Local & Repertory

Altered States William Hurt goes into a sensory-deprivation tank in this 1980 adaptation of the Paddy Chayefsky novel, and he comes out quite a different man. Director Ken Russell goes relatively easy on the special effects to depict Hurt’s inner journey, as his Harvard scientist drops psychoactive drugs and embarks on a head-trip possibly back to the dawn of mankind. Fun fact: Drew Barrymore plays Hurt’s little daughter in the film. (R)

Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Fri. & Sat. 10 p.m. Through April 26.

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Army of Darkness Before Sam Raimi started the Spider-Man franchise, before Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy, there were the marching skeletons and new-risen dead threatening humanity in Army of Darkness. The 1993 picture capped Raimi’s Evil Dead series with its signature mixture of humor and horror, gymnastic witches, flagrant historical inaccuracies, and a very irreverent Bruce Campbell. Handy with a shotgun or one-liner, sporting a chainsaw where his right hand should be, Campbell’s S-Mart clerk manages to offend nearly everyone—alive or dead—in a medieval England that looks suspiciously like Pasadena. Story logic matters less than action and Three Stooges-style slapstick. Campbell exudes a goofy gusto and iron-jawed charisma; he and Raimi rewrite medieval history as every bored 12-year-old schoolboy wished it could be. (R) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, April 18-22, 9:30 p.m.

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Back to the Future The first and best of Michael J. Fox’s star-making trilogy, Back to the Future (1985) has one of the more preposterous plotlines in movie history: Huey Lewis-listening ‘80s dude Marty McFly (shown to be a badass for hitching rides on trucks while on his skateboard) has a buddy who’s inventing a time machine. Shit goes haywire and Marty finds himself stuck in 1955, fending off advances from his future mom (Lea Thompson) while coaching his future father (Crispin Glover) to assert his masculinity. The memorable performances make you forget all of that, though, incredibly. (PG) ANDREW BONAZELLI Central Cinema, $6-$8, April 18-19, 7 p.m.; Sun., April 20, 3 p.m.; April 21-22, 7 p.m.

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Big-Screen Musicals SEE PICK LIST, PAGE 23.

Fantastic Planet The band Kingdom of the Holy Sun will performa a new live score to this animated French fantasia (and drug movie) from 1973. Dancing follows the sci-fi screening, with music from DJs Mamma Casserole and Veins. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $12, Sun., April 20, 7 p.m.

Love & Air Sex Director Bryan Poyser will introduce this indie comedy, which has good festival buzz, about a slacker trying to win back his girl by triumphing at the Air Sex World Championships in Austin, Texas. (R)

SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Sat., April 19, 9:30 p.m.

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Pulsos Latinos SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 23.

Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring Newly elected city council member Kshama Sawant has brought socialism back to the national spotlight. Now there’s an entire film retrospective that will program titles (some still pending) looking back to our 1999 WTO protests, the great strike of 1919, and other touchstones of the left. See nwfilmforum.org for ongoing schedule. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11, Through May 1.

The Thomas Crown Affair This super-stylish heist movie from 1968, starring elegant Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen, is introduced by local artist artist Mark Mitchell and SAM curator Chiyo Ishikawa. (PG)

Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11, Mon., April 21, 7 p.m.

Guinevere Turner The actress and writer visits Seattle to talk about the pioneering lesbian rom-com Go Fish (6:30 p.m. Fri.) and the quite different American Psycho (1 p.m. Sat.), which she co-wrote with director Mary Harron. The former film is celebrating its 20th anniversary; the latter, adapted from the brutal and possibly satirical Bret Easton Ellis novel, was one of the most controversial releases of 2000. (R)

SIFF Cinema Uptown, $6-$11.

The Unity of All Things Visiting director Daniel Schmidt will introduce this sci-fi account about physicists building a particle accelerator. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11, Sat., April 19, 7 p.m.

Ongoing

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Ernest & Celestine Can mice and bears be friends? NO THEY CANNOT—which is the one thing the denizens of the above-ground bear city and the subterranean, Borrowers-style mouse city agree on in this French/Belgian nominee for the 2013 Best Animated Feature Oscar. The two are linked by mutual fear and a weirdly interdependent dental-based economy too fancifully complex to go into here. (Mice and bears, that is, not France and Belgium.) But independent-minded and (consequently) lonely Celestine, who lives in a mouse orphanage and likes to draw, isn’t afraid of bears, shocking everyone. She befriends Ernest, a grumpy and none-too-successful busker, and the two outlaws (after raiding a confectioner’s) settle down in Ernest’s cabin. The pair’s final peril, after the Bear Police and Rat Police finally catch up with them, is scary enough for kids to enjoy, but not too scary to freak out parents. (PG) GAVIN BORCHERT Varsity

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Finding Vivian Maier The biggest discovery of 20th-century photography was made in 2007 by Chicago flea-market maven/historian John Maloof. Vivian Maier was a nanny who died soon thereafter, indigent and mentally ill, a hoarder. Maloof bought trunks of her negatives with no idea what they contained. The revelation of those images, in a series of art shows and books, immediately placed her in the front rank of street photographers like Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand. But who the hell was she? Now Maloof and Charlie Siskel have directed a kind of documentary detective story about the enigmatic spinster (1926–2009). It’s an irresistible quest, as Maloof interviews the now-grown kids Maier cared for, plus a few fleeting friends and acquaintances, who had no idea of her gifts. Maier was almost pathologically secretive (“sort of a spy,” she said), but all photographers hide behind the camera. Would she have wanted her images seen by the public? Maloof conclusively answers that question. Would she have wanted his movie to be made? All her grown charges say the same: No. (NR) B.R.M. Seven Gables

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The Grand Budapest Hotel By the time of its 1968 framing story, the Grand Budapest Hotel has been robbed of its gingerbread design by a Soviet (or some similarly aesthetically challenged) occupier—the first of many comments on the importance of style in Wes Anderson’s latest film. A writer (Jude Law) gets the hotel’s story from its mysterious owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham, a lovely presence). Zero takes us back between world wars, when he (played now by Tony Revolori) began as a bellhop at the elegant establishment located in the mythical European country of Zubrowka. Dominating this place is the worldly Monsieur Gustave, the fussy hotel manager (Ralph Fiennes, in absolutely glorious form). The death of one of M. Gustave’s elderly ladyfriends (Tilda Swinton) leads to a wildly convoluted tale of a missing painting, resentful heirs, a prison break, and murder. Also on hand are Anderson veterans Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson—all are in service to a project so steeped in Anderson’s velvet-trimmed bric-a-brac we might not notice how rare a movie like this is: a comedy that doesn’t depend on a star turn or a high concept, but is a throwback to the sophisticated (but slapstick-friendly) work of Ernst Lubitsch and other such classical directors. (R) ROBERT HORTON Ark Lodge, Big Picture, Guild 45th, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Lynwood (Bainbridge), Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown

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Le Week-End If a British couple making a misguided trip to Paris to save their marriage sounds like a cliched plot, rest assured it’s not. Instead, we meet still-beautiful Meg (Lindsay Duncan) with her sculpted cheekbones and long blonde hair, and Nick (Jim Broadbent), a sweet, goofy-ish philosophy professor who confesses on the trip that he’s just been sacked from his job. From the first scene their dysfunction is evident. s Nick makes one loving overture after another, Meg’s aggravation with him—and downright cruelty—becomes increasingly palpable, even as she tries to check it. (Their push-pull dynamic is expertly rendered by the veteran team of director Roger Michell and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi, previous collaborators on The Mother and Venus.) Despite Nick and Meg’s 30-year rut and the loathsome jabs that result, there are exquisite moments of levity. Also here are unexpected moments of passion: a long kiss on the street, an almost discomfiting scene of sexual masochism. The weekend culminates at a posh dinner party thrown by Nick’s old Cambridge buddy, played appropriately neurotically by Jeff Goldblum, where both this marriage’s frailty and its endurance are beautifully, achingly captured. (R) NICOLE SPRINKLE Guild 45th