Local & Repertory
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All Monsters Attack! The GI’s annual Halloween celebration has a complicated schedule of horror and fright flicks (see grandillusioncinema.org for full details). Titles include Hellraiser, Witchcraft Through the Ages, and Deep Red. Notable also are the anthology screenings, one including a pizza party (3 p.m. Sun.) and another presented by Scarecrow: VCR That Dripped Blood 2: Undead Media (8 p.m. Weds.) Prepare to be very afraid. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, $5-$8, Oct. 25-31.
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American Football One way or another, 2013 looks like it’ll be the Sounders’ most memorable MLS season so far. Exactly how remains to be seen. Will this be the year they take it all—or the year they come closer than ever and then implode at the last moment? At press time, both outcomes, agonizingly, look possible. But this is also the year Scott Levy’s documentary American Football will finally appear, a close-up chronicle hugely anticipated by the fan base. The film opens with what’s arguably the team’s low point to date, the shocking 3-0 first-round playoff loss to Real Salt Lake on October 29, 2011, and follows the 2012 season through to a redemptive victory—in an amazing coincidence no scriptwriter would dare—a year later against the same team to mark the Sounders’ first playoff advance. Judging from the clips made available so far, Levy’s game footage is ravishing, but he balances it with deeply personal interviews with players and coaches. (NR) GAVIN BORCHERT Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 448-6680, cinerama.com, $20, Sat., Oct. 26, 11 a.m. & 3:30 p.m.
Best of Fest Family Films The Seattle Jewish Film Festival presents a trio of kid-friendly pictures: the English bar mitzvah comedy Sixty Six, set in 1966 and starring Helena Bonham Carter (7:30 p.m. Sat.); the animated French adventure tale The Rabbi’s Cat (likely subtitled, 2 p.m. Sun. ); and the recent Russian dance My Dad Is Baryshnikov (7:30 p.m. Sun.). Films are rated PG and PG-13. Rainier Valley Cultural Arts Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., 725-7517, seedseattle.org, $5, Sat., Oct. 26; Sun., Oct. 27.
The Fly The Ark Lodge is beginning a periodic series of “Dark Lodge” screenings upstairs, beginning with the original Vincent Price version of the famous sci-fi tale about a teleportation device gone horribly wrong. (PG)
Ark Lodge Cinemas, 4816 Rainier Ave. S., 721-3156, arklodgecinemas.com, $7-$11, Fri., Oct. 25, 9 p.m.
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French Cinema Now Nineteen titles are scheduled during this week-long fest, beginning with the Cannes favorite Blue Is the Warmest Color (6:30 p.m. Thurs.), based on a comic book, which features all the steamy lesbian sex you can handle, and then some. (The film runs nearly three hours.) Random highlights includes Juliette Binoche portraying sculptor Camille Claudel, the animated fantasy picture The Day of the Crows, and Denis Levant playing some kind of ogre chasing children through the forest in Hop O’ My Thumb. See siff.net for full schedule, which also includes several visiting directors and actors. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, 324-9996, $6-$11 individual, $75-$100 series, Oct. 24-30.
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Horror Week SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 21.
The Lost Boys/The Cabin in the Woods Jason Patric battles California vampires in this enjoyable 1987 horror-com, capably directed by Joel Schumacher. Despite the marquee attraction of Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, the film earns a solid B rating thanks to Edward Herrmann, Dianne Wiest, and Kiefer Sutherland. (R) BRIAN MILLER Following is the Joss Whedon-produced The Cabin in the Woods (2012), in which director Drew Goddard creates an intricate design that makes the this horror comedy nearly impossible to talk about without giving away surprises. Five college kids go up to a remote cabin for a weekend of hijinks. They are a near-perfect collection of stereotypes/archetypes of their genre, each there to subvert/upend expectations. Whedon and Goddard attempt to honor, send up, and advance genre conventions simultaneously. Sometimes it works. But too often the film wants it both ways, trying to make the audience have a genuine reaction while never letting go of the self-conscious acknowledgement of how it is leading the audience to that response. (R) MARK OLSEN Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, Fri.-Weds. 7 & 9:30 p.m.
May I Be Frank This three-course lunch event, catered by Thrive, features the subject of this new documentary: Frank Ferrante, the local actor known for his Groucho Marx stage show and frequent appearances at Teatro ZinZanni. (NR)
Central Cinema, $15-$40, Sun., Oct. 27, 12:30 p.m.
A Place at the Table This well-intentioned doc by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush is really best suited for the children of Seattle’s overeducated foodies, something that ought to be screened in middle school. With subjects including food deserts, corn-syrup subsidies, and the obesity/poverty paradox, A Place at the Table attempts to enliven the talking heads (Marion Nestle, etc.) with real-life vignettes featuring sympathetic poor folk from Philadelphia to rural Colorado to the Mississippi Delta. As you’d expect, there are no Whole Foods from which to purchase fruits and veggies; more to the point, they couldn’t afford such healthy fare even if it were convenient. Among other non-surprises here are the thwarted efforts in Washington, D.C., to increase the purchasing power of food stamps and decrease the lobbying power of big agribusiness. For a little stardust, concerned citizen Jeff Bridges adds his comments—and they’re entirely intelligent. (“It’s a problem people are ashamed of acknowledging,” says the Dude of poverty and malnutrition.) Like others in the doc, he wants to see increased federal spending to fight hunger. Where might such funding come from? “We’re spending $20 billion a year in agricultural subsidies for the wrong foods,” says Nestle. Well, tell that to the congressional representatives from red-voting farm states. That’s where Place needs to be screened. (PG)
BRIAN MILLER University Congregational Church, N.E. 45th St. & 15th Ave. N.E., 524-2322, universityucc.org, Free, Sun., Oct. 27, 6:30 p.m.
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Ride the Night Continuing SAM’s fall film noir series, Orson Welles directs and stars in the enjoyably convoluted The Lady From Shanghai (1947). Opposite him in the drama, which includes the famous hall of mirrors sequence, is the succulent Rita Hayworth. (NR)
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63–$68 series, $8 individual, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through Dec. 5.
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The Shining In the fright-flick canon, The Shining (1980) is an art-film anomaly, since director Stanley Kubrick emphasizes the long buildup so much more than Jack Nicholson’s final ax attack on his snowbound family. The swooping aerial shots, the Big Wheel pedaling down endless hallways, the dull talk of canned goods and Indian burial grounds, the thumping tennis ball—they lull you into a kind of dream state. There’s a primal, fairy-tale quality laced with Oedipal conflict as this household of three is fatally divided. It matters less if Nicholson’s blocked writer is demonically possessed (or Indian-cursed or evil reincarnated or whatever) than that he’s simply a bad father—rough and impatient with his young son, cruelly dismissive of his wife (Shelley Duvall), selfish in his writerly ambitions. (Stephen King is never kind to his fellow scribes.) A failure at the typewriter, his imagination turns inward, rotting inside its own topiary maze. If King’s book manifests more of that horror, Kubrick lingers upon its latency and origins. (R) BRIAN MILLER Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 323-0587, landmarktheatres.com, $8.25, midnight, Sat.
Trashed What but a sense of shame about the trash each of us produces could account for the relief of disposing of it and the speed at which its memory evaporates? But our garbage never really goes away, as Jeremy Irons and director Candida Brady expend vigorous energy and much jet fuel to illustrate in the quietly livid Trashed. Irons’ high indignation provides a fine, Stradivarian accompaniment to his visits to a seething Lebanon landfill, several Scandinavia incineration plants, a rubbish-choked Indonesia river, and, most grotesquely, a hall of Agent Orange–warped fetuses aligned in giant pickling jars in Vietnam. The form is straightforward, if a little meandering, as is the message: We have to fix this. In that sense, forcing our attention onto the thing most of us love to forget makes its own point. And indeed it is hard to look at the dumps, heaps, toxic seepages, and ocean-polluting plastics shown here to be neither as distant nor as containable as one might hope. The coup de grace—that we are now literally made of that which we throw away—is softened only by the idea that future generations need not be. (NR) MICHELLE ORANGE McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St. (Seattle Center), cedar-grove.com, Free, Tue., Oct. 29, 7 p.m.
Waxie Moon in Fallen Jewel Both the local dancer (Moon) and director Wes Hurley will attend this benefit screening on behalf of Seattle Counseling Service. (NR)
Central Cinema, $20-$25, Thu., Oct. 24, 8 p.m.
Ongoing
After Tiller At the time of filming, only four physicians in the U.S. offer late-term abortions in their three separate clinics. One is located in liberal Boulder, Colo., which makes sense. The other two are in New Mexico and Nebraska, which makes no sense. Is the need greater there? Are there more birth defects, more poverty? And why, apart from the possibility of being assassinated (as was Dr. George Tiller in 2009), aren’t more than four doctors offering this service? First-time documentary filmmakers Lana Wilson and Martha Shane never address such issues. They’re not journalists, and their intent is only to humanize four aging physicians as people—not as demons subject to sidewalk screaming, fiery sermons, political denunciations, and the occasional bullet. That these four physicians are brave and compassionate is beyond dispute. Now where is the documentary about how the health-care system has forced them into that lonely position? (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Film Center
Blue Jasmine There’s nothing comic about the downfall of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, the inspiration for Woody Allen’s miscalculated seriocom. Blue Jasmine is an awkward mismatch of pathos and ridicule, less fusion than simple borrowing. Grafted onto the story of delusional trophy wife Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) is a Madoff-like fable of the recent financial crisis. In flashback, we see her husband (Alec Baldwin) buying her consent with luxury while he swindles the Montauk set. In the present timeframe, Jasmine is broke and living with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in a shabby San Francisco apartment. Jasmine is a snob who needs to be brought low, a task relished by Ginger, her boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale), and her ex (a surprisingly sympathetic Andrew Dice Clay). Perhaps because her heroine isn’t entirely Allen’s creation, he doesn’t finally know what to do with her. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas
Captain Phillips Tom Hanks is hijacked and held hostage by Somali pirates, as actually happened to Richard Phillips in 2009. If you read the newspapers, there’s nothing surprising here, though expert director Paul Greengrass—of the Bourne movies and United 93—adds as much tension as he can, chiefly through jittery cameras, screaming pirates, and the late-film addition of lethal Navy SEALs. But if I may jump to the end of the movie first: Greengrass and screenwriter Billy Ray do make the interesting decision not to treat that ending triumphantly. Before that point, however, Captain Phillips flatters the chief pirate, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), by treating him as an equal. If not quite cogs, they’re bit players in the global nexus of commerce and power. Muse says of the warlords who stake him, “I got bosses.” “We all got bosses,” replies the weary Phillips. In Captain Phillips, their conflict is starkly asymmetrical: all our American military might versus four skinny guys with AK-47s. Muse and Phillips are both small men ferrying large assets in the international supply chain. And if they don’t like the job, plenty of others will take their place. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Alderwood 16, Factoria, Woodinville, Southcenter, Cinebarre, Redmond Town Center, Kirkland Parkplace, Guild 45th, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Thornton Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Ark Lodge, Bainbridge, others
Don Jon Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed, and stars in Don Jon, the story of a porn addict who’d be right in place amongst the braying loudmouths of Jersey Shore. However, the likable Jon is also a ladies’ man, prowling the disco with his buddies and searching for a “dime” (a “10,” on the immortal scale) to take home on a Saturday night. An encounter with the lushly named Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson, in a deft caricature) suggests that our boy may have found authentic love, but Gordon-Levitt throws in some reasonably fresh variations on the tale of an addict redeemed. One of them comes in the form of a night-school classmate (Julianne Moore) who’s got more honest life experience than most of the people in Jon’s circle. All this is in service of a very simple message, of the kind an earnest young filmmaker might feel is important to say for his generation. (R) ROBERT HORTON Varsity, others
Enough Said Nothing much happens in a Nicole Holofcener film, and that’s OK. Ten years divorced, her daughter soon to leave for college, Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) wearily lugs her massage table from client to client, hearing their petty complaints without comment, seemingly resigned to a single woman’s slide toward menopause. The large, hairy obstacle in that path is Albert (James Gandolfini). Eva has a secret pipeline to confirm her doubts about him: Albert’s ex-wife Marianne (Catherine Keener) is one of her clients. If there is a Hippocratic oath for masseuses, Eva knows she’s broken it tenfold. Yet she continues to knead and befriend the cynical poet while allowing Marianne’s complaints to poison her relationship with Albert. In his last screen role, Gandolfini conveys a lumpy shyness and decency; his Albert is genuinely hurt by the fat-shaming of Eva’s yoga-toned cohort. Eva’s BFF (Toni Colette) tells her to learn to compromise in a relationship, even while constantly dissing her husband (the excellently indignant Ben Falcone). For the women of Enough Said, too much candor has its risks, but remaining silent can bring disaster. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Sundance, Lynwood (Bainbridge), Majestic Bay
Escape From Tomorrow First-time filmmaker Randy Moore shot his movie at Disney World and Epcot Center without asking permission, an act of bravado that made it instantly notorious at Sundance this year. Although this suggests an underground aesthetic, the black-and-white result is sharply composed, tightly scripted, and dense with digital effects. While the movie does have fun letting the air out of certain beloved Disney balloons, the nightmare that unfolds has more to do with a general human tendency to retreat into fantasyland than with a slam on Walt Disney. We are following Jim (Roy Abramsohn) and Emily (Elena Schuber) as they escort their two kids through a final day of fun at Disney’s two Orlando theme parks. Jim’s journey eventually goes off its funhouse rails and enters a surreal realm, with a Shining-esque hint that maybe he was always meant to be here. Escape doesn’t entirely hold together, and its more baffling moments suggest that it was never meant to. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Sundance
The Fifth Estate In tackling the hot topic of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, whenever director Bill Condon wants to convey the Wild West reach of what can happen with information on the Internet, he uses cornball visualizations: hundreds of wired desks manned by hundreds of Assanges in a warehouse with no end, or fireballs exploding across the same space. The invention looks trite, but the effort is understandable. In some ways, The Fifth Estate lines up as a movie about people sitting at laptops. We mostly get Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s perspective as the Nick Carraway to Assange’s mystifying Gatsby, a committed observer who becomes less enchanted with his white-haired hero the more he gets to know him. Daniel is played by Daniel Bruhl, of the current Rush; Assange is a juicy role for Benedict Cumberbatch, the erudite scarecrow equally at ease playing classical parts or Star Trek villains. Condon aims for the vibe of a ’70s political thriller of the kind directed by Alan J. Pakula, like All the President’s Men. That’s a fine goal, but the tricky part is that Assange is here both tireless crusader and paranoid control freak—Woodward and Nixon in the same person. Issues like the future of journalism and public responsibility are dutifully stirred, but the movie keeps coming back to Assange as monster/martyr. (R) ROBERT HORTON Cinebarre, Bainbridge, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Majestic Bay, Meridian, Thornton Place, Sundance, others
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Gravity George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are stranded in orbit, bombarded by space debris. Their dilemma is established in an astonishing 12-minute opening sequence, seamlessly rendered via CGI by director Alfonso Cuaron. The camera occupies no fixed position. There is no up or down in the frame as it pushes and swoops among the wreckage and flailing astronauts. (Here let’s note that the 3-D version is essential; don’t even consider seeing the conventional rendering.) Dr. Stone (Bullock) at first can’t get her bearings; and the rest of the film consists of her navigating from one problem to the next. For all its technical marvels and breathtaking panoramas reflected in Stone’s visor, Gravity is a very compact, task-oriented picture. It’s both space-age and hugely traditional, though with a modern, self-aware heroine. Stone scores her biggest laugh with an exasperated aside: “I hate space.” Thanks to Cuaron’s peerless directing work, we know just the feeling. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Ark Lodge, Cinebarre, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Majestic Bay, Meridian, Thornton Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Sundance, others
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Inequality for All The basis for this advocacy doc, Robert Reich’s Aftershock, was published three years ago as we were tentatively clambering out of the Great Recession. The market is up today, but we also have a jobless recovery for the middle class. Why is that? Using the same graphs he employs as a UC Berkeley professor, Reich shows how the inequality curve began climbing in the ’80s, accelerating with the deregulation of financial markets during the Clinton era. It’s a 40-year trend, with technology, globalization, outsourcing, and other causes. And that is why, despite Reich’s ebullience, this is such an important, dismaying film. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Varsity
