Local & Repertory
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Fight Club Every lame buddy flick features a ritual fist fight that bonds its two male leads, and that cliched meta-scene is the inspiration for David Fincher’s dark, gleefully incoherent 1999 comedy Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Office drone Edward Norton receives his first beating from Brad Pitt, along with a whole nutty philosophy of male liberation—but just ignore it with the other manifestoes. Fincher employs an elliptical structure of multiple flashbacks and fantasy sequences, digressing frequently to prowl the sordid details with slo-mo computer-generated camera trickery. Early on, Norton compulsively attends disease survivor support groups—without being sick himself. It’s a fresh, funny, fast-paced beginning, and the next two acts do sag by comparison. (Not unlike Norton’s buddy Meat Loaf, for that matter.) Helena Bonham Carter barely dignifies her klepto-nympho role, but Fincher makes better use of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” on the soundtrack. (R) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central- cinema.com, $6-$8, Jan. 24-29, 9:30 p.m.
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In a World… SIFF contines its Monday night “Recent Raves!” series with Lake Bell’s accomplished 2013 comedy, her debut feature. Carol Solomon (Bell) is a voice nerd, fascinated by the accents she covertly tapes with her ever-present Dictaphone, yet her career is confined to voice coaching, not doing voiceovers for movie trailers, her family trade. When her widowed father Sam (Fred Melamed) kicks her out of the house to make way for a young new girlfriend (Alexandra Holden), he condescendingly tells Carol, “I’m going to support you by not supporting you.” Implicit in his rebuke is that women, with their higher voices, have no place in his manly profession. Then the couch-surfing Carol catches a break at a recording studio run by amiable Louis (Demetri Martin). Everything that transpires among Lake’s players is predictable, but in a pleasant, breezy way. In a World… plays like an overstuffed sitcom, with Carol’s wacky friends and neighbors dropping in for brief, effective bits (these include Nick Offerman, Rob Corddry, and Tig Notaro). It’s a knowing industry satire, but not a mean industry satire. Bell doesn’t write the conflicts, easily resolved, or characters any deeper than they need be—save for the imperious yet fragile Sam. Some may recall the wonderful Melamed, an actual voiceover artist, from the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man. His Sam is sexist, sure, but also a wounded bundle of pride whom Carol must somehow nudge off his voiceover throne. (R) B.R.M. SIFF Film Center, (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Mondays, 7 p.m. Through Feb. 24.
Searching for Bobby Fischer Local film appreciation group The 20/20 Awards presents this 1993 chess drama, written and directed by Steven Zaillian and based on the book by Fred Waitzkin about his own chess prodigy son. (PG)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Thu., Jan. 23, 6:30 p.m.
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Silent Movie Mondays Organist Jim Riggs will provide live accompaniment for G.W. Pabst’s 1929 Pandora’s Box, starring Louise Brooks as a prostitute who refuses to bend to social convention. You could call it a fallen woman melodrama, only Lulu never displays the slightest remorse or guilt for her scandalous succession of lovers (she seduces half the family of her eventual newspaper publisher husband). After all her sinning (which paralleled Brooks’ public life), that Lulu has to die seems not a moral punishment but kind of validation of a life lived without fear of risk or consequence. She chooses Jack the Ripper like any other lover. (NR) B.R.M. The Paramount, 911 Pine St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org, $5-$10, Mondays, 7 p.m. Through Feb. 10.
The Sprocket Society’s Saturday Secret Matinees The 1949 serial Batman & Robin will be screened in weekly installments. January’s surprise features will have a superhero theme. (NR)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8 individual, $35-$56 pass, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Through March 29.
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The Third Man Orson Welles stars in Carol Reed’s wonderfully atmospheric 1949 adaptation of Graham Greene’s The Third Man. Some people say that Welles exerted his influence on the picture over director Reed, but that’s unfair to the British pro. His use of skewed camera angles, Vienna’s labyrinthine sewers (shot on location), and great zither score (by Anton Karas), makes Welles’ Harry Lime only one part of a dark canvas of corruption. Joseph Cotton plays the innocent Yank who can’t believe his old pal is involved in underworld drug dealing and murder. When the two of them meet for the famous Ferris wheel scene, his eyes are opened to how even upright Americans can turn rotten in the right milieu (always a favorite Greene theme). Comparing the revelers below to ants, Lime asks, “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money?” (NR) B.R.M. Central Cinema, $6-$8, Jan. 24-29, 7 p.m.
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Umberto D Is this the greatest dog movie ever made? I don’t care how clever Lassie or Toto or Rin Tin Tin or Asta may have been, Flag is the dog for me. The little mutt is also the life force that keeps an impoverished pensioner clinging to his dignity in Vittorio De Sica’s 1952 neorealist classic, screened as part of SAM’s The Golden Age of Italian Cinema retrospective. Carlo Battisti plays the aged former civil servant being threatened with eviction by his heartless blond floozy of a landlady. Some kind of Jack Russell terrier mix plays Flag, and they’re an unbeatable team. Umberto sells his books to make the rent and buy dog food, while Flag proves stoically willing to panhandle when his master is too ashamed. Four years after The Bicycle Thief, De Sica is still unsparing in his indictment of Italy’s postwar poverty and selfishness. The old social safety net of family and village is gone, and it’s everyone for himself. Thank God Umberto still has Flag. (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.
Ongoing
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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. If this isn’t a great movie, and it’s not, it sure is a fireworks display. The movie’s fun to watch, if seemingly untethered. It would be nice to be able to avoid comparing it to vintage Scorsese, but the ricocheting camera and syncopated use of pop songs do seem awfully familiar, and just a little ersatz. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, others
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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. (Meanwhile, Sam is evolving at a startling rate; “Tell me you love me,” she implores.) 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. Majestic Bay, Sundance, others
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Inside Llewyn Davis While there are funny bits in this simple story of a struggling folk musician in 1961 Greenwich Village, very loosely inspired by Dave Van Ronk’s memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street, 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—an astronaut ditty called “Please, Mr. Kennedy”—is a knowingly cornball novelty song. But Llewyn’s a jerk to fellow musicians and benefactors, rude to his sister, and dismissive of others’ talent—possibly because he’s unsure of his own. Idealism has made Llewyn cynical. 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. Harvard Exit, Sundance, others
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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. Supposedly a prospective millionaire in his old hometown, he’s a big shot at last, grander than his bullying old business partner Ed (Stacy Keach). 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. With its mix of delusion, decency, and dunces, Nebraska is a little slow for my taste but enormously rewarding in the end, one of the year’s best films. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th, Harvard Exit, others
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The Square Jehane Noujaim’s documentary is both timely and behind the current news cycle. And that’s not to fault the Egyptian-American filmmaker’s brave, total, immersive commitment in a fluid and sometimes dangerous situation. She spent over two years following the protests and battles at Tahrir Square, which erupted in January 2011. No one, including her, had any idea where events would lead. Her perspective is mostly ground-level, following a half-dozen charismatic revolutionaries, some of whom speak English. One of Noujaim’s cameramen, Ahmed, is a central figure in the protests, making speeches, debating skeptics, and tossing stones at the police. He’s the one closest to the Arab Street, and we can see him grow exhausted from the cycle of taking the square, being beaten back, and returning months later. The initial euphoria eventually runs into a brick wall called the Muslim Brotherhood. The Square’s granular approach makes it a very partisan doc. Noujaim is on the side of the revolutionaries—who wouldn’t be?—without ever trying to summon a thesis from all the exhilarating, power-to-the-people process of revolution. To be fair, that may be impossible. Her film is an invaluable chronicle of an historic moment. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance
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12 Years a Slave English director Steve McQueen’s 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? This is no Amistad or Schindler’s List, tackling the big story, but a personal tale. 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. The film’s and-then-this-happened quality is appropriate for a memoir written in the stunned aftermath of a nightmare. 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, others
Theaters:
Admiral, 2343 California Ave. SW, 938-3456; Ark Lodge, 4816 Rainier Ave. S, 721-3156; Big Picture, 2505 First Ave., 256-0566; Big
Picture
Redmond, 7411 166th Ave. NE, 425-556-0566; Central
Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684; Cinebarre, 6009 SW 244th St. (Mountlake Terrace)., 425-672-7501; Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 448-6680; Crest, 16505 Fifth Ave. NE, 363-6339; Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., 523-3935; Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., 547-2127; Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 323-0587; iPic Theaters, 16451 N.E. 74th St. (Redmond), 425-636-5601; Kirkland Parkplace, 404 Park Place, 425-827-9000; Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N, 425-454-7400; Majestic Bay, 2044 NW Market St., 781-2229; Meridian, 1501 Seventh Ave., 223-9600; Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380; Oak Tree, 10006 Aurora Ave. N, 527-1748; Pacific Place, 600 Pine St., 888-262-4386; Seven Gables, 911 NE 50th St., 632-8821; SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996; SIFF Film Center, Seattle Center, 324-9996; Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave NE, 633-0059; Thornton Place, 301 NE 103rd St., 517-9953; Varsity, 4329 University Way NE, 632-6412.
