LIMITED RUN
The Breakfast Club
“My image of you is totally blown.” Egyptian, Sat-Sun midnight.
Darwin’s Nightmare
The decimation of hundreds of cichlid species unique to Central Africa’s enormous Lake Victoria is, by now, a relatively well-known story. But what truly cements the Nile perch’s oily reign is not natural selection, but the economic and social interests binding the region’s people. This fantastic, Oscar-nominated documentary paints a detailed and gruesome picture of the people—both local and foreign—who live and die by the Tanzanian fish trade. (ANNIE WAGNER) Northwest Film Forum, Sat-Sun noon, 4:30 pm.
The Day My God Dies
A documentary about sexual trafficking in Nepal. Hearing, Speech, and Deafness Center, Sat March 11 at 7:30 pm.
Eva
A 1962 Joseph Losey film starring Jeanne Moreau and the canals of Venice. Movie Legends, Sun March 12 at 1 pm.
Gay Sex in the ’70s
If you call a movie Gay Sex in the ’70s, you can be sure a certain segment of the population will see it no matter what—I was recently invited to see it with a group of guys I don’t even know—which is maybe why the filmmakers took no trouble to make it well. The time period in question is 1969 (the beginning of “gay liberation”) to 1981 (the beginning of AIDS); the scene is New York City (the piers, the bars, the streets). There is some interesting footage, but it is overwhelmed by all the other bad elements at play: bad sound, really bad graphics, bad interviews with pasty, unappealing old guys, incredibly bad lighting, revolting anecdotes, etc. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE) Varsity, Fri-Sun 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30 pm, Mon-Thurs 7:30, 9:30 pm.
A Hard Day’s Night
Beatlemania! Sun March 12 at 4:45, 7, 9:15 pm.
La Grande Bouffe
Marco Ferreri’s scandalous black comedy about four men who retire to a mansion in the French countryside—and plan on eating themselves to death! Tickets $20, includes antipasto buffet and wine samples. Pink Door, Sun March 12 at 7 pm.
Living Room
A documentary about “infoshops,” defined as “community spaces that facilitate access to… information while providing a physical space for people to build creative projects of resistance to current forms of destruction and domination.” Whoo! Wayward Cafe, Mon March 13 at 7 pm.
Mama Earth
A film partially narrated by a whimsical character known as Mother Earth. Central Cinema, Wed March 15 at 7 and 9 pm. (Continues next week.)
Neighbor No. 13
At the opening of this Japanese horror import, a bully and his friends splash acid onto the face of their prey. Then things get twisted and brutal. A tale of revenge best served creepy and ponderous, Neighbor No. 13 spins around suppressed memories and split personalities in an attempt to gussy up what is essentially a simple I Spit on Your Grave-type yarn. When the film succeeds—as in its brief fits of violence, much of it against children—the result can be pleasingly shocking. When it fails, it’s due to director Yasuo Inoue’s preference for glacial pacing, which stalls the film’s inertia when its most needed. As horror flicks go, this one’s little more than a curiosity. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Grand Illusion, Weekdays 6:30, 8:45 pm, Sat-Sun 4, 6:30, 8:45 pm.
Open Screening
Anything goes, so long as it’s under 10 minutes and in VHS or DVD format. And it’s only two bucks to submit or attend. 911 Media Arts, Mon March 13 at 7 pm.
Oscar-Nominated Short Documentaries
I have no idea how A Note of Triumph, about radio genius Norman Corwin, won the Oscar for short documentaries—it’s educational, nostalgic, and has a few funny moments with Studs Terkel, but none of the extreme pathos of God Sleeps in Rwanda or the drama of The Death of Kevin Carter, which, if you don’t know anything about photojournalist Kevin Carter, is actually a short mystery as well as documentary. He was a South African member of the Bang Bang Club, a pack of tough, savvy, and wild photographers who had enough street cred in the slums of Johannesburg to move freely and cover the brutality of the apartheid-era army in its last violent spasms. He was also a drug abuser, a thrill seeker, and a ladies’ man. So what did him in? Hint: It involved a Pulitzer Prize. Come to think of it, maybe it’s better for director Dan Krauss that his movie didn’t win. (BRENDAN KILEY) Northwest Film Forum, Weekdays 7 (Program 1, w/ The Mushroom Club and A Note of Triumph) and 8:30 pm (Program 2, w/ The Death of Kevin Carter and God Sleeps in Rwanda), Sat-Sun Program 1: 2, 7 pm, Program 2: 3:30, 8:30 pm.
Seattle Jewish Film Festival
See review this issue. Films screen at the Museum of History and Industry. See www.brownpapertickets.com for complete schedule and details.
Strangers on a Train
Who needs Strangers on a Train when you could have Snakes on a Plane? Actually, Snakes on a Plane doesn’t come out until August, so tennis and homoeroticism will have to suffice. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs March 9 at 7:30 pm.
Videos by Shirin Neshat
Two video works by the exquisite Iranian artist Shirin Neshat. Tooba is currently installed at the gallery; the University of Washington’s Firoozeh Papan-Matin will introduce the complementary works Makhdokht and Zarin. Seattle Asian Art Museum, Thurs March 9 at 7 pm.
The Wedding Banquet
The film that shot Ang Lee to international prominence, 1993’s Academy Award–nominated The Wedding Banquet is something of a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? reversal, this time centered around a queer Taiwanese immigrant to New York who enters into a marriage of convenience in order to remain closeted to his conservative family back home. Central Cinema, Thurs-Sun 7, 9:30 pm. (Late shows 21+.)
Without Warning
Frisbee monsters, alien predators, and David Caruso, oh my! Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat 11 pm.
NOW PLAYING
16 Blocks
16 Blocks, Richard Donner’s first film in three years, is an initially spiffy exercise in gritty neo-noir finally torpedoed by the director’s lingering vanilla sensibilities and an intensely annoying central performance by Mos Def. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
2005 Academy Award-Nominated Short Films
Two programs of the year’s best (or at least “Academy Award–nominated”) shorts—one for live action, the other for animation.
Aquamarine
Yes, Aquamarine is a movie about teenage mermaids with blue highlights who fall in love with salty, tan, human lifeguards. But it’s also, surprisingly, not that terrible. (LINDY WEST)
Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain achieves an elegant hybrid between the “masculine” genre of the Western and the “feminine” genre of melodrama. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Caché
The Austrian director Michael Haneke, best known for the shock-masochism of his 2001 film, The Piano Teacher, now gives audiences the far subtler and more politically engaged Caché (which won him the Best Director prize at Cannes). Unnerving surveillance videotapes keep showing up at the home of a Paris couple and the road leading back to the culprit is cluttered with bloody chicken heads, imperialist xenophobia, and red herrings—if you’ve heard that the final scene solves the mystery, you’ve been misinformed. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Capote
Despite its limited scope—it addresses only the years that Truman Capote was writing his groundbreaking In Cold Blood, about a Kansas robbery turned quadruple murder—you want to call the film, after the fashion of ambitious biographies, “A Life.” Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Truman Capote, and his is an enveloping performance, in which every flighty affectation seems an invention of the man rather than the impersonator. His pursed lips and bons mots and the ravishing twirls of his overcoat become more and more infrequent until all that’s left is alcohol and a horrible will to power. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Casanova
Casanova treats 18th-century Venice as a place where spit-takes graced every meal, mandatory pie-fights broke out on the hour, and even the filthiest urchin possessed bullwhip comedic timing. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is decent entertainment—epic and scary and icily pretty. If only it were safe enough to send your freethinking children to. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Crash
Crash certainly doesn’t want for hubris, but ultimately stands as a case of laudable ambition overwhelming still-developing narrative abilities. Although this would-be epic of race relations in Los Angeles sports a handful of genuinely searing moments, it’s hard to shake the sense of someone constantly rearranging three-by-five cards behind the scenes for maximum impact. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Curious George
I LOVED Curious George as a kid, and I still do. But I hate, hate, HATE this movie. (MEGAN SELING)
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
As his fearless and now defunct Comedy Central series repeatedly illustrated, Chappelle suffers no fools and fears no censors, but he also stages no embargos against goofball riffs or straightforward lampoons. (HANNAH LEVIN)
Doogal
Doogal, a British CGI fairytale given wiseass U.S. vocal retrofit (the replacement cast includes Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart as an evil spring with a porn moustache, and Kevin Smith as a farting moose) continues the post-Shrek slide into a self-congratulatory pop culture morass, where references to C.S.I. and Disney execs trump piddling things like story development and moral lessons. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Eight Below
Most of the film is a slow, weirdly enjoyable story of a pack of abandoned huskies eking out a feral existence in Antarctica. It’s Survivor, doggie-style. (ANNIE WAGNER)
The Family Stone
In its attempt to be all things to all viewers, the holiday-themed smorgasbord The Family Stone hits every conceivable chord, no matter how much of a stretch. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Firewall
Harrison Ford’s umpteenth entry into the white-collar family-values action film, smushes together two of the traditionally more wit-intensive suspense genres—the heist picture and home invasion thriller—to shockingly little effect. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Freedomland
Richard Price writes Books—big, chewy New Jersey melodramas that combine meticulous plotting with realistically frazzled, just-this-side-of-haywire characterizations—but this adaptation of his 1998 novel is disappointing. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Documenting the Red Scare clash between Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and Joseph McCarthy, George Clooney’s second trip behind the lens is a largely terrific picture: a scathing social document submerged within a deeply pleasurable entertainment. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
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)
Illusion
Illusion will bore you beyond tears and burn itself, as all wretched art does, deep within your gray matter like the memory of passing a kidney stone. Unless you are one of those faithful souls the film has squarely in its sights, in which case the spectacle of recovering stroke victim Kirk Douglas writhing on a bed for 106 minutes may be appealing. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
King Kong
As genuinely touching as the final New York scenes are, the true heart of the film lies in the insanely sustained second act, in which Kong, his gal, and her supposed rescuers come into contact with an army of dinosaurs, angry villagers, and seemingly every creepy thing ever to walk the earth. Throughout, Peter Jackson manages to simultaneously convey the sense of a filmmaker at the absolute top of his technical game, and a kid deliriously hopped up on Poprocks, going nuts with his favorite action figures. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Manderlay
The Lars von Trier film about a young woman named Grace who finds slaves in 1933 on an Alabama plantation. Manderlay is a massive failure from whose ruins nothing can be recuperated. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Match Point
Woody Allen’s Match Point is a light and brutal thriller about the opposing forces of contempt and desire. Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is a former tennis pro with scheming Irish eyes and a permanent frown. While coaching at a tony London country club, he meets a rich young man named Tom (Matthew Goode), who bizarrely appears to be coming on to him. The drinks and box seats at the opera are not in fact invitations to bed, but invitations into the family. In no time at all Chris is engaged to Tom’s perky and annoying but equally rich sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer), and another sort of love triangle has developed. Marriages are consummated, vows are broken, women are discovered to be fertile or infertile in inverse proportion to their social class, and the social order is upended. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Munich
Steven Spielberg has discovered a damning parable about America’s post-9/11 strategy. He just hasn’t turned it into a good movie. (JOSH FEIT)
Night Watch
There’s vampire fighting, an attempt to forestall a world-ending prophecy, and a guy who likes to use his own spine as a broadsword. I’m not sure what the hell I saw, but I wouldn’t mind watching more of it. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther isn’t awful, exactly, but it’s so overwhelmingly blah that there’s almost nothing to say. (LINDY WEST)
Pride & Prejudice
Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy aren’t so much in love as they are erotically enthralled. Their famous clash of wits isn’t the cause of their affection; it’s sublimation at its most sublime. In other words, forget stuffy: This Pride & Prejudice is totally hot. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Running Scared
Russian mafia meth addicts with embarrassingly square faux-Sopranos dialogue. This movie is fucking silly. (LINDY WEST)
The Second Chance
It’s the tale of Ethan Jenkins, assistant pastor at mega-rich mega-white megachurch The Rock, who heads to the inner city and learns about Christly love, black people, and why you shouldn’t throw wads of cash at junkies. There’s something refreshing about a preachy movie that lets you know what it’s doing up front—no offensively obvious symbolism, no moral sleight of hand, just a great big prostitute-redeeming, homeless-feeding, foot-washing Jesus party. (LINDY WEST)
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a masterpiece, flat out. An award winner at Cannes, director Tommy Lee Jones’s ferociously entertaining deconstruction of the West begins deep in Peckinpah territory, but soon forges its own unique, queerly beautiful path. Keeping in tone with the visible decomposition of the title character, Jones and his exceptional supporting cast give things a shockingly earthy vibe—characters belch, slouch, and matter-of-factly let their stretch marks and man boobs hang free. Taken together, these elements would likely be recommendation enough. What launches the movie to a realm above, however, is the revelatory final scene, which posits that even the most damaged people can achieve a moment of… grace? Something, at any rate, that leaves me admiringly tongue-tied. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Transamerica
Felicity Huffman clearly aced her homework, and her exceptional performance as a transsexual woman is the reason to see Transamerica. Huffman deftly shows us the stress that results from constantly working to conceal the past. (KALEY DAVIS)
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
This movie, like Laurence Sterne’s book, is hilarious. (CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE)
Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion
Madea’s Family Reunion diverges from the winning formula of the previous movie. The guns are gone, and so are the reefers. But the worst thing is the way Madea is sidelined for reverent poetry and goofy romance and the kitschiest “Parisian” wedding décor I’ve ever seen. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Ultraviolet
Genetically modified Milla Jovovich and professional preteen creepazoid Cameron Bright are the future. No, really.
Walk the Line
Joaquin Phoenix is a damn fine Man in Black. The interplay between Cash and June Carter is fiery, and watching their tenderness grow through time and tribulation makes for a powerful story, even if its main subject feels larger than any one film could ever encapsulate. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
Why We Fight
This agitdoc, from The Trials of Henry Kissinger director Eugene Jarecki, tries to tread the thin line between dry but thorough Frontline documentaries and Michael Moore’s gotcha journalism. (ANNIE WAGNER)