Opening
Anchorman 2: Super-Sized Ron Burgundy and his ’80s TV pals are now free to curse like sailors in this recut of the 2013 comedy, playing for one week only. (R)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, Pacific Place, Alderwood 16, others
Generation War Made for German television, this mini-series is being presented in two blocks totaling over four and one-half hours in length. It follows five characters from the rise of Hitler through the collapse of the Third Reich. (NR)
Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., 632-8821, landmarktheatres.com, $8-$10.50, Feb. 28-March 6.
Non-Stop Liam Neeson wields his AARP card as a deadly weapon. Do we care about the plot? He’s on a plane, he’s Liam Neeson, and that’s all you need to know. (PG-13)
Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Alderwood 16, others
Son of God From the folks who brought you The Bible on the History Channel last year, this new production returns Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado to the role of Jesus. (PG-13)
Pacific Place, Lincoln Square, Oak Tree, others
Local & Repertory
•
All Is Lost Playing an unnamed solo yachtsman shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean, the 77-year-old Robert Redford is truly like The Old Man and the Sea—a taciturn, uncomplaining hero in the Hemingway mold. Writer/director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) withholds any personal information about our near-wordless hero, whose sloop is damaged by an errant floating shipping container full of shoes. His radio and electronics are flooded, so he calmly and methodically goes about patching his boat while storm clouds gather in the distance. This is fundamentally a process drama: Character is revealed through action, not words. For non-sailors, there is a lot of line-pulling, fiberglass repair, water-distilling, and sail-trimming; this can be tedious to watch, but the film shows how survival is often a matter of enduring tedium and loneliness. Here is a small man adrift, stripped of technology, surviving by his wits. Here, too, is Redford without any Hollywood trappings—no chance to smile or charm. And it’s a great performance, possibly his best. All Is Lost pushes backward to the primitive: from GPS technology to sextant to drifting raft. It’s a simple story, but so in a way was that of Odysseus: epic, stoic, and specific. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, 7:30 p.m. Mon., March 3.
Boop! The Sprocket Society presents a selection of naughty 1930s cartoons featuring Betty Boop. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Thu., Feb. 27, 8 p.m.
Building Character Local film gadfly Warren Etheredge will lead discussions after each title in this five-night series. Titles include Smashed, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Mud. West of Lenin, 203 N. 36th St., 352-1777, thewarrenreport.com, $7-$10 ($25-$35 series), Through March 1, 7 p.m.
Can’t Hardly Wait This 1998 teen-com features Jennifer Love Hewitt and a host of other TV faces, all playing high-schoolers contemplating the great beyond. Note: no show on Oscar Sunday. (PG-13)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, Feb. 28-March 5, 9:30 p.m.
•
Casablanca We all know the story of this 1942 Michael Curtiz favorite: a classic love triangle set against the tensions of war. True to its stage origins, the film sets up neat oppositions between selfishness and sacrifice, patriotism and exile, love and duty. Humphrey Bogart gained iconic status as Rick, who balances his lingering attachment to Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa against his long-suppressed sense of idealism. Casablanca is about a lot of things, but one strong theme is forgiveness: Two former lovers must somehow reconcile themselves with the past, mutually absolving each other to clear the way for the future. Their relationship has its parallel as Bogie and Claude Rains also forgive and forget, then famously stride forward together to battle. The movie is being presented by Turner Classic Movies to celebrate that cable channel’s 20th anniversary; free tickets are available through tcm.com/20. (PG) B.R.M. Pacific Place, 600 Pine St., Tue., March 4, 7:30 p.m.
•
The Golden Age of Italian Cinema Federico Fellini’s 1963 classic 8½ is partly a self-portrait of the frustrated filmmaker, but it’s equally a fantasy picture. Marcello Mastroianni plays the blocked director juggling two beauties (Anouk Aimee and Sandra Milo—good dilemma to have), bereft of ideas for his next picture (some kind of sci-fi extravaganza), and hounded by press and producers. In response, Guido retreats into memory and fantasy, where yet another woman awaits (Claudia Cardinale, some dream). From the very first scene—Guido trapped in the traffic jam, then flying aloft—8½ conveys claustrophobia and desperation. All these people, asking what he’ll do next! All these women, asking if he loves them! Guido’s fanciful escapes and reveries are the stories that come easily to him (unlike his dreaded next movie project); they’re snippets of the movie running his head that he could never commit to film (or not a narrative film). My favorite scene is the flashback to Guido’s youth, he and his boyhood pals dancing on the beach with the lusty prostitute Saraghina (Eddra Gale). It’s a burst of surreal neorealism, a collision of Italian genres, like some broken remnant from an ancient ruin. All of 8½ is like that—precious fragments that won’t be made whole. (NR) B.R.M. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 (series), Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through March 13.
•
North by Northwest Alfred Hitchcock’s wonderful 1959 chase movie is one of his absolute best, an espionage romp for the ages. Criss-crossing the country from cornfield to Mount Rushmore, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint embody every sly, sexy nuance of Ernest Lehman’s excellent script. Sample dialogue exchange: Grant: “When I was a little boy, I wouldn’t even let my mother undress me.” Saint: “Well, you’re a big boy now.” So cool. So hot. Then there’s the priceless final train shot, still guaranteed to raise a hoot. (NR) B.R.M. Central Cinema, $6-$8, Feb. 28-March 1, 7 p.m.; Sat., March 1, 3 p.m.; March 3-5, 7 p.m.
•
Seattle Jewish Film Festival SEE PAGE 24.
The Sprocket Society’s Saturday Secret Matinees The 1949 serial Batman & Robin will be screened in weekly installments. February’s surprise features will have a monster theme. (NR)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8 individual, $35-$56 pass, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Through March 29.
Take Back Your Power Director Josh del Sol will be on hand to share his concerns about utilities monitoring your power use. (NR)
Keystone Congregational Church, 5019 Keystone Place N., 632-6021, keystoneseattle.org, Free, Fri., Feb. 28, 7 p.m.
The Telephone Book In this 1971 porno, a hippie chick falls in love (or something) with an obscene phone caller. So naturally she tries to find him; various sex-capades ensue. (NR)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Fri.-Sat, 10 p.m. Through March 1.
Ultimate ‘80s Music Video Sing Along Don’t pretend you don’t know the words. Bands featured will include Prince, A Flock of Seagulls, and The Go-Gos. SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Fri., Feb. 28, 10 p.m.
•
Woody Allen in the ‘80s Running Friday-Sunday, 1985’s Broadway Danny Rose has Allen immersing himself in the kind of desperate, unhip showbiz milieu he once mocked as a stand-up comic. Mia Farrow is downright unrecognizable as the mobster’s moll who complicates Rose’s life. Playing Sunday-Wednesday, Radio Days (1987) is a fonder sort of period piece, a kind of anthology film set during the ’40s of Allen’s own boyhood in Queens. See grandillusioncinema.org for showtimes. (PG-13)
Grand Illusion, $5–$8, Through March 5.
Ongoing
•
American Hustle The latest concoction from David O. Russell is full of big roundhouse swings and juicy performances: It’s a fictionalized take on the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s, in which the FBI teamed with a second-rate con man (here called Irving Rosenfeld, played by Christian Bale) in a wacko sting operation involving a bogus Arab sheik and bribes to U.S. congressmen. Along with the FBI coercing him into its scheme, Irving is caught between his hottie moll Sydney (Amy Adams) and neglected wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence). Even more complicated for Irving is that one of the targets of the undercover operation, a genially corrupt yet idealistic Jersey politico (Jeremy Renner), turns out to be a soulmate. Equally unhappy is the presiding FBI agent (Bradley Cooper, his permed hair and his sexual urge equally curled in maddening knots), who’s developed a crush on Sydney that is driving him insane. Russell encourages his actors to go for it, and man, do they go for it. (R) ROBERT HORTON iPic Theaters, Lincoln Square, Sundance, Thornton Place, others
•
Dallas Buyers Club Making a straight white Texas homophobe the hero of a film about the ’80s AIDS crisis doesn’t seem right. It’s inappropriate, exceptional, possibly even crass. All those qualities are reflected in Matthew McConaughey’s ornery, emaciated portrayal of Ron Woodroof, a rodeo rider and rough liver who contracted HIV in 1985. Fond of strippers, regularly swigging from his pocket flask, doing lines of coke when he can afford them, betting on the bulls he rides, Ron has tons of Texas-sized character. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, the unruly Dallas Buyers Club goes easy on the sinner-to-saint conversion story. McConaughey and the filmmakers know that once Ron gets religion, so to speak, their tale risks tedium. As Ron desperately bribes and steals a path to off-label meds, his allies and adversaries do read like fictional composites (played by Griffin Dunne, Jennifer Garner, Denis O’Hare, and Steve Zahn). Best among them is the transvestite Rayon, who becomes Ron’s right-hand woman (Jared Leto). They’re both fellow gamblers who delight in beating the house. (R) B.R.M. Sundance, iPic Theaters, Meridian, others
•
Gloria In this Chilean character study, Paulina Garcia—a veteran of Chilean television—plays the title role, and she builds a small masterpiece out of Gloria’s behavioral tics. Garcia understands this woman from the heels up. She’s divorced, nearing 60, with grown kids who are kind but aloof. Gloria has a couple of purely sexual encounters during the film (the movie is admirably nonchalant about suggesting that people over 50 might enjoy a fling or two, and unembarrassed about depicting such flings), but her main romantic interest is a recently divorced ex-Navy retiree, Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez). Director Sebastian Lelio fills Gloria with colorful detail, to the point of occasional pushiness. But he and Garcia have created a character so richly imperfect and fully inhabited that her trajectory remains engaging despite the occasional overstatement. (R) R.H. Sundance
•
The Great Beauty Paolo Sorrentino’s fantastic 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 the whole “debauched country.” In one of the year’s best movies, Servillo’s wry glances are both mocking and wincing, appropriate for a movie that’s simultaneously bursting with life and regret. (NR) B.R.M. Crest
•
Her Spike Jonze’s unlikely romance is set in a smooth, efficient near-future Los Angeles. There are no poor people, no upsetting stories on the news. Technology works perfectly. Everyone ought to be happy, and that’s the problem for mopey Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix). Gradually it emerges that he’ separated from his wife (Rooney Mara), but won’t sign the divorce papers. Impulsively deciding to upgrade his phone and home PC, Theodore opts for the new OS1 ( “It’s not just an operating system, it’s a consciousness”). He chooses a female voice (Scarlett Johansson’s) called Samantha, which soon takes over his life. Before long they’re going on dates together—and more. When Theodore finally spills his secret, his friend Amy (Amy Adams) treats it like no big news—everyone’s falling in love with an OS, she tells him. In this ingenious and unexpectedly touching story, both humans and programs worry about being alone. And both yearn to connect across the digital divide between sentience and software. (R) B.R.M. Sundance, Harvard Exit, others
•
Inside Llewyn Davis While there are funny bits in this simple story of a struggling folk musician in 1961 Greenwich Village, the situation for Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is fairly dire. He has no money, no apartment, and no real prospects in the music industry—apart from an album that isn’t selling. He’s the wrong guy at the right moment, as the movie’s poignant final scenes make clear. The Coen brothers aren’t really making a comedy here, and you should temper your expectations to appreciate the movie’s minor-key rewards. Isaac can really sing and play guitar; the sterling soundtrack, by T Bone Burnett, is built around live music performances; and the catchiest tune is a knowingly cornball novelty song. As a man, Llewyn is a self-described asshole offstage; he’s only at his best onstage. If music can’t save him or provide a career, it’s also his only succor against life’s crushing disappointments. (R) B.R.M. Sundance
Like Father, Like Son Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film is inspired by true accounts of a parental nightmare: Two couples learn that their 6-year-old sons, born on the same day in the same country hospital, were switched at birth. Brought together by the news, the mortified parents must now work out what to do about a very complicated future. The focus is on Ryota (Japanese singer/actor Masaharu Fukuyama), a hard-driving architect whose long workday leaves him little time with his wife Midori (Machiko Ono) or their beloved son Keita. The other couple gets less screen time, as their cheerfully messy, mildly trashy small-town existence is contrasted—a little too neatly—with the sterile high-rise apartment of their Tokyo counterparts. We generally see the boys through their parents’ perspectives, the opposite of the approach Kore-eda took in his 2004 masterpiece, Nobody Knows (about abandoned kids left to fend for themselves). Like Father, Like Son feels unbalanced, because you can’t help but wonder what’s going on when the boys are on their own, traveling between houses as the families get to know each other. (NR) R.H. Varsity
•
Nebraska Whether delusional, demented, or duped by a sweepstakes letter promising him $1 million, it really doesn’t matter about the motivations of Woody (the excellent and subdued Bruce Dern). What counts is the willpower of this cotton-haired, ex-alcoholic Montana geezer. His son David (Will Forte, surprisingly tender) becomes the enabler/Sancho Panza figure on their trek to Nebraska, where Woody expects to get his prize. There is a lifetime of regret and bad parenting to reveal in Alexander Payne’s black-white-movie, which makes it sound more bleak than it is. There’s both comedy and pathos as Woody makes his triumphant return to Hawthorne, en route to the sweepstakes office in Lincoln, Nebraska. If the locals mistakenly gush over Woody’s good fortune, and if his own ridiculous family, the Grants, come begging for riches, he enjoys the acclaim. Also visiting Lincoln is Woody’s wife, the movie’s salty truth-teller. Kate (June Squibb, a hoot) cheerfully defames the dead, ridicules Woody’s lottery dreams, and gives zero fucks about offending anyone. Written by local screenwriter Bob Nelson, Nebraska is enormously rewarding in the end, one of the year’s best films. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th, Oak Tree, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Vashon, others
Philomena Based on actual events, our film begins with journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a brittle Oxbridge type, newly out of a job and lowering himself to write a human-interest story. That’s how he meets Philomena (Judi Dench), an Irish lady with the kinds of questions that perhaps only a reporter could answer. As a teenager in the 1950s, Philomena got pregnant, was sent to a Catholic convent to hide her sin, and gave birth there. She remained at the convent as unpaid labor, and her little boy was taken at age 3, never to be seen or heard from again. The pair’s discoveries are a matter of record now, but we’ll hold off on the revelations . . . except to say that there are some doozies. Maybe it’s Coogan’s acerbic personality (he scripted, with Jeff Pope), or director Stephen Frears’ unpretentious take on the material, but Philomena generally succeeds in distinguishing itself from the average weepie. The calm roll-out is effective; Coogan’s performance is shrewd; and anytime the camera gets near the convent, the Irish chill is almost palpable. (PG-13) R.H. Guild 45th, Ark Lodge, Meridian, others
•
7 Boxes This is the story of a seemingly unremarkable teen named Victor (Celso Franco) who wants to rise above his station in life, which happens to be as a delivery boy in a Paraguayan market. The first step toward fame and fortune, he believes, is acquiring an expensive camera-phone so he can make movies. The only problem is that Victor is poor—then circumstance puts a $100 payday within his reach. All he has to do is wheel the titular cargo around the marketplace. It is, of course, not that simple. Victor soon finds himself fleeing angry thugs and avoiding capture by the police. He proves elusive, inventive, and, to the film’s benefit, quite likable. Comparisons to Slumdog Millionaire are unavoidable, but 7 Boxes is much more gritty and believable than Danny Boyle’s tale of class jumping in India. The chase scenes are sometimes more gripping, too—even though most involve a wheelbarrow. Directors Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori succeed in creating a thriller that doesn’t need a big budget or Hollywood flash. (NR) MARK BAUMGARTEN SIFF Cinema Uptown
•
12 Years a Slave Made by English director Steve McQueen, this harrowing historical drama is based on a memoir by Solomon Northup (here played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man from Saratoga, New York, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. Solomon passes through the possession of a series of Southern plantation owners. One sensitive slave owner (Benedict Cumberbatch) gives Solomon—a musician by trade—a fiddle. Then he’s sold to the cruel cotton farmer Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), who also owns the furiously hard-working Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). Patsey, like Solomon, is caught inside the terror of not knowing how to play this hand. Do they keep their heads down and try to survive, or do they resist? Instead of taking on the history of the “peculiar institution,” the film narrows itself to a single story, Solomon’s daily routine, his few possessions. Along the way, McQueen includes idyllic nature shots of Louisiana, as though to contrast that unspoiled world with what men have done in it. The contrast is lacerating. (R) R.H. Guild 45th, Ark Lodge, others
2014 Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts Among the five titles included here, four of which I’ve seen, most deal with emphatically Big Topics: prison reform, the Holocaust, the Arab Spring, and queer bashing. (The fifth, an outlier, is about an eccentric New Mexico artist.) The Lady in Number 6 is a polished English profile of a 109-year-old pianist and Holocaust survivor; sadly, she just died. Karama Has No Walls, filmed by two extraordinarily brave young cameramen while government forces were shooting at them and fellow protestors, is a bloody news dispatch from Yemen, close cousin to the Oscar-nominated Tahrir Square doc The Square. Cavedigger, the outlier, is a sad/amusing portrait of a guy who creates cathedral-like sandstone caves. The film I predict will take home the Oscar is Jason Cohen’s Facing Fear. In 1981 Los Angeles, a 15-year-old street hustler and a 17-year-old skinhead meet in the parking lot of a hot-dog stand. It’s an angry mob against one, and the scared gay teen—cast out by his fundamentalist mother—is kicked and beaten unconscious on the pavement. Tim Zaal and Matthew Boger are going to meet again, some 25 years later, and I’ll leave the particulars there. How do you forgive your would-be killer? And how can that violent felon ever atone for his assault? Those are the questions considered by Facing Fear. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance
Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago In Lydia Smith’s cheerful, international, uplifting documentary, a few priests explain the history of the pilgrimage paths to Santiago, Spain, where St. James is supposedly buried. At 500 miles from southwestern France, the Camino is a strenuous walk on both paved roads and pastoral trails, a trek that takes a month for most walkers. Not all of these half-dozen trekkers are strictly religious. For one young Portuguese businessman, the Camino is a personal challenge. A cheerful, sturdy Danish woman wants the time alone—then falls in step with a handsome Canadian. Then there’s the British-accented Samantha, a brash Brazilian who says she’s lost her job, boyfriend, and apartment back in London. She stops for regular smoking breaks, flirts shamelessly, and would be a far better heroine than Julia Roberts in the Eat Pray Love/Under the Tuscan Sun memoir category. The fellowship among these travelers is enormously appealing. (NR) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown
The Wind Rises Beloved animator Hayao Miyazaki has announced this as his final feature, which means the Oscar-nominated The Wind Rises ought to be arriving on a parade float of acclaim, buoyed by pastel clouds and pulled by a collection of amazing imaginary creatures. On the one hand, a biographical study of engineer and airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi sounds like a great match for Miyazaki’s wistful style: It allows for beautiful flying sequences and perhaps some self-portraiture in its study of a detail-minded dreamer who assembles his creations from a combination of math-based design and pure imagination. The problem? Horikoshi’s masterpiece was the Zero, Japan’s lethally efficient World War II fighter plane. There’s something head-in-the-clouds about this movie’s soft treatment of its central character. (PG-13) R.H. Cinerama, Majestic Bay, others
•
The Wolf of Wall Street Hugely, rudely entertaining, Martin Scorsese’s three-hour tale of rogue stock traders during the early ‘90s stars a ferociously funny Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, upon whose jailhouse memoir the movie is based. Wolf almost seems like a remake of Scorsese’s Goodfellas. The crucial difference, however, is the absence of mobsters and violence; this film is a greed-com, and the clowns include Jonah Hill, Rob Reiner, Matthew McConaughey, Jean Dujardin, and Spike Jonze. In a way, this is the movie Brian De Palma tried and failed to make out of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. Belfort is a guy programmed to sell, fuck, steal, and get high, only fun to watch while engaged in those core activities. In the film’s coda, Belfort finally recognizes as much: The only thing worse than being poor is being bored. Fortunately for us, Scorsese’s Wolf is the opposite of boring. (R) B.R.M. Lincoln Square, Meridian, Sundance, Thornton Place, others
