Local & Repertory

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Arrested Development Okay, this isn’t a movie screening, but a movie and new season are in the works for the late, great TV series that originally ran from 2003-06. Four old episodes are being screened to reacquaint yourselves with the Bluth family (like there’s any need). That means Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, and the rest of the wonderfully dry cast. And to circle in your calendars, the first new episode is to debut on Netflix on May 4. (NR)

SIFF Film Center, $5, Sat., March 30, 8 p.m.

Death Becomes Her Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, and Goldie Hawn star in this so-so comedy from 1992, directed by Robert Zemeckis. In it, a standard romantic triangle is complicated by and elixir that gives eternal life, meaning that our players can inflict all manner of injury on one another, but no one can actually die. It sounds funnier than it is. No show on Mon. (PG-13)

Central Cinema, 1411 $6-$8, March 29-April 3, 7 p.m.

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Epic De Niro SEE THE WIRE, PAGE 17.

The Jeffrey Dahmer Files Director Chris James Thompson goes back to Milwaukee to interview those who knew the notorious cannibal and serial killer, who was arrested and tried in 1991. This film is not to be confused with the 2002 feature Dahmer, which gave Jeremy Renner his breakout role. (NR)

Grand Illusion, Fri., March 29, 11 p.m.; Sat., March 30, 11 p.m.; Mon., April 1, 9 p.m.

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Little Fugitive SEE THE WIRE, PAGE 17.

Miami Connection From 1987, this rediscovered cult-film-in-the-making concerns Ninja rock, cocaine dealing, and neon colors. (NR)

SIFF Cinema Uptown, $5-$10, Fri., March 29, 9:45 p.m.; Sat., March 30, 9:45 p.m.

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Midnight Cowboy In the Oscar-winning 1969 drama, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman hustle to survive on the mean streets of NYC. Directed by John Schlesinger. Note: No show Mon. (X)

Central Cinema, $6-$8, March 29-April 3, 9:30 p.m.

Midnight Horror Call the tavern, or just drop by, to see what random gore flicks are playing in this ongoing series. Plus drink specials! (NR)

Comet Tavern, 922 E. Pike St., 322-9272, comettavern.com, Free, Thurs.-Sun.

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Sound City Directed by Dave Grohl, former drummer for Nirvana, this affectionate doc takes a look at the L.A. studio whose impeccable backing musicians helped craft hits for acts like Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Rick Springfield, Tom Petty, and Metallica. Grohl, who now leads Foo Fighters, provides an insider’s take on the craft of recording music. Note: No show Monday night. (NR)

Grand Illusion, $5-$8, March 29-April 3, 8:30 p.m.; Sat., March 30, 3:30 p.m.; Sun., March 31, 3:30 p.m.

To the Last Drop The controversial proposed Keystone pipeline, and the Canadian tar sands that would feed it, are the subjects of this new hour-long doc by Tom Radford. Discussion follows. (NR)

Keystone Congregational Church, 5019 Keystone Place N., 632-6021, keystoneseattle.org, Free, Fri., March 29, 7 p.m.

Waxie Moon in Fallen Jewel The local dancer/choreographer appears in this performance film, directed by Wes Hurley. (NR)

Central Cinema, $12, Thurs., March 28, 8 p.m.

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Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks’ inspired 1974 spoof is probably his best movie, affectionately rooted in the James Whale originals (particularly Bride of Frankenstein) yet knowingly updated with innuendo and vaudeville. Gene Wilder stars as the mad scientist who’s determined not to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. The great Madeline Kahn plays his fiancee, destined to end up with quite another man (er, monster, played by Peter Boyle). Marty Feldman is the goggle-eyed hunchback. Wilder and Brooks are both credited with the script, which includes countless classic gags—from “What knockers!” to “It could be worse; it could be raining”—and much horse whinnying at the mention of Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). Brooks was able to reuse portions of the original Frankenstein laboratory sets that Universal had saved; and that period integrity is one reason the comedy holds up so well. In a way, the Borscht Belt is as timeless as Transylvania. Screens at midnight. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Egyptian, $8.25, Fri., March 29; Sat., March 30.

Ongoing

Admission Based on a 2009 campus novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Admission contains a clutch of topical issues that Tina Fey might’ve expanded much further and funnier. (Unfortunately, she’s only acting here, not writing.) Fey plays Portia, an admissions officer at Princeton locked into a childless long-term relationship with a feckless academic (smug weakling Michael Sheen, too short on screen time). Seemingly bound for a thin envelope is shy, brainy senior Jeremiah (Nat Wolff), a scholarship student at an artsy-fartsy prep school. His teacher John (Paul Rudd) is pushing him toward Princeton, but with an ulterior motive. In swift succession, Portia becomes a very biased booster for Jeremiah, a flustered crush object for John, and a maternal figure to the latter’s son, a precocious 11-year-old orphan adopted by his single father. Fey could probably pen an entire sitcom season from these elements, but Portia feels like more of a paycheck role for her. (Likewise, Rudd coasts lazily on his charm.) Directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy, American Pie), Admission plays like cut-rate Nora Ephron—and it’s her shoes as a writer and director that Fey seems most capable of filling. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Pacific Place, Ark Lodge Cinemas, Cinebarre, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Majestic Bay Theatres, Sundance Cinemas, others

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Argo Ben Affleck’s Oscar winner begins with the November 4, 1979, attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran. While 52 Americans are held hostage, six embassy workers manage to escape, ultimately hiding out at the home of Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Determined to smuggle the houseguests out of Iran by disguising them as a film crew on a location scout, CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Affleck) enlists the help of John Chambers (John Goodman), a movie makeup artist, and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), an old-school producer. Between hokey wisecracks ribbing industry idiocy, the trio seizes on a dusty script for a Star Wars rip-off called Argo. Affleck’s movie doesn’t reflect who we are now so much as it argues for what Hollywood can be. It’s a love letter from Affleck to the industry that made him, shunned him, and loves nothing more than to be loved. (R) KARINA LONGWORTH Admiral, Crest, others

The Gatekeepers Israeli director Dror Moreh says he was directly inspired by Errol Morris’ 2003 The Fog of War, which drew lessons from the Vietnam War that applied to Iraq and Afghanistan. But those were our wars, our bloody mistakes, political bungling, and costly occupations. Israel’s Occupied Territories, acquired after 1967’s Six-Day War, are a different matter. So too is its secretive Shin Bet security agency, which conducts counterterrorism operations in those Palestinian regions, including drone strikes and targeted assassinations. What’s most newsworthy here is that Moreh convinced six former Shin Bet leaders to go on record before the camera. They are surprisingly skeptical about Israeli policies for controlling the Occupied Territories. And while there’s no consensus view, if Moreh asked for a vote, it seems they’d go back to pre-1967 borders. Basically, though no one wants to come out and say it, the Six-Day War was a Pyrrhic victory, the acquisition of a demographic time bomb compounded by Israel’s settlement policies. One statement rings universal, and ex–Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin puts it in English for global emphasis: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Harvard Exit

Ginger & Rosa It’s 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and English teens Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert) are worrying about nuclear armageddon. Neither can take much comfort in their home lives. Rosa’s father left years ago. Ginger’s still got hers (Alessandro Nivola), although he’s not a very good one. Neither girl respects her mother, whom they regard as pathetic and dreamless women. A strong cast gives weight to the two families’ tensions and troubles. Fanning has a winningly easy smile, and she makes Ginger’s loss of innocence is painful to watch. Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, as Ginger’s mother, has a wince-worthy British accent but is convincing as a beleaguered wife. But the scenes are cut much too short, giving the movie an unneeded sense of rushing, and director Sally Potter (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) gives too much away too soon: In an early scene, Ginger’s flirty father makes eyes at Rosa through the rearview mirror, so it doesn’t come as a surprise when Rosa reveals to Ginger that she feels a “soul connection” with her dad. The characters are well-wrought in Potter’s coming-of-age drama, but what happens to them is too predictable. (PG-13) ERIN K. THOMPSON Lincoln Square, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Guild 45th

Quartet At Beecham House, a baronial residence for retired musicians, former conductor Cedric (Michael Gambon) determines to reunite the foursome who shone in a long-ago production of Rigoletto. Assembling the headlining act requires a few desultory scenes of encouraging Beecham’s newest addition, opera diva Jean Horton (Maggie Smith), to participate. Jean, once romantically involved with Reginald (Tom Courtenay), who passes the time giving gentle lectures to bused-in youths about the difference between opera and rap, states her objections sharply: “I can’t insult the memory of who I was.” That all-too-real fear for the eminences gathered here stands as the only true pathos in the sentimental and pandering Quartet, adapted by Ronald Harwood from his 1999 play and directed by Dustin Hoffman, stepping behind the camera for the first time. “Their love of life is infectious,” says the staff doctor, belying the previous scenes of agony over hip-replacement surgery and Reginald’s stated wish to have “a dignified senility.” The physician might have been referring exclusively to the randy joker played by Billy Connolly, prone to public urination and violating the staff’s personal space—acts sanctifying the memory of who he still is. (PG-13) MELISSA ANDERSON Kirkland Parkplace, Guild 45th, SIFF Cinema Uptown, others

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Searching for Sugar Man Malik Bendjelloul’s Oscar-winning documentary is such a gift. In telling the tale of Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican-American balladeer from Detroit who cut a couple of tepidly received LPs in the early ‘70s, vanished, and subsequently became an Elvis-sized rock god in South Africa, the Swedish filmmaker sidesteps arthritic VH1-style “where are they now” antics in favor of a more equivocal interrogation of celebrity culture. It’s no huge surprise when Rodriguez himself turns up, still living the same modest existence as before his brush with micro-fame. Better still, Rodriguez’s apparent contentment with an ordinary working life lets Searching for Sugar Man hold up a mirror to what we’ve come to expect from artists in an age of pervasive, entitled notoriety. (PG-13) MARK HOLCOMB SIFF Cinema Uptown

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Silver Linings Playbook If you took the fighting out of The Fighter, David O. Russell’s previous movie, you’d be left with a close, fractious family like the Solitanos of his hugely appealing new Silver Linings Playbook. Instead of Boston Irish and boxing, we have Philadelphia Italian and the Eagles. The family patriarch (a fine, restrained Robert De Niro) is an OCD bookie bound by strange rituals to the team; his wide-eyed wife (Jacki Weaver) is the nervous family conciliator/enabler; and their volatile son Pat (Bradley Cooper, wired) is fresh out of the nuthouse with a restraining order from his ex. But Pat is looking for those silver linings through self-improvement: reading, running, losing weight, scheming to win back his wife. Russell’s pell-mell approach perfectly suits the story of Pat’s mania and wrong-footed romance with young widow Tiffany (the Oscar-winning Jennifer Lawrence), who’s even more titanic in her instability than Pat. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, Big Picture, Cinebarre, Pacific Place, others

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The Waiting Room Granted intimate access to Oakland’s Highland Hospital, director Peter Nicks basically employs the reality-TV approach of TLC’s old Trauma: Life in the ER series. Then he overlays secondary interviews to add socioeconomic background. The majority of those in the waiting room, sometimes for days, are there for one simple reason. Says one likable young bearded fellow, his testicular cancer requiring surgery: “I don’t have any insurance.” We meet a carpet layer with bone spurs on his spine, a little girl with a serious infection and unemployed parents, a guy whose bullet wound is aching, a homeless alcoholic whom the doctors greet by first name. They are, mostly, a sympathetic lot. They are also mostly low-income and minority (this is Oakland, after all, where the recession still seems to be raging). Bound for PBS later this year, The Waiting Room tells us what we already know, but its lessons are worth repeating. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Varsity

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; 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; Varsity, 4329 University Way NE, 781-5755.