Limited Run

Argentina: Hope in Hard Times
A documentary about the Argentine economic crisis's sunny aftermath. 911 Media Arts, Thurs Dec 7 at 7:15 pm. (Preceded by fair trade holiday gift fair and followed by a discussion with filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin.)

The Boat, Cops, and By the Sea
Silent films by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, accompanied by the Pontiac Bay Symphony Orchestra. Nathan Hale Performing Arts Center, Sat Dec 9 at 7:30 pm.

Bring Your Own Projector
A weekly free-for-all that will provide a wall onto which you project your Super-8 or 16mm film or slides or filmstrip or digital video or whatever, along with many other simultaneous projections. (You may also bring DVD shorts and still slides to show using the complimentary in-house equipment.) Mad visual cacophony ensues. Alibi Room (downstairs), Mon Dec 11 at 6 pm.

Bullitt
In this 1968 policier, Steve McQueen plays a cop named Bullitt who's assigned to watch a witness in the hours leading up to a big trial. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs Dec 7 at 7:30 pm.

The Cave of the Yellow Dog
Ostensibly a feature film, Yellow Dog is more a moving-picture postcard. The plot (girl finds puppy) is simple and unimportant. The main attractions are the long, slow shots of the Mongolian countryside and its residents as they make cheese, herd animals, dismantle a yurt, etc. It also contains the following mother-daughter exchange: "Could you collect some dung for curing the meat?" "But I've never collected dung before!" "Well, you can try." (BRENDAN KILEY) Varsity, Fri-Sun 2, 4:15, 7, 9:10 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9:10 pm.

The Circle
The Circle is the essence of the city: motion, circular motion. Nine or so distressed women enter and leave the plot; walking here, running away from there, being transported to some destination by taxi, bus, or private car. We get lost in the swirling city of Tehran with its cluttered alleyways, busy thoroughfares, and flights of rickety stairs. The Circle is not simply a successful work of cinematic art, but a scathing study of how women are criminalized in Iranian society. Unlike the American study of women in national politics, The Contender, The Circle isn't hindered by a broad political agenda; the art and message dissolve smoothly into the motion of the women, as they desperately attempt to improve their impossible circumstances. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Keystone Church, Fri Dec 8 at 7 pm.

Citizen Kane
The mildly overrated Orson Welles classic about demagoguery and deep focus. Central Cinema, Fri-Sun 6:30, 9:15 pm. (Late shows 21+.)

The Critics Wrap 2006
Area critics (including Sheila Benson, who may have some interesting things to say about the decline of local film coverage in the Seattle Weekly; Robert Horton; and The Stranger's own Andrew Wright) discuss the year's best and worst in film. Frye Art Museum, Fri Dec 8 at 7:30 pm

Curtains
A free screening of a new black-and-white movie by Robert Allen. Grand Illusion, Mon Dec 11 at 9 pm.

Damnation
I could tell you that Damnation is a black-and-white movie from 1987 about adultery, but to be honest, it's hard enough to distinguish between the characters without trying to figure out who's harassing, haranguing, and cheating on whom. The little bursts of plot are incidental to director Béla Tarr's main business: long, lulling takes of rain hitting puddles, or a man who peers around columns, or bucket-trams of coal ascending and descending a mountain. There's a still shot near the beginning of a hill of glasses and steins, beautifully composed and accompanied not by the busy clinking of drinks but by the meditative clack of off-screen billiard balls. It's a shot worthy of a gelatin-silver print, except more mesmerizing. You don't just want to look at the scene, you want to look at it while seated in that rural dancehall—drunk, with a bleary gaze that makes the lights curve and run together. (ANNIE WAGNER) Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Sun 7, 9:30 pm.

Dark City
Alex Proyas's 1998 film, Dark City, is a gorgeous mess of a picture; like an antique chair, it's pretty to look at, but unable to support weight. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.

Ethiopian Film Festival
Ethiopian filmmaker Tewodros Teshome screens three of his films: Cold Flame (about a fledgling romance between two university students that's cut short by an HIV/AIDS diagnosis), Love Verdict, and Red Error. This event is a benefit for Blue Nile Children's Organization and its project to construct a medical clinic in Addis Ababa. Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, Sat Dec 9. Cold Flame at 11 am, Love Verdict at 3:30 pm, Red Error at 5:45 pm.

Holiday High Notes
Northwest Boyschoir accompanies three august holiday-themed silent films: A Holiday Pageant at Home (1901), A Winter Straw Ride (1906), and Santa Claus (1925). Northwest Film Forum, Sun Dec 10 at 3 pm (Intermediate Choir) and 5 pm (Advanced Choir).

Key Largo
The quality of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's films may have tailed off somewhat in director Howard Hawks's absence, but the chemistry stayed the same. By 1948's Florida gangster saga Key Largo, the age difference between the two was becoming ever more apparent. Still, even if Bogie was starting to look a little long (okay, longer) in the tooth, that infernal sizzle remained. Warts and all, no cinematic couple ever seemed so compatible on screen, or so frankly amused to be paid to be doing what they'd most likely be doing at home anyway. (ANDREW WRIGHT) Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon 7 pm, Tues-Thurs 7, 9 pm.

Mobile Exposure
The curated monthly Independent Exposure series tackles travel and mobility. Central Cinema, Wed Dec 13 at 7, 9 pm.

Mutual Appreciation
See preview. Northwest Film Forum, Daily 7, 9 pm.

Santa Smokes
A German-U.S. coproduction by Seattle native Till Schauder (with Chris Valentien), Santa Smokes is a comedy about a starving New York actor in a Santa suit. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat 11 pm.

Say I Do
Last seen at the Port Townsend Film Festival, where it won a special jury prize, Say I Do is that rare breed: a gentle mockumentary. It's a faux wedding video documenting a misbegotten, misguided, and ultimately misty special day for Sydney (Pamela Moore Somers), a sratty princess, and Ben (Ben Koldyke), her handsome and obnoxious groom. The ensemble acting (with David BelAyche as a French limo driver and Rebecca Rosenak as Sydney's smart lush of a sister) is stellar, the desert cinematography claims a credible charm, and the complicated POV is carefully justified at—and around—every corner. A surprisingly tolerable indie, now playing at a suburban multiplex near you. (ANNIE WAGNER) Lincoln Square Cinemas, Daily 12:25, 2:50, 5:10, 7:30, 9:45.

Venus
An advance screening to raise money for SIFF's year-round programming. Harvard Exit, Thurs Dec 14 at 7:30 pm. (See www.seattlefilm.org for tickets.)

Wholphin 3
A screening of the newest DVD magazine from McSweeney's, with new shorts by Paul Thomas Anderson, Dennis Hopper, and more. Plus local films by Stranger Genius shortlisters Stefan Gruber (hopefully, the French ladybug saga Anaelle) and Dayna Hanson. Ravenna Third Place Books, Fri Dec 8 at 6 pm.

The World According to Shorts
Curated by Jonathan Howell at BAMcinématek in Brooklyn, this program of international shorts includes We Have Decided Not to Die (about ritual and transcendence), United We Stand (about old-timers who come across a young woman stuck in a swamp), Antichrist (about a young demon child), The Old Woman's Step (about selling a chicken in Brazil), Ring of Fire (about gay cowboys). Northwest Film Forum, Mon-Thurs 7, 9 pm.

Now Playing

Babel
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. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Bobby
After winning California's 1968 presidential primary, Robert F. Kennedy left the ballroom stage with the famous words, "Now, it's on to Chicago." He then cut through the kitchen of L.A.'s regal Ambassador Hotel, greeting the working-class kitchen staff on his way, and was gunned down at point-blank range by assassin Sirhan Sirhan. This infamous moment was preserved in a black-and-white still of Kennedy elegantly sprawled on the kitchen floor as an equally elegant kitchen staffer (an angelic Hispanic teenager in formal kitchen whites) crouched down to comfort him. Rewind 20 hours. Writer-director Emilio Estevez (seriously!) imagines the life of this teenage kitchen worker (he had tickets to the Dodgers game, but had to work a double shift that day) and conjures 20 or so other commonplace dramas that, Robert Altman-style, revolve around the Ambassador Hotel on that fateful June 4. A few of the storylines—like those involving the racial dynamics of the kitchen staff and the one about the aging doorman—are engaging. But most are lackluster. (JOSH FEIT)

Borat: 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 isn't being 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)

Casino 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)

Deck the Halls
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)

Déjà Vu
Hey, tough guy! Think nothing could possibly make Denzel Washington more awesome (besides astronaut training and laser eyes)? Well, how about the ability to TRAVEL through TIME? And how about the ability to travel through time while engaging in witty patter with hilarious Hebrew Adam Goldberg? And how about if he also has a HEART OF GOLD? Did I just kick your mind in the junk, or what? It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and a party ferry—loaded with crisp, white American sailors, with brides and babies in tow—blows up, to the tune of 543 casualties. With the help of a secret government "surveillance" team, Denzel tracks down the culprit: a McVeigh-style superpatriot who believes that "sometimes a little human collateral is the cost of freedom." Freedom from what? Doesn't matter! Denzel's 'boutsta travel through TIIIIIIIIIIME! It seems the U.S. government has managed to invent a time machine (though, as some brief but gut-churning Ninth Ward footage shows, it's still unable to build a fix-a-black-person's-house machine). (LINDY WEST)

The 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)

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)

Flushed 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)

The Fountain
Darren Aronofsky's ambitious, confounding take on the Fountain of Youth is the damnedest thing: an intimate, eon-spanning love story (starring an extremely game Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz) where profound and profoundly silly are never separated by more than a subliminal thread. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

A 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. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Happy Feet
So anyway, Happy Feet is about a penguin named Mumble. He's fucking adorable. No 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. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Little 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)

The Nativity Story
The film is a boring, historically vague, cowardly regurgitation of the tale that rerouted the course of mankind—so straightforward that it seems to have sprung fully formed from the Pope's armpit. It's cuddly, Christian cinema for the already convinced; about as deep as Life of Brian, and without the jokes. Mary is your typical Nazarene teen: gossiping with the girls by the donkey-powered mill, whipping up blocks of soggy sheep cheese, picking hay off her tunic, and avoiding the rapey gaze of King Herod's cavalry. Nazareth is kind of a shithole, but it's home. Soon after her nuptials, while wandering for no reason through a grove, Mary is visited by one glowing, tall-and-a-half angel named Gabriel, with an important announcement: "Come, you will conceive in your womb. And bear a son. And call his name Jesus." It's not just any baby, though, and not just any baby-daddy—instead, Gabriel explains, one of these nights, the old Holy Spirit's gonna sneak up her Suez Canal and plant a Messiah in there! Hot! Long story short, The Nativity Story is nothing you didn't already know. (LINDY WEST)

The Prestige
The complicated plot boils down to a mundane feud between rival London magicians, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. They strive to steal each other's best tricks, and they push each other to unhealthy limits, including an ill-advised consultation with Nikola Tesla (David Bowie, hamming it evil genius). 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)

The 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. Basically, The Queen is The West Wing populated by stuck-up twits, and in addition to the studiously wooden figurehead (a metaphor that's never seemed so apt), there are a whole crew of politicians and staffers conducting surreptitiously from backstage. Michael Sheen, as Tony Blair, is excellent as the sort of squishy leader celebrity-era democracy is prone to. And the minutiae of public relations have never seemed so stupid—or so fascinating. (ANNIE WAGNER)

The 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)

Shortbus
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)

Shut Up & Sing
When Dixie Chicks frontwoman Natalie Maines took the stage of Shepherds Bush Empire in London and told an audibly sympathetic 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. 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)

Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
For the record, I usually pretty much love Tenacious D. The Pick of Destiny, though—well, I just liked it. (MEGAN SELING)

Turistas
For all the critical grousing about the rising popularity of torture porn, it's hard to dismiss the seamy voyeuristic buzz generated when done right/wrong. Director John (Into the Blue) Stockwell's Turistas, in which a bunch of foxy American vacationers get their innards removed in Brazil, can't match the over-the-top, post-modern grue of Hostel or the Saw series, but its unwinking, relentless mojo handily trumps the other contenders in the genre. (It also helps that Stockwell, a former actor, actually seems to like his cast of sacrificial twentysomethings, which makes the constant threat of spleen removal feel unusually tense.) The splattery xenophobia does peter out before the climax, but this is still the first of the new horror wave to feel like a true modern-day descendant of the straight-faced, grainy sleazefests of yore. Also, there's a completely gratuitous cliff sequence that does Wile E. Coyote proud. Hey, these days, you take what you can get. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj
Kal Penn's Taj (partly for plot reasons, mostly to explain the lack of Ryan "Van Wilder" Reynolds) is now pursuing a degree at some snooty British school that looks like Hogwarts and is full of haughty Brits who say things like "Good day" and "Well, now really" and "quite a kerscuffle." Moments after Taj's arrival in this wonderland of stiff upper lips, the conceited Pipp (Daniel Percival) refuses Taj entry into his super-gay fraternity, Fox and Hounds. Taj soon realizes his true destiny: to team up with the biggest losers on campus, start a new frat called Cock and Bulls, and give Pipp and his fey cohorts what they deserve! U-S-A! U-S-A! IN-DI-A! IN-DI-A! (ERIK HENRIKSEN)

Volver
Somewhere between Alfred Hitchcock and Clare Boothe Luce, but with a campy, peppery nativity all his own, Almodóvar has emerged as the world's premier post-feminist yarn-spinner, a wizened gay devotee of all things Sirkian, candy-colored, tear-jerking, and hormonal. That said, are we running in place in San Pedro? Audiences who have attended to this year's "Viva Pedro!" traveling retro-series may well be wearying of Almodóvar's similar plot structures and tame psychosexual playfulness. You can't be blamed for being ambivalent about Volver, even though it might be the wittiest and most emotionally coherent film he's made in years. (MICHAEL ATKINSON)