Blowing Up Cinema: The Art of Michelangelo Antonioni They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Jack Nicholson kept the slow, existential 1975 thriller The Passenger off the U.S. market for decades. Among those who aren’t so keen on the pacing of Blow-Up or L’Avventura, The Passenger won’t earn Antonioni any new fans. Nicholson expertly plays a reporter, failed in career and marriage, who makes a fresh start by assuming the identity of a dead man. We follow him from North Africa through various European cities, as do his wife and some ominous agents of an African dictatorship. He picks up a girl (Maria Schneider, best left to the ’70s) who tells Nicholson this new identity gives him a purpose, some political meaning: “That’s what you wanted.” But such beliefs are dangerous for the formerly indifferent reporter. It’s like The Bourne Identity played at half speed—deliberate, but never dull. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum.org. $8–$12 individual, $35–$54 series. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through March 24.

Cinema Italian Style Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, an account of an aging playboy journalist in Rome, casts its eye back to La Dolce Vita (also about a playboy journalist in Rome). Yet this movie looks even further back, from the capsized Costa Concordia to the ruins and reproachful marble statues of antiquity. “I feel old,” says Jep (the sublime Toni Servillo) soon after the debauch of his 65th birthday party. He’s been coasting on the success of his first and only novel, 40 years prior, content with his goal to be king of Rome’s high life. Jep is a dandy with thinning hair brushed back and a girdle beneath his silk shirt. False appearances are all that count, but it takes intelligence to deceive. Disgust—and then perhaps self-disgust—begins to color his perception of a Botox party, the food obsessions of a prominent cardinal, the splatter-art demonstration of a child artist, and the whole “debauched country.” Servillo makes Jep both suave and somber, a guy living parallel lives in hectic ballrooms and in his head. His wry glances are both mocking and wincing, appropriate for a movie that’s simultaneously bursting with life and regret. (NR) B.R.M. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $63–$68 series, $8 individual. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through March 19.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Shot-for-salivating-shot, this boasts the highest “wow” quotient of anything in the formidably ecstatic Marilyn Monroe oeuvre. The 1953 movie, directed by Howard Hawks, opens with an edible MM and full-figured gal pal Jane Russell bursting onto the screen in skin-tight, feather-hatted, red-sequined regalia like a couple of carnivorous cake toppings. It eventually ogles its way through not only the now legendary “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Friend” routine but an audacious “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love” number, where Russell offers to take on the entire U.S. Men’s Olympic Team. Yet they ignore her in favor of choreographed calisthenics in nude-colored shorts—again, wow. (G) STEVE WIECKING Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 7 p.m. Fri. & Sun.-Tues. plus 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun. matinees

Growing Up Baumbach On Wednesday the 18th we have Noah Baumbach’s 1995 fairly witty campus comedy Kicking and Screaming, which made good use of Eric Stoltz, Chris Eigeman, and Josh Hamilton. Following on the 25th is 2013’s Frances Ha, about which our Robert Horton wrote, “Co-written by and starring Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha is Noah Baumbach’s unabashed 2013 tribute to her distinctive (don’t you dare say “quirky”) charms. The outline of a typical indie picture is in place, as we follow 27-year-old Frances and her New York apartment-hopping over the course of a few months. Frances dreams of being a dancer, as though nobody’d told her that if you haven’t made it as a dancer by 27, your dream should probably be in the past tense. (Actually, somebody probably told her. But her go-with-the-flow optimism is undaunted by such realities.) The appeal of Frances Ha comes from Gerwig’s pluck and the film’s sprightly sense of play. Many scenes last only a few seconds, and consist of the kind of overheard conversational snippets that capture the found poetry of random eavesdropping.” (R)

SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net. $5. 7 p.m. Wednesdays through April 1.

Killer Workout We believe this is an ’80s parody of serial-killer flicks and Jane Fonda-style workout videos. (NR)

Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org. $2. 10 p.m. Fri.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, and Barry Bostwick do their thing. Costumes if you must. (R)

SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. Midnight Sat.

Saturday Secret Matinee Hosted by The Sprocket Society, this Saturday matinee series features the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, preceded by various vintage cartoons and shorts. Total program length is about two hours. (NR)

Grand Illusion, $5-$9. 1 p.m. Saturdays through March 28.

Seattle Jewish Film Festival The fest continues with fun documentary profiles of composer Marvin Hamlisch and comic performer Sophie Tucker. Above and Beyond relates how the Israeli Air Force was created in 1948 by a few WWII vets flying German-designed fighters and wearing secondhand Luftwaffe uniforms (!); there’s even affecting and unexpected cameo from Pee-Wee Herman, whose Hollywood stunt-pilot father was one such pilot. Lacey Schwartz’s Little White Lie explores her middle-class upbringing in liberal Woodstock, New York. There, the only child in a Jewish household, she eventually grew curious during the ’90s as to why—apart from her father’s supposedly dark Sicilian lineage—her skin tone didn’t match her parents’. Mixed-race confusion follows. Opening on March 27 for a run at SIFF, the divorce drama GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem has already earned strong reviews. (NR)

Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, and Stroum Jewish Community Center (Mercer Island). $5–$18. Tickets & info: 324-9996, seattlejewishfilmfestival.org. Ends Sun., March 22.

Spaceballs Mel Brooks’ 1987 send-up of the Star Wars phenomenon—plus any number of other sci-fi flicks—is screened for your enjoyment. (PG)

Central Cinema, $7-$9. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Tues.

Still Alice Adapted from the 2007 bestseller by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is like experiencing only the second half of Flowers for Algernon: high-functioning start as Columbia professor, wife, and mother of three grown children; then after Alzheimer’s diagnosis at age 50, the brutal, inexorable mental degradation and loss of self. An academic, Alice (Julianne Moore) plays word games and self-tests her memory. She types constant reminders into her iPhone, which soon becomes her adjunct memory and, eventually, her intellectual superior—even the auto-correct feature seems poignant. And finally she records a video on her laptop addressed to her future self, conveying detailed instructions, that will later allow Moore to play both sides of a scene with herself: crisp professionalism versus foggy incomprehension. Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (Quinceanera) mostly avoid the sap, despite the score’s twinkly piano pathos. (PG-13) B.R.M. SIFF Film Center, $7-$12. 7 p.m. Mon.

Uranium Drive-In This recent eco-doc examines the new push toward nuclear power. (NR)

Keystone Church, 5019 Keystone Pl. N., 632-6021, meaningfulmovies.org. Free. 7 p.m. Fri.

The Wrecking Crew A late add to the SIFF roster, this documentary about L.A. studio musicians was well-received as a progress cut during the festival some years back. Figures in the film include Glen Campbell, Sonny Bono, Herb Alpert, and The Beach Boys. (NR)

SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. Opens Fri.

Ongoing

Ballet 422 Jody Lee Lipes’ documentary isn’t so much about a dance as about the process of making one. We follow choreographer Justin Peck from rehearsals to meetings and back again, watching him as he watches his dancers, scribbles in a notebook, etc. By the end of the film, we know much more about Peck’s life as an up-and-coming dancemaker at New York City Ballet than we do about the ballet we’ve seen him make. Lipes has made a doc in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman: Rather than utilizing interviews and explanatory narrative, we are left to sort out the various locations and situations for ourselves. This uninflected style fits Peck’s calm demeanor. He’s making a complex ballet, full of virtuosic dancing, but he seems to keep any emotional outbursts in check. As time counts down to opening night, he only gets more serious. (NR) SANDRA KURTZ Sundance

Beloved Sisters There’s no definitive proof that German writer Friedrich Schiller was snuggling up with his wife’s sister, but this movie certainly likes the idea. In the film, set in the late 18th century, Schiller (the callow Florian Stetter) meets future wife Charlotte (Henriette Confurius) when he is still a threadbare playwright. Charlotte has the luxury of marrying for love, because her older sister Caroline (Hannah Herzsprung) has already married for wealth, thus propping up the fortunes of Charlotte and the sisters’ shrewd mother (Claudia Messner). But both sisters are close to the writer, and his erotic attention is clearly divided. With its heavy-breathing material, Beloved Sisters has possibilities, but veteran director Dominik Graf swerves recklessly between the arthouse and soap opera. The thing stretches out to 170 minutes, which makes for a lot of pretty costumes and houses but not much momentum. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Grand Illusion

Birdman A movie star in a career skid since he stopped playing a masked superhero named Birdman back in the ’90s, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is preparing his big comeback in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver stories, funded and directed by himself. Obstacles abound: Riggan’s co-star (Andrea Riseborough) announces she’s pregnant with his child; his grown daughter (Emma Stone) is his assistant, and not his biggest fan; a critic plans to destroy the play. And, in the movie’s funniest headache, Riggan must endure a popular but insufferable stage actor (Edward Norton, doing a wonderful self-parody) who’s involved with the play’s other actress (Naomi Watts). This is all going on while Riggan maintains a tenuous hold on his own sanity—he hears Birdman’s voice in his head, for one thing. To create Riggan’s world, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Gravity cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki present the film as a continuous unbroken shot (disguised with artful digital seams). Birdman serves so many heady moments it qualifies as a bona fide happening. It has a few stumbles, but the result is truly fun to watch. (R) R.H. Varsity

Chappie Though hugely anticipated, the new sci-fi movie from Neill Blomkamp (of District 9 and Elysium) turns out to be hugely unwieldy, if not quite a flop. Again filming in a gritty, near-futuristic Johannesburg, Blomkamp and his co-writer (and wife) Terri Tatchell have concocted an R-rated fairy tale of sorts. There’s too much crime, bad language, and shooting for kids who otherwise might appreciate how the artificially intelligent robot Chappie (created by Dev Patel’s programmer) swiftly undergoes an innocence-to-experience process of maturation not unlike their own. The movie works best and most sweetly in its crypto-parenting scenes, with the overprotective Patel pitted against the larcenous Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser (from the hip-hop duo Die Antwoord). Chappie’s hard-wired to do no harm, per Asimov’s Three Rules of Robotics, but he’s also tempted—teenage rebellion soon arrives—by the thug life. The rest of the plot is a mess, a stripped-bolt fusion of Frankenstein, RoboCop, and A.I. Blomkamp and Tatchell crib from many sources, but they can’t have it both ways. The corporate intrigue about commercialized crime fighting—cue Sigourney Weaver and Hugh Jackman—demands a grown-up treatment, satire advanced beyond the Brothers Grimm. Chappie himself eventually becomes a genius savant incapable of original thought, a fitting mascot for the movie. (R) B.R.M. Pacific Place, Lincoln Square, others

Cinderella When the mood strikes me, I also can be swept up in watching two beautiful people fall in love. And beautiful they are: Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden as Prince Charming (in some very flattering tight pants) and Downton Abbey’s Lily James as the demure and free-spirited Ella, who wears butterflies in her hair because that’s just her brand of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. (Let’s also here bestow the praising-hands emoji upon James’ eyebrows, the boldness of which is unprecedented by any other Disney princess.) The familiar plot has been gently tweaked. Prior to the fateful ball, Ella now meets Prince Charming in the forest, where he claims to be a humble apprentice working at the palace. Ella’s also been given more agency. Unlike most adaptations of the Perrault folk tale, this Ella is hardly embarrassed by her low station. She soon adopts a strong take-me-as-I-am attitude, surely designed to appeal to girls raised on Frozen. After being christened “Cinderella” by her evil stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and stepsisters, she chooses to reclaim the demeaning nickname and make it her own. Is that the best message for how to respond to bullying? Perhaps not the worst. (PG) DIANA M. LE Ark Lodge, Admiral, Varsity, Bainbridge, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Majestic Bay, others

Focus Will Smith is all arrogant confidence as Nicky, the veteran con artist who runs his jobs like a coach fielding a champion team. Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) is working-class grifter Jess, the minor-league talent who proves to be a natural as the distraction, if not star player, of Nicky’s squad. Filmmaking team Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who wrote Bad Santa and directed Crazy Stupid Love, seed the script with clues and suggestions and comic relief to keep us looking in the wrong direction, manufacturing one kind of drama while surreptitiously playing out another. It’s kind of fun as those things go, at least until the con is dropped. Without their carefully cultivated pose in place, Smith and Robbie have nothing to fall back on, and are left to bicker like idiots. It would be clever if that were the point, but it’s merely a failure of imagination. (R) SEAN AXMAKER Lincoln Square, others

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Peter Jackson’s crowded final film of the J.R.R. Tolkien universe begins in mid-breath. Fiery breath: The flying dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) was loosed at the end of Part Two, and his flaming rampage is in full swing as Five Armies commences. With no memory-refreshing from the previous chapters, we launch into a dozen or so plotlines: all those names and all those creatures, plus cameo appearances from LOTR cast members. The hubbub renders nominal hero Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) a team player rather than a true protagonist. The second half of the picture is overwhelmed by a giant battle (there may be five armies involved, but I’m a little vague on that), which ping-pongs between thousands of computer-generated soldiers and clever hand-to-hand combat involving the principals. Jackson is as resourceful as ever at exploiting cool locations—crumbling bridges and iced-over lakes—for cartoony stunts. Such ingenuity is at the service of a project that lost its emotional core when Jackson decided to take Tolkien’s relatively streamlined novel and pump it up into three plus-sized movies. It’s still pleasant to see Bilbo in the company of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), but the rest of the cast hasn’t taken up the slack. (PG-13) R.H. Crest

The Imitation Game A ripping true story can survive even the Oscar-bait effect. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the brilliant English code-breaker Alan Turing as a borderline-autistic personality, a rude brainiac who during World War II fiddles with his big computing machine while his colleagues stand around scratching their heads. Turing’s homosexuality only gradually enters the picture, and even when he proposes marriage to fellow code-breaker Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), it isn’t treated as a really big deal. Even if the movie sketches simplistic conflicts among its principal characters, the wartime world is so meticulously re-created and the stakes so compelling that it emits plenty of movie-movie sparks. (Morten Tyldum, of the ridiculously entertaining Headhunters, directs.) But the real reason to like this movie is that it’s so diligently pro-weirdo. Especially in Cumberbatch’s truly eccentric hands, Turing stays defiantly what he is: an oddball who uses rationality to solve problems. The film suggests that Turing does not have to become a nicer person—he beat the Germans’ Enigma code and won WWII, so let him be. (PG-13) R.H. Lincoln Square, others

Into the Woods Cue the irony that this sly modern classic musical (songs by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine) has been taken up by Disney, history’s busiest purveyors of the happy ending. Its fairy-tale happy ending comes halfway through the action, then Cinderella and company must decide what to do next. Into the Woods presents a crowded roster, with Meryl Streep earning top billing as the Witch, the blue-haired crank who sets things in motion with a curse. (James Corden and Emily Blunt play the baker and wife who want a child; also on hand are Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, and Johnny Depp as various familiar fairy-tale characters.) The blend of rustic locations and studio-built woods is eye-filling, especially when the characters cross the border from the realistic realm to the enchanted forest. In general, though, director Rob Marshall (who guided Chicago to its dubious best-picture Oscar) brings his usual clunky touch, hammering home the big moments and underlining subtlety with a broad brush. The singing tends toward the Broadway-brassy, although Blunt and Corden—working in a more casual style—are completely charming. A bit of the 1987 show’s subversive message still peeks through, making this an unusual blockbuster to unleash at Christmastime. (PG) R.H. Crest

Mr. Turner Must the great man also be a nice guy? Mike Leigh’s comprehensive biopic tempers our admiration for the English painter J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), unquestionably a genius, and recognized as such in his day. Turner (Timothy Spall), when we meet him, is famous, prosperous, and possessed of a nice London home. His cagey old father (Paul Jesson) aids in the family business, as does the devoted maid Hannah (Dorothy Atkinson), who’s plainly, painfully in love with her indifferent master. (He is by turns tender and terrible to the women who surround him.) During the last 25 years of his life, Turner and his art—in late career tending toward abstraction—are mutable. He travels under an assumed name to the coastal village of Margate, where he eventually takes a new lover, Sophia (Marion Bailey), to replace poor Hannah. Yet the film’s no melodrama. Leigh and his Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dick Pope periodically pause for us to see 19th-century views as Turner did: lambent light on a Flemish canal, the sun filtered through sea mist near the shore, or locomotive steam bursting into a halo above the green countryside. As for the final nature of this selfish, sensitive, uncompromising artist, Leigh simply frames him in a portrait, leaving us to grope for psychological shapes and colors. (R) B.R.M. Bainbridge, Sundance

A Most Violent Year Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) sports a handsome camel-hair topcoat. He’d like to achieve success the honest way, and that immaculate coat is like his shining armor. Problem is, this is 1981-era New York, the business is heating oil, and nothing stays clean for very long here. Writer/director J.C. Chandor is skillful with these details—this is a very intricate story—and quiet in his approach. Abel’s jacket is the flashiest thing about the movie, where the essential plot is him trying to put together a deal to buy a choice piece of East River waterfront, where he can land oil barges. Assisting him is his fierce wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), the daughter of a local mobster, whose take on life is a little worldlier than his. The actors are a splendid pair: Isaac, of Inside Llewyn Davis, captures the immigrant’s go-go drive for success; and the only problem with Chastain in this film is that she isn’t in it enough. Chandor’s first two films, Margin Call and All Is Lost, were more startling and original. But he does manage the game with dexterity, and the re-creation of a grungy, now-distant era is completely convincing. (R) R.H. Crest

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel The plot devices in this sequel are so stale that the movie itself loses interest in them halfway through its dawdling 122 minutes—and this is a good thing. By that time the contrivances of Ol Parker’s script have done their duty, and we can get to the element that turned the film’s 2011 predecessor into a surprise hit: hanging around with a group of witty old pros in a pleasant location. There are many worse reasons for enjoying movies. Director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) mostly allows Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, and Penelope Wilton to float around on many years’ worth of accrued goodwill. (New to the expat ensemble is Richard Gere.) Especially fine is the spindly Bill Nighy, whose shy Douglas is a hesitant suitor to Dench’s Evelyn, a still-active buyer of fabrics. Even when the story has him fulfilling sitcom ideas, Nighy maintains his tottering dignity and sense of fun. Second Best will be a hit with its original audience, and maybe then some. The languid mood is laced with an appreciation for getting to the End of Things, especially as Smith’s formerly snappish Muriel mellows into a melancholy leave-taking. (PG) R.H. Sundance, Ark Lodge, Kirkland, Lynwood (Bainbridge), Meridian, Lincoln Square, Majestic Bay, others

’71 For young soldier Gary (Jack O’Connell from Unbroken) and most of his British squad, Northern Ireland is more than another country. Dispatched there to patrol the volatile frontline between Catholic and Protestant factions is like being sent to the moon. Twenty-five minutes into the picture, directed with brutal, kinetic grace by Yann Demange, Gary finds himself running for his life. No rifle, no backup, no idea where he is, behind enemy lines. IRA bullets fly around his head as he races down shoulder-width alleyways in a panic, camera pell-mell behind him. The rest of ’71 is a pure, thrilling, suspenseful chase movie—the best thing I’ve seen thus far in the new year. And though running from monsters is a cinema standby (think of Aliens), the treacherous neighborhood politics are what makes Gary’s overnight odyssey so harrowing. (He’s also double-crossed by his superiors and meanwhile sheltered by his supposed adversaries.) Gary is totally disoriented, stunned from punches to the head, later concussed by a bomb. His age and innocence make him a hapless pilgrim (or potential martyr) in a place as terrifying as Fallujah today, like being caught between Shia and Sunni militias. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th

Song of the Sea Dazzling in its visual presentation, though not so thrilling in its conventional storytelling, the Irish-animated Song features a plot is drawn from Celtic folklore, specifically the tradition of the selkie, those mythological shapeshifters who can live on land or sea, as humans or seals. Our hero is Ben (voiced by David Rawle), a young lad whose mother vanishes under dramatic circumstances the night his mute younger sister Saoirse is born. They live on a wee shard of an island with their mournful father (Brendan Gleeson), a red-bearded lighthouse-keeper, but a series of marvelous events lead Ben into a secret world of magical creatures and spell-spinning songs. Director Tomm Moore lets the movie’s forward momentum run aground at various moments, but he and the Cartoon Saloon crew seem more interested in creating the gorgeous vistas that occupy virtually every frame. The character designs follow circular, looping patterns, and the visual influences seem inspired by anime and the line drawings of 1950s-era UPA cartoons (Mr. Magoo is not forgotten, people). (PG) R.H. Guild 45th

The Theory of Everything The Stephen Hawking biopic opens with our hero (Les Miz star Eddie Redmayne) as a young nerd at university, where his geeky manner doesn’t entirely derail his ability to woo future wife Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones). Hawking is diagnosed with motor neuron disease at age 21 and given a two-year prognosis for survival—one of the film’s sharpest ideas is to allow time to pass, and pass, without pointing out that Hawking is demolishing the expectations for someone with his condition. James Marsh’s movie is officially adapted from (now ex-wife) Jane Hawking’s memoir, so the love story has its share of ups and downs. This is where Theory manages to distinguish itself from the usual Oscar bait. Whether dealing with Jane’s closeness to a widowed choirmaster (who becomes part of the Hawking family), or Stephen’s chemistry with his speech therapist, the film catches a frank, worldly view of the way things happen sometimes. No special villains here—you might say it’s just the way the universe unfolds. Redmayne’s performance is a fine piece of physical acting, and does suggest some of the playfulness in Hawking’s personality. From now until Oscar night, you will not be able to get away from it. (PG-13) R.H. Crest

What We Do in the Shadows The premise is ’90s-stale: basically MTV’s The Real World cast with vampires, presented as direct-address documentary. This droll comedy comes from the brain trust behind 2007’s Eagle Vs. Shark: Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi, who play neck-biters Vladislav and Viago, respectively. Our three main vamps are a hapless lot. They can’t get invited into any of the good clubs or discos—ending up forlorn in an all-night Chinese diner instead. After all the aestheticized languor of Only Lovers Left Alive (and the earnest teen soap opera of Twilight), the silly deadpan tone is quite welcome. Clement and Waititi know this is a sketch writ large (forget about plot), so they never pause long between sneaky gags. The amsuing and essential conflict here is between age-old vampire traditions and today’s hook-up customs. These neck-biters have been at it so long that they’re only imitating old vampire stereotypes. Things have gotten to the point, Vladislav admits, where they’re even cribbing from The Lost Boys. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, Ark Lodge

Wild Tales The opening sequence to Damian Szifron’s Argentine anthology movie sets up a Twilight Zone-style series of revelations, compressed into just a few minutes. Passengers riding on a suspiciously underfilled plane begin to realize that there might be a reason for their presence there, beyond the obvious business of getting to a destination. Szifron wants to get his movie started with a bang, and he does—though the rest of Wild Tales doesn’t live up to the wicked curtain-raiser. But there are enough moments of irony and ingenuity to make it worthwhile. In one episode, a lone driver has a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, which allows the slowpoke he antagonized earlier to stop by and exact revenge. In another, an explosives expert becomes enraged by a parking ticket—rage that leads him to lose everything. But there’s a twist. A lot of these segments rely on a twist, a technique that doesn’t quite disguise how in-your-face the lessons are. The twists also can’t disguise the way some of the tales rely on illogical behavior to allow their plots to develop. Wild Tales is a showy exercise (you can see why Pedro Almodovar signed on as a producer), and Szifron has undoubtedly punched his ticket for bigger and better things. (R) R.H. Seven Gables