Bodysong
A found-footage feature about "love, sex, violence, death, and dreams," by UK director Simon Pummell. Northwest Film Forum, Thurs-Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat 9 pm, Sun 7, 9 pm.
* Criss Cross
This 1949 film by Robert Siodmak stars Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo in this tale of a man's fascination with his ex-wife and her links to a seedy underworld. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Oct 28 at 7:30 pm.
* End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones
See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Sun 2, 4:30, 7:15, 9:45 pm, Mon-Thurs 7:15, 9:45 pm.
* Eyes Without a Face
See Stranger Suggests. Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.
Fourteen Hours
Film noir about a jumper on a ledge. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Nov 4 at 7:30 pm.
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire
A documentary introduced by one of the founders of MoveOn.org. Rendezvous, Sat Oct 30 at 4 pm.
Lightning in a Bottle
A concert film about a "Salute to the Blues" show at Radio City Music Hall. Varsity, Fri-Sun 1:50, 4:20, 7, 9:20 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9:20 pm.
Mad Monster Party
A stop-motion creature showdown. Grand Illusion, Fri 11 pm, Sat noon, 11 pm, Sun noon.
Other People's Pictures
A film about family snapshots being sold at the Chelsea Flea Market. Consolidated Works, Fri-Sun 8 pm.
* Rosemary's Baby
Polanski's second greatest American film stars Mia Farrow as vulnerability incarnate and John Cassavetes as the personification of vanity. Ruth Gordon tags along as the embodiment of all that is frustrating and treacherous about the elderly. Rosemary's Baby is a film that both shows its age (36 years old) and holds up brilliantly well. Viva Polanski! (SEAN NELSON) Grand Illusion, Weekdays 6, 8:30 pm, Sat-Sun 3:30, 6, 8:30 pm.
Soul Purpose
A ski and snowboard film shot on 16 mm. Showbox, Wed Nov 3 at 8 pm.
Sublime Frequencies Showcase
World music fans should not miss this showcase. Basically, Sublime Frequencies is a group dedicated to going around the world and collecting sounds and images from marginalized cultures. The preview disc I got was for "Folk Music of the Sahara: Among the Tuareg of Libya," and even though the video is single-camera shaky some of the time, the music itself was professionally captured and sounds great. Director Hisham Mayet will introduce the videos, which don't have any subtitles or introductory text. And aside from the music from Libya, there's also another collection of music and video from Northern Thailand, both playing as part of the Testpattern series at the NWFF. (ANDY SPLETZER) Northwest Film Forum, Sat Oct 30 at 7 pm.
The Thief of Baghdad
This 1940 Arabian Nights-ish fantasy comes complete with flying carpets, a thief, a magician, and of course, a genie. Rendezvous, Wed Nov 3 at 7:30 pm.
* Tron
What is Tron about? Is it about the peculiar relationship between man and machine? Is it about reminding us that there used to be a semi-popular actor named Bruce Boxleitner? Is it about Jeff Bridges' majestically feathered hair? The answers: Yes, yes, and yes. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) EMP's JBL Theater, Fri Oct 29 at 7 pm. Greg Bear introduces the film.
Twisted Flicks: The Blob
Amorphous goo, dubbed live by Jet City Improv. Historic University Theater, Thurs-Sat 8 pm.
The Unknown w/ Freaks
The Unknown (1927) stars Lon Chaney as an faux-armless knife-thrower; the infamous 1932 film Freaks, a tale of forbidden midget love, stars real sideshow carnies. Movie Legends, Sun Oct 31 at 1 pm.
Until When...
The Palestine Film Festival kicks off with this documentary about four families living in Dheisheh Refugee Camp outside of Bethlehem. Ethnic Cultural Theater, Sun Oct 31 at 7 pm.
* Young Frankenstein, Twilight Zone, Psycho
Scary movies and two episodes of a scary teevee show. Hotwire Online Coffeehouse, Sat Oct 30 at 5 pm.
NOW PLAYING
Being Julia
Annette Bening throws herself into each dizzying emotion with abandon, but the histrionics are so grossly out of proportion with the charm or threat posed by her schoolboy lover that the emotional center of the film is hollowed out. The end is smashingly entertaining, but I'm not so sure it makes the tedious, feature-length setup worthwhile. (ANNIE WAGNER)
Birth
See review this issue.
* The Bourne Supremacy
Forget the plot. Remember the dizzying fight scenes, the indefatigable cloak and dagger in which everyone is the smartest person in the room (and Bourne is the smartest of them all), the best car chase ever filmed (fact!). Remember director Paul Greengrass's masterful handheld choreography. Best of all, remember the supporting cast: Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Franka Potente, all of whom, along with Damon--whose robotic beauty has never better served a character than this one--help to elevate the Robert Ludlum pulp into a high lowbrow masterpiece. (SEAN NELSON)
De-Lovely
De-Lovely is perfumed with preciousness, and ultimately suffers from the self-consciousness of its Hollywood gloss, as well as the difficult-to-swallow progressiveness of its characters. (Oddly enough, the sub rosa insinuation of Cole Porter's homosexuality in the 1946 biopic Night and Day rings much truer to the life one imagines a gay man leading in the '20s and '30s.) Still, the fine performances of Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd diminish the film's more troublesome liberties. (SEAN NELSON)
The Forgotten
The Forgotten is a surprisingly strong mainstream thriller, with twists that are both implausible and utterly credible, thanks especially to the open-wound vulnerability of the great Julianne Moore. She plays a bereaved mother who suddenly begins to suspect that everyone around her--shrink, husband, neighbor--is part of a conspiracy to make her believe her dead son never existed. Because this is a thriller, she's right, of course, but in a world of infinite possibilities, the choices made by screenwriter Gerald DiPego and highly skilled genre director Joseph Ruben justify the thrills in a refreshingly inventive style. (SEAN NELSON)
Friday Night Lights
A working-class football movie starring Billy Bob Thornton.
* Garden State
Zack Braff's debut film, Garden State, which he wrote, directed, and stars in, may very well be a similar act of egogasm (when you put Simon and Garfunkel on the soundtrack of your examination of disaffected twentysomethings, you're just asking for it), but it features enough odd grace notes among the rampant navel-gazing to warrant a watch. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
The Grudge
The problem with the American remake of The Grudge is that the ghost never rests. You want a moment to look at Tokyo, to observe its traffic, its bright shops and busy bars--but that pleasure must be found in another movie (see Lost In Translation), because before the setting cools into the normal rhythms of urban life, yet another victim is being pursued and devoured. The ghost in The Grudge is to horror films what Ebola is to pathology. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
This documentary offers a very basic portrait of a man, Howard Zinn, whose life has been extraordinary. Composed of interviews with the popular author of A People's History of The United States, his colleagues, and former students like Alice Walker, the story of Howard Zinn is not that different from the story of Forrest Gump. Both seem to have been close to the center of all the major American social events in the second half of the 20th century. After obtaining his doctorate, Zinn, we learn, got a post at a prominent black university, Spellman, just at the very moment that the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. He wrote an early book about the radical black student organization SNCC, and was fired by the black university for his aggressive role in anti-segregation protests. (Very few white liberals have that kind of cred.) In the '60s and '70s, he taught at Boston University, which was a hotbed of antiwar activity. And he also visited North Vietnam during the war. Howard Zinn wrote about history at the very moment he was an active part of it, but this documentary fails to capture the energy of this historian and his times; and maybe the documentary form is wholly inadequate for such an enormous undertaking. It's possible that big events and passions can only be successfully represented by films that have the budget and star power of Forrest Gump. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
I * Huckabees
While there are many characters, themes, plots, and subplots in Huckabees, the real conflicts are all dialectical--existential detectives vs. nihilist temptress, surrealistic idealist vs. empirical purist, etc. And even though these precepts are embodied by famous actors, the entire film winds up feeling like an abstraction, rather than a dramatization, of a philosophical quandary. That doesn't mean Huckabees fails to entertain; it just means that the viewer is required to discern a pattern from a seemingly random blizzard of ideas blowing across the screen. (SEAN NELSON)
Intimate Strangers
Directed by Patrice Leconte, Intimate Strangers has a strong start and a weak finish. The opening is strong because the premise actually works. But once the accountant is exposed, the comedy dies and a drama is born. With the comedy gone for good, all that's left to enjoy are the film's set designs and the cinematography, which works hard to capture the bourgeois elegance of Sandrine Bonnaire's face. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Ladder 49
I can't say Ladder 49 is a powerful movie that does real justice to the life of a firefighter, because I'm not a firefighter. I don't even personally know any firefighters. But if it is, if this movie is even 75-percent legit... well then, shit--firefighters are amazing, courageous, and insane human beings. (MEGAN SELING )
* The Motorcycle Diaries
This is a film that should be taken for what it is: a beautifully constructed road movie with a dash of conscience on the side. There is much to despise about Che Guevara later in his life; these early adventures help us understand where the eventual fanatic was born. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* Napoleon Dynamite
In this charming new film, 24-year-old writer/ director Jared Hess mines the nebulous area between popular chic and weirdo freak, where outcast attributes are both quality, subtle comedy, and a charmingly dark part of our collective high-school unconscious. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
* Primer
Primer, the $7,000 debut from director/writer/editor/composer/actor/egghead Shane Carruth may very well be one of the best American movies of the year, and I'll be damned if I understood more than 40 percent of it. Set within a buzzing, florescent-lit labyrinth of garage labs and self-storage complexes, the film follows two aspiring hackers as they accidentally invent an ominously humming box that seems to combine the most worrisome aspects of both time and Xerox machines. Things progress from there, and back again. Vague, I know, but to reveal more would sour the script's surprises (of which there are more than a few), and because Carruth's flummoxing combination of dense torrents of geek-speak and leap-frogging plot threads actively defies standard narrative coherence, while encouraging and supporting multiple explanations. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
Raise Your Voice
Hilary Duff has about as much screen presence as a Peep marshmallow treat. "Band camp is hard! I miss my dead brother!" BOO HOO, Lizzy Maguire! So, yeah, all these kids (including Lizzy Maguire) are at a prestigious LA music camp. They make music, they fight, they get drunk (well, one gets drunk), and in the end they all learn a valuable lesson about themselves. How sweet. How dull. I was told that I have to go see all these dumb movies because my reviews of them are funny. Does that makes sense!? I'm being punished for being funny!? I demand I start getting to review good movies. If you're with me, send an e-mail to Brad Steinbacher, Mr. Film Editor, at brad@thestranger.com with the subject line "Don't punish Megan Seling for being hilarious." Thank you. (MEGAN SELING)
Ray
See review this issue.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Alice (Milla Jovovich) survives a dastardly laboratory incident! But now she has to flee from the undead! The horror.
Saw
See review this issue.
Shall We Dance?
In Shall We Dance?, which is directed by Peter Chelsom, an estate planner (Richard Gere) wants to fuck a mysterious dance instructor (Jennifer Lopez). His marriage is safe, dull, and very white; in a flash he sees the exact opposite of all that he is--a brown voluptuous woman. She thrives in the heart of the city (Chicago); he is imprisoned in the suburbs. She has passion; he has a pension. As always, the north wants to hump the south. He makes a cautious move toward his desire, but what he ends up with are a bunch of dance lessons instead of sex. His wife (Susan Sarandon) suspects he is having an affair; but she soon learns that he is spending his nights practicing the tango. The movie ends with the marriage reaffirmed and a return of peace to the kingdom of the petty bourgeoisie. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
Shark Tale
Dreamworks' newest faux-Disney offering is a drably animated parable about the perils of watching too much Cribs. Will Smith provides the voice of a lowly fish named Oscar, a whale-wash employee who can only fantasize about appearing on a billboard in the ocean equivalent of midtown Manhattan. But then a freak accident kills a shark who'd been pursuing Oscar, and the boy from the reef's South Side seizes the opportunity to reinvent himself as a shark-slaying celebrity. Clearly, the ruse can't be sustained for long. (ANNIE WAGNER)
* Shaun of the Dead
A sharp, clever, and gory horror-comedy that manages to be as scary as it is hilarious, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Shaun of the Dead shows all the marks of becoming a cult classic (and yeah, I know that sounds clichéd--but in this case, it's actually true). In the recent glut of financially successful zombie flicks--from 28 Days Later to the remake of Dawn of the Dead--the UK-made Shaun is the clear spiritual and intellectual winner, a film that simultaneously respects and satirizes the zombie genre. (ERIK HENRIKSEN)
* Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
This is perhaps the most expensive experimental film ever (think of a cheerful Lars von Trier's Zentropa, or a Guy Maddin film with a ridiculous budget), and as such it's fairly shocking that it exists at all. Studios are not ones to gamble, after all, especially on first-time filmmakers with cockamamie schemes about robots and fighter planes, but Conran has managed to make something in Sky Captain that both harks back and leaps forward at the same time, and it is without a doubt, on a purely technical level, one of the bravest major studio pictures ever released. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Stage Beauty
Stage Beauty takes place at the dawn of the Restoration, when females were first allowed to perform on stage, thus displacing all the men who had been groomed (literally) to play female roles in the theater. The incomparable Billy Crudup plays the most glamorous and celebrated actor-ess of his day, who suddenly finds himself upstaged by his lady dresser, Claire Danes, and cast out of polite society. Having faded from star to relic in a single season, Crudup's Ned Kynaston must then summon up the balls to change from Desdemona to Othello, when he knows he was meant to play the former. It's a very particular dilemma, and one that calls up many troubling--and unconvincing--conclusions about the nature of masculinity. The film surrounding these conclusions, however, is pleasing because of (what else?) the actors. (SEAN NELSON)
Surviving Christmas
Surviving Christmas is like Gigli, but with Christmas. By that I don't mean that it's about a lesbian falling for a low-level mobster--I mean it's a piece of shit. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
* Tarnation
As the footage of his childhood reveals, Jonathan Caouette is a born performer with a commitment to self-invention that verges on scary. But the performance of Tarnation is much grander than its components. It's a heroic assertion of life that's accompanied by a chilling history of compelling arguments against it; the film embraces hope without denying the self-destructive impulse. In many ways, it's the story of a performer in search of an audience. The greatest irony of all is that its author has now found one, but only by tearing down all pretense of self-aggrandizement--Caouette achieves beauty by showing his ugliest self. (SEAN NELSON)
Taxi
Taxi met every single one of my expectations. Of course, knowing the film's storyline included a likeable but clumsy cop, an opinionated bike messenger turned cab driver, and a gang of supermodels who rob banks... Well, my standards weren't set very high. Jimmy Fallon played Jimmy Fallon, Queen Latifah played Queen Latifah, and the supermodels wore a lot of short skirts. But I laughed, so, you know, it was fine. (MEGAN SELING)
Team America: World Police
Heavily inspired by Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds series (which was recently bastardized by Paramount into a puppet-free "adventure"), the marionette work in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's film is truly amazing. The action sequences, and even the quiet moments, are triumphs of design, beautifully photographed by Bill Pope and far more complicated than any sane person(s) would even attempt, let alone succeed at creating. It's not just an homage to Anderson, it's a completion of the creepy world Anderson was so obsessed with. Team America's comedy may run from inspired to painfully flat, and the politics may be far too simplistic, but Parker and Stone have done one thing better than anyone has before: They've made the greatest marionette movie of all time. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
Undertow
See review this issue.
Vanity Fair
The problem with Reese Witherspoon as Becky is linked to the way this film tries to reinvent her character. Thackeray's secret sympathy for his conniving protagonist--who is so bad she even hates children--always seeps through the cynical narration. Becky Sharp is great because, no matter how much we admire her pluck from the safe distance of the 21st century, she was a terrible bitch. Mira Nair does not agree. (ANNIE WAGNER)
* Vera Drake
The title character, played with impossible pathos and naiveté by Imelda Staunton, is a housekeeper, mother, visitor of shut-ins, and part-time abortionist. She is paid for polishing fireplace grates in rich people's homes, but the latter three functions--feeding and clothing her family of four, putting the kettle on in the cramped flats of various invalids, and pumping the uteruses of troubled women full of a noxious solution of carbolic soap--she performs gratis. The narrative is clearly engaged in modern political struggles, but at the same time it's a bruising, classical tragedy about a woman whose passionate altruism brings pain and suffering upon herself and the people whom she loves. (ANNIE WAGNER)
What the #$*! Do We Know?!
This ungainly, inane film purports to be about quantum physics but is really about the power of positive thinking, with a midlife-crisis plot (starring Marlee Matlin) and some childish cartoon figures and a series of talking heads who can't stop using the word "paradigm." (EMILY HALL)
Wimbledon
In this wretched, soulless tale of love on the courts of Wimbledon, tennis boy Peter Colt (Paul Bettany) meets tennis girl Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst) when a serendipitous keycard mix-up sends him into her hotel suite just as she's finishing her shower. The sad fact is that the best thing about this movie is the dorky, good-omen ball boy, who pops up whenever it looks like Peter is about to lose. (ANNIE WAGNER)
