WASHINGTON GROWN
Grand Illusion
Recommendation Level: Medium Recommended
This three-week showcase of local films probably could have been two weeks (there are some industrial staples in the creamed corn, if you know what I mean), but I ain't mad atcha, Washington Grown! The first week's shows are divided into two separate programs: "Local Laughs" and "Fringe Favorites." Local Laughs is entertaining but slow, though it features some fantastic conceptual business from Cro-Magnon Pictures (Man Talk!). Fringe Favorites is the correct choice hereâcomedic shorts from the eminently recommendable Kevin and Travis, Black Daisy, and Paste Dogg Animationâthough you also have to sit through Far Too Gone, an endless, ENDLESS "short" about a really boring guy in a bathrobe who thinks he's Tori Amos. Hmm.
HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE
Central Cinema
Recommendation Level: Accio Movie TicketâAm I Right, Nerds?!
Remember when Daniel Radcliffe did that play and we had to see his penis?
VACUUM
Northwest Film Forum
Recommendation Level: FREE CAKE!
Tired of paying too much for cake? How would ZERO DOLLARS suit you?
EFFING BRUTAL
Grand Illusion
Recommendation Level: Certainly Not
Effing Brutal is obviously a labor of love: a full-color, full-length graphic novel based on that guy-who-thinks-he's-Tori-Amos thing from earlier (seriously? Is MORE necessary?), which has now been "made" into a feature-length "film." Basically what writer/director Brian Labrecque did here is film each page, sliding from panel to panel, while a dry British-ish narrator and miscellaneous actors read the words out loud. It is slow, it is overblown, it involves ketamine. On the DVD case, Labrecque declares himself an "indie film god."
HALLOWEEN II TWO: THE HALLOWEENENING OF CURLY'S GOLD TO DEATH WITH A KNIFE
Wide release
Recommendation Level: I'm Going to Stab You in the Face with a Knife
Dude, what a useless, steaming bucket of solid waste this franchise is. And by "franchise," I actually mean "GENRE." Maybe it's time for slasher films to be deceased? Thoughts? Since, you know,
we kind of already have 45,000 identical movies in which the main plot point is a woman getting stabbed in the face with a knife to death? Do you really not have a handle on what that looks like yet? Because ifâlike in Roman timesâwe used "a woman getting stabbed in the face with a knife to death" as currency, you would already be a fucking gold-plated gazillionaire, with a woman-getting-stabbed-in-the-face-with-a-knife-to-death-shaped swimming pool at your summer palace. Get over it.
But, to be more specific, here's why I hate Halloween II Two. First of all, Laurie "Avril Lavigne" McBoohoo is the most limp and helpless female protagonist in the history of vaginas. Second of all: MICHAEL MYERS, WHAT THE FUCK?! Questions: Why are you so mad? Why do you have to stab everyone? Also, why are you magic? Why are you unkillable? Why do you have superstrength? And how come it takes six men to lift you? I'm going to do some quick math hereâeven if those are the world's six most shriveled Dickensian orphans (which they're not), they can still definitely lift 100 pounds each. WHY DO YOU WEIGH 600 POUNDS?! What are you eating, man?!
If I had to pick one good thing about this movie, it's that several of the people in it are on the television show Deadwood, which reminded me pleasantly of two places I'd rather be: melting into my own couch watching the television show Deadwood or in the actual city of Deadwood, circa 1872, wiping a rotting cowpoke's smallpox lesions with this tuft of Indian hair I bought. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER. Also I would like to say that I think Rob Zombie is kind of hot. 
