Local & Repertory
As You Like It This British film retrospective continues with Our Man in Havana (1959), based on the Graham Greene novel, with Alec Guinness as a rather ineffective British spy in revolutionary Cuba. (NR)
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 series, $8 individual, Thu., May 1, 7:30 p.m.
DocBrunch The new documentary American Meat examines farming practices, the agriculture industry, and the trend toward organic and locally sourced food. Burritos from Chipotle are included with your ticket. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Sun., May 4.
Giant Monsters All–Out Attack The 1995 Godzilla vs Destoroyah begins this creature series. Other titles include the 1954 original Godzilla (newly restored), It Came From Beneath the Sea, and the original King Kong. See SIFF website for full schedule. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, $6-$11, May 2-8.
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Inequality for All The basis for this 2013 advocacy doc, Robert Reich’s Aftershock, was published four years ago as we were tentatively clambering out of the Great Recession, which began with the subprime-mortgage collapse of 2008. The market is up today, but we also have a jobless recovery for the middle class. Why? Reich shows how the inequality curve began climbing in the ’80s, accelerating with the deregulation of financial markets during the Clinton era. It’s a 40-year trend, with technology, globalization, outsourcing, and other causes. Meanwhile, Republican rhetoric about an “opportunity society” has become a cruel irony: Social mobility is heading in the wrong direction, making the country ever more polarized. And that is why, despite Reich’s ebullience, this is such an important, dismaying film. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Keystone Congregational Church, 5019 Keystone Place N., 632-6021, keystoneseattle.org, Free, Fri., May 2, 7 p.m.
Junk Local filmmaker Kevin Hamedani and cast members will attend this screening of their film-world satire, about a couple of slackers who go out on the festival circuit. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Thu., May 1, 8 p.m.
Langston Hughes African American Film Festival Over 50 movies and various related events are part of this year’s fest, with special packages for women, sci-fi enthusiasts, the LGBTQ community, and kids. Highlights on the schedule include the recent acclaimed indie Mother of George, about Nigerian immigrants in New York, a documentary about black South African opera singers (Nidiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing), and the doc Vanishing Pearls: The Oystermen of Pointe a la Hache, about a coastal Louisiana community trying to survive after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, 104 17th Ave. S., 684-4757, langstoninstitute.org, Most screenings $5-$10. Passes $50-$100. $25 for gala opening/closing nights, Through May 4.
The Muppets Take Manhattan/Kill Bill: Vol. 2 First comes the G-rated children’s movie from 1984. Following, though not part of a double-feature, is Quentin Tarantino’s R-rated revenge flick from 2004, memorably starring Uma Thurman. Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, May 2-7, 7 & 9:30 p.m.
Navajo Star Wars It is what it purports to be: the 1977 original Star Wars, dubbed into Navajo. 21 and over. (PG)
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $6-$11, Fri., May 2, 11 p.m.; Sat., May 3, 8 & 11 p.m.
Nothing Against Life Local filmmaker Julio Ramirez will introduce and conduct a post-screening Q&A about his suicide-prevention drama. The event benefits for Washington State’s Youth Suicide Prevention Program. (NR)
Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 448-6680, cinerama.com, $15, Wed., April 30, 6:45 p.m.
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Othello SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 22.
Pay 2 Play: Democracy’s High Stakes Upset about the Citizens United decision? This ticketed all-day event includes the screening of a new documentary promoting a new constitutional amendment to get money out of politics. Dollaracracy author John Nichols will also appear. (NR)
University Temple United Methodist Church, 1415 N.E. 43rd St., 28amend-movi.nationbuilder.com, Sat., May 3, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
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.
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Sci-Fi Film Festival SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 21.
Seattle True Independent Film Festival Well over a dozen oddball indies, plus many shorts, will be screened at the Grand Illusion, Wing-It Productions, and Lucid Lounge. Titles on the schedule range from a documentary about a diabetic mountain climber hoping to bag a peak a day to sex (Gary Busey stars in Confessions of a Womanizer!) to zombies. Of course there will be zombies. Various parties and social events also attend the festival, which for last year’s Best of Seattle guide our discerning readers voted STIFF the Best Film Festival (Besides SIFF). And that surely counts for something. See trueindependent.org for prices, schedule, and other details. (NR)
May 2-10.
Ongoing
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Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq Joining the New York City Ballet in the early ’50s, tall and long-limbed at a time when most women in ballet were still petite and cute, Tanaquil Le Clercq was often called the prototype of the George Balanchine ballerina. The future seemed bright for his protege and future wife, but Le Clercq’s story took an O. Henry turn, as related in Nancy Buirski’s tragic new documentary. She was only 14 when they met (to his 39), and he was already a towering figure in their art. Yet he began making dances with her “gawky grace” as a template for the kind of dancer he wanted to develop. When they married in 1952, it seemed an extension of their work in the studio. Then, on on a 1956 European tour, Le Clercq complained of feeling achy during a performance. The next morning, she couldn’t move. It was polio. Le Clercq spent the rest of her life (1929–2000) in a wheelchair. Luckily for us, her career was flourishing when network TV still broadcast serious cultural programming. Buirski has gathered almost every clip in the archives to illustrate the dancer’s signature style, augmented by old newsreels and poignant new interviews with her surviving peers. (NR) SANDRA KURTZ 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. 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. Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson also serve 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, Guild 45th, Lincoln Square, Bainbridge, Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Bainbridge, others
