Local & Repertory
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DocBrunch Discussion follows the screening of last year’s Inequality for All, in which UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich shows how the inequality curve began climbing in the ’80s, accelerating with the deregulation of financial markets during the Clinton era (when he worked in the White House). It’s a 40-year trend, with technology, globalization, outsourcing, and other causes. To counter that trend, Reich advocates federal stimulus and other policies to grow the middle class and get it spending again, to raise that median income (essentially flat since the pre-OPEC ’70s, measured in constant dollars). Reich would raise taxes on carbon and the elite (particularly capital gains), and he encourages federal spending in areas like bridge repair and infrastructure that create middle-class jobs. Meanwhile, Republican rhetoric about an “opportunity society” has become a cruel irony: Social mobility is heading in the wrong direction, making the country ever more polarized. And that is why, despite Reich’s ebullience, this is such an important, dismaying film. (PG) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Sun., Feb. 9, 2 p.m.
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Jim Carrey plays Joel, an office-worker drone so stifled by his routine that the last two years of his cartoon journal/diary are blank. Kate Winslet plays Clementine, a flighty, mercurial bookstore-clerk drone from the same LIE exit. They meet cute at the beach. So, is this movie a simple opposites-attract formula job? Not at all; the Oscar-winning 2004 collaboration between French director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is a heart-trip and a head-trip all at the same time. Joel opts to have the memory of Clementine removed from his brain by some shady operators (Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, and Kirsten Dunst among them). Naturally the low-tech procedure goes very, very wrong. As love, memory, reality, and temporality are scrambled together, though, Eternal Sunshine does just about everything right. (R) B.R.M. Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, Feb. 7-11, 9:30 p.m.
The Golden Age of Italian Cinema Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, the 1955 Le Amiche (or The Girlfriends), a young roman woman (Eleonora Rossi Drago) finds decadence and intrigue up north in Turin. (NR)
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 (series), Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through March 13.
Music Craft: Lou Reed The late music icon is captured in a series of short films, with Nico and the Velvet Underground appearing among them. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $6-$11, Thu., Feb. 6, 8 p.m.
Post Alley Film Festival Short films are screened in various packages until 7 p.m., followed by a reception and fundraiser for the fest. (NR)
SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), postalleyfilmfestival.com, $10-$15, Sat., Feb. 8, 11:30 a.m.
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Say Anything John Cusack as romantic lead? It didn’t seem likely, but that’s exactly what happened with the alchemy of Cameron Crowe’s lovely 1989 rom-com (his directorial debut). Ione Skye is the girl, and John Mahoney her disapproving father. Cusack was just graduating from teen fodder when Crowe gifted him with the role of a decade. Set in Seattle, the film has Cusack’s kid from the wrong side of the tracks fall hard for a college-bound high achiever. Though something of a shambling oaf, whose only goal in life is to become a pro kick-boxer, he somehow locates his own inner Cary Grant to woo her. Well, a Cary Grant for the grunge era, since Crowe’s soundtrack includes Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden, and The Replacements. (Look for Lili Taylor and Eric Stoltz, Crowe’s good-luck charm, in nice supporting roles.) Two decades later, there are plenty of women in their 30s and 40s who are, perhaps after a divorce or two, still looking for their Lloyd Dobler. (R) B.R.M. Central Cinema, $6-$8, Feb. 7-11, 7 p.m.
Seattle Asian American Film Festival Over two dozen features and shorts are screened, with subjects including gang-bangers in Pomona, California, the “Linsanity” surrounding NBA star Jeremy Lin, and marriage equality. See seattleaaff.org for ticket info and full schedule. (NR)
Ark Lodge, 4816 Rainier Ave. S., 721-3156, arklodgecinemas.com, Feb. 6-9.
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Sidewalk Stories SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 22.
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Silent Movie Mondays Organist Jim Riggs will provide live accompaniment for Buster Keaton’s great Civil War railroad chase movie The General, which features some astonishing stunts and gags. It’s a classic. (NR)
The Paramount, 911 Pine St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org, $5-$10, Mon., 7 p.m.
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 “tough guys” theme. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8 individual, $35-$56 pass, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Through March 29.
Stealing Africa Discussion follows this doc about copper mining and corruption in Zambia. (NR)
Keystone Congregational Church, 5019 Keystone Place N., 632-6021, keystoneseattle.org, Free, Fri., Feb. 7, 7 p.m.
These Birds Walk A Pakistani runaway tries to survive on the streets of Karachi in this new documentary. (NR)
SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Feb. 7-9, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Feb. 9, 3 p.m.
Third Contact A shrink goes off the rails, and becomes obsessed with a mysterious female patient, in this new English thriller. (NR)
SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Thu., Feb. 6, 8:30 p.m.
The Trials of Muhammad Ali The most famous athlete of the 20th century, his every fight and utterance covered by international media from 1960–81 (his boxing career), Muhammad Ali has left a mountain of archives for authors and filmmakers to mine. But here’s the catch: They’d better find something new to say after so many prior books and documentaries. Bill Siegel succeeds in pulling up only a few nuggets here, like Ali performing in the Broadway musical Buck White during his ban from boxing. That period, 1967–71, should’ve been framed to much tighter and more dramatic effect, yet Siegel falls into the trap of giving us the whole of the GOAT, which cannot be done in 92 minutes. I doubt many millennials watch boxing today, and for some this footage may be fresh. The sport is in such decline, its brain-injury stats so damning, that the tale of Ali’s conscientious-objector lawsuit—to avoid being drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War—feels as distant as the Civil War. Siegel punches it up with some fresh interviews, but his sources are too fawning. Ali is great enough without being lionized yet again. His famously repeated quote “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong” is certainly true and courageous, but Siegel never digs deeper into Ali’s resentment about his loss of vocation—the millions he couldn’t earn while serving safely in a National Guard unit, far from the front lines. (NR) B.R.M. Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave., 622-9250, fryemuseum.org, Free, Sat., Feb. 8, noon.
24 Exposures From Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, Hannah Takes the Stairs), this new drama takes a nod back to European art-house and softcore movies of the 1960s, with murder and fetish models in the mix. (NR)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Thu., Feb. 6, 9 p.m.
The Visitor This 1979 Italian cult film is reportedly a pastiche of sci-fi and Satanism, with an odd variety of American talent earning easy paydays abroad. Appearing in the cast are John Huston, Shelley Winters, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, Franco Nero and Sam Peckinpah. 21 and over. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11, Fri., Feb. 7, 11 p.m.; Sat., Feb. 8, 11 p.m.
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Wadjda SIFF continues its Monday night “Recent Raves!” series with Saudi Arabian writer/director Haifaa Al-Mansour debut feature, also the first film made by a Saudi woman. She shot some of the exterior scenes from the inside of a van, because a woman working with men in public is not looked on with favor in Riyadh. Her struggles are more than good journalistic copy; they explain the controlled ferocity of the movie’s storytelling, which is a coded version of the making of the film itself. Desperate to own a bicycle, Wadjda energizes the movie. She’s a smart and innately rebellious 10-year-old—a stock character, perhaps, but not in Waad Mohammed’s performance. Her insolent body language and exasperated eye-rolling mark Wadjda as a hilariously recognizable 21st-century child, even if the society around her seems more 16th-century. Wadjda’s father has left their home because her mother (Reem Abdullah) is unable to supply more children, which means no male heir. Al-Mansour makes her points without caricaturing her characters; the father (Sultan al-Assaf), for instance, is warm and kind, if weak. Her film could not exist if it were a screed, but even the casual depiction of inequality is infuriating. Yet Al-Mansour plays it careful even during the expected happy ending. (PG) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Mon., 7 p.m.
