Limited Run

Ace in the Hole
SAM@MOHAI's Billy Wilder series continues with this 1951 film starring Kirk Douglas. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs Feb 1 at 7:30 pm.

Ball of Wax Volume 7 DVD release
A screening of a new experimental music video compilation, plus live shows by Unbunny and Water Kill the Sun. Sunset Tavern, Thurs Feb 1 at 9 pm. (21+ only.)

Cinema K: Children's Film Festival 2007
A huge and consistently delightful series of offbeat films by or about or for children. If you see only one thing at the festival, make it World of Wonder, a program of live-action shorts from around the world. Lard, from England, is an adorable movie about getting away from scary older kids and confusing butter for lard. Once Again Rain is a didactic but adorable movie from Iran about the joy of umbrellas and sharing the little you have. Legends, Fables, and Dreams: Award-Winning Animated Films also contains some winners, including local filmmaker Stefan Gruber's Anaelle. (ANNIE WAGNER) Northwest Film Forum, see www.nwfilmforum.org for a complete schedule and details.

Darkon
See review this issue. Northwest Film Forum, Daily 7, 9 pm.

El Topo
This Mexican movie from 1970 sounds completely insane. Apparently, "An outlaw challenges the invincible Four Masters of the Desert for the love of the woman. He defeats them, achieving a higher level of consciousness until his woman betrays him. Starting a new existence as a holy man..." You get the picture. Grand Illusion, Fri 6:30, 8:45, 11 pm, Sat 4, 6:30, 8:45, 11 pm, Sun 4, 6:30, 8:45 pm, Mon-Thurs 6:30, 8:45 pm.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
The scariest thing about Enron's fraudulent business plan was this: The corrupt mastermind, CEO Jeff Skilling, was likely on to the future model of the American economy. With the collapse of traditional industry, it's possible that 21st-century American companies—like Enron in the late 20th century—will be trading purely in abstractions, dealing in virtual commodities and virtual profits. Enron got caught first. And this accessible, damning documentary shows us the corporate doublespeak in action. (JOSH FEIT) One Earth One Design, Thurs Feb 8 at 7 pm.

Half-Cocked
See review this issue. Northwest Film Forum, Wed Feb 7 at 7, 9 pm.

Inherit the Wind
Leading up to Charles Darwin's birthday on February 12, Central Cinema presents a run of Inherit the Wind, in which the ignoramuses crush the good guys but there is much rousing oratory. Central Cinema, Wed-Thurs 6:45, 9:30 pm. (Late shows 21+, continues through Feb 11.)

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
See review this issue. Varsity, see Movie Times, p. 83, for details.

The Life of Oharu
Many of Kenji Mizoguchi's films deal with prostitution and the travails of life as a geisha. The theme is represented in this series by The Life of Oharu (1952), which describes the descent of a woman from court lady to unhappy daughter to exalted concubine to cast-off shell of a baby machine to geisha and beggar and worse. It's the inverse of Moll Flanders, and it is relentless. (ANNIE WAGNER) Northwest Film Forum, Mon-Tues 7, 9:30 pm.

Mama Earth
A film partially narrated by a whimsical character known as Mother Earth. 911 Media Arts, Fri Feb 2 at 7:30 pm.

The Music Room
Seattle Asian Art Museum kicks off a Satyajit Ray series with this early film (three years after Pather Panchali) about the Indian nouveau riche and the crumbling aristocracy. Seattle Asian Art Museum, Sun Feb 4 at 1:30 pm.

Pecker
Young Pecker (Edward Furlong) is never without a camera, traversing his Baltimore neighborhood taking pictures of the burgers on the grill at work, his kid sister getting her sugar fix, rats copulating in an alley, or patrons being "tea-bagged" at the gay strip joint his sister emcees. When Pecker hangs a show of his photos at the sandwich shop, Rorey (Lili Taylor), an art dealer from New York, just happens to wander in, and offers him a show on the spot. Perhaps director John Waters has become like one of those career politicians—a little too in on the joke to feel the impact of the punch line. Pecker, while it doesn't offer the viewer anything more voluptuous than irony, nevertheless does so very attractively, gathering an art-house cast capable of delivering their lines without a smirk. This brand of lucid humor is what Waters strives for, but in the end, he stops before the bite pierces flesh, and instead turns humanitarian. (TRACI VOGEL) Central Cinema, Thurs-Sun 7, 9:30 pm. (Late shows 21+).

Power of Video II: A Night of Film, Fun, Music, and Supporting Great Causes
A fundraiser for the beleaguered Northwest Actors Studio, this screening event features local films Merlot, Crooked, and Death & a Salesman, plus music by Wired ad Wandering Hands. Northwest Actors Studio, Fri-Sat 8 pm.

Reservoir Dogs
When Tarantino became Tarantino. Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.

Secret Agent
The Old School AV Night (yeah!) presents a screening of Secret Agent, the 1936 Hitchcock film starring renowned British actor John Gielgud. Central Cinema, Mon Feb 5 at 7 pm.

The Seven Year Itch
Marilyn Monroe stars in Billy Wilder's 1955 sex farce about coveting your blond bombshell neighbor. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs Feb 8 at 7:30 pm.

W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices
A 1995 documentary with narration by Amiri Baraka, Toni Cade Babara, and more. Keystone Church, Fri Feb 2 at 7 pm.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wallace and Gromit have invented the Bunny Vac 6000, a large vacuum that humanely sucks up the cutest frickin' bunnies in the whole wide world, and safely releases them to another location. Hooray! But you know how bunnies like to, ahem, breed, so of course the rabbit population keeps rising and rising despite Wallace's efforts. The humor is just as funny as the classic Loony Tunes (which were funny!) but even smarter because it's not actually American-made. (MEGAN SELING) Seattle Asian Art Museum, Sat Feb 3 at 1:30 pm. (Free!)

Recently Reviewed

Alpha Dog
Writer-director Nick Cassavetes has aimed to make Alpha Dog a gritty and provocative condemnation of vacuous parenting—well-off kids with too little to do and too little supervision. The obvious reference to reach for is Larry Clark's Bully, which tilled similar ground. But while that film was eventually derailed by Clark's unfortunate obsession with young flesh, Alpha Dog is mired by an unnecessary faux doc framing, which finds the likes of Bruce Willis (and, in one particularly gruesome sequence, Sharon Stone in a fat suit), spouting forth to an unseen interviewer. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Catch and Release
I like my rom-coms to clock in around 72 minutes; Catch and Release is just shy of two hours, and is the most mixed of bags. There are no funny parts, which is an unexpected relief from Hollywood's usual misfired madcappery. It's also boring. Timothy Olyphant is magnetic. Juliette Lewis is hysterical. Everyone is constantly wearing the worst outfit ever, which is pretty much exactly like real life, so nice work there. But it's also dedicated to the notions that men don't know how to use kitchen appliances, and girls can't throw overhand, so fuck that. (LINDY WEST)

Freedom Writers
Aren't white people awesome? And brave? Isn't it cool how we're always, like, going to the inner city and teaching minorities about tolerance and feelings and how to read? And when those crazy minos won't stop gangbangin', we're all, "Who here likes Too-Pack?" and then they're all, "I hate white people," but we're all, "What—are you trippin'?" and then we all have a good laugh. God, it's so great being white and hilarious. "My badness!" Holy shit. This movie has got to be joking. (LINDY WEST)

The Hitcher
The Hitcher is the most 1996 movie I've seen since 1997. It's spring break. Two nubile youngsters, Grace (Sophia Bush) and Jim (Zachary Knighton), speed across New Mexico, determined to join the stomach-pumpin', groin-waxin', date-rapin' hordes at Lake Havasu. The fun stops when Jim foolishly picks up a hitchhiker (Sean Bean, Boromiriffic!) at a rainy redneck mini-mart. No attempt is made to explain why the Hitcher does what he does—not so much as an "escaped convict" or a "brain eaten by spiders"—or how the human body (spoiler alert!), when pulled apart like taffy, could fatally split right through the torso (wouldn't the wrists be more plausible?). The Hitcher is Scream without the wit; it's I Know What You Did Last Summer without the Ryan Phillippe. (LINDY WEST)

Inland Empire
David Lynch has finally and irrevocably wagon-trained deep into Lynchistan without a map, and I don't think we can expect to see him return to civilization any time soon. Inland Empire—named after the California region not because it's set there, but because Lynch simply liked the sound of it—recalls Bergman's Persona and Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits in its allusive structure and suggestions of a fracturing female psyche. But there's no trace of homage, or even traditional psychology. Laura Dern plays, in the film's clearest thread, a Hollywood-mansion-inhabiting actress with a homicidally jealous husband (Peter J. Lucas) and a new job: a role in a Southern melodrama that roughly parallels the romantic triangle that eventually forms with her co-star (Justin Theroux). But Lynch twists the diegesis like a mile of taffy, until there's no there there, just dreams within dreams within movies within nightmares. (MICHAEL ATKINSON)

Letters from Iwo Jima
Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood's smaller, subtitled, Japanese-centered companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, thankfully finds the filmmaker on much firmer ground. Although not without its share of warts—mainly due to an occasionally pokey flashback structure—there's an intimate, feverish immediacy to it that the previous film lacked. Respectful without being overly reverent, it provides the new perspective on WWII that the earlier film promised, with a look into another culture that goes far beyond mere outsider novelty or politically correct lip service. (To get an idea of how it could have all gone wrong, look no further than Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, where the Japanese commanders are depicted as inscrutable, poetry-spouting androids of honor.) Here is a different take on the battlefield, one that provides a long-overdue illumination of the Greatest Generation's opposing image, as well as a compelling examination of the meaning of sacrifice and service when fighting an unwinnable war. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Miss Potter
In this dotty biopic, Renée Zellweger plays the eponymous authoress Beatrix Potter, and thoroughly botches the job. Cute and ruddy, Zellweger gulps air like a chipmunk tucking away nuts, squeaks and squirms her way into a simulacrum of abashed pleasure, twinkles her lidless eyes, and generally interprets Victorian spinsterhood as an unnaturally prolonged case of the cutes. The result is ghastly. Then, as an excuse to animate Beatrix Potter's creations (nicely executed by Passion Pictures), the producers have decided that Potter had an overly personal relationship with her drawings of bunnies and frogs and puddle ducks. Miss Potter hallucinates her little avatars acting naughty or agitated whenever she's inclined the same way. The animation is cute, but the live-action commingling is distressing. Why couldn't these drawn animals be like every other inanimate object in movieland, coming alive only when their owner turns her back? (ANNIE WAGNER)

Notes on a Scandal
This is the picture of an absolute vampire: Her fingers are crooked, her love is morbid, and she refuses to be sustained by anything else but the freshest blood, the highest beauty. Going for the kill, Judi Dench satanically grows from a crusty history teacher into a god of her passion. She is a giant tearing the world apart for the blood she needs to survive. The wreckage piles up, the music swells, and we enter the region of opera. In addition, Cate Blanchett has the most beautiful lips in all of movieland. If it weren't for one editing mistake near the end—a failed attempt to show the enormous gulf between the subject and the object of its desire—then Notes on a Scandal would have deserved a standing ovation. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Pan's Labyrinth
Pan's Labyrinth picks up scraps and notions from scattered fairy tales—fear of sexual maturity, thirst for rules and the righteous urge to subvert them, doubtful reconciliation with death—and weaves them into an original fantasy of furious power. After suffering through the many "fractured" adaptations that neuter their source material in the guise of updating it, I was beginning to worry that the primeval richness of fairy tales would have to be reserved for theater. Pan's Labyrinth chalked out an alternate route, and proved me wrong. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Set in a decidedly stank 18th-century France, Patrick Süskind's narrative tells the tale of a penniless near mute (newcomer Ben Whishaw) born with a sense of smell akin to that of an irradiated bloodhound. After learning the tricks of the trade from a has-been perfumer (Dustin Hoffman), he sets out to create the ultimate scent, a concoction that requires the use of, oh, a few dozen female corpses. Co-writer Tom Tykwer's screenplay retains the most striking aspects of the source material (often verbatim, courtesy of an intermittent voice-over by the priceless John Hurt) and improves on it in others, particularly in concocting a compelling motive for the rising body count. Most importantly, he keeps the essence which made the novel such a scabrous, compelling read: namely, the feeling that, no matter how loathsome the protagonist's actions, we still somehow want to see the sick bastard get away with it. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Seraphim Falls
For devotees of gonad cinema, there may not be a better time to be had at the movies right now than the first 20-ish minutes of Seraphim Falls, in which Pierce Brosnan's outlaw mountain man evades capture from a bounty-hunting posse led by Liam Neeson at his prickliest. Brutal, gritty, and virtually silent, this opening is the sort of thing that you can imagine Jack London and Chuck Bronson tearfully tipping a 40 to in the afterlife. The rest of the film can't match that initial frostbitten rush, opting instead for an increasingly strained faux-mysticism and some tired old saws about the duality between hunter and hunted. (They're similar, apparently.) Still, the considerable charisma of its leads—particularly Brosnan, who proves that his post-Bond charm surge in The Matador wasn't a fluke—and some inspired secondary casting choices make for a fairly compelling ride. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Smokin' Aces
The premise—mob boss puts out a million-dollar bounty on a turncoat Vegas magician (Jeremy Piven, who plays this kind of asshole maybe a bit too well), inspiring an army of killers, feds, and assorted lowlifes to declare war on his Tahoe hideout—is an absolute corker, yet the sum feels significantly less than its parts. Director Joe Carnahan may have set out to make the defining statement on the genre, but his film comes off as more like a tribute to the all-star disposable antics of The Cannonball Run.

Stomp the Yard
Stomp the Yard's previews will try to convince you that this movie is a dramatic portrayal of a heartbroken-on-the-inside-but-still-tough-as-fuck kid from the hood who's fighting one of life's ultimate battles (the death of a younger brother) while also trying to regain a sense of self after watching (and feeling responsible for) the death of said brother. But don't fall for that shit—Stomp the Yard is about motherfuckin' dancing. Not only is there a bitchin' soundtrack with the Roots, Public Enemy, and Ghostface Killah, but these Atlanta step crews with arms the size of my head have got some of the coolest fuckin' moves this side of Footloose. (MEGAN SELING)

Venus
Venus, the latest film by the estimable team of director Roger Michell and scripter Hanif Kureishi, seems to have several agendas on its plate, among them a continuation of the duo's superb earlier May-December saga The Mother; a bemused reflection on the performing life; and a much-needed corrective to those horribly twinkly movies about lovably eccentric senior citizens that seem to belch forth from the UK on a monthly basis. Mostly, though, it's about building a shrine to the greatness of Peter O'Toole, assembling a loose, shambling framework for the icon to caper, rage, charm, and otherwise do whatever pops into his head at the moment. This is hardly a bad thing. (ANDREW WRIGHT)