Local & Repertory
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Aliens “Game over, man! Game over!” With panicky Bill Paxton and the rest of his military squad quaking in fear around her, leave it to Sigourney Weaver to again save the day in James Cameron’s flat-out brilliant 1986 sci-fi/feminist/monster movie Aliens. It’s a showdown between mothers: Weaver’s Ripley, returning to the now-colonized planet where she battled the lone alien in ‘79, versus the alien queen and her burgeoning brood of acid-fanged, rip-ya-apart, double-jawed spawn. I don’t care how big an ego Cameron may have post-Avatar; he shows top-of-the-world form here, impeccably constructing action sequences that are by turns terrifying, funny, and terrifying again. Movie screens at midnight. (R) BRIAN MILLER Egyptian, $8.25, Fri., May 3, 11:59 p.m.; Sat., May 4, 11:59 p.m.
Dave Local film appreciation society The 20/20 Awards screens this 1993 political comedy by Ivan Reitman. Kevin Kline is cast in double roles, one being a naive, good-natured office drone who has to double for the ill president of the U.S., whose wife (Sigourney Weaver) is rightfully suspicious of the plan. (PG-13)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Thu., May 2, 9 p.m.
Escape from New York One of the undersung bad-ass screen heroes of the 1980s, Snake Plissken gave Kurt Russell an iconic role in this dystopian satire from John Carpenter. Everyone knows the plot to the 1981 escape movie, in which Snake has to break into prison (i.e. Manhattan) to rescue the same president who’s run our country into the ditch and oppressed the underclass, whose numbers certainly include Plissken and his criminal cohort. Payback is sweet, so long as you’re paid for it. (R)
Central Cinema, $6-$8, Thu., May 2, 8 p.m.
From Dusk Till Dawn Robert Rodriguez (as director) and Quentin Tarantino (as writer and actor) teamed up for this 1996 border-set vampire tale. Also in the mix is George Clooney, making his transition from small to big screen. The results are violent and funny, but the dusty pastiche of various movie genres eventually wears thin. Look for Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Salma Hayek, and Cheech Marin among the cast. And of course: Danny Trejo, the future Machete. (R)
Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 3-7, 9:30 p.m.
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Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut: French New Wave Masters Godard’s fourth feature, My Life to Live (1959), is a rocket from Pandora’s Box. It’s sectioned into 12 “tableaux,” each chapter opening with an intertitle describing its contents. The framing is carefully indiscriminate; faces are backlit into murk; cafe clatter swallows conversation. The camera rarely cues on in-scene action, instead turning weird patterns or unmooring from the story at the whim of private authorial logic. Star Anna Karina was in the brutal early rounds of marriage to her director, who was never more doting and egghead-condescending than in this showpiece. She’s Nana, a northern provincial in Paris who aspires to maybe become a film actress (like Anna Karina!), but settles on making a quick franc horizontally. The suburban streets and jukebox idylls are as banal as her daydreams, though she touches loftier things—a teary commiseration with Dreyer’s Joan of Arc, a chance dialogue with philosopher Brice Parain. The purpose of this one-woman show is suggested by a child’s description of essence: “Take away the outside, the inside is left. Take away the inside, and you see a soul.” Toward this, girl-for-rent Nana is probed from every side: interrogated by the camera, her jilted beau, the police, her pimp, and the prose of Poe (all of them, really, Godard). (NR) NICK PINKERTON Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 (series), $8 individual, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through May 30.
Like Water for Chocolate A huge and deserved hit for Miramax back in 1992, Alfonso Arau’s family romance saga helped reestablish Mexico as a filmmaking power. In a way, its unlikely heirs include Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien. (PG-13) Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 3-7, 7 p.m.
The Revolutionary Now 91 and living near Gig Harbor, Sidney Rittenberg was a proud young leftie learning Mandarin in the U.S. Army during World War II. But the war ended, he got attached to the U.N., and, during an assignment to revolutionary China, he threw in his lot with Mao and joined the Communist Party. He would spend 34 years there, serving as a Party spokesman, marrying twice, and enduring two periods of solitary imprisonment (16 years total). It’s an amazing life story, well told through interviews, stills, and newsreels by Irv Drasnin and Bainbridge-based Lucy Ostrander and Don Sellers. All three are veterans of public television, and it shows. Rittenberg’s ambitions and regrets are clearly laid out, with graphics, intertitles, and wonderful old Communist posters. Rittenberg is generously quoted and given considerable benefit of hindsight. Prison and the Cultural Revolution clearly dimmed his idealism, and he left China in 1980, back home becoming a consultant to Microsoft and other companies. So why Rittenberg, why now? The Revolutionary would’ve been more timely before China’s economic boom, when the damage of the Cultural Revolution was still fresh. Of today’s Baidu-connected young Chinese, says Rittenberg regarding that history, “They don’t know.” (NR) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Fri., May 3, 6:30 p.m.; Sat., May 4, 4:15 & 6:30 p.m.; Sun., May 5, 4:15 p.m.
Seattle True Independent Film Festival SEE THE WIRE, PAGE 17.
Ongoing
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Mud Matthew McConaughey’s character, known only as Mud, is a ne’er-do-well Arkansas native, a fugitive and teller of tall tales, hiding on a sandbar island. His improbable refuge—a boat lifted into the trees by a recent flood—is discovered by two young teens who naturally idolize this tattooed, charismatic outcast. Mud has a neat treehouse; Mud has a hot girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon) and a gun; Mud is every 14-year-old’s idea of cool, like some dude from a cigarette ad come to life. Back home, reality is more complicated for Ellis (Tye Sheridan, one of Brad Pitt’s boys in The Tree of Life). Mud is his story, not Mud’s, as Ellis watches his parents’ marriage dissolve, has his first kiss, and begins to question the story Mud is feeding him. Though a little too long and leisurely—shall we just say Southern?—for my taste, Mud is very well crafted and acted. (Look for Sam Shepard, Michael Shannon, and Joe Don Baker in significant supporting roles.) It’s a big step up from indie-dom for writer/director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter). (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Oak Tree, Meridian, Sundance
The Place Beyond the Pines Luke (Ryan Gosling), a tattooed, muscled motorcycle stunt rider in a traveling circus, is a bad boy—just the way you like them. But then Luke discovers that a former one-night stand (Eva Mendes) has a toddler-aged son. Suddenly he turns paternal. He quits the circus, tells Romina he wants to settle down, to take care of her and the kid. However, Luke has no job skills but motorcycle riding and, taught by a new mentor (Ben Mendelsohn), bank robbing. Pines is the second film by Derek Cianfrance to star the Gos (after Blue Valentine), but it turns out to be a much larger and longer ensemble piece, one that eventually skips 15 years forward from its initial story. One of Luke’s stickups is interrupted by anambitious young cop with a law degree, Avery (Bradley Cooper), who has an eye on politics. Fifteen years later, however, Avery will have to reconsider the debt he owes Luke’s family. Cianfrance shows admirable seriousness about his characters, but only the early crime scenes have any spark to them. (R) BRIAN MILLER Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace, Harvard Exit, Majestic Bay, Cinebarre, Thornton Place, Bainbridge, others
Theaters:
Admiral, 2343 California Ave. SW, 938-3456; Ark Lodge Cinemas, 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, 781-5755; Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 781-5755; Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., 523-3935; Guild 45, 2115 N. 45th St., 781-5755; Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 781-5755; 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; Metro, 4500 Ninth Ave. NE, 781-5755; 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., 781-5755; SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996; SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (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, 781-5755.
