/We dance whene'er we're able/We do routines and chorus scenes with footwork impeccable/We dine well here in Camelot/We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot/We're knights of the Round Table/Our shows are for-mi-dable/But many times we're given rhymes that are quite un-sing-able/We're opera mad in Camelot/We sing from the diaphragm a lot/In war we're tough and able/Quite in-de-fa-ti-gable/Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable/It's a busy life in Camelot." Varsity, Fri-Sun 2, 4:30, 7:10, 9:20 pm, Mon-Thurs 7:10, 9:20 pm.

Snow Falling on Cedars
An island in the postwar Pacific Northwest is the setting for a murder trial that reunites reporter Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke) with Hatsue Miyamoto (Youki Kudoh), the great love of his young life, who was sent to a Japanese American internment camp and now suffers besides her accused husband, Kazuo (Rick Yune). Director Scott Hicks has created a truly stunning visual design for the story, weaving burnished memories into every gorgeously wounded frame. Still, what fells the film is its lack of a compelling center; it starts to bore you without anyone to carry its consuming passions. Smoking around its edges are intriguing details about the appalling treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, but the romance that supposedly burns beneath all the pain of history is as remote as the hollowed cedar tree that acts as a touchstone for its lovers. (STEVE WIECKING) Central Cinema, Wed-Thurs 6:30, 9:30 pm. (Late shows 21+, film continues through Dec 3.)

Uganda Rising
A Vancouver, B.C.-produced documentary by Jesse James Miller and Pete McCormack about the civil war in Northern Uganda. This screening is a benefit for former Ugandan child soldiers, routed through the International Rescue Committee; see http://www.beanonline.org/">www.beanonline.org; for more information. Broadway Performance Hall, Tues Nov 28 at 8 pm.

Now Playing

recommendedBabel
Babel is a huge, messy, sensuous film, its 142 minutes stretched over such riches as an embarrassingly intimate scene in which Cate Blanchett struggles to steady herself over a bedpan, a startlingly cheerful moment in which suburban American children are subjected to the slaughter of a chicken, and a lovely, turbulent sequence in which a deaf Japanese schoolgirl (the fascinating Rinko Kikuchi) takes Ecstasy and goes out dancing. The movie is clearly of a piece with Amores Perros and 21 Grams, the previous collaborations between writer Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñárritu: A Japanese man traveling in Morocco gives a rifle to a goatherd, whose son accidentally shoots an American woman, whose government wildly overreacts. Meanwhile, the young son and daughter of the hemorrhaging woman are taken to a wedding in Mexico by their immigrant nanny; as the exhausted revelers return to California, U.S. border control guards provoke another wild overreaction, and the kids end up stranded in the desert. In the story with the most tenuous connection to the rest, the deaf Japanese schoolgirl tries to get laid or at least touched by other human hands. Each of the stories concerns parents and children, and each is preoccupied with the arbitrary yet unbridgeable borders between people. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommendedBorat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
It's hairy, balls-out humor—but behind the seemingly random spray of political incorrectness, it's very carefully calibrated. Borat is a Kazakh television personality from a backwater where, supposedly, retarded brothers are stored in cages, where sisters are prostitutes and wives are enormously ugly, where pretty much everybody is related to the town rapist. On a scale of dangerous humor, riffs about a place few Americans have ever heard of, except perhaps in news reports about its self-aggrandizing dictator, are probably pretty safe. Humor about humorless feminists: relatively safe. Humor about idiot frat boys ingesting unidentifiable substances: very safe. Almost not-humor about red-state bigots: Uh, wait, aren't they most of the moviegoing public? Humor about Jews (even delivered by a Cohen): safe as Palestinian houses. There's also a reason it wasn't initially released in much of middle America. It comes down on homophobes hard, and proves, without a doubt, that Jews eat sandwiches too. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommendedCasino Royale
It gives me great relief to say that Casino Royale is good. Really, really good. Maybe, in fact, the best entry since 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. What's more, this may be the first installment—courtesy of a smashing lead performance by Daniel Craig—to capture the rock-hearted, alligator-blooded nature of Ian Fleming's literary character. No offense to St. Connery is intended, but, man, Craig has it down cold. And, just like that, drinking and shooting and driving fast and screwing are cool all over again. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Copying Beethoven
Every time I watch an inspirational dramedy about the waning years of a fiery yet vulnerable classical composer, I have the same thought: not enough chamber pots. Praise be to Copying Beethoven, then, a film that seems to conflate gritty realism with the presence of an open kettle of urine by the bed. (LINDY WEST)

Deck the Halls
This offensive piece of smoldering crap is good for nothing except a litmus test for potential friends. Does your would-be buddy think gay panic is fucking hilarious? Find out when a naked Danny DeVito snuggles into a sleeping bag with a frozen Matthew Broderick! Does this person think it's really chuckle-worthy when two fathers inadvertently catcall their teenage daughters? How about when a bully sheriff bends over to reveal his ladies' thong underwear? How about when Kristin Chenowith debases herself in the role of yet another shrill, aging, busty ditz? Unless you're a bad person, Deck the Halls will make you want to strangle yourself with a string of Christmas lights and gouge out your own eyes with the hook end of a candy cane. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommendedThe Departed
Returning at last from the gold statuette wilderness, Martin Scorsese has assembled The Departed with an absolute precision that's been lacking in his work since Goodfellas. The result is a film that's not so much a puzzle as it is a pretzel, overlapping and tying itself up at any given moment, and effectively capturing us within the twisted lives of its two leads. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Fast Food Nation
Fast Food Nation, the movie by Richard Linklater (who cowrote the screenplay with journalist Eric Schlosser, who wrote Fast Food Nation the book), has no room for facts. It's a fictional narrative inspired by the themes of a nonfiction book, and the transition is just as clunky as it sounds. Everyone from the lovely Ashley Johnson (playing a Colorado teen with a crap job at "Mickey's") to Ethan Hawke (as her chill uncle) to Avril Lavigne (as a ditzy environmentalist) has a little speech to deliver, a naive position to espouse, and the result is a cacophony in monotone. There's also a melodrama about Mexican workers, a minor detective story about a Mickey's exec who thinks he can eliminate fecal matter from his burgers (ha!), and a really grisly scene in which a human leg is inadvertently ground into patties. You're better off reading the book, or better yet, moving on to the newest entry in the anti-fast food genre: Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. You think hamburgers are scary? Wait till you get a good look at a silky ear of corn. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Flags of Our Fathers
The canvas here may be too large, or the history too weighty, for director Clint Eastwood to find an in. Whatever the reason, as both war epic and historical character piece, it feels weirdly insubstantial. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

recommendedFlushed Away
Bad news first: Flushed Away, Aardman's first feature-length film since the triumphant Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (and notably, the first made without the participation of W&G creator Nick Park), is indeed significantly more manic than the films that made the studio famous. Fortunately, it's a great kind of manic, with an unapologetically crass, blitzkrieg approach that more than delivers the comedic goods. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

For Your Consideration
The mockumentary formula that Christopher Guest helped invent is getting very tired. So the shiny new innovation in For Your Consideration is... there's no "umentary"! Now it's all mock. All the usual suspects do their usual shticks, but only Fred Willard (as the host of an Access Hollywood clone) lands on the sweet spot between earnest and deliriously off-kilter. Everybody else looks like they'd rather be somewhere—anywhere—else. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
The film's hypothesis: Diane Arbus, the midcentury American photographer who'd become famous for her cool portraits of misfits, was nothing but a neurotic housewife... until she fell in love with the asthmatic ape-man who lived upstairs! We're not meant to take this proposition as fact: It's an imaginary portrait, the opening title card reiterates, reaching "beyond reality" to offer the most pigheadedly literal symbolism I think I've ever encountered in a film. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommendedA Good Year
Ridley Scott departs his native terrain of manly action-adventure epics and plunges into the viticultural riches of Provence, dragging home the most shamelessly silly movie about grapes ever made. Russell Crowe plays an obnoxious London stockbroker, prone to addressing his team as "lab rats" and caressing those female employees who dare to display their comely thighs. Then he gets into ethical trouble and, serendipitously, a long-lost uncle dies, leaving behind a tempting French estate full of memories, casks of noxious wine, and plentiful joie de vivre. Also, a hot local girl (Marion Cotillard, trés hot). Also, a hot Californian girl (Abbie Cornish, California hot), who claims to be a cousin and may be the rightful heir to the estate. His plans to sell the property quickly fall by the wayside. You know how the movie ends before it rightly begins, but despite my best efforts, I didn't hate it. I blame the excellent cast. Plus, there's a great scene in which Crowe is forced to dog paddle through a manure-tainted pool, and a number of frankly admiring shots of cute butts in miniskirts. Hey, it's France—you're allowed to stare. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommendedHappy Feet
So anyway, Happy Feet is about a penguin named Mumble. He's fucking adorable. Thanks to a clumsy dad who dropped him before he hatched from his egg, though, Mumble's a little different from all the other penguins. See, all the other penguins can sing, and they rely on their talent to attract them a mate. But poor little dropped Mumble screeches like nails on a chalkboard as soon as he opens his mouth. It's so not sexy and it's so not going to find him a lady penguin to get down with. But what Mumble can do, is dance. And boy can that motherfucker's feet fly! He's like Fred Astaire on ice! With uh... feathers! And a beak! (MEGAN SELING)

The Illusionist
Edward Norton plays Eisenheim, a cabinet-maker's apprentice turned master of illusions and sloshy consonants. In front of adoring Viennese audiences, he makes an orange seedling sprout instantaneously into a gnarly little tree. You must forgive yourself for not being equally astounded—you're in a movie theater, where your l'œil is tromped with some regularity. After dabbling with political danger when he makes out with the soon-to-be-murdered Duchess von Teschen, Eisenheim starts wowing the crowds with some really spectacular shit: raising people from the dead. You may wonder idly whether the filmmakers are using CGI or fancy mechanical contraptions to produce their supernatural wisps, but, unless you're 3 years old, you will most assuredly not find yourself pondering the thin membrane between the living and the dead. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Let's Go to Prison
Mr. Show co-creator Bob Odenkirk was one of the pioneers of a new kind of sketch comedy, one where the botched gags and unresolved punchlines counted as much towards the eventual laugh as the actual jokes. With this in mind, his latest film as a director raises a bit of a quandary: It's not especially funny, but was that the point all along? Based on Jim Hogshire's You Are Going to Prison, Odenkirk's film has a promising germ of an idea, at least: Habitual offender (Dax Shepard) voluntarily checks himself back into the pokey in order to torment the white-bread son of a judge (Arrested Development's Will Arnett). To be fair, the rapid-fire slew of rape jokes does occasionally hit a surrealistic beat worthy of its director's back catalog, but the number of thuds may be more than even the most ardent new-school comedy fan can forgive. Still, whatever the copious whiff factor, it may be worth a matinee for the brief look at the most pathetic strip club in cinematic history. Gah, my eyes. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

recommendedLittle Children
The children in Little Children are like aliens. They may be in this world, but they are not of it. With their tiny heads and big eyes, they stare and jut their imperceptible hips and fixate passionately on such objects as plush jester's hats and light-addled moths. One of the wonderful things about the film, which is full of more ordinary virtues, is that it recognizes that children create their own worlds, and that in a story about their parents, they're just strange little visitors—adorable, perhaps, but unreachable and opaque. The kids in question belong to Sarah (a rumpled, lovely Kate Winslet) and Brad (Patrick Wilson), two stay-at-home parents who chance to meet at a suburban playground. Against the backdrop of their quickly feverish, sun-dappled affair, a pedophile named Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley) moves back into his mother's house in town. Ronnie is pitiable, and his mother still loves him, and those paltry scraps contain all the makings of tragedy. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Little Miss Sunshine
A dysfunctional family road trip comedy built upon a mountain of character quirks. Call it Indie Filmmaking 101. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Marie Antoinette
Inadvertently, Sofia Coppola has painted a pathetic portrait of a spoiled kitten not unlike herself, born into unlimited resources and without a thought in her pretty head, before she lost it entirely. (MICHAEL ATKINSON)

Open Season
Open Season is a cartoon about man vs. beast. Not in the depressing Steve Irwin vs. stingray kind of way. In the Bugs Bunny vs. Elmer Fudd kind of way. (MEGAN SELING)

The Prestige
The film is all formless and shallow until the final payoff—known in magic jargon as "the prestige"—when doubles and sacrifice and character all coalesce into one dark metaphysical conceit. There's no sleight-of-hand here, just sick magic (not slick, mind you, sick), and it's tremendous. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommendedThe Queen
The central conflict in The Queen is, literally, whether Her Majesty Schoolmarm will deign to mention the unseemly death of an ex-princess—but no one in the whole supposedly accurate movie even notices that Mother Teresa has gone tits up. Nevertheless, The Queen's myopia is so complete, the performances so meticulous, that you can't help but start to care about, or pine for, or want to overthrow the British monarchy. (ANNIE WAGNER)

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
Tim Allen battles a dude with an icy fauxhawk.

recommendedThe Science of Sleep
Wads of cotton are tossed into the air and become clouds. A tiny stuffed horse is magically spurred to life. There are so many wondrous sights to behold that you can't help but get swept up in the cacophony; Michel Gondry's overactive imagination alone makes the film worth seeing. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

recommendedShortbus
It's a cozy invention, the NYC Shortbus cabaret whose orgies are presided over by a benevolently catty Justin Bond. But a setting can't sustain an entire movie, and the plot is outright lazy. (Literal climax, anyone?) The energy of the film sputters out halfway through. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommendedShut Up & Sing
When Dixie Chicks frontwoman Natalie Maines told an audibly sympathetic London audience that she was ashamed that Dubya was from the band's home state of Texas, even the most pessimistic liberal couldn't have anticipated the fallout. The most gripping elements of the film are not the obvious dramatic moments—such as Dallas police discussing death threats with the women prior to their return to Texas—but the confused way America's country sweethearts react to the wave of conservative criticism. Initially apologetic and bewildered, the Chicks' journey from meek-voiced penitents to defiant and articulate free-speech advocates is nothing short of inspiring. (HANNAH LEVIN)

Stranger Than Fiction
If you were left cold by the self-loathing machinations of Adaptation, then Stranger Than Fiction should prove to be a tamer, and less complicated, antidote. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)