LIMITED RUN


Amnesty International Film Festival
A series of documentaries about human rights, both here and abroad. All films screen on the UW campus. A documentary featurette called Too Flawed to Fix: The Illinois Death Penalty Experience plays with the short film Books Not Bars, Thomson Hall Room 101, Mon April 18 at 5:30 pm. A Closer Walk, about the world AIDS crisis, Thomson Hall Room 101, Mon April 18 at 7:15 pm. Brothers and Others plays with the short Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death, Savery Hall Room 239, Tues April 19 at 6:30 pm. Stolen Childhoods plays with the short Price of Youth, Thomson Hall Room 101, Wed April 20 at 5:30 pm. The Day My God Died, Thomson Hall Room 101, Wed April 20 at 7:15 pm.

Battles Without Honor or Humanity
The 1973 film about the origin of the Japanese yakuza. Savery Hall Room 239, UW campus, Thurs April 14 at 7:30 pm.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
"This is my happening and it FREAKS ME OUT!" Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert collaborated on this intentionally dizzy mess of a movie, which, as my friend recently pointed out, is the closest Hollywood has ever come to Bollywood (without going over). Beyond offers a little T, a little A, and a whole lot of "Oh!", featuring a guest appearance by the great Strawberry Alarm Clock (performing "Incense and Peppermints" and "I'm Coming Home"). (SEAN NELSON) Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.

ByDesign '05
The Film Forum's annual festival of graphic design in film includes several events with Pablo Ferro, a designer who works on film title sequences, trailers, and other visual effects. For workshop information, please see www.nwfilmforum.org. All screenings take place at Northwest Film Forum. Quick Cuts and Split Screens: An Evening with Pablo Ferro, Fri April 15 at 7:30 pm. Seattle Moves, a screening of title clips from local designers, Sat April 16 at 5 pm. Entropy: New Shorts and Music Videos, Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 9 pm. Best of ByDesign, a selection of works screened at previous festivals, Sun April 17 at 7 pm.

Chinatown
See review this issue. Northwest Film Forum, Daily 7, 9:45 pm.

Johnny Got His Gun
A film by screenwriter Dalton Trumbo about the aftermath of World War I. West Seattle Public Library, Sat April 17 at 2 pm.

The Man Without a Past
Aki Kaurismäki's latest has charmed audiences at film festivals around the world, and it's easy to see why. Bathed in the perpetual golden light of northern Finland, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous. The camera rarely moves, which emphasizes the strong compositions Kaurismäki set up with cinematographer Timo Salminen. The pacing is slow but confident, and once you lock into its rhythm it becomes completely engaging. Above all the movie is funny, eschewing the gross-out humor so popular today for the more gentle humor of silent films. (ANDY SPLETZER) Nordic Heritage Museum, Thurs April 14 at 7 pm.

My Life as a Dog
A 1985 film by Lasse Halstrom about a little boy named Ingemar who goes away to stay with relatives for the summer. Nordic Heritage Museum, Thurs April 21 at 7 pm.

Pepe Le Moko
A beautiful socialite named Gaby (Mireille Balin) chances upon the infamous criminal Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) during a police raid on the labyrinthine Casbah district of Algiers. In one fabulous, deservedly renowned scene, Pepe idly seduces the poised Gaby by pretending exclusive interest in her elaborate jewelry. This brilliant and feisty 1937 movie represents the sort of guilty pleasure that could only become a classic in the medium of film--the shame of France's colonial past is inseparable from the pleasure we take in watching these suave gangsters revel in their exotic surroundings. The newly restored print isn't perfect, but the experience of seeing this kind of grand fatalism on the big screen is priceless. (ANNIE WAGNER) Seattle Art Museum, Thurs April 14 at 7:30 pm.

The Pornographers
Inamura Shohei's 1966 film about a destitute family man who also makes adult films. Savery Hall Room 239, UW campus, Thurs April 21 at 7:30 pm.

Quai Des Orfevres
Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) is going places, or so she thinks, and plays fast and loose with the come-ons of other men in full view of her husband Maurice, who simmers with impotent jealousy. She's a chorus girl, dancer, and model, with boundless aspirations, but Maurice, she swears, is the only fella for her. One night, her ambitions and flirtations collide in the apartment of Brignon (Charles Dullin, exquisitely sleazy), an impresario whose taste for ladies runs to just this side of porn; next thing you know, Brignon is dead, Maurice is under suspicion, and Jenny has to decide just how much to confess, and to whom. All this detail really only scratches the surface of a film that's near-delirious with its own energy. Made just three years after France's liberation, Orfèvres is funny, kinky, tough, and cynical, but it swells with love for both cinema and mankind. (SEAN NELSON) Seattle Art Museum, Thurs April 21 at 7:30 pm.

Rock Hudson's Home Movies
Rock Hudson's Home Movies, by Mark Rappaport, muses over the gayness--be it intentional or otherwise--to be found in Hudson's films, using an actor playing Hudson himself to adress us in the audience directly. Much of the end result is smart and well thought out, with Rappaport using the Hudson clips not just to examine, but occasionally to crack wise as well. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat 11 pm.

Seconds
A 1966 John Frankenheimer film about a secret organization that peddles a second chance at life. This is the last film in Grand Illusion's Rock Hudson series. Grand Illusion, Weekdays 6:30, 8:45 pm, Sat-Sun 4:15, 6:30, 8:45 pm.

Sex On Screen
The aura of Conworks may have dimmed alarmingly in recent weeks, but this weekend's nicely varied exploration of all things nude and naughty more than warrants a mention. Short films dominate Friday's lineup, with top honors going to director Aundre Johnson's Fucking Hollywood, which crams an entire lifetime's worth of La la land loathing into 15 hilarious minutes. Saturday night's program, meanwhile, features Rina Barone and Patricia DiTillio's Slut, an intriguing (if tad academic) documentary exploring the origins and lasting impact of the titular word, which, as the authors convincingly argue, should be evaluated as a deadly weapon. (Warning for the easily queasy: this film features an appearance by the late-era Ron Jeremy). Finally, for audiences looking for a little more straightforward sizzle, there's the closing night film, the stunningly photographed, cheerfully moronic DJ Hound Dog, about a mutton-chopped, tequila-chugging platter spinner (co-director Jon Jacobs) whose rise to the top of the Miami music scene includes plenty of medium-core nookie with a slew of ridiculously attractive women. Think of it as a Clambake or Harum Scarum for the new raved-up millennium, and know that somewhere, Col. Tom Parker is drooling. (ANDREW WRIGHT) All films screen at Consolidated Works. Luv Shorts: Shorts Package, Fri April 15 at 6:30 pm. (Hot) Pink Shorts: Shorts Package, Fri April 15 at 8:30 pm. It's Still Okay to Laugh: Shorts Package, Fri April 15 at 11:30 pm. Maria Beatty Retrospective, Sat April 16 at 5 pm. Slut, Sat April 16 at 7:15 pm. Anonymous, Sat April 16 at 9 pm. Sexy Secret, Sat April 16 at 11 pm. Andrew Blake Retrospective, Sun April 17 at 5 pm. An Evening with Andrew Blake, Sun April 17 at 7 pm. DJ Hound Dog, Sun April 17 at 9 pm.

Shadow of a Doubt
The 1945 Hitchcock film about a murderer who comes to visit a sunny California town. Movie Legends, Sun April 17 at pm.

Sneak
The Sneak series of film previews continues its fourth season. For more information, see www.sneakfilms.com. Pacific Place, Sun April 17 at 10 am.

Superman Meets Johnny the Giantkiller
The first feature-length animated film to come out of France, Superman (1950) will be accompanied by New York-based punk-jazz band Gutbucket. Northwest Film Forum, Sat-Sun 1 pm.

Tasveer: Traveling Film South Asia
A festival of South Asian documentaries. All screenings take place at 911 Media Arts. Tale of the Darkest Night, about a rash of killings by the Pakastani Army at Dhaka University, Tues April 19 at 7 pm. The Fire Within, about the Tana Bhagats, a peaceful sect in Jharkhand, India, who follow a Gandhian philosophy, Tues April 19 at 9 pm. Series continues through April 29, see www.tasveer.org for details.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
On paper, this documentary about the five-year relationship between a gentle, sporadically homeless hippie with no visible means of support and an unruly flock of birds sounds like a recipe for instant tooth decay. Darned if it doesn't work, though. Despite a few unfortunately syrupy music cues and an occasional drift into the land of the overly cutes, director/photographer Judy Irving's film is a refreshingly nonjudgmental, beautifully shot look at a genuine original, and the San Franciscan community that affectionately supports his decidedly unusual drumbeat. Mild tonal sputtering aside, this word-of-mouth art house phenom is the rare movie that honestly earns its sentimentality, with a Zapruderish photographic reveal in the final act that's seriously the most affecting thing I've seen all year. Stock up on Kleenex and take the folks. (Note: Star Mark Bittner is scheduled to make appearances at the Friday evening screenings.) (ANDREW WRIGHT) Varsity, Fri-Sun noon, 2:20, 4:40, 7, 9:20 pm, Mon-Thurs 7, 9:20 pm. NOW PLAYING


The Amityville Horror
A remake of a 1979 horror film about a family that moves into a haunted house.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose
Wrtier/director Rebecca Miller (daughter of Arthur) deals her cards large, and with a perversely admirable shamelessness; pretentious as it may be, you've just got to respect a filmmaker with the chutzpah to juxtapose a young girl's deflowering with a snake being set loose in the house. Thankfully, her assembled cast (including brief turns by the always welcome Catherine Keener and Jena Malone) possesses a considerably more subtle touch: Daniel Day-Lewis, as a strident environmentalist, delivers an infuriating, fascinating combo platter of constantly warring self-righteousness and humility. The performances may ultimately not be able to conquer the overpowering artiness of Miller's approach, but they do manage to render it somewhat less airless. (ANDREW WRIGHT).

Beauty Shop
I had no idea Kevin Bacon was in this movie and then--POOF!--there he was, acting all pompous and French and sporting the worst hairdo he's ever had in the history of all Kevin Bacon hairdos. It was quite exciting. The rest of the movie, though, was a lot like Barbershop except all the roles are reversed. (MEGAN SELING)

Born Into Brothels
Rare is the documentary that feels too short, but this wrenching, multiple award-winning look at kids growing up within the squalid red-light sector of India begs for a more detailed exploration. Filmed in an arresting mix of handheld video and Kodachrome stills, the film follows the efforts of co-director/photographer Zana Briski to save the children of Calcutta's sex workers, initially by encouraging their photographic skills, and then navigating through unbelievable levels of bureaucratic quicksand in an attempt to get them out of the slums and into boarding schools. Briski's struggle is worthy of sainthood, but her resulting document, after an absolutely engrossing first reel, follows a slightly frustrating route. Unintentionally or not, as she concentrates increasingly on getting passports and HIV tests processed, the focus shifts to a more conventional individual vs. the system story, and away from the fairly miraculous day-to-day existence of the kids, where it feels like it belongs. As it stands, the glimpses we see of them and their all-too-knowing interactions with their hellish surroundings are somehow both too much, and not nearly enough. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Bride & Prejudice
I'm happy to report that adapter Paul Mayeda Berges and co-adapter/director Gurinder Chadha, best known for her adorable girl-power anthem Bend It Like Beckham, lose no sleep over fitting the plot of Pride and Prejudice into a Bollywood mold. The end result doesn't bear the faintest resemblance to Jane Austen, and truth be told, it doesn't cleave too closely to Bollywood conventions either. Bride & Prejudice--even the title makes me simultaneously cringe and cackle--is shorter than you'd expect, some of the colors in that big party scene look a bit washed out, and a certain character bears an unmistakable resemblance to Ali G. But who cares? (ANNIE WAGNER)

Dear Frankie
The premise of Dear Frankie, the latest lightly accented and life-affirming import from the good folks at Miramax, is enough to make the wary reach for the insulin: a stalled-in-neutral woman with a mysterious past (Emily Mortimer) hires a strong and silent sailor (Gerard Butler) to impersonate her deaf son's long-absent father for a weekend. Romance blossoms, life lessons are learned, shaky family ties are strengthened, etc. While it certainly sounds precious enough, it is to the film's credit that things never quite develop in the way expected, and with a mildly bittersweet resolution unusual to the genre. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Downfall
There are a lot of sentimental war moments in Downfall, and the conceit that we are watching through the eyes of Hitler's sheltered and therefore ignorant (and therefore blameless) secretary, is flimsy on many levels. Because the characters are Nazis, their panic and its subsequent rash of suicides and murders are deeply satisfying. Because it's a movie, however, you're left with the unpleasant prospect of watching a bunch of rats slowly drowning for two and a half hours. There are better ways to go. (SEAN NELSON)

Dust to Glory
An exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) documentary from director Dana Brown (Step Into Liquid), Dust to Glory chronicles the Tecate Score Baja 1000 race, where lunatics onboard motorcycles, cars, and even motor homes spend 32 hours blazing through 1000 miles of Baja peninsula, rolling over, crashing, and sometimes dying. Shot with over 50 cameras, the film is a definite thrill to watch, masterfully edited and littered with interesting characters. And even though the music occasionally hammers home the heroics to an absurd degree, there's no denying the ridiculous bravery--or is it psychotic lack of self-preservation?--that drives the racers, a bravery Brown manages to let himself, and his film, get caught up in. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Fever Pitch
People seem to love the Farrelly brothers. More specifically, people seem to love their peculiar take on love. Peter and Bobby have already directed a number of well-received quirky romantic comedies that make women giggle and swoon while guys laugh so hard they bust a nut, and now they've made Fever Pitch (based on the Nick Hornby novel), which is yet another take on two awkward people doing their best to work their way through an unconventionally warped relationship. Since it was filmed during the Sox's 2003-04 World Series-winning season, Fever Pitch includes plenty of footage from games; they even got permission to be on the field after the Sox won the series-ending game four. The bummer, though, is that it isn't as funny as other Farrelly classics. It still has that "cute as fuck" spin to it that is utterly unhateable (even if you usually don't like the whole romantic comedy thing), but no nuts will be busted this time around. (MEGAN SELING)

Guess Who
Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher star in this movie about a grumpy in-law-to-be and the white boy his daughter wants to marry.

Hitch
For the most part, the movie is dull because Will Smith plays a playa (a man who has all the right moves). It's only late in the film where things turn lively, as Smith finally wakes up and begins to do more of what he always did when he was as a teen rapper and a '90s TV star: comedy. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Hotel Rwanda
Hotel Rwanda isn't a great film in terms of photography or casting (many of the extras do not look like Hutus or Tutsis). It's a film held up entirely by Don Cheadle. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Ice Princess
Ice Princess, Disney's latest "believe in yourself" after-school special, is stupid. I repeat: STUPID. (MEGAN SELING)

Living Life
In 2003, The Stranger named then-17-year-old Jesse Harris as a recipient of one of the Genius Awards "Ones to Watch" for raiding his college to direct his first feature film. Now that film, Living Life, has been completed, and even though the final product can't be called genius, the label "one to watch" certainly remains. The story: Likeable kid Jason (played bravely by Benjamin Garman), who has just graduated from high school, is diagnosed with a freak form of cancer. While undergoing treatment his bonds with his friends are tested, estranged family members are forgiven, and magic occurs--both between individuals and in the halls and wards of the hospital. All of which sounds very schmaltzy and afterschool special-like (which it is), but Harris' surprising skill with a camera, along with the sheer charm of his precociousness, helps keep the film from becoming an overbearingly preachy slog. As first efforts go, we've all seen a lot worse from adults. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Look At Me
A French film about a girl named Lolita (Marilou Barry) who has trouble getting her father, a famous author, to pay attention to her.

Melinda and Melinda
It's funny that so many of Woody Allen's films revolve around fidelity. Not because of the pathetically sordid events of his own personal life, but because he has a fan base that remains steadfast and faithful. These are the people who will reflexively and devotedly hail his latest film, the tedious Melinda and Melinda, as a return to form. It's actually a return to two forms: the tragic and comic strands of marital fidelity that the auteur has tirelessly (and often tiresomely) been threading over the course of his once-brilliant, ever-increasingly meaningless oeuvre. (NATE LIPPENS)

Million Dollar Baby
As sappy and Lifetime-y as the plot sounds, Clint Eastwood's skill with the performers keeps Million Dollar Baby afloat. Both Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman deliver graceful turns that mesh perfectly with Eastwood's grave brooding, and by the time the film takes a brutally tragic turn you can't help but find yourself yanked along emotionally. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Millions
Danny Boyle has crafted a kid-friendly fable with enough sly modern-day relevance to keep adults from checking their watches. An over-imaginative 7-year-old stumbles across a huge bag of loot in the field near his new house, days before the mandatory UK changeover to the euro. While the money initially brings nothing but good fortune, dealing with the newfound stash gets steadily more complicated as the deadline approaches. Teamed again with his 28 Days cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, Boyle successfully maintains a child's eye visual sensibility throughout, in a miraculously noncloying fashion. Every blade of grass is a nuclear Jolly Rancher green, bad guys block out the sun, tract houses quick assemble around the oblivious tenants, and landscapes stretch out for eons. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
In Miss Congeniality 2, Sandra Bullock's dreamy hunk of a boyfriend dumps her. Like every woman would in this situation, she decides to get as hot as possible to make him regret it. Everyone loves the underdog and everyone loves a beauty queen, and the geeky snortasaurus rex is both of those things! Perfect! Man, this movie sucks. (MEGAN SELING)

Off the Map
The man, the myth, the mustache: Frankly, it takes a lot for me to not recommend a movie starring Sam Elliott. Sadly, Off the Map, a good-looking yet overly stagy character piece in the wilds of New Mexico, fits the bill. Despite an often-stunning sense of time and place, it can't escape some fatally stage-bound dialogue. Set deep in the thick of the '70s (those with a phobia of beaded curtains and macramé knickknacks need not apply), director Campbell Scott's film follows the coming-of-age saga of a tomboy growing up within a quasi-nomadic family proudly living off the land, with occasional visits to the local dump. The good news is that Scott is as intuitive a filmmaker as he is an actor; working with cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia, he creates some lovely, startling color schemes in the wide open spaces. The director occasionally gets so blissed out on the mood he's created that he loses the narrative thread entirely, which may actually be the best moments of the film. Unfortunately, such golden bits can't negate the cumulative effect of Joan Ackermann's script (adapted from her play), which is awash in enough twinkly magic realism to give Garrison Keillor a canker sore. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

The Pacifier
Vin Diesel belongs as a villain, not as a Navy Seal who moves in with a suburban family (the specifics are unnecessary; all you need to know is that the plot, such as it is, is utterly idiotic), and despite his game efforts The Pacifier is painfully inept. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Robots
Robots may seem like a heartwarming children's flick that relies on dazzling animation to cover up a predictable storyline and not-as-funny-as-it-should-be dialogue, but really it's the most PUNK ROCK MOVIE ON EARTH. (MEGAN SELING)

Sahara
Thankfully, only the barest plot and character elements are held over from Clive Cussler's virtually unreadable doorstop of a novel, which is the kind of tech-heavy, mondo-macho potboiler that stewardesses must get tired of sweeping up after every flight. (Actual sample passage: "This day, the temperature rose from 15 degrees C (60 degrees F) to 35 degrees C (95 degrees F) in three hours, topping off during the hottest part of the afternoon at 46 degrees C (114 degrees F).") What still remains: Matthew McConaughey is the wonderfully named Dirk Pitt, a ludicrously rad underwater explorer/rare-car enthusiast/secret agent/master of languages/all-around stud who, along with faithful companion/hetero life partner Steve Zahn, gets caught up in a sinister desert plot involving Civil War battleships, ocean-killing water pollution, toxic waste, slithery French industrialists, feuding generals, and Lord knows what else. McConaughey's THC-saturated, lounge-lizardy persona may be far from the standard Man of Action template, but it adds a wobbly nonchalance to his various acts of over the top derring-do. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Schultze Gets the Blues
Sad, silent Schultze has nothing to look forward to but lonely nights spent drinking beer from huge bottles and practicing the turgid waltz his father taught him on the accordion. Then, one night, while flipping around the radio dial, he hears a zydeco song. Captivated by this utterly alien music, he can't bring himself to play, or listen to, anything else--which causes problems since he is expected to play his famous waltz at a local festival. Much of the film centers on the encroachment of Western ideas onto traditional European modes of living, so it's refreshing that director Michael Schorr allows his pilgrim's progress to unfold with ambivalence. There are no screeds here, just some very pointed, poignant observations about the slow death of the old way, already in progress. (SEAN NELSON)

Sin City
In purely aesthetic terms, Sin City is without a doubt the ultimate comic-book movie. Dialogue, sets, costumes, even framing--each has been thoroughly copped from the pages of Miller's comics, almost to the point of absurdity. To call the film an adaptation is a massive understatement; this isn't a translation, it's a cut-and-paste job, bringing Miller's twisted vision directly to the screen in all its unfiltered glory. The result is one of the most daring and beautifully made films you'll ever see--too bad, then, that it's as thin as the pages the comic was printed on. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)

Steamboy
Steamboy, Katsuhiro Otomo's monstrously anticipated comeback, ditches his familiar Neo-Tokyo stomping grounds for an equally insanely rendered 19th century London, much of which gets reduced to dust by the final act. While the story is fairly cookie cutter for the genre (young tech-whiz kid finds mysterious energy source, gets caught between warring and heavily armed scientific theorists, takes to the skies), it benefits from an unusually straightforward delivery and an extremely well chosen celebrity voice cast. Unfortunately, although the copious technology built on acres of shuddering cogs and gears is unquestionably neat (dig those steam-emitting flying stormtroopers!), the sheer flabbergasting level of detail, and over-reliance on third act super-sized explosions, eventually proves exhausting. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Turtles Can Fly
See review this issue.

The Upside of Anger
Secretly sleazy yuppies, oversexed teens, upscale infighting--as a cinematic subject, the exploration of suburbia's dark underbelly could stand to spend some serious time in the ground. The Upside of Anger makes an all-too-blatant grab for the award-friendly glory road well plowed by the likes of American Beauty and Terms of Endearment, yet is nearly redeemed by a cast that wrings out every last bit of potential from the formula. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Voices in Wartime
A feature-length documentary about the poetry written during and about times of war.

Walk on Water
A ruthless, grieving Mossad agent (Lior Ashkenazi) is assigned to track down and kill a long-vanished Nazi war criminal by getting close to his unsuspecting grandchildren as they tour the Holy Land. What lingers past the clutter of seemingly disparate topics the film touches on (nationalism, socio-political posturing, sexual identity, and a smattering of romantic comedy) are the number of unexpected character moments, in which the director Eytan Fox's naturalistic touch with actors is allowed to shine. For a film to tackle such a crazy quilt of ideas is perhaps certifiable. That it almost pulls it off is borderline miraculous. (ANDREW WRIGHT)