Local & Repertory
•
Altman: A Defining Director The new documentary Altman screens several times during this mini-fest. Representing the late, great director (1925–2006) himself are M*A*S*H, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Popeye, The Player, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park. (NR)SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 324-9996, siff.net. $5. Fri.-Thurs.
Days & Nights This new adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull stars William Hurt, Jean Reno, Cherry Jones, Katie Holmes, and Mark Rylance among its large ensemble cast. (NR)Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., 633-0059, sundancecinemas.com. Opens Fri., Oct. 17.
Earshot Jazz Films As a sidebar to the ongoing Earshot Jazz Festival, this program includes a documentary profile of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the 1981 Stations of the Elevated (a graffiti doc featuring Charles Mingus and Aretha Franklin), Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story, and other notable titles for music lovers. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum.org. $6-$12. Sat., Oct. 18-Sat., Oct. 25.
•
Finding Fela Though he outlived Bob Marley, Fela Kuti never managed to connect with Western ears in the same way. His tunes were too long for our Top 40 charts, and Nigerian politics were too distant and complicated when compared to simple sing-along Caribbean liberation anthems. For that reason, mounting a 2009 Broadway musical about his eventful yet eccentric life (1938–1997) proved a challenge for Bill T. Jones and his collaborators, as we see in Alex Gibney’s comprehensive documentary about the show—which toured through Seattle last year—and its inspiration. Fela himself is most vivid in old performance clips, especially in his sinuous, jumpsuited glory during a 1978 gig at the Berlin Jazz Festival. He’s more elusive in old interviews from the archives, leaving his children (including musician Femi Kuti), manager, former bandmates, and journalists to assess his life and legacy. His Afro-fusion aesthetic is fascinating; and we see how from the early ’60s forward he absorbed and distilled Miles Davis, the highlife music of Ghana, James Brown, Malcolm X, and more. One of his takeaway quotes in Finding Fela might as well be his epitaph: “Music cannot be for enjoyment. Music has to be for revolution.” In truth, his music realized both. (NR) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. 7 p.m. Mon.
•
Ghostbusters Who you gonna call? I think we all know the answer: the top-grossing film of 1984, possibly to be given an all-female remake, Ghostbusters! Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Sigourney Weaver star in the paranormal smash comedy, which inspired only one so-so sequel and a surprising number of video games. It was, of course, a simpler time back then, when special effects weren’t quite so seamless, and the greatest threat facing New York City was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The movie was a total star turn for Murray, playing the loosest and least professional academic on campus. Using Aykroyd as his uptight foil, with well-timed sideline zingers from the wonky Ramis (who co-wrote the script with Aykroyd), Murray is freed to embrace his inner, off-kilter leading man—he’s like Cary Grant on mescaline, utterly assured in everything he says, even when nothing he says makes the slightest bit of sense. (PG) B.R.M. Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $6-$8. 7 p.m. Fri.-Tues. (No show Sun.)
•
Hitchcock Re-Mastered: The Many Lives of Psycho
SW senior film critic Robert Horton gives a talk, illustrated with clips, on the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock masterwork and its legacy. In the latter department, he considers Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake, Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho (1993) and James Franco’s installation Psycho Nacirema (2013). (NR)Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave., 622-9250, fryemuseum.org. Free. 2 p.m. Sun.
Live by Night From 1949, He Walked by Night has genius inventor Richard Basehart turn to a life of crime. Look for Jack Webb in a supporting role; this film, partly directed by Anthony Mann, is often credited as an inspiration for the TV show Dragnet. (NR)Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $63–$68 series. $8 individual. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Dec. 18.
•
Scarecrow Grand Reopening Though the venerable video store, a perennial winner in our Best of Seattle polls, hasn’t actually closed in order to reopen, today marks its relaunch as a nonprofit. Various games, sale items, a raffle, bingo, trivia contests, and other activities are planned to celebrate. It’s also International Video Store Day, which really ought to be a national holiday. Scarecrow Video, 5030 Roosevelt Way N.E., 524-8554, scarecrow.com. Free. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Sat.
•
Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Notable titles include the stage adaptation Match, with Patrick Stewart as a retired dancer and ballet teacher reflecting on his life during the fabulous ’60s; the high-school coming-out drama Blackbird, with Mo’nique in a supporting role; and a repertory presentation of The Muppet Movie, meaning a chance to sing along with “Rainbow Connection.” As always, the documentaries engage with a variety of topical issues, including marriage equality (Limited Partnership), parental rights (Letter to Anita), and the passing of what might be called the Stonewall generation of leaders and public intellectuals who helped advance our culture to the better place we are today (Regarding Susan Sontag). (NR)SIFF Cinema Egyptian, Northwest Film Forum, and other venues. Info: threedollarbillcinema.org. Ends Sun., Oct. 19.
Seattle Polish Film Festival Titles in this two-week series, which boasts a group of repertory classics selected by Martin Scorsese, include The Saragossa Manuscript, Man of Iron, and A Short Film About Killing. All films are screened with subtitles. (NR)SIFF Cinema Uptown and other venues. See polishfilms.org for schedule. Ends Sun., Oct. 19.
Shaun of the Dead Co-screenwriters Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s 2004 “rom-zom-com” shows laudable imagination and irreverence. Shaun (Pegg) is an utter dullard, an interim electronics store manager who frequents the same London dive bar every night, retains boorish college crony Ed as a flatmate, and can’t be bothered to disengage from PS2 long enough to accommodate easily aggravated girlfriend Liz. When a (never-explained) zombie plague commences right outside Shaun and Ed’s door, they’re hilariously oblivious. However, Wright and Pegg do share Kevin Smith’s weakness for extracting lame life lessons out of inspired lunacy. (R) ANDREW BONAZELLI Central Cinema, $6-$8. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Tues.
Ongoing
•
Gone Girl What’s exceptional about Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of her 2012 novel, directed with acid fidelity by David Fincher, is that Gone Girl doesn’t like most of its characters. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) soon falls under suspicion of murdering his missing wife Amy (Rosamund Pike). The small-town Missouri police investigation (led by Kim Dickens) goes entirely against Nick for the first hour. He behaves like an oaf and does most everything to make himself the prime suspect, despite wise counsel from his sister (Carrie Coon) and lawyer (a surprisingly effective, enjoyable Tyler Perry). Second hour, still no body, but flashbacks turn us against the absent Amy. As we slowly investigate the Dunnes’ very flawed marriage, funny little kernels of bile begin to explode underfoot. How the hell did these two end up together? Flynn’s foundational joke answers that question with a satire of marriage. The movie poster and tabloid-TV plot suggest a standard I-didn’t-kill-my-wife tale, but matrimony is what’s being murdered here. Amid the media circus, Nick becomes the scorned sap because of his untruths; but what really damns him in the movie’s intricate plot is his credulity—he believed in Amy too much. Gone Girl is all about manipulation—Fincher’s stock in trade, really, which helps make the film such cynical, mean-spirited fun. (R) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Sundance, Bainbridge, Majestic Bay, Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace, Cinebarre, others
Hector and the Search for Happiness The title of this whimsical though ultimately conventional quest-com spells it out for you. Hector (Simon Pegg) is an upright British shrink with a committed girlfriend named Clara (Rosamund Pike), amusingly eccentric patients, and a very neat apartment. What he needs is an adventure, very much like Tintin, so he embarks on a world tour to find out what makes people happy. (The final answer will be Clara, but you knew that already.) Hector’s travels take him to Shanghai, the Himalayas, Africa, and Los Angeles. En route he meets a gruff business tycoon (Stellan Skarsgård), a gorgeous Chinese woman (Ming Zhou), a Tibetan monk, a drug lord (Jean Reno), an old flame (Toni Collette), and a sage neuroscientist (Christopher Plummer). There’s a lot of talent and international color here, and director Peter Chelsom knows how to use both quite agreeably. Hector is nothing if not agreeable—to a fault, really—though it’s impossible to hate. Hector himself is nice to a fault. Back home, we can understand why impatient Clara keeps shutting off their Skype chats: So much virtue can be a bore. (R) B.R.M. Seven Gables
The Judge Big-city defense attorney Hank Palmer (Robert Downey, Jr.) comes home to Indiana just in time to see his father (Robert Duvall), a respected judge, arrested for vehicular homicide. Father and son do not care for each other, but the dominoes are poised to let Hank stick around and mount a spirited defense. In the course of the trial, family dynamics are tested, Hank brushes up against an old girlfriend (Vera Farmiga), and zero coolness points are awarded to anyone involved in the movie. Our star doesn’t run roughshod over the script or his fellow actors, but he doesn’t phone it in, either. Without losing the conventional arc of the character, this is very much a Downey performance, full of quicksilver responses and sneaky humor. The Judge retains its court-appointed status as a middlebrow awards contender, but it points to a career Downey could maintain after Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes have run their course, when this eternally youthful actor ages into a different kind of role. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Bainbridge, Majestic Bay, Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace, others
Kill the Messenger No one in 1996, when this factually inspired tale is set, has any idea how swiftly the standing of newspapers will erode. We hear the AOL dial-up tone when hotshot reporter Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) files a big expose with the San Jose Mercury News, and the Web traffic is terrific—until his jealous MSM rivals shoot him down. We’re placed entirely on Webb’s side when he gets some leaked court documents that lead him from the crack trade in ’80s L.A. to the CIA-backed contras in Nicaragua. The 10-year-old link seems incredible, but Webb finds sources in prison, Managua, and even Washington, D.C. Webb’s a red-blooded, motorcycle-lovin’ family guy who listens to The Clash when he writes—too professionally aggressive, perhaps, but not enough to alarm his editors (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Oliver Platt). Yet he ends up paranoid and waving a gun in his suburban driveway at the CIA agents who may or may not be following him. In its earnest, plodding way, Kill the Messenger treads some of the same ground as Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 Traffic, only it insists on heroes and resolutions to a global business that continues to this day (and ever will). You want to see more of the moneyed misdeeds and villains (including Paz Vega, Andy Garcia, and Ray Liotta), but Kill the Messenger denies you that pleasure. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th, others
•
Last Days in Vietnam How, short of total victory, do you end a war? The question has been haunting our military and political leaders since Korea. And though Rory Kennedy’s sobering new doc focuses on the last few desperate days of the Vietnam War, 40 years ago, its lessons are surely applicable today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and whatever the hell it is we call ISIS. The bulk of the testimony here comes from guys who were actually on the ground in Saigon—soldiers (American and Vietnamese), a CIA agent, embassy staffers, and the stray journalist or two. These fresh interviews are coupled with vivid archival news footage filmed on both sides of the U.S. embassy walls as a terrified tidal wave of humanity sought evacuation before the North Vietnamese Army overran Saigon in late April 1975. With a deluded ambassador in charge, his men began a covert evacuation plan that would also include thousands of Vietnamese (despite orders and U.S. immigration laws): girlfriends, wives and families, friends, and brothers-in-arms. (“We gotta save the tailor!” says one attache whose suits he made.) There’s intrigue in these brave tales that occasionally recalls Argo, only with an unhappy outcome for all those natives left behind. (NR) B.R.M. Varsity
Magic in the Moonlight Set during the interwar period in the South of France, Magic in the Moonlight isn’t Woody Allen’s worst picture (my vote: The Curse of the Jade Scorpion), but it’s close. Colin Firth plays a cynical magician, who keeps repeating Allen’s dull ideas over and over and fucking over again. Emma Stone, in her first career misstep (Allen’s fault, not hers), plays a shyster mentalist seeking to dupe a rich family out of its fortune (chiefly by marrying its gullible, ukulele-playing son, Hamish Linklater). The recreations of this posh ’20s milieu seem curiously literal, like magazine spreads, so soon after seeing Wes Anderson’s smartly inflected period detail in The Grand Budapest Hotel, which both revered and ridiculed the past. Magic feels like Allen’s re-rendering of a thin prewar British stage comedy he saw at a matinee during his youth, now peppered with references to Nietzsche and atheism. It’s dated, then updated, which only seems to date it the more. Period aside, no one wants to see Firth, 53, and Stone, 25, as a couple. The math doesn’t work. It’s icky. (PG-13) B.R.M. Crest
My Old Lady Set mostly in a fabulous Paris apartment, tis film is based on a play by Israel Horovitz, and no wonder Horovitz (making his feature-film directing debut—at age 75) chose not to open up the stage work; that’s one great pad. A failed-at-everything 57-year-old blowhard named Mathias Gold (Kevin Kline) has arrived in Paris to claim the place, but there’s just one problem. It was purchased by his father, some 40 years earlier, in the French contract called viager, which means the seller gets to live in it until she dies, as the buyer pays a monthly stipend in the interim. And she—in this case 92-year-old Madame Girard (Maggie Smith)—is still very alertly alive. So is her daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas), and so are various ghosts from the past, many of which come staggering to life as Mathias moves into an empty room and schemes a way to undercut these entrenched ladies. The pace is rocky here, and everybody speaks as though they’re in a play. This is partially mitigated by the fact that if you’re going to have people running off at the mouth, you could do worse than this hyper-eloquent trio. (PG-13) R.H. Lynwood (Bainbridge)
The November Man Sometimes a genre needs no excuses. This is not a great movie, nor perhaps even a particularly good one, it’s a straight-up spy picture with distinct attractions. One of those is Brosnan, who makes a much better James Bond now than he did when he actually carried the license to kill. He plays Peter Devereaux, a retired secret agent much surprised when his former apprentice (Luke Bracey) and old boss (bullet-headed Bill Smitrovich) get caught up in a botched rescue mission. It’s all connected to a corrupt Russian politician and Chechen rebels, tied together with an enjoyably wild conspiracy theory. The mystery woman, because there must be one, is a social worker (Olga Kurylenko, recently seen twirling in the nonsense of To the Wonder). The political intrigue distinguishes it from a Liam Neeson vehicle, even if the story line actually pulls a chapter from Taken in its late going. This film’s very lack of novelty is an attribute—it’s neither better nor worse than the average spy flick, and those terms are agreeable to this fan of the genre. (R) R.H. Crest
•
Pride In essence a Clifford Odets play with a Culture Club soundtrack, Pride is based on a true story in ’80s England: how a nascent gay-rights movement made common cause with an also-beleaguered group that might otherwise seem adversarial—men known for, in the words of one memorable Monty Python sketch, “their tough, rugged life hewing the black gold from the uncompromising hell of one mile under.” Of course not everyone in the Welsh village of Onyllwyn is thrilled to see a lorryful of London poofs drive up, no matter how much money they’re bringing. In depicting their thaw, director Matthew Warchus and screenwriter Stephen Beresford push buttons without shame; prepare yourself for grandmas saying startling things adorably, repressed bodies liberated by dance pop, darkest-before-dawn plot twists, and even a buck-up communal sing. (And yes, one Welsh character comes out; see if you can guess who it’ll be.) Still, you can hardly blame Warchus and Beresford if Pride’s most tearduct-activating moments actually did happen. (R) GAVIN BORCHERT Sundance, Harvard Exit
The Skeleton Twins Maggie and Milo are fraternal twins who are estranged (for 10 years), living on opposite coasts, and seriously depressed for reasons that seem dissimilar but boil down to past family trauma. That Maggie and Milo are played by Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader will get this mediocre dramedy more attention than it deserves. That their performances are good oughtn’t be surprising (the two SNL pros have plenty of experience with the comedy of awkwardness). That their script is so tonally sad-happy yet familiar, one has to attribute to the inexperienced writers (Mark Heyman and Craig Johnson; the latter is a Bellingham native and UW grad who directed the film). Maggie and Milo are catty, sardonic misanthropes, angry at the world because they haven’t lived up to their youthful potential. A failed actor, Milo returns home to New Jersey, where Maggie’s a dental hygienist married to a doofus (Luke Wilson) whom she treats with gentle contempt. There’s also a sex scandal lurking in the past, but the snark bogs down in melodrama, and no amount of ’80s pop montages can really change the film’s predictable trajectory. When even the bitter Maggie can declare “We’re supposed to be there for each other,” you know the cause is lost. (R) B.R.M. Harvard Exit
This Is Where I Leave You The fractious Altman clan gathers for an awkward and altogether irreverent weeklong mourning period (sitting shiva) for its deceased patriarch, at the command of an imperious new widow (Jane Fonda) who wears her conspicuous boob job with blithe pride. All of which greatly discomfits her four grown children. Among them, Corey Stoll is the son who stayed to run the family business; Adam Driver is the ne’er-do-well youngest son who fled to the West Coast; Tina Fey is the unhappily married wife and mother, also visiting; and Jason Bateman is the New York radio producer whose marriage just imploded (not that he’s telling anyone, not just now, not on this trip, no way). There’s a lot of ground to cover in this cluttered adaptation of Jonathan Tropper’s 2009 novel (he did the adaptation), directed with no great subtlety by Shawn Levy, who helmed all those wildly popular, family-friendly Night at the Museum movies. There are moments that work well here. Fey shows tender lost love for her old boyfriend (Timothy Olyphant), a guy who never left town owing to an accident; how culpable she was, the script is reluctant to spell out. Driver, of Girls, brings a welcome jolt of energy to a feckless, underwritten character. On the whole, however, Levy is fatally wed to a formula of tears, outbursts, wise counsel, and reconciliation—repeated often. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th, others
•
The Trip to Italy Director Michael Winterbottom reunites with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for another eating-kvetching tour, this time ranging from Rome to Capri and the Amalfi coast. Coogan and Brydon are playing caricatures of themselves (who also co-starred in Winterbottom’s 2005 Tristram Shandy), not quite frenemies and not quite BFFs: two guys anxious about their personal and professional standing at midlife. Joking about the classical past and the stars of Hollywood’s golden age, they constantly worry how they’ll rate against the greats. Though it didn’t occur to me when I saw the movie during SIFF, their constant nattering about the permanence of art versus the fleeting pleasures of the now makes them fellow travellers with Toni Servillo in The Great Beauty. He could almost be their tour guide, and they need one. Now I grant you that newbies may find less to appreciate in the dueling Roger Moore impressions and crushed hopes of middle age. This is not a comedy for the under-40 set. Still, the gorgeous locations and food may inspire happy travels of your own. Go while you’ve got time remaining. (NR) B.R.M. Crest
The Two Faces of January Con artists always have something at stake—exposure, the possibility of their past transgressions catching up with them, and suspense about their next game. Three of them meet in the shadow of the Parthenon: Rydal (Oscar Isaac), an American tour guide knocking around Athens in the early 1960s, and Chester and Colette MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst), a stockbroker and his younger wife on extended vacation. Patricia Highsmith, the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, hatched this group of expat swindlers, so there’s likely to be at least as much psychological game-playing as conventional suspense. Yes, there’s a murder, but most of the movie is concerned with how Rydal projects guilty feelings about his own late father onto Chester; or how the discrepancy in age between the MacFarlands might create a seed of doubt between them; or whether Chester is more interested in Colette or Rydal. Director Hossein Amini adapted Highsmith’s novel, and while his movie does nicely with the concept of a sunlit noir, it doesn’t actually generate a lot of heat. For all that, I enjoyed the movie anyway, and the actors are very watchable. (PG-13) R.H. Varsity
The Zero Theorem Terry Gilliam’s latest is visually exuberant and robustly cynical, it shows the director still circling the big ideas he’s been nursing since his Monty Python days. Pat Rushin’s futuristic script is draped around the defeated shoulders of a worker drone named Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz). Convinced he is dying, he pesters his manager (David Thewlis) to be allowed to work—Qohen inputs “entities” into a fearsomely complicated database—at home. For reasons that remain murky, the increasingly jittery hero is visited by a teen tech genius (Lucas Hedges) and a saucy young woman (Melanie Thierry); also mixed into the chaos are Qohen’s daft psychotherapist (Tilda Swinton, still in Snowpiercer mode) and a genial white-haired company boss known only as Management (Gilliam’s Brothers Grimm star Matt Damon). If the film has anything like a narrative rope to cling to, it’s that Qohen is trying to solve an elusive theorem that will prove the meaning of life, or maybe the absence of the meaning of life. If you have a vast appetite for watching wheels spin, nobody does it quite as floridly as Terry Gilliam. (NR) R.H. Grand Illusion
