Local & Repertory
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Fremont Outdoor Cinema The Coen brothers’ 1998 stoner-noir The Big Lebowski is Raymond Chandler filtered through dirty bong water, where almost every line of dialogue is a hazy, hilarious non sequitur. My favorite is when accidental P.I. Jeff Bridges (forever the Dude) is ambushed in his tub by nihilists bearing a ferret. “Hey, nice marmot,” he greets them, with his usual unflustered amiability. Nothing rattles Bridges’ Dude, not a lost rug, not a leering Tara Reid, not a lisping John Turturro, not a raving John Goodman, not a simpering Steve Buscemi, and not even shrieking performance artist Julianne Moore, who joins Bridges in a Busby Berkeley-style bowling fantasy that sums up the movie’s sweet, silly spirit. (R) BRIAN MILLER 3501 Phinney Ave. N., 781-4230, fremontoutdoormovies.com. $30 series, $5 individual (21 and over). Movies start at dusk. Sat.
Hank and Asha This recent rom-com has a couple connect via video chats between Prague and New York. The titular lovers are played by Andrew Pastides and Mahira Kakkar. (NR)
SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net. $6-$11. 7 p.m. Mon.
Hot Fuzz Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have built their 2007 buddy-cop homage-parody on everything from The Wicker Man to Point Break. Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, the best cop on the London police force banished to the idyllic setting of Sandford. Things, of course, aren’t what they seem, and the movie crawls toward a combustible finale that references damned near every cop movie Wright’s ever seen. Point Break is a particular favorite of Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the town drunk and police office with whom Nicholas is partnered. Ultimately, Hot Fuzz is a kind of a love story between these two guys—appropriate, as the film is obviously inspired by Lethal Weapon. But Hot Fuzz transcends its influences. It thrives as its own entity, a British variation on Hollywood nonsense. (R) ROBERT WILONSKY Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $6-$8. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Tues.
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Moonlight Cinema The 1988 action flick Die Hard made a big-screen star of Bruce Willis. He plays a cop whose wife … oh, forget it; you know the plot. Bruce battles the baddies in a big Los Angeles office tower; bullets and glass fly all over the place; and he and terrorist Alan Rickman basically have an acting contest to see which thespian can toe over the line into hetero-camp without the audience noticing. His TV apprentice years on Moonlighting made Willis a master of the softly delivered wisecrack, and here he added muscle to his resume. Die Hard is dumb to its core and irresistible for that reason. In the post-Schwarzenegger pantheon of ’80s action heroes, only Willis could make a line like “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” almost sound clever. (R) B.R.M. Redhook Ale Brewery, 14300 N.E. 145th St., Woodinville, 425-420-1113, redhook.com. $5. Outdoor movie screens at dusk. Thursdays through Aug. 28.
Movies at Magnuson Park From 1989, The Little Mermaid was a signature animated hit for Disney. How many little girls signed up for swimming lessons on account of Ariel? (PG)
Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E., moviesatmagnuson.com. $5. Thursdays. 7 p.m.
Movies at the Mural Last year’s Star Trek Into Darkness is screened, with Kirk and Spock (Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto) battling Benedict Cumberbatch’s malign Khan. (PG-13)
Seattle Center Mural Amphitheater, 684-7200, seattlecenter.com. Free. Movies begin at dusk. Sat.
Motivational Growth In this locally made horror flick, laced with absurd humor, a man is driven insane by the mold in his bathroom, which actually talks to him. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $6-$11. 9 p.m.
The NeverEnding Story Wolfgang Petersen’s 1984 fantasy-adventure film was squarely aimed at kids who, three decades later, may choose to laugh at the goblins and unicorns. (PG)
Central Cinema, $6-$8. 7 p.m. Fri.-Tues. plus 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun.
Event Yadda. (NR)
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Event Yadda. (NR)
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Event Yadda. (NR)
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Rich Hill A dispatch from the frontlines of red-state rural poverty, this documentary follows three boys (and their families) in the small town of Rich Hill, Missouri. The coal is long gone from this declining hamlet, and with it the economic base that gave families their stability. “We’re not trash, we’re good people,” insists 14-year-old Andrew, who begins the film with the most intact family: two parents and a sister. There’s no money, but somehow they’re scraping by. The situation is more grim for 15-year-old Harley, on various meds and living with his grandmother; and for 13-year-old Appachey, a pudgy, volatile smoker who’s acting out at school, defiant of his single mother. The trap to avoid here for filmmakers (and cousins) Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos is that of red-state ghetto voyeurism. Fortunately they had family connections in Rich Hill, one reason for their close, non-condescending access; also they ease the camera back and let these three kids narrate their own stories. The pathologies pile up with few surprises, and the filmmakers eschew any context or questions. Theirs is an entirely trees-for-the-forest approach to these youths at risk. Rich Hill puts you in mind of recent feature films like Hellion and Joe, only without the Nicolas Cage father figure to intervene and save these kids. (NR) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown
Ongoing
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Belle The English Belle, based on a true story, inspired by an 18th-century painting of two cousins—one black, one white—never lets you doubt its heroine’s felicitous fate. Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is born with two strikes against her: She’s the mulatto daughter of a kindly English naval captain who swiftly returns to sea, never to be seen again; and she’s female, raised by aristocratic cousins in the famous Kenwood House (today a museum), meaning she can’t work for a living and must marry into society—but what white gentleman would have her? Writer Misan Sagay and director Amma Assante have thus fused two genres—the Austen-style marriage drama and the outsider’s quest for equality—and neatly placed them under one roof. The guardians for Dido and cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) are Lady and Lord Mansfield (Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson); the latter is England’s highest jurist who in 1783 would decide the Zong case, in which seafaring slavers dumped their human cargo to claim the insurance money. Belle never surprises you, but it satisfyingly combines corsets and social conscience, love match and legal progress. (PG) B.R.M. Crest
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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) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Harvard Exit, Lincoln Square, Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace
Burkholder Taylor Guterson, son of novelist David Guterson, scored a hit at SIFF ’11 with the likable Old Goats, starring three geezers from Bainbridge Island whom he’d roped into making their acting debuts. Burkholder is essentially the sequel, which reconvenes its principal cast—mortality tugging ever more insistently at their sleeves. Pushing 90, Teddy (Bob Burkholder) is the long-time tenant and de facto BFF of Barry (Britt Crossley), long-divorced and equally indignant about enforced bachelorhood. Teddy’s libido is more intact, even as his wits are declining. Also returning from Old Goats is David Vanderwal (the best actor of the three), playing an inept and equally lonely New Age vision-quest leader who takes our main duo on a forest debacle. That this excursion comes at the movie’s midpoint hints at its gentle pacing; very, very little happens in Burkholder apart from discussion about, and evidence of, our inevitable decline. The film becomes almost a documentary about the perilous making of a movie. You sense the pressures weighing upon the young director of a fragile cast, the pathos of an actor portraying his character’s—and his own—future mental decline. (NR) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown
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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
The Dog It would be easier to enjoy the madcap, stranger-than-fiction revelations of The Dog if it weren’t for the queasy awareness that its central subject is getting such a great kick out of all this. He is John Wojtowicz, the real-life guy whose botched 1972 bank robbery later became the basis for the Al Pacino film Dog Day Afternoon. The unlikely events of that movie really were based on fact, and The Dog is here to introduce us to the truth—if you want to believe Wojtowicz. Interviewed by directors Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren over a period of years, Wojtowicz declares himself a “pervert,” and the evidence follows. Once a Goldwater Republican, he did Vietnam duty and got married, then fell into the burgeoning New York gay-rights movement. Wojtowicz seems to have been less interested in political liberation than in having sex with anything that moved. The movie is successful at capturing an oddball individual and the ineffable 1970s, but the geek-show spectacle leaves behind a squalid whiff of exploitation. (NR) R.H. Grand Illusion
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Edge of Tomorrow Earth has been invaded by space aliens, and Europe is already lost. Though no combat veteran, Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is thrust into a kind of second D-Day landing on the beaches of France, where he is promptly killed in battle. Yes, 15 minutes into the movie Tom Cruise is dead—but this presents no special problem for Edge of Tomorrow. In fact it’s crucial to the plot. The sci-fi hook of this movie, adapted from a novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, is that during his demise Cage absorbed alien blood that makes him time-jump back to the day before the invasion. He keeps getting killed, but each time he wakes up he learns a little more about how to fight the aliens and how to keep a heroic fellow combatant (Emily Blunt) alive. The further Cage gets in his progress, the more possible outcomes we see. It must be said here that Cruise plays this exactly right: You can see his exhaustion and impatience with certain scenes even when it’s our first time viewing them. Oh, yeah—he’s been here before. There’s absurdity built into this lunatic set-up, and director Doug Liman—he did the first Bourne picture—understands the humor of a guy who repeatedly gets killed for the good of mankind. (PG-13) R.H. Crest
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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. Majestic Bay, Sundance, Bainbridge, Ark Lodge, Thornton Place, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Vashon, 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, Ark Lodge, Majestic Bay, Bainbridge, Kirkland Parkplace, others
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)
Sundance, others
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, Lynwood (Bainbridge), 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. Seven Gables, Kirkland Parkplace, others
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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. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Tin Theater
What If Directed Michael Dowse, this Toronto rom-com has a sizable gift in the casting of Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan, who either have terrific chemistry together or are able to fake it expertly. Their characters, Wallace and Chantry, bond over refrigerator magnets at a party and he walks her home. She mentions her boyfriend at the usual moment for such things, and that becomes the major impediment to a quick resolution of this mutual-attraction club. Elan Mastai’s script—based on a Canadian play—depends on keeping the two leads apart, which can be a labored ploy (one third-act delaying tactic isn’t remotely credible), but can also result in the occasional When Harry Met Sally rom-com success. If you can roll with said ploy, you will notice that the wisecracking zingers and cascading conversations rarely pause, and that when a quiet moment is required—a pause in the moonlight before deciding to skinny-dip, for instance—the film can handle it. Radcliffe makes his somewhat pinched charm work nicely here; Kazan continues to impress, not least because she gives a very amusing physical performance. (PG-13) R.H. Sundance, others
