Local & Repertory
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Blade Runner: The Final Cut Ridley Scott’s vanguard science-fiction epic from 1982 has been digitally tweaked in hundreds of ways, most of which will be noticed only by the most pious of fanboys. Mainly, the rerelease is a good excuse to indulge once more in Scott’s iconic and highly influential vision of a future Los Angeles choked by rain, neon, and cheap pleasure palaces, where Harrison Ford’s bounty hunter trolls the godforsaken urban landscape for those renegade “replicants.” Of course, there comes a steely-eyed brunette (Sean Young), who may be a replicant herself. It has always been difficult to discuss Blade Runner—one of the few genuine masterpieces of the forlorn 1980s—without focusing on its style, and yet it is a movie where style becomes content and vice versa, as the romantic fatalism of ’40s film noir freely intermingles with the visionary imagination of Philip K. Dick. (R)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. Midnights Fri. & Sat.
Comin’ at Ya! This is a 3-D presentation of the little-remembered 1981 spaghetti Western, with plenty of gunflights, arrows, and flying furniture directed at the lens. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. 9:45 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 9:15 p.m. Sun.
The Device This local horror flick by Jeremy Berg finds two adult sisters reconnecting while they try to solve an old family secret that may involve … aliens?!? (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org. $5-$9. 8 p.m. Mon.
Gremlins Watch as Phoebe Cates and Zach Galligan (where is he now?) battle ill-behaved green puppets in this 1984 sci-fi comedy, basically a riff on the old Star Trek “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode, effectively reworked by writer Chris Columbus, director Joe Dante, and executive producer Steven Spielberg (who, we hear, has since moved on to better things). (PG)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 7 p.m. Sat.-Mon. Also 3 p.m. Sat. matinee.
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It’s A Wonderful Life Times are tough in Frank Capra’s 1946 holiday classic. Banks are failing. People are losing their homes. Veterans are returning from a bloody war abroad. Families are falling apart. And all these stresses converge during the holidays, when there may not even be enough money in the household to buy any presents. Sound familiar? In the GI’s 44th-annual screening of this seasonal classic, the distressed town of Bedford Falls could today be Anytown, USA. And beleaguered banker James Stewart could be any small businessman struggling to remain solvent amid our current financial crisis. If It’s a Wonderful Life is arguably the best Christmas movie ever made, that’s because it’s certainly one of the most depressing Christmas movies ever made. Our suicidal hero is given a future vision—courtesy of an angel (Henry Travers)—of bankruptcy, death, poverty, and evil, unfettered capitalism (hello, Lionel Barrymore). Even his wife (Donna Reed) ends up a spinster in the alternative universe of Pottersville. Before the inevitable tear-swelling plot reversal, the movie is 100 percent grim. Yet amazingly, 68 years later, it preserves the power to inspire hope for better days ahead. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Grand Illusion, see grandillusioncinema.org for showtimes. $5-$9. Runs Fri., Dec. 12-Thurs., Jan. 1.
Landmark Poster Sale Here’s a chance to shop for your favorite film lover, choosing among this year’s movie posters, from Generation War to Ernest & Celestine. (NR)
Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., 632-8821, landmarktheatres.com. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sun.
Live by Night From 1957, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue features Walter Matthau as a mobster menacing New York dockworkers, despite the efforts of a crusading DA. Also on hand as a corrupt labor lawyer, the ever-amusing Dan Duryea, who never seems to take any studio assignment too seriously. (NR)
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $63–$68 series. $8 individual. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Dec. 18.
The Princess Bride/Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Two family favorites are running on a complicated weekend schedule through New Year’s Day. The 1987 Bride is being screened as a quote-along presentation (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” etc.) while the 1971 Wonka features “Smell-O-Vision,” so be warned if you’re fragrance-intolerent. (NR)
SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, $7-$12. See siff.net for showtimes. Run Fri., Dec. 12-Thurs., Jan. 1.
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Scrooged Bill Murray stars in this spry and darkly comic take on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The 1988 satire, directed by Richard Donner, is set in the world of TV entertainment that Murray had by then gained ample reason to hate. Carol King plays the daffy Christmas fairy who gives Murray’s character the holiday thrashing he deserves. (PG-13)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 9:30 p.m. Sat.-Tues.
Greg Sestero Co-author of the recent book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, Sestero will appear before a screening of that same 2003 vanity project/cult oddity by director Tommy Wiseau. This should be a fascinating evening. (NR)
Central Cinema, $7-$9. 7 p.m. (presentation) & 9 p.m. (movie). Fri.
Why Don’t You Play in Hell? From Japanese director Sion Sono (Cold Fish), this is apparently a violent and stylish salute both to old yakuza movies and the endangered medium of 35 mm film itself. (NR)
Grand Illusion, $5-$9. 9:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat.
Event Yadda. (NR)
Details
Ongoing
Antarctica: A Year on Ice First-time filmmaker Anthony Powell has worked in Antarctica on and off for 15 years. He’s even spent nine long, sunless winters in Antarctica, where he also met and married his wife. So he brings a practical insider’s expertise to both the climate (cold, austere, and often beautiful) and human society (close, confined, and often claustrophobic) of the place. Powell is a satellite and communications repair guy, and he focuses his interviews not on noble scientists but on the background staff, almost like Walmart workers on the ice. We hear from a store clerk, a fireman, a helicopter pilot, and so forth. As with Powell’s own narration, their remarks aren’t philosophical. Powell embraces the Antarctic scenery, but also the quotidian life of his fellow workers. Their community vibe suggests small-town Alaska, particularly during the annual Christmas festival (this during summer, when the sun never sets). And having made a specialty of time-lapse photography (some series last for days), Powell does not shy away from the beauty shots, which will please armchair adventurers. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Crest
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The Babadook How did this children’s book get into the house? Nobody seems to know. This one—it shares its title with the movie we are watching—is called The Babadook, almost an anagram for “bad book,” and that’s the effect it has on Amelia (Essie Davis) and her 6-year-old son Sam (Noah Wiseman). They’re especially vulnerable to its dark magic. Among other issues, the death of Sam’s father some years earlier is very much in the background of the scary little tale that unfolds. The Babadook himself is dark-suited and creepy-fingered, and he wears a cape and a Victorian hat, like a creature from an earlier era of horror—suggesting that what’s scary never really goes out of style. After a great deal of slow-burning buildup, the Babadook becomes real, and mother and son must wage battle (but then they have been all along). This is the debut feature of writer/director Jennifer Kent, who skillfully keeps us locked into the moment-by-moment thrills of a monster movie, but also insists that this Babadook is clearly a stand-in for the other problems that inflict the lonely household: grief, guilt, depression, an unwillingness to live life. The Babadook may be a monster, but he’s the monster Amelia and Sam needed. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, SIFF Cinema Uptown
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Birdman A movie star in a career skid since he stopped playing a masked superhero named Birdman back in the ’90s, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is preparing his big comeback in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver stories, funded and directed by himself. Obstacles abound: Riggan’s co-star (Andrea Riseborough) announces she’s pregnant with his child; his grown daughter (Emma Stone) is his assistant, and not his biggest fan; a critic plans to destroy the play. And, in the movie’s funniest headache, Riggan must endure a popular but insufferable stage actor (Edward Norton, doing a wonderful self-parody) who’s involved with the play’s other actress (Naomi Watts). This is all going on while Riggan maintains a tenuous hold on his own sanity—he hears Birdman’s voice in his head, for one thing. To create Riggan’s world, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Gravity cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki present the film as a continuous unbroken shot (disguised with artful digital seams). Birdman serves so many heady moments it qualifies as a bona fide happening. It has a few stumbles, but the result is truly fun to watch. And Keaton—the former Batman, of course—is a splendidly weathered, human presence. Ironically or not, he keeps the film grounded. (R) ROBERT HORTON Guild 45th, Pacific Place, Lincoln Square, Kirkland, Bainbridge, Cinebarre, others
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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period—Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned—the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) R.H. Crest
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Citizenfour Fugitive leaker Edward Snowden has invited documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (The Oath) and The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald into his Hong Kong hotel room. In this absorbing character study, they debate how and when to spill the information he took from his job at the National Security Agency. Clicking the SEND button carries as much weight as Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat in All the President’s Men. This straightforward documentary may be smaller-scaled than a political thriller, but it has similar suspense: Everybody in the room realizes the stakes—and the dangers—of exposing a whistleblower to public scrutiny. One man’s whistleblower is another man’s traitor, a debate that Poitras doesn’t pause to consider, so confident is she of Snowden’s cause. Having this access to Snowden in the exact hours he went from being a nonentity with top-secret clearance to a hero/pariah is a rare chance to see a now-historical character in the moment of truth. By the end of the film, we get a scene that suggests that Snowden is not alone in his whistleblowing status—a tantalizing hint (scribbled by Greenwald on pieces of paper) of another story to come. (NR) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown
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Force Majeure On a ski vacation in the French Alps, Tomas, Ebba, and their two young kids are a sleek, modern Swedish family seemingly stepped out of an iPhone 6 ad. At lunch on a sunny balcony, the family and fellow diners are suddenly hit by a seeming avalanche. The frame goes white as we hear sounds of chaos and confusion; then everyone realizes that only a light dusting of snow has fallen on their fettuccine alfredo. After those few seconds of panic, there’s laughter all around. Thank God we’ve survived; now let’s not talk about it. Ruben Ostlund’s sly, unsettling study of marital dissolution is what happens when people talk about it. Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) can’t let go of the fact that Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) grabbed his phone and abandoned the family in the face of possible doom. Copping to his cowardice only makes him seem more pathetic to Ebba, who begins re-evaluating the whole basis of their marriage. If not for the sake of their kids (played by actual siblings), what’s the point in staying together? This isn’t a fraught drama of the old Bergmanesque variety; it’s more a dark comedy of shame. Men reveal themselves to be posturing fools here, while women sensibly wonder if they’re the only ones keeping our species alive. (R) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Cinema Uptown
Fury In David Ayer’s proudly old-fashioned WWII drama, Sgt. Don Collier (Pitt) gives no indication of his life before the war. Nor is there any depth to his typical crew—Shia LaBeouf the pious Bible-thumper, Michael Pena the steadfast Mexican-American, Jon Bernthal the volatile hick—and their regional accents. Because every WWII movie demands one, the greenhorn here is Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist recruited to man the machine gun where his predecessor perished in a bloody puddle. Fury covers 24 hours in April 1945, as Allied forces roll through Germany in the war’s endgame. Collier’s most lethal enemies are the few remaining Tiger tanks, much better armored than our flimsy Shermans. Though victory is, to us, preordained, the mood here is all mud and exhaustion. Collier and crew have been fighting for years, from North Africa to Europe, to the point where he says of his tank, “This is my home.” (German troops say the same thing during the finale—not that it saves them; Nazis die by the score.) Ayer creates a strange, overlong interlude at Fury’s midpoint, as two German women host Collier and Ellison, though this is hardly a date movie. In an otherwise predictable, patriotic flick, here Collier seems to yearn for a calm, cultured oasis amid the chaos of war. (R) BRIAN MILLER Pacific Place, others
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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) BRIAN MILLER Sundance, Cinebarre, Alderwood 16, others?
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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will—in their own zany way—end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right—and keeping the story’s goals simple—can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) R.H. Crest, Admiral
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The Homesman Though ailing at the movies, the myth of the West is alive and well in American politics, currently full of gun-totin’, hog-castratin’ candidates. Yet The Homesman is so good it makes you wish director and co-star Tommy Lee Jones could somehow make a Western a year, just to keep exploring the pockets of American frontier experience that still need filling in. This one offers a series of new wrinkles, beginning with its route: The story goes from west to east, the opposite of most Westerns. During the 1850s, Nebraska “spinster” Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank, a fine and precise performance) volunteers to transport three women back to Iowa. They’ve been driven mad by the prairie and their men, or at least they have become no longer socially acceptable. Claim-jumper and full-time scalawag George Briggs (Jones) will accompany Mary on her grim, weekslong job. Their episodic adventures bring them into contact with a variety of frontier types along the way (played by Tim Blake Nelson, James Spader, Hailee Steinfeld, Barry Corbin, and no less than Meryl Streep). The setup suggests the potential for showing the West from the female characters’ perspective, which isn’t entirely the case, although the story does depict the unfairness of frontier life for women. The real subject is the West itself—the brutality of it and the price paid for settling it. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Pacific Place, TK others…
Horrible Bosses 2 The first film’s trio of losers—played by Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day—is now trying to go the self-employment route by creating a new bathing gadget. But their idiotic invention, the “Shower Buddy,” brings them into partnership with a corporate shark (Christoph Waltz) and his conniving son (a manic Chris Pine, from Star Trek). When the boys get screwed over, their response is to kidnap the son and hold him for ransom. One way the sequel improves the formula is that we can sort of buy these three simpletons preparing an abduction. Wall-to-wall jokes ensue, and the non sequiturs are freely distributed. Jamie Foxx returns as the boys’ underworld advisor. Also returning to the cast are Jennifer Aniston—not quite naughty enough to pull off her sex-addicted dentist, but give her points for trying—and Kevin Spacey. But the movie’s good bits come from the way director Sean Anders lets the main threesome play off central ideas that allow for improvisation. Bateman’s deadpan is first-rate as usual, while Day and Sudeikis bounce around like puppies. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Pacific Place, TK others…
Interstellar Reaching about 90 years forward from its start in a near-future dystopia, Christopher Nolan’s solemn space epic commits itself both to a father/daughter reunion and the salvation of mankind. Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper is sent on a mission to plunge into a wormhole near Saturn because Michael Caine tells him to. And no one in a Chris Nolan movie can say no to Michael Caine, here playing a professor named Brand who also sends along his scientist daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) with Cooper and two others. Before leaving, Cooper tells his daughter—played by three actresses at different ages—that maybe they’ll be the same age when he returns home, because of Einstein and other stuff we slept through in AP physics. The two ceremoniously synchronize their watches, sure to figure later—two hours for us, rather more for them—in the story. Cooper and company must investigate possible planets for colonization (scouted in advance by other astronauts). One is water, the other ice, and both prove quite lethal. There’s some action (though none so elegant as in the much superior Gravity), but what Nolan really wants Cooper’s team to do is discuss relativity, gravity, the fifth dimension, and quantum data (the latter requiring a visit to a black hole). There’s talk of ghosts and a cosmic “they” who chose Cooper for his long mission. But with the frequent recitations of Dylan Thomas poetry and the grown Murph (Jessica Chastain) stabbing chalky equations on a blackboard, the movie feels like an undergraduate seminar in space—one that’s three hours long. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Pacific Science Center IMAX, SIFF Cinema Uptown, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, Thornton Place, Majestic Bay, Bainbridge, Kirkland, Admiral, Cinebarre, others
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) ROBERT HORTON Kirkland
Nightcrawler Titled and released as if it were a Halloween horror flick, Dan Gilroy’s dark media fable has more in common with Network than Nosferatu. Lou (the politely creepy Jake Gyllenhaal) is identified as an earnest, calculating criminal in the opening minutes; he’s never less than transparent about his motives, most of which appear to have been gleaned from self-help books and inspirational Internet sites. He’s an amoral American hustler, a type descended from Dale Carnegie and Sammy Glick. A career in stolen scrap metal soon gives way to freelance videography at L.A. car wrecks and crime scenes, and Lou’s basest impulses are naturally encouraged by a ratings-starved TV station. (Rene Russo is amusingly aroused as the station’s “vampire shift” manager—a venal Mrs. Robinson who mentors eager Lou.) Nightcrawler is more a parable of unfettered capitalism—there’s your horror—than realistic media satire. Lou’s swift progress in TMZ-land brings him a rival (Bill Paxton) and a naive protegee (English actor Riz Ahmed), but no one here has—or needs—much depth. Lou has no history, no family, only his hollow aphorisms of success. Nightcrawler never quite settles on a satisfactory tone between squeamish laughter and a smarter, Chayefskian disgust, but Lou you remember—a creature for these craven times, prospering from our need to see the worst. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance, Pacific Place, Cinebarre, others
Pelican Dreams From Bay Area director Judy Irving (The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill), this is more of a personal film with a smaller flock. She describes her childhood identification with the gawky pelican, so clumsy on shore but so graceful in flight. Irving follows one sickly pelican rescued on the Golden Gate Bridge, which she dubs Gigi, and a few other stories of pelicans-on-the-mend. It’s no surprise that she finds a small community of avid pelican-philes (one even tattooed with the bird); as with Wild Parrots, she’s intent on the bond between a charismatic species and us earthbound admirers. Not an ornithologist, Irving does tend toward airy sentiment and anthropomorphism (“What does it feel like to fly?”). Still, she clearly loves the birds and their devoted protectors, who patiently explain that pelicans can’t be tamed or treated as pets. Yet like crows and pigeons, they’re becoming accustomed both to us and our urban environment. (NR) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Film Center
Rosewater Making his debut behind the camera, Jon Stewart’s life-inspired movie is about the Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari (Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal). In 2009 Bahari was arrested by Iranian authorities while covering the disputed elections in Tehran; included in the “evidence” against him was a Daily Show segment. We see Bahari’s home life in Toronto and his journalistic work for Newsweek in Tehran, where his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo) still lives. Once in prison, his main tormentor (Kim Bodnia) obsesses over whether Bahari’s arthouse DVDs are actually pornography and the question of just how many Jews are running the world. Stewart relishes these absurdities, as you would expect. Rosewater too frequently has a dutiful quality, careful always to balance the negatives of the Iranian authorities with the positives of Iranian culture. The movie doesn’t announce the arrival of a born filmmaker, but it’s much better than a dilettante project—Stewart keeps a difficult storytelling subject moving right along. And there are sequences, like Garcia Bernal’s exhilarating solo dance at a crucial point in his imprisonment, that convey a real appreciation for the human element that survives amid political horror. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Meridian, Lincoln Square, others
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. (R) BRIAN MILLER Crest
St. Vincent Bill Murray is pretty much the sole draw for the movie, and given his unique screen presence, it’s something. St. Vincent is all about the Murray persona: a deeply sarcastic man struggling to find his way to sincerity. That struggle is why Murray looks so melancholy in so much of his work. But it’s not a good movie. Murray’s slovenly Brooklyn misanthrope is Vincent, who reluctantly agrees to babysit the 12-year-old son (Jaeden Lieberher) of his new next-door neighbor (Melissa McCarthy). This will take time away from drinking, gambling at the racetrack, or visiting his Russian prostitute (Naomi Watts). We are also cued to the reasons Vincent is curmudgeonly, none of which will come as much of a surprise. Writer/director Theodore Melfi tries hard to convince us that Vincent is capable of great nastiness, but even these efforts seem rigged to ultimately show the soft, gooey center of both character and movie. As much pleasure as I took from watching Murray stretch out, I didn’t believe a minute of it. But do stick around for the end credits, when Murray sings along to Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From the Storm.” It’s the movie’s one great sequence. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Guild 45th, Meridian, Alderwood 16, others
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. Crest
The Theory of Everything The Stephen Hawking biopic opens with our hero (Les Miz star Eddie Redmayne) as a young nerd at university, where his geeky manner doesn’t entirely derail his ability to woo future wife Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones). Hawking is diagnosed with motor neuron disease at age 21 and given a two-year prognosis for survival—one of the film’s sharpest ideas is to allow time to pass, and pass, without pointing out that Hawking is demolishing the expectations for someone with his condition. James Marsh’s movie is officially adapted from (now ex-wife) Jane Hawking’s memoir, so the love story has its share of ups and downs. This is where Theory manages to distinguish itself from the usual Oscar bait. Whether dealing with Jane’s closeness to a widowed choirmaster) who becomes part of the Hawking family, or Stephen’s chemistry with his speech therapist, the film catches a frank, worldly view of the way things happen sometimes. No special villains here—you might say it’s just the way the universe unfolds. Redmayne’s performance is a fine piece of physical acting, and does suggest some of the playfulness in Hawking’s personality. From now until Oscar night, you will not be able to get away from it. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, Lincoln Square, Lynwood (Bainbridge) TK others
