Local & Repertory
•
Down by Law Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 prison escape comedy places hipsters John Lurie and Tom Waits in the swamps of Louisiana, in the company of pre-Life Is Beautiful Roberto Benigni. Crisp black-and-white photography and a great soundtrack compliment Jarmusch’s wry humor—relaxed, situational, and founded in the endearing eccentricities of his characters. With Benigni’s lovely wife, Nicoletta Braschi. (R) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $6-$8. 10 p.m. Fri.-Wed.
Princess Mononoke Hayao Miyazaki’s epic 1999 fantasy is grounded in a mythology as richly complex as Disney’s fairy tales are simplistic. The last of a lost clan, Prince Ashitaka leaves his peaceful paradise on a quest to find a cure for the demonic disease threatening to devour him. He travels west into a medieval Japan in the early stages of industrialization, where he finds forests razed and the earth sucked dry of resources. Yet the natural world has rallied to fight the human incursion. Miyazaki paints his figures in moral shades of gray—presenting the yin and yang within both man and nature. His figurehead is Mononoke herself, a wolf child and primal eco-warrior who leads the charge against her blood kin, humankind, in a battle of apocalyptic proportions. (PG-13) SEAN AXMAKER Central Cinema, $6-$8. 7 p.m. Fri.-Wed. & 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun.
Rock Out With Your VCR Out Curators from Scarecrow Video present the worst bands of the ’80s and beyond, in al their MTV glory. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org. $5-$9. 9 p.m. Sat.
Sweet Dreams Ice cream and African drumming precede this doc about musicians in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. (NR)
Keystone Church, 5019 Keystone Pl. N., meaningfulmovies.org. Free. 6:30 p.m.
Ongoing
•
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) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Harvard Exit, Ark Lodge, Vashon, Kirkland Parkplace, others
•
Calvary This is a bumpy, uneven picture full of colorful digressions—is that simply to say it’s Irish?—and narrative dead-ends. Its writer and director is John Michael McDonagh, whose The Guard was no less unwieldy (though more comical). But both pictures are given ballast, and a deep keel beyond that, by the greatness of Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson’s cleric, Father James, tends a small ungrateful flock on the windswept west coast of Ireland. Catholicism is fading fast, even in Ireland, and the widening pedophilia scandal has made the church a damaged brand. Father James is a newcomer in a village now venting what seems to be centuries of resentment against the old ecclesiastical control. That anger is expressed in the film’s very first scene, set in a confessional, where Father James is told he’ll be killed in a week, to be sacrificed for the sins of his church. Calvary is equally a thriller about a man investigating his own murder and a consideration of what it means for a nation to lose its collective, unifying faith. Father James’ seven-day search leads him through an array of sinners, skeptics, wife-beaters, adulterers, suicide contemplators, and such. They’re a colorful lot, not entirely plausible as people—more like movie archetypes or illustrative characters in Pilgrim’s Progress. Still, this is Gleeson’s show, and he’s what makes Calvary worthwhile. (R) B.R.M. Sundance, Harvard Exit
Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism—apart from the constant Twitter plugs—is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene—but no, he’s only there to help. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. Just expect no salt. (R) B.R.M. Sundance
•
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 the Black Power movement, and even perhaps a trace of reggae into his great band Africa ’70. No less a polymath than Questlove from the Roots here offers his tribute to Fela, who was born into privilege yet endlessly battled the petro-military-oligarchy that often jailed him (and notoriously killed his mother). 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) B.R.M. Varsity
•
Frank Michael Fassbender spends most of this unlikely band comedy inside an oversized papier-mache head, which ought to make Frank the world’s worst musical frontman. Instead he inspires fierce, cultish devotion among his his band, the Soronprfbs, who may have no actual fans. Part of the suspense here for viewers is when or if Frank will ever remove his fake noggin. For new keyboard player Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), the suspense is whether Frank’s suspicious acolytes will ever truly accept him; and further, if Frank will ever acknowledge Jon as a musician likewise possessing genuine talent. This is a fundamentally sad film, yet one full of slapstick, silliness, and laughter. Frank is essentially unknowable, so his band willingly accepts every humiliation and ridiculous challenge to earn—or at least guess at—his good favor. (The most hilariously protective of Frank, and scornful of Jon, is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s fierce Clara—a kind of muse and ninja.) English journalist Jon Ronson really did play in a band led by a guy like Frank. However, he and director Lenny Abrahamson have greatly embellished the tale, which now makes you think of any number of outsider artist-savants and the thrall they exert over their insecure followers. Is Frank cult leader or charlatan, genius or insane? It’s hard to decide, since he never breaks character—or can’t, really, given the mask. (NR) B.R.M. Varsity
•
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. Sundance, Thornton Place, Kirkland Parkplace, Ark Lodge, Big Picture, others
The Hundred-Foot Journey In the South of France, the zaniness begins when the Kadam family, newly arrived in France from India, fetch up with car trouble in a small town. Restaurateurs by trade, they seize the opportunity to open an Indian place—in a spot across the street from a celebrated bastion of French haute cuisine, Le Saule Pleureur. This Michelin-starred legend is run by frosty Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), whose demeanor is the direct opposite of the earthy Kadam patriarch (Om Puri, a crafty old pro). It’s culinary and cultural war, but will the cooking genius of Papa’s 20-something son Hassan (Manish Dayal) be denied? Madame Mallory can recognize a chef’s innate talent by asking a prospect to cook an omelet in her presence. You can already hear the eggs breaking in Hassan’s future—the movie’s like that. Daval is a good-looking and likable leading man, so it’s too bad he’s given an unpersuasive love story with Madame Mallory’s sous-chef, Marguerite—Charlotte Le Bon, a pretty actress who doesn’t look convinced by the love story, either; her facial expression perpetually conveys the silent question, “Are you sure this is in the script?” Mirren hits her marks, and the food is of course drooled over. Director Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, etc.) knows how to keep things tidy, and Journey is pleasant product, even if it seems as premeditated as a Marvel Comics blockbuster. (PG) R.H. Sundance, Kirkland Parkplace, others
•
Land Ho! Dr. Mitch is well into his 60s, adult kids gone, divorced, eating dinner alone when we meet him. He won’t admit it, of course, especially to his somber visitor Colin, his former brother-in-law, who carries the weight of post-midlife more heavily. Colin initially seems the guy in need of cheering up, which the earthy, garrulous Mitch makes his mission by taking the two of them to Iceland. Land Ho! is a buddy movie and a road-trip picaresque with an unusual pedigree. It was directed and written (with a healthy dollop of improv) by indie filmmakers Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens; the latter cast her loud, colorful cousin, Earl Lynn Nelson (a non-actor), as Mitch; and the Bellevue-based Australian Paul Eenhoorn actor plays his quiet foil. These old goats are in need of an adventure—through the discos and fashionable restaurants of Reykjavik; out to the remote hot springs and black-sand beaches—and they’re fully aware it could be their last adventure. (“Life is too short to sit still,” says Mitch, who gradually reveals his own problems and need for companionship.) What Nelson and Eenhoorn have is genuine Hope and Crosby–style chemistry, which makes the film so charming. And though Colin quietly protests the overbearing Mitch, we see—thanks to Eenhoorn’s expert performance—how he’s secretly pleased by the attention and reanimated by Mitch’s vulgar vigor. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th
Lucy Insofar as playing transcendent thinking/killing machines, Scarlett Johansson is definitely on a roll. Last year she was the omniscient OS Samantha in Her. This spring she was the alien huntress in Under the Skin. Now, in Luc Besson’s enjoyably silly sci-fi shoot-em-up, she’s a young woman whose brain achieves 100 percent of potential, owing to a forced drug-mule errand gone wrong. The bogus conceit that humans only use 10 percent of our cerebellum takes way too long for Besson to advance, with Morgan Freeman’s tedious scientist and nature documentary footage used to amplify his dubious theory. No matter: Lucy is soon learning Mandarin, electrical engineering, mad handgun skills, and Formula One-level driving on the fly. (Telekinesis soon follows, of course.) Her goal, which takes her from Taiwan to Paris, is to track down the other couriers with bags of IQ-growth hormone sewn in their guts and mainline those purple crystals—all for the good of humanity, which she hopes to enlighten before her apotheosis. (Pursuing her is the vengeful drug lord Jang, played by Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik, who wants his stash back.) Beneath the gunfire and philosophical malarky, there is—as in Besson’s best action efforts—a sound sentimental foundation to Lucy. This slacker turned godhead-assassin interrupts her mission to call her mom. “I feel everything. I remember everything,” she says tearfully, describing memories back to infancy. For anyone who’s ever forgotten where they put the car keys, Lucy makes 11 percent seem awfully tempting. (R) B.R.M. TK if any
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. Guild 45th, Kirkland Parkplace, others
A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA—represented by Robin Wright—to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) B.R.M. Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace
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. Sundance, others
•
The One I Love It’s almost impossible to describe the fanciful sci-fi plot here without resorting to significant clues, so let’s be vague about things. Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) and Ethan (Mark Duplass) are a bickering L.A. couple making no progress in marriage counseling. (Ethan’s affair will be revealed later.) Childless and confortable, they’re studies in yuppie self-absorption, neither one willing to concede ground to the other. Their smooth therapist (Ted Danson) sends them to a weekend retreat that’s worked well for other clients, he says. There, Sophie and Ethan wonder what became of their fun, Lollapalooza-going, X-dropping days. What happened to their kinder, cooler selves? In a very big story twist, writer Justin Lader and director Charlie McDowell cleverly filter that feeling of past/present discontent through a refracting lens. (Duplass actually gave them the movie’s premise to develop.) Just how well do you know your spouse? You want to be a better partner, but it takes so much damn effort. And The One I Love forces Ethan and Sophie to make that effort; their very freedom depends upon it. Thus their weekend lesson may be this: A successful relationship requires you to be a very good actor. (R) B.R.M. Sundance
Song of the New Earth Maybe it’s just me, but the therapeutic efficacy of music must have more convincing advocates than “sound shaman” Tom Kenyon. Subject of this doc by Ward Serrill (The Heart of the Game), Kenyon travels the hotel-conference-room circuit here and in Europe leading meditative seminars—drawing audiences to hear him chant in an odd, throaty falsetto (that often suggests Hermione Gingold) accompanied by finger cymbals, sonorous bowls, and the like. Kenyon arrived at this calling after years as a fairly promiscuous collector of spiritual influences (statuary from Ganesh to Our Lady of Guadalupe adorns his Orcas Island yard) and epiphanies, here rendered in off-putting animated sequences by Drew Christie. Though a perfectly nice man, Kenyon neither says nor does anything in Song of the New Earth to persuade me he warrants this prettily photographed hagiography; it’s by acolytes for acolytes. (NR) GAVIN BORCHERT SIFF Cinema Uptown
•
Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel—Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders—and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) R.H. TK if any
•
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. Sundance, SIFF Cinema Uptown
