Local & Repertory
As You Like It
Only Two Can Play (1962) Features Peter Sellers and Mai Zetterling as would-be lovers in Wales. It’s based on the novel by Kingsley Amis. (NR)
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 series, $8 individual, Thu., May 22, 7:30 p.m.
•
Best in Show From 2000, Christopher Guest turns his attention to less-pedigreed traits of human behavior attending a big dog show. Half the cast of Waiting for Guffman is on hand, including Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, and Fred Willard, plus Spinal Tap vet Michael McKean. They riff on Guest’s plot outline—basically a mockumentary backstage portrait of ridiculous dog owners. The result is 90 minutes of sly observational humor about how we use pets as the idealized representations of our imperfect lives, the furry, drooling, leg-humping vehicles of our hopes and dreams. Instead of broad hilarity and ridicule, there’s a subcurrent of low-key laughter running throughout the picture. For Guest, each well-coiffed canine on display is the product of a stage parent watching anxiously from the wings. He invites us to laugh at the owners’ foibles, while still rooting for their dogs—and better selves—to win. (R) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, May 23-28, 9:30 p.m.
Capitol Hill Wes Hurley screens episodes from his Web series set on the titular mound, where an innocent young Portland lass tries to find her bearings. Central Cinema, $15, Thu., May 22, 8 p.m.
•
Easy Rider SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 24.
Game On A panel discussion presented by Imagos Films considers the influence of video games on cinema. Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $6-$11, Tue., May 27, 8 p.m.
•
Jurassic Park The late writer Michael Crichton, who famously tutored President Bush on the fallacy of global warming, was no scientist. But the doctor-turned-novelist, from The Andromeda Strain forward, knew how to mix popular science into exceptionally good potboiler fiction. He was a master of the in-flight novel, and Jurassic Park is one of his very best works. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 adaptation benefits from equally from the then-new magic of CGI and our old love of dinosaurs running amok. (Long before Godzilla, silent movies were doing the same.) While Crichton warns us about the dangers of genetic engineering—in rather static debates among scientists Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum—Spielberg keeps things moving at a wonderful pace. As in Jaws, whose DNA is strongly felt here, the hunters become the hunted. The thud of the oncoming Tyrannosaurus rex rippling in a water cup, the heat of his breath on a car window, the swarming Velociraptors—these ancient terrors trump our high-tech inventions. (PG-13) B.R.M. Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 23-28, 7 p.m.; Sat., May 24, 3 p.m.; Sun., May 25, 3 p.m.
Stage Fright This new slasher flick, set backstage on Broadway, is apparently modeled on the final-girl thrillers of the ’80s. (R)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, Fri., May 23, 9 p.m.; Sat., May 24, 9 p.m.
Ongoing
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 If Tobey Maguire was all open-faced wonder about his accidental arachnid skill set, Andrew Garfield’s more of a brooder—Peter Parker hiding in his room despite the entreaties of Aunt May (Sally Field). He’s given a welcome few goofy grace notes with girlfriend Gwen (Emma Stone), but most of the time we’re watching his masked CG avatar swing seamlessly through Manhattan canyons, not the actual thespian. The dazzling computer effects have advanced so far from the Sam Raimi/Maguire pictures that most viewers won’t even notice the absence. Everything slowly builds after a zingy first hour to a two-part finale that’s more coded than directed. Where are the actors? No one cares. Neither do Garfield, Stone, their castmates, or director Marc Webb. Returning from Part I, Webb keeps the tone light, caps the sulking, and limits the inside jokes. The plot and dialogue are elementary—subtitles not required anywhere on the planet. Also worth the 3-D IMAX ticket price is the roster of supporting talent: Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz, Chris Cooper, Colm Feore, Denis Leary, and Paul Giamatti. Given the money invested in Spidey’s aerial ballets with the camera (totally untethered, as in Gravity), it’s nice to see the budget padded with so many pros. (PG-13) B.R.M. Cinebarre, Lincoln Square, Pacific Place, Southcenter, Thornton Place, others
•
Fed Up Narrated by Katie Couric, Stephanie Soechtig’s advocacy doc is slickly made, studded with food gurus (Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, etc.), and sympathetic to the sad young teens we see struggling with obesity. Yet heredity is only part of our four-decade obesity epidemic, which the filmmakers convincingly trace back to a collision between industry and regulators. On the one hand, the FDA is supposed to keep our food healthy. On the other, the USDA’s goal is basically to sell as much food as possible—including corn; and from that, high fructose corn syrup. Which side do you suppose is winning? “It’s fair to say the U.S. government is subsidizing the obesity epidemic,” says Pollan, who then pauses a beat. “Indirectly.” Fed Up convincingly argues how the processed food industry has so successfully engineered its products since the ’70s to be addictive yet never sating. Willpower counts for little (ask any alcoholic or junkie). “We are not going to exercise our way out of this obesity problem,” says one nutritionist. Viewers will not be surprised when parallels to Big Tobacco are explicitly drawn. (PG) B.R.M. Varsity
•
Finding Vivian Maier The biggest discovery of 20th-century photography was made in 2007 by Chicago 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, 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. Varsity
•
The Grand Budapest Hotel By the time of its 1968 framing story, said hotel has been robbed of its gingerbread design—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 Cinebarre, Guild 45th
•
Locke Tom Hardy is cast as a methodical Welsh structural engineer who specializes in concrete. This is a film where you will learn a lot about how that material is poured and processed. There is only one location to the movie: Locke’s BMW as he heads south through the night from Birmingham toward London—away from a critical job he is abandoning—to attend the birth of a child from a drunken one-night stand. Steven Knight’s Locke is essentially a radio play made into a movie. The camera moves up high to track Locke’s journey; there are some visual flourishes; but basically we’re listening to Hardy’s soft rumbling voice for 85 minutes. It’s a one-man dialogue, with calls to and from his wife and two sons, the hospital, his irate bosses, and a panicked Irish underling back at the job site. Locke keeps telling others, “Everything will be all right,” but he’s really trying to reassure himself against the existential void, the potential loss of job, family, and self-control. Hardy gives Locke a calm, steady self-assessment, a kind of lucid despair. He’s a guy forced to realize in one night that his life has no foundation. (R) B.R.M. Harvard Exit
