COMING SOON
Analyze That, The Big Lebowski, Empire, Equilibrium, Music Video Spotlight: The Director’s Bureau, Personal Velocity, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, The Way Home
NEW THIS WEEK
Adam Sandler’s 8 Crazy Nights
Adam Sandler plays a twentysomething loser with a bad temper who causes trouble, makes cracks about bodily functions, and finds redemption. Sound familiar? But wait! This time his performance will have no choice but to be animated! “Look, I’m Crazy Cartoonhead!” Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12
Solaris
See review this issue. Factoria, Guild 45th, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12
Treasure Planet
That tired old Robert Louis Stevenson “classic” Treasure Island gets a much-needed facelift in Disney’s most recent stroke of genius. Now with more lasers! Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Majestic Bay, Metro, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12
LIMITED RUN
Alias Betty
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun at 2:10 pm, 4:30, 7, 9:20, Mon-Thurs at 7 pm, 9:20.
Buy Nothing Day Cinema
A self-congratulatory afternoon of consumer rejection, featuring the documentaries More Fun, Less Stuff and The Cost of Cool. Just make sure you don’t buy any popcorn. Independent Media Center, Fri at 3 pm.
Carnival Magic
Low-budget exploitation director Al Adamson’s swansong following 20 years of titles like I Spit on Your Corpse, The Naughty Stewardesses, and Blazing Stewardesses, featuring a talking chimp in a diaper. Let me repeat that: a talking chimp in a diaper. Not available on video. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat at 11 pm.
The Dark Crystal
You know what this means: time to get stoned and go watch the muppets… again! Egyptian, Fri-Sat at midnight.
Hillbillies in Hollywood
Film archivist Dennis Nyback presents 35 years of country/rockabilly music shorts, featuring extremely rare footage of icons like Bob Wills, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jimmie Rodgers between 1927 and 1963. JBL Theater, Wed at 6 pm.
* Polterchrist
A cult-classic in the making, Polterchrist combines blasphemous humor, raunchy bathroom scenes, and low-grade special effects to make for one excellently creepy “horrordy” film. The local B-movie production follows Jesus’ cranky, bloodthirsty return to Earth, drawing you into his unholy massacre of teenagers in a Kent, Washington, bowling alley. While the main storyline is pure bloodsploitation, it’s the constant segues into the dreams, hallucinations, and fantasies of Jesus, the glue sniffer, and Johnny Appleseed (he fits in here, too, somehow) that make this movie so goddamn funny. And the Polterchrist soundtrack–which ranges from metal to post rock to country songs about turds–isn’t bad either. (JENNIFER MAERZ) Seattle Art Museum, Sat at 1 pm, 3 pm.
* Raise the Red Lantern
We usually like to print our favorite lines from revival films here at Film Shorts, but Raise the Red Lantern is short on the dialogue, and no one here has a Chinese keyboard, so let’s just leave it like this: In terms of national, historical, and feminist political allegory that also works as pure soap opera melodrama, there’s no beating Zhang Yimou’s hypnotic 1992 tale of female indenture, feudal corruption, and personal redemption, starring the indescribably beautiful Gong Li. (SEAN NELSON) Northwest Asian Art Theatre, Tues at 7 pm.
Skateboard Movies
Do you really need me to walk you through this one? Sunset Tavern, Mon at 8 pm.
Ultra
See review this issue and Stranger Suggests. Little Theatre, see Movie Times for details.
* Urban Warrior
A surprisingly rational and even-handed examination of the evolution of the modern police force from a protectionist to a military model. One expects an inquiry like this to be didactic and full of foregone conclusions (not to mention shaky DV camerawork), but the interviews maintain enough distance to sidestep the “pigs vs. kids” ghetto and engage in an interesting, enlightening discussion about contemporary city life. (SEAN NELSON) Independent Media Center, Fri-Sat at 7:30 pm.
Virgin of Lust
Deep Crimson director Arturo Ripstein maps the sordid tale of a Mexican prostitute, her pornography-obsessed would-be suitor, and the attempted assassination of Francisco Franco in 1940s Mexico. Director in attendance! Grand Illusion, Thurs Dec 5 at 6 pm, 9 pm.
NOW PLAYING
* 8 Mile
Directed by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys), the movie tells the story of Jimmy Smith Jr. (Eminem), a working-class kid who begrudgingly crashes with his jobless, trailer-dwelling mom (Kim Basinger), a woman who lives off bingo and bad men, while his predominantly black posse supports him through the underground battle halls of Detroit. It’s the Marshall Mathers version of the underdog-done-good idea, a concept presented in various films over the years, from The Karate Kid to Hoop Dreams. But 8 Mile works because you believe the story behind it. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
Ararat
With Ararat, Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) attempts to address not just the 1915 genocide of Armenia and its lingering effects on the identity of Armenians and Turks but also the very meanings of denial, memory, and fractured modern family life. With roughly three plots and even a film within a film tossed into the mix, the rickety construction threatens to collapse in upon itself at several points, which serves only to distract from the powerful truths at its foundation. (TAMARA PARIS)
* The Bourne Identity
I’ll be hornswaggled if The Bourne Identity isn’t a tight, satisfying exponent of its genre. (SEAN NELSON)
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 the psychological complexity in favor of cheap shots. He wants to say something great, but ultimately doesn’t. Can’t, maybe. Because he isn’t really a social critic, he’s a demagogue. (SEAN NELSON)
Comedian
The reason this documentary will stand as a work of greatness for decades to come is simple: It absolutely nails the psychology of the standup comic, the most narcissistic, petty, self-obsessed, hateful, and bitter breed of entertainer known to mankind. (SEAN NELSON)
Die Another Day
See review this issue.
El Crimen del Padre Amaro
Stylish photography with just enough overexposure to suggest blinding sun; excellent character acting from half the beautiful people in Mexico; a fun soundtrack. But the script? The script is taken from a melodramatic Portuguese novel written in 1875. It had little to do with the actual Church of 1875, let alone today; it’s a soap opera. Are you trying to tell me the Catholic Church has no sense of humor? (BARLEY BLAIR)
* The Emperor’s Club
Though the first third of The Emperor’s Club plays like Dead Poet’s Society redux–genius teacher inspires emotionally undernourished trustafarians to excellence–the picture’s trajectory is far subtler, and more troubling. Where one film was a crowd-pleasing paean to personal freedom, the other is an elegy to the passing of intellectual and moral rigor as a way of life. Where one was a character study, the other is a study of Character. (SEAN NELSON)
Extreme OPS
A feature-length Mountain Dew commercial, but without all that regard for captivating plot.
* Far From Heaven
In both style and substance, Far from Heaven pays homage to Douglas Sirk’s classic 1956 melodrama All That Heaven Allows, uping the ante by introducing intricate new threats to his heroine’s true love–threats that would’ve landed Sirk’s film in the studio censor’s blender. But Todd Haynes’ pitch-perfect inclusion of sexual confusion and racial bigotry into Sirk’s original mix gives him the power to transcend his source material and create a melodramatic masterpiece all his own. (DAVID SCHMADER)
* The Fast Runner
Although the filmmakers have lovingly reconstructed every detail of prehistoric Inuit culture–this being the first feature-length film entirely in the Inuktitut language–by recording life on the infinite tundra with digital-video intimacy, they keep the characters palpably real. (MATT FONTAINE)
Femme Fatale
As a Brian DePalma film Femme Fatale couldn’t be much more real, which means it also couldn’t be much more fake, and that’s why it couldn’t be much better. It’s got everything a proper De Palma movie should have: sex, cameras, surveillance, manipulation, mistaken identity, doubles, lesbians, impalement, elaborate split-screen action, withering humor, and more self-awareness than a narcissists’ convention. (SEAN NELSON)
Frida
Frida is yet another artist’s story that has been stripped of nuance and turned into a paean to something indiscriminately called “living,” here with requisite Latin heat and groaning tables of erotically charged food. (EMILY HALL)
The Friday After Next
“Xmas in the ‘hood,” the third installment of Ice Cube’s ghetto-comic empire, is a sort of Home Alone-flavored seasoning of the original Friday formula, complete with a sea of belly laughs by way of domestic violence, homophobia, racial intolerance, rape, and of course the requisite hilarity of drug abuse (“Santa’s a crackheaded thief–now that shit is funny.”). It’s impossible for me to ask this without sounding entirely prudish, but, for god’s sake, is nothing sacred? (ZAC PENNINGTON)
* The Good Girl
When it comes to deep, dark cinematic comedy, Miguel Arteta and Mike White have cornered the market. Following 2000’s Chuck & Buck comes The Good Girl, which explores similarly perverse terrain–the soul of a woman trapped by fate and circumstance, driven to commit acts of deeply iffy morality and legality. Starring Jennifer Aniston (who, incidentally, aces the role, bringing a beautifully understated gravity to the character), doe-eyed Jake Gyllenhaal, and John C. Reilly (who scores another supporting-role home run). (DAVID SCHMADER)
Half Past Dead
At the bloated age of 51, tired Zen action hero Steven Seagal (a.k.a. “Last Ponytail Standing”) plays an FBI agent on the hunt for a high-tech criminal genius (Morris Chestnut)–planning to break into a maximum security prison and rough up Ja Rule.
Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a thunderous bore. The plot is some garbage about destiny and magic and spiders and snakes–if you’re planning on seeing it, you either already know the plot or won’t want to. Only a kid could stand it, but no kid worth a damn is going to want to sit through a 161-minute movie in which nothing exciting or funny happens, and in which our hero is never truly jeopardized. Harry is just a charmed little guy who gets everything he wants and always saves the day. (SEAN NELSON)
* I’m Going Home
I’m Going Home is a film about being old, made by a man who knows a thing or two about the subject. Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira is in his mid-’90s, and still active as a filmmaker, much like the octogenarian actor protagonist of this meditative death rattle of a movie, who confronts tragedy with work. Nothing much happens in I’m Going Home (and it takes its time), but the film’s gentle sadness is gripping nonetheless. (SEAN NELSON)
I-Spy
Almost proof that chemistry can trump originality. Almost. An update of the ’60s TV show, I-Spy slaps the brilliance of Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson together and places them in a creaky, fairly inane plot. There are explosions, fights, and an invisible military jet (no, really), but what makes the flick tolerable is the humor of its stars. Murphy and Wilson’s talents are wasted here, to be sure, but what little breathing room is given proves superduper entertaining. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Interview With the Assassin
It’s always a lot of fun when a fake documentary fools you into wondering whether its real or not. Alas, this dopey, sub-X-Files conspiracy pseudothriller, concerning a man who claims to have really pulled the trigger on JFK, never hooks you, even for a second. There are tense moments, and lead actor Raymond J. Barry turns in a fine performance, but the whole conceit (Mr. Grassy Knoll hires an unemployed TV cameraman to tell his story) just reeks like ashtray in Oliver Stone’s dorm. (SEAN NELSON)
* Jackass: The Movie
Jackass is a perfect film. (SEAN NELSON)
Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie
The computer-animated version of the pamphlets you find at bus stops.
* Moonlight Mile
Parallels to The Graduate are hard to miss, from the fact that Hoffman’s character is named Ben (and could very well be Ben Braddock 35 years later), to the affectless subtlety of Gyllenhaal’s performance. I know this film looks like a sappy weeper, and it kind of is, but as a story of bereavement, commitment, and coming of age (and finding the limits of each), it is also funny, smart, and exquisitely well acted by Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, and Jake Gyllenhaal. (SEAN NELSON)
* My Big Fat Greek Wedding
I love how this movie has been playing for like 25 years and has made 200 grillion dollars and no one I know has seen or even heard of it. Until this past weekend, that is, when a girl I really admire admitted that she not only saw, but really enjoyed it. I think that’s terrific. The Stranger vows to review this film if and when it earns $300 million. That’s a promise. (SEAN NELSON)
Punch-Drunk Love
Starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Punch-Drunk Love is a confused story–not confusing to the audience, but confused within itself. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Real Women Have Curves
A simplistic and thought-provokeless tale about one spirited teenage member of the underclass’ struggle to individuate her young self in the context of her traditional, stifling, almost poverty-stricken family. Every major scene devolves into sloganeering, a champagne socialist’s daydream of life in the po’ house. Real Women is a lowest-common-denominator piece of silky propaganda. (MICHAEL SHILLING)
Red Dragon
So here it is, the trifecta for Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, and it’s sure to make piles of money. But is Red Dragon any good? The answer is kinda and no–kinda, thanks to Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Emily Watson, and Ralph Fiennes; no, thanks to Sir Anthony himself, who seems so utterly bored with the role that you can almost hear him snoozing with his eyes open. Clunky and breathtakingly unoriginal, Brett Ratner’s film is an absolute paint-by-numbers affair. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
The Ring
There are a few jumps here and there, along with one startling image near the end involving a TV, but for the most part The Ring just sorta trudges along, rarely surprising, often befuddling. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
The Santa Clause 2
The most unnecessary sequel since Silent Night, Deadly Night 4.
* Secretary
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lee Holloway, a slightly retarded nymphet secretary just released from a loony house, who develops a subversive relationship with her employer, played by James Spader. Part of Secretary‘s singular quality is that the heroine’s problem is never resolved. She entrenches herself deeper and deeper in her “sick” dependency, and ultimately, it becomes her virtue. (MEG VAN HUYGEN)
Standing in the Shadows of Motown
A functional, if not exactly riveting documentary about the session musicians who comprised the backbone of the Motown sound but whom no one has ever heard of. The Funk Brothers (a mixed-race collective of amazing players) can be heard on every Detroit-era Motown hit, but because of the way the star singers were marketed, they very often didn’t even receive credit. The movie does them justice by telling the story, but slips into miscalculation by having the fellas play the old hits live, accompanied by some of today’s least impressive stars (Joan Osborne, Me’shell N’degeocello, Levert). The performances just reinforce the star power of the original Motown stable. (SEAN NELSON)
Sweet Home Alabama
A lesson that’s already been taught in one hackneyed comedy after another–namely, that poor white Southern folk are fat, dumb, and wear Jaclyn Smith, but the boys are hot and they ain’t as stupid as city folk think, ’cause they have heart. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
They
A young psychology student is plagued by the nightmares of her childhood in Wes Craven’s latest debacle.
The Transporter
You see, there’s this kinda shady guy, who’s British but is a master of Kung Fu, and his job is to transport materials. This other guy, who’s American, hires him to transport something and it turns out to be a really hot Chinese woman. And then, all hell breaks loose–not spectacular hell, but more of a muddling, dimwitted hell. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* The Truth About Charlie
A remake of Stanley Donen’s Charade, a communion-wafer-thin ’60s comedy. The film, like its predecessor, is a smart kind of dumb; a romp with a love of movies, faces, and all things Francophile at the center. (SEAN NELSON)
XXX
Just how bad is XXX? Worse than you’ve imagined. Seriously. I would rather be catheterized by a Parkinson’s-afflicted nurse than sit through it again. It’s that bad. Don’t believe me? Then go see it. Flop down the $10 at your neighborhood multiplex and slouch your way through the picture. You’ll see–and afterward you’ll say, “Shit, man, I wish I’d listened to that chump from The Stranger.” (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)