Local & Repertory

As the Palaces Burn This new crime documentary follows singer Randy Blythe, of the band Lamb of God, who is charged with the death of a young fan in the Czech Republic. 21 and over. (NR)

The Showbox, 1426 First Ave., 628-3151, showboxonline.com, $12, Thu., March 6, 8 p.m.

Big Trouble in Little China John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986) is an enjoyable mash-up of classic Westerns, Saturday-morning serials, and more Chinese wuxia than any of the Indiana Jones movies, with Kurt Russell in full bloom as Carpenter’s de rigueur hard-drinkin’, hard-gamblin’, wise-crackin’ loner hero—a bowling-alley John Wayne. When I was all of eight, this seemed like just about the greatest movie ever made, and like much of Carpenter’s work, it has aged well. (PG-13) SCOTT FOUNDAS Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave.,686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, March 7-11, 9:30 p.m.

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Cousin Jules SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 23.

DocBrunch Richard Robbins’ recent Girl Rising looks at nine case studies of education and empowerment around the globe. Segments are narrated by actresses including Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, and Kerry Washington. (NR)

SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Sun., March 9, noon; Sun., March 23; Sun., March 30.

Eurocrime! The subtitle to this new doc tells it all: “The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s.” (NR)

Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Thu., March 6, 7 p.m.

The Golden Age of Italian Cinema Federico Fellini’s first color film, Juliet of the Spirits offers both a starring role for his wife (Giulietta Masina) and a snapshot into his overheated imagination, circa 1965. It’s a surreal mid-life crisis flick in which Masina’s pampered, childless doormat housewife confronts her husband’s philandering. Buxom neighbor Sandra Milo offers a licentious portal to a world of flashbacks and fantasies, while our heroine is visited by voices from the beyond. Should she take a lover in revenge? (Try Prozac!) “Love is a religion,” a freaky oracle tells her, although Fellini won’t permit Juliet to participate in the decadent orgies around her—if they’re real at all. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $8 (individual), $63-$68 (series), Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through March 13.

Music Craft: Roxy Music Bryan Ferry and company perform at the 1973 Montreux Jazz Festival and other venues in this BBC documentary. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $6-$11, Thu., March 6, 8 p.m.

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The Past Playing as part of SIFF’s Recent Raves! series, The Past is Asghar Farhadi’s first film made outside his native Iran. With one exception, The Past is much like his A Separation: deliberate, full of feeling, scrupulously made. It begins after a four-year separation. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) has come from Iran to Paris to finalize his divorce from Marie (saucer-eyed Berenice Bejo, from The Artist), who is anxious to get on with her life with new beau Samir (Tahar Rahim, A Prophet). Part of the drama revolves around Marie’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), who still needs Ahmad’s fatherly advice after having carried around a guilty secret for a long time. This secret provides the film with its plottiest device, a melodramatic thread that keeps The Past from reaching the delicate achievement of A Separation. It’s like a 45-minute whodunit that suddenly sprouts inside a character study. Still, the movie shows a deep empathy for its people and a strong sense of place. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, $6-$11, Mondays, 7:30 p.m. Continues through March 31.

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Seattle Jewish Film Festival In the fest’s second week are documentaries about Neil Diamond, Jews in Iran, and the notorious Anti-Semite Richard Wagner. The latter, Wagner’s Jews, shows how some amazingly talented Jewish pianists, violinists, conductors, and concert promoters were willing to help the cranky, egotistical composer. What’s more, he depended on them and—according to biographers and music historians interviewed here—had conflicted feelings about them. No less an authority than Leon Botstein insists you can’t draw a straight line from Wagner to Hitler. Seattle Opera’s Speight Jenkins will give a talk following the screening, which ought to be fascinating. See seattlejewishfilmfestival.org for full schedule and details; venues also include the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island. SIFF Cinema Uptown, $9-$12 individual, $100-$250 series, Through March 9.

The Sprocket Society’s Saturday Secret Matinees The 1949 serial Batman & Robin will be screened in weekly installments. March’s surprise features will have a B-movie monster theme. (NR)

Grand Illusion, 1403 N$5-$8 individual, $35-$56 pass, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Through March 29.

Streets of Fire From 1984, Walter Hill’s somewhat gonzo MTV-meets-biker-mythology picture scored radio hits including Dan Hartman’s “I Can Dream About You.” Look for Diane Lane and Willem Dafoe among the cast. 21 and over. (R)

Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11, Fri., March 7, 11 p.m.; Sat., March 8, 11 p.m.

Three Amigos Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short star in this inside-Hollywood trifle from 1986. (PG-13)

Central Cinema, $6-$8, March 7-11, 7 p.m.

Ongoing

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Dallas Buyers Club Making a straight white Texas homophobe the hero of a film about the ’80s AIDS crisis doesn’t seem right. It’s inappropriate, exceptional, possibly even crass. All those qualities are reflected in Matthew McConaughey’s ornery, emaciated portrayal of Ron Woodroof, a rodeo rider and rough liver who contracted HIV in 1985. Fond of strippers, regularly swigging from his pocket flask, doing lines of coke when he can afford them, betting on the bulls he rides, Ron has tons of Texas-sized character. The unruly Dallas Buyers Club goes easy on the sinner-to-saint conversion story. McConaughey and the filmmakers know that once Ron gets religion, so to speak, their tale risks tedium. As Ron desperately bribes and steals a path to off-label meds, his allies and adversaries do read like fictional composites. Best among them is the transvestite Rayon, who becomes Ron’s right-hand woman (Jared Leto). They’re both fellow gamblers who delight in beating the house. (R) B.R.M. Sundance, Big Picture, others

Non-Stop Neesploitation. The Full Neeson. Release the Neeson. After Bronson and Eastwood, is there any more satisfying expression of cranky white codgerhood than the resurgent Liam Neeson? His latest, aka Neeson on a Plane, is a hokey but effective thriller encapsulated by our hero’s throwaway line: “I hate flying.” And yet flying is what this alcoholic federal air marshal does for a job. Bill Marks is a familiar distillation of Neeson’s prior roles in The Grey, Taken, and Unknown—a mournful pessimist who only bothers with life out of habit, loyalty, or revenge. Who’s sending him text messages on a London-bound flight, threatening to kill a passenger every 20 minutes for a ransom of $150 million? The plot mechanics don’t really add up, but the constant indignity and annoyance of post-9/11 air travel are what rings true here. Marks trusts no one on his plane, and his fellow flyers have cause to distrust him, too. (Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, Scott McNairy, and recent Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o are also on board.) Everyone’s a suspect, and every passenger’s petty complaint signals the breakdown of community. That Neeson plays a loner here is a given. What’s darkest about Non-Stop is how isolated and suspicious his seat-mates are of one another. It’s like a journey … Into the Neeson, as it were. (PG-13) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Kirkland Parkplace, Bainbridge, iPic, others

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12 Years a Slave Made by English director Steve McQueen, this harrowing historical drama is based on a memoir by Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man from Saratoga, New York, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. Solomon passes through the possession of a series of Southern plantation owners. One sensitive slave owner (Benedict Cumberbatch) gives Solomon—a musician by trade—a fiddle. Then he’s sold to the cruel cotton farmer Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), who also owns the furiously hard-working Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). Patsey, like Solomon, is caught inside the terror of not knowing how to play this hand. Do they keep their heads down and try to survive, or do they resist? Instead of taking on the history of the “peculiar institution,” the film narrows itself to a single story, Solomon’s daily routine, his few possessions. The film’s and-then-this-happened quality is appropriate for a memoir written in the stunned aftermath of a nightmare. Along the way, McQueen includes idyllic nature shots of Louisiana, as though to contrast that unspoiled world with what men have done in it. The contrast is lacerating. (R) R.H. Guild 45th, Bainbridge, Ark Lodge, others