LIMITED RUN

6ixtynin9

The flood of human-perpetrated violence in this disconcertingly quiet Thai thriller—made in the wake of the Asian economic collapse of the 1990s—might seem a little coarse in the context of the more recent South Asian catastrophes. But then again, maybe tsunamis and earthquakes can only heighten our sympathy for absurd behavior in the face of fate. 6ixtynin9 tells the story of a young woman named Tum (Lalita Panyopas) who loses her job in "financial services" to a genuinely fearsome lay-off ritual. When she returns to her apartment (number 9) she find a huge box of cash meant for the occupant of number 6 (hence the unintentionally suggestive title). The gangsters come back to correct their error, and Tum naturally wants to protect the booty. Bodies accumulate, a sadistic downstairs neighbor pokes her head in, and it wouldn't be surprising to find out that Tarantino was lurking just off-camera. 6ixtynin9 is by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, but don't go looking for the crushing beauty of his newer film Last Life in the Universe—Christopher Doyle wasn't the cinematographer here. This one still has its charms, though, not least of which is Panyopas, who manages to look mildly surprised every time she kills someone. (ANNIE WAGNER) Central Cinema, Thurs-Sun 6:30, 9:30 pm. (Late show 21+.)

recommended The Big Lebowski

If pressed to name my single favorite moment in my single favorite Coen Brothers movie, The Big Lebowski, it would be a three-way tie between Jeff "the Dude" Lebowski's dumpster-bumping car crash, the sheriff's assault on the Dude with a coffee mug, and the Raymond Chandler-esque discovery of Jackie Treehorn's hard-on doodle. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.

recommended Cavite

While visiting the Philippines for his father's funeral, a slacker security guard receives an anonymous phone call at the airport: Follow a series of mysterious demands to the letter, or your family dies. Now that's high concept, Hollywood. Made for somewhere in the neighborhood of seven grand, the heavily caffeinated debut from writer-directors Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon is a triumph of working within limitations, with clever cutaways and an ingenious, propulsive sound design papering over a myriad of budgetary gaps. (Even the smeary DV, normally a liability, here gives the images a surreal, Otter Pop vividness.) In retrospect, co-director Gamazon can't quite handle the emotive heavy lifting needed in the lead performance, and an unnecessary coda threatens to ruin the near perfect circularity of the premise. On the fly and in the moment, however, it's just about brilliant. (ANDREW WRIGHT) Varsity, Fri-Tues 1:50, 3:40, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30 pm, Wed-Thurs 7:30, 9:30 pm.

Clean

See review this issue. Varsity, Fri-Tues 2, 4:30, 7, 9:20 pm, Wed 7, 9:20 pm.

Don't Panic

A 1989 Mexican slasher film starring a Ouija board and dinosaur pajamas. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat 11 pm.

recommended The Legend of Rita

Best known for The Tin Drum, Volker Schlöndorff's more recent cinematic outings tend toward the lackluster. But with The Legend of Rita (2000), he got his groove back, delivering the kind of sizzling ethical, political complexity that made The Lost Honor of Katarina Blum such a red-hot poker. He tracks a German political terrorist/heroine's flight through numerous lives and disguises—this joyously idealistic, existentially loony young woman's "legends." Every legend she inhabits comes furnished with work, relationships, good times; when she sheds a life and moves on, it shocks us right out of our comfy identification with her bourgeois normalcy. Charismatic, admirable, and ultimately, bone-deep scary, Rita's is the very human face of fanaticism, up close and personal. (KATHLEEN MURPHY) Central Cinema, Wed July 5 at 7, 9:30 pm. (Late show 21+.) Through July 9.

recommended Let's Rock Again

See Stranger Suggests, page 25. EMP'S JBL Theater, Wed July 5 at 7:30 pm.

recommended A Man, a Blade, an Empty Road: Summer of Samurai

Jidai-geki, or samurai period films, often aspire to the condition of art. In these films, we frequently see the soul of the nation searching for deep answers, examining the way things were back then in the hope of understanding why things are this or that way today. Samurai period films are not entirely pure; they have the usual sword slashing and elaborate fight scenes, but battles and blood do not consume the whole picture. What you will see during the Northwest Film Forum's Summer of Samurai series are films that fall under the jidai-geki category. (CHARLES MUDEDE) All films screen at Northwest Film Forum. Harakiri, Fri-Sun 7, 9:30 pm; Zatoichi on the Road, Mon July 3 at 7, 9 pm; Seven Samurai, Wed-Thurs 7 pm.

The Muppet Movie

A brand-new print of the Muppet classic, in which Kermit crawls out of a swamp and sets off for Hollywood. Northwest Film Forum, Sat-Sun 5 pm.

Overlord

See review this issue. Grand Illusion, Weekdays 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5, 7, 9 pm.

Party Girl

Presumably this is the Party Girl with Parker Posey in the lead role. South Lake Union Discovery Center, Fri June 30 after dusk.

recommended Roman Holiday

Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn star in this breezy little trifle about a slumming princess and an undercover reporter in one of the world's most beautiful cities. Museum of History and Industry, Thurs July 6 at 7:30 pm.

Shrek 2

Shrek 2 can best be described with a shrug. As in: It's fine, no big deal, just what you would expect. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Fremont Outdoor Movies, Sat July 1 at dusk.

recommended Stolen

See Stranger Suggests, page 25, and review this issue. Northwest Film Forum, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon 7, 9 pm, Wed-Thurs 7, 9 pm.

Trudell

This boring but well-intentioned hagiography concerns the poet and Native American activist John Trudell, who has dedicated his life to being a forceful, eloquent spokesman for "the indigenous people of the western hemisphere." Testimonials from celebrities like Robert Redford and Jackson Browne do little to counteract the white-man's-burdensome vibe of piety in the film. Trudell is an interesting subject with a lot of really important stuff to say. The film about him is cloying. (SEAN NELSON) Keystone Church, Fri June 30 at 7 pm.

Now Playing

Cars

With Pixar movies, you know the story is going to be bursting with loveable characters housing their own endearing little quirks. Toy Story had Buzz Lightyear, Monsters, Inc. had Mike Wazowski, Finding Nemo had Dory and those awesome stoner turtles—but who do we get in Cars? Just a bunch of stupid cars! Cars are machines. Metal, plastic, rubber... just machines. Even with a face painted on them, they're not warm. You don't wanna cuddle with a car. You don't want a car for a friend or even a pet. You kinda just want 'em all to drive themselves off of a cliff so they can be scrapped and turned into something cool. Like Transformers. (MEGAN SELING)

Click

Adam Sandler plays an omnipotent couch potato in this sophisticated movie about how the fast-forward button on your DVD remote control has revolutionized the way you think about patience, experience, destiny, and the remembrance of things past.

The Da Vinci Code

Everything about this movie is boiled until tough. The cinematography (by Cinderella Man's Salvatore Totino) is without flair; Tom Hanks is charmless; Audrey Tautou looks like a dusty china doll; and the scavenger-hunt plot is stretched out over 149 draining minutes. Only Ian McKellen wrings any fun out of the movie, but then again, he gets two crutches to play with. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommended District B13

Clocking in at 85 minutes, District B13 serves as an ideal sampler for writer-producer Luc Besson's (The Professional) distinct flavor of Eurotrash, where the men have manly goo-goo eyes for each other; the women are gold-hearted, punked-out skanks; and even the sluggiest thug wears Gautier. What makes District B13 stand out from the pack is the incorporation of parkour, a frankly dumbfounding extreme sport involving crazy rooftop shenanigans. Whatever the pseudo-philosophical bullstuff of its origins (the Wikipedia entry expounds at length about harmony and "being fluid like water"), it makes for the most irresistibly cinematic martial art since the hallowed Gymkata. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Expiration Date

Why must so many American independent films be so cringe-worthy? Why must the cast, crew, friends of the filmmaker, producers, etc., be so gosh-darn awed at the prospect of participating in a minor motion picture that they neglect to point out that, for example, there are truly painful Asian stereotypes in the script that make no discernible contribution to the plot and whose only possible purpose is misguided humor? This (I hate to admit it) completely typical American indie is marred by numerous such missteps, most not quite so patently offensive, but still so obvious that it's hard to imagine anyone read over the screenplay before the cameras rolled. A very broad comedy—certainly not black in hue, but perhaps a mild shade of gray—set in Queen Anne, Volunteer Park, and other picturesque locations with views of the Space Needle, plus the (film insider joke!) Alibi Room, Expiration Date is about a Native dude named Charlie who is doomed to be run over by a milk truck on his 25th birthday (family curse, apparently). It's almost funny whenever a Smith Brothers milk truck is mowing Charlie down, but it's almost never funny when he's wooing the most annoying girl in the world—a cutesy, bug-eyed bohemian dancer! who might have cancer! who teaches geriatric aerobics! against whom the animal control depot has taken out a restraining order, but who still stages a puppy breakout halfway through the film! Seattle actor Brandon Whitehead plays a caffeine addict. There are several conspicuously placed copies of The Stranger. But no amount of local shout-outs is gonna make Expiration Date a good film. (ANNIE WAGNER)

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Drift racing in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Friends with Money

Friends with Money atones for its shortcomings in the plot department by kicking unprecedented ass in the great-actress-triumvirate-of-delight department: Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, and Catherine Keener. But it's still a movie about the emotional pain of building an addition to one's house. (LINDY WEST)

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties

It's based on a Mark Twain story, so why they gotta be messin' with Dickens?

The Heart of the Game

Since being picked up by Miramax, The Heart of the Game has become a big, fat juggernaut modeled after Hoop Dreams and narrated by Ludacris—but it began as a scrappy, no-budget local movie about the girls' basketball team at Roosevelt High School.The big games are all raucous intra-city blowouts against Garfield. There's plenty of grainy video footage courtesy of KOMO TV. It's impossible to approach the movie with anything resembling objectivity—and that's what makes it such gripping fun. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommended An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth is workmanlike and clumsy at times—but it's also hugely invigorating. Tracking Gore's global-warming lecture as he schleps his Apple laptop across the country and to China, it's a collection of scientific facts and correlations made urgent through human drama and low-tech slide-show magic. It should be required viewing for every American citizen. And if it kicks up a storm of speculation regarding Al Gore's political prospects in 2008? So much the better. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Keeping Up With the Steins

Keeping Up with the Steins starts like a sitcom (kid watches program in which tribal boys become warriors, makes clever analogy with upcoming bar mitzvah); coasts like a sitcom (hippie relatives, ethnic relatives, Darryl Hannah acting wacky); and ends like a stupid, stupid sitcom (worth of ritual is reaffirmed; candles are lit; Neil Diamond sings "Hava Nagila"). Is it all worth it, just to witness the spectacle of a 13-year-old cutie spreading his arms on the deck of a faux Titanic and yelping, "I'm the king of the Torah!"? Shockingly, no. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommended Lady Vengeance

In terms of formal control and sheer filmmaking prowess, Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) is so far out in front of his contemporaries that it isn't even funny. Unfortunately, the relentless sourness of his output to date is even less chuckle inducing. To steal a line about Wolverine, he's the best at what he does, but what he does isn't very nice. Told in a blizzard of flashbacks, fast-forwards, and sideways digressions, Lady Vengeance follows a beautiful convict (an angelic Lee Yeong-ae) sent behind bars for her involvement in a horrendously botched kidnapping. Released after a decade, she sets her avenging sights on the crime's mastermind, enlisting a number of her former cellmates (and, more worryingly, the parents of previous victims) in her dirty deed. The rampant bloodshed and sadism with which the filmmaker first made his name is largely delivered offscreen this time around, but that makes the thematic ugliness feel even more invasive. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

The Lake House

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves exchange love letters. Schmoopy, time-warped love letters. You call that a movie?

recommended Mission: Impossible 3

Clearly, in retrospect, what the Mission: Impossible franchise needed was a director young and hungry enough to shoot the moon, yet humble enough to work comfortably within the system. In short, a TV guy. Enter Alias/Lost creator J. J. Abrams, whose television work displays a genuine affinity for the ol' cloak and dagger, as well as a winningly snarky knack for subverting the dustier conventions of same. His feature debut lives up to his small-screen predilections, which should please audiences and studio accountants alike. Abrams's script, cowritten with Alias cohorts Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, finds Tom Cruise's IMF hotshot semiretired to instructor status and on the cusp of settling down with adorable nurse Michelle Monaghan. Before long, however, circumstances draw him back into the field, in the person of Philip Seymour Hoffman's sociopathic arms dealer with a grudge. Stuff goes boom. This rather A-to-B plot is fleshed out with a number of killer supporting acts, including Laurence Fishburne, Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg, and especially Hoffman, who makes for an amusingly direct, pissy supervillain. It's with Cruise, however, that the director pulls off his biggest coup. Pesky personal matters aside, there's always been something uncomfortable about Cruise's screen presence—that feeling that he's always blaringly on, giving even the quietest moments 140 percent. Abrams's solution—steadily jacking up the emotional and physical intensity to match the star—pays huge, pleasantly exhausting dividends. He's got game. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

recommended Nacho Libre

Gosh! Rip off my frickin' movie why don't you, Jared Hess! This is pretty much the worst movie ever made. I mean, I guess it's an okay movie. It's pretty funny. And Jack Black looks flipping sweet in tights. If he can become a wrestler and make money, he'll be able to afford better food for the monastery and all the orphans. Dang. Now that I think about it, it's pretty much my favorite movie ever. (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE)

The Omen

A remake of the 1976 horror film of the same name. Starring Liv Schreiber, Julia Stiles, and many creepy black-haired babies as Damien.

Over the Hedge

This movie is about cartoon animals with feelings who learn lessons about junk food and waste and suburban sprawl. There are three funny parts. 1. RJ the Raccoon teaches the other animals about big fat humans: "The human mouth is called a piehole." 2. The exterminator is fooled by a lawn flamingo: "Those things are so lifelike. Curse you, plastic moldsman!" 3. A cat's pick-up line: "Inside, I have a multileveled climby thing with shag carpet." Wait. I fucked up. Number three's not funny. The rest—despite an all-hits-no-misses cast and an awesome Ben Folds soundtrack—is a shrill combo of recycled jokes, less than hilarious mayhem, and demonic porcupine babies. But the kiddie audience loved it. In the climactic moments, when Stella the Skunk pops her anal plug and fills evil Gladys's house with skunk stank, they burst into triumphant applause. (LINDY WEST)

Peaceful Warrior

Red-lipped, doe-eyed Scott Mechlowicz is Dan Millman—a single-minded and foolhardy college gymnast (rings, specifically) who spends his hours banging chicks, guzzling beer, and burning, burning, burning for that Olympic gold. Everything seems on track for Dan, until the night he goes out to buy some milk (fortifying!) and meets a wise, flying gas-station attendant with a magical secret name (aka Nick Nolte)—the wise, flying gas-station attendant with a magical secret name who will change his life... forever! Wow, barf! (LINDY WEST)

A Prairie Home Companion

In his ballyhooed return to the environs, if not the concerns, of Middle America, Robert Altman takes on a script by Garrison Keillor about the end of his famed radio show. G. K., as the dour host is known backstage, looks rather like some heretofore-unknown breed of fleshy-lipped bulldog. To be frank, I wish I had never learned that: imaginary Powder Milk Biscuits will never taste quite the same. Such are the perils of adapting a radio program to film. But none particularly impugn Altman's contribution: his patented ensemble whirligig, which sweeps through and around scenes with an almost mechanical precision. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin are adorable as a pair of indifferently harmonizing sisters. Lindsay Lohan, as Streep's poetry-scribbling daughter, is, like the children of Lake Wobegone, merely above average. But all this delicate chemistry is nearly ruined by the script. It's sad to see Keillor making miscalculations about the nature and appeal of his own creations. (ANNIE WAGNER)

The Proposition

Beginning with an alarmingly visceral bordello massacre, screenwriter Nick Cave wastes no time in getting down to narrative business. After notorious Irish desperado Charlie (Guy Pearce) gets nabbed in said shootout, the local sheriff offers a choice: watch his younger sibling swing from the noose, or agree to hunt down and kill his older brother, a much-feared butcher rumored by the local aboriginals to have shape-shifting powers. As his discography proves, Cave has no small gift for capturing the uneasy allure of violence. Swift, brutal, and not exactly shy about close-ups, the savagery here genuinely hurts. Unfortunately, the moments between bloodlettings are less successful, especially when they reach for a sagebrush poetics that inevitably falls flat. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

recommended Stick It

A defiant teen with a taste for extreme sports, Haley (a smokin' if not particularly complex performance from Missy Peregrym) is, like her predecessor in Bring It On, much more hardcore than the pantywaist sport she's forced to take up. The rationale in Stick It is a little hazy—something involving a spectacular dirt-bike crash, an easily influenced judge, and a hefty cash prize in an amateur sport—but it does the trick. Haley has to train at Vickerman Gymnastics Academy with a coach from hell. Then Stick It veers off the sports-movie formula. The run-up to the big meet deemphasizes sweat and competition, opting instead for a delirious Busby Berkeley-style stretching circle against a bright red background. Routines on the uneven parallel bars are superimposed in one time-delayed sequence full of giants and releases and dismounts. And the climax isn't so much about perfect execution as it is about one ex-gymnast (Bendinger, natch) and her contradictory feelings about the alien psychology of the sport. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommended Thank You for Smoking

As a work of satire, Thank You for Smoking is safely and securely dated. The book it's adapted from (by conservative novelist Christopher Buckley) was published in the mid-'90s, when tobacco lawsuits were flying fast and loose and the word "probe" was rampant in headlines in the Washington Post. But what the movie loses in relevance, it gains in absurd comedy. When Nick visits his kid's school for a career day, a smarty-pants kid up front announces, "My mommy says cigarettes kill." Without batting an eye, he bends to her and sweetly inquires, "Now, is your mommy a doctor?" Eckhart, a blond Mormon with a toothpastey grin, plays Nick with evident relish; Cameron Bright, of the preternaturally blue eyes, brings his baby gravitas to the role of Nick's son. There are some hilarious smaller performances by Adam Brody (as the hyperactive assistant to a Hollywood agent) and William H. Macy (as a tongue-tied liberal senator from Vermont), and one very bad performance by Katie Holmes (as a spunky reporter). It's fast-paced and fun, and if some of the movie's values seem creaky, that's because neoconservatism has won out over conservatism, and public-speaking skills have become ever less relevant. (ANNIE WAGNER)

recommended United 93

There are some difficulties when it comes to telling the story of United Flight 93, the fourth plane hijacked on 9/11, whose passengers somehow overcame the terrorists and brought the plane to the ground before it could hurt anyone besides themselves. There's no suspense; we already know what's going to happen. The dialogue drips with dramatic irony—passengers telling family members, business associates, and one another about their plans for tomorrow and the next week—which is ironic, since 9/11 was supposed to have killed irony. But there are very good reasons to sit through United 93. On the emotional register, the film hits a perfectly chosen note, neither aggressive enough to seem callous nor excessively deferential, which would have felt mawkish. Whatever dramatic inventions were necessary for the scenes on the plane, the confusion on the ground is drawn straight from The 9/11 Commission Report. With so many officials glued to their radar screens, which were designed for one purpose, it isn't hard to understand why they couldn't see what was happening. The hijackers had fitted their planes with a new meaning that didn't show up in green and black. It needed a movie, and it needed a screen. (ANNIE WAGNER)

Waist Deep

A security-guard parolee (Tyrese Gibson) goes loco after his son is kidnapped. Given three days to come up with the ransom, he teams up with a peripherally connected hot mama to rip off a series of local gangsters. As far as revenge scenarios go, this is serviceable enough, but things get hopelessly botched in the execution. Gibson is not exactly the most expressive of actors, and watching him clank through the more emotive scenes like Der Golem leaves one pining for the chops of a Seagal or Van Damme. Hampered by this lead performance, director Vondie Curtis-Hall is unable to find a style that sticks. The results had the preview audience howling, presumably not with approval. (ANDREW WRIGHT)

Wordplay

A mild documentary about crossword puzzles and those who love them, featuring interviews with Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart (who valiantly tries to inject some zaniness into the proceeedings), the Indigo Girls, and of course, puzzle editors Will Shortz and Merl Reagle. Compared to the several Scrabble documentaries that came out a few years ago, Wordplay is conspicuously lacking in crazy characters. Remember the guy with gastrointestinal distress in Word Wars who's always spitting in a cup? Or the spasmodic kid in Spellbound? Wordplay needs characters like that. (ANNIE WAGNER)

X-Men: The Last Stand

Yes, Wolverine gets to kick some minor ass, and thankfully Storm isn't entirely useless this time around, but to what end? If a mutant with amazing powers can't... you know, amaze, then why should we bother to care? The X-Men films have never lived up to the intelligence of the original comics, but they've never shied away—or completely ignored—that intelligence either. X-Men: The Last Stand, under director Brett Ratner's abysmal care, is too scared to tackle the big ideas. He has given us the summer blockbuster he wants to see—unfortunately, most everyone who enjoys movies has better taste. It's a shameful way for the trilogy to end: not with a brain, but with a whimper. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)