Local & Repertory
As You Like It Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie star in 1963’s Billy Liar, about a clerk whose imagination gets the better of him, sensitively directed by John Schlesinger. (NR)
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 series, $8 individual, Thurs., 7:30 p.m.
Dirty Harry Directed by Don Siegel, this 1971 bad-cop flick made Pauline Kael and liberals everywhere hate the now-revered Clint Eastwood. Who, let’s remember, didn’t write that iconic role, and whose mature films as director have since shown all the ambiguities of violence and revenge (see Mystic River especially). It’s a brutal, quotable benchmark of the Nixon era. (R) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $6-$8. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Weds.
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Godard Does Himself With his Cannes-selected Goodbye to Language possibly marking Jean-Luc Godard’s farewell to cinema (he being 83), here’s a chance to sample three of his classics: Alphaville (1965), Le Petit Soldat (1963), and Contempt. In the latter, of course, the fateful decision of an ambitious screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to let his young wife (Brigitte Bardot) ride in a red Alfa with a lecherous movie producer (Jack Palance) bodes poorly for their marriage. Godard’s 1963 film is about many things: moviemaking satire, Homer’s Odyssey, lost idealism, and the interrelationship between art and life (with cinema always the valance between). But through the Mediterranean colors and CinemaScope lenses, it’s the gradual, ineluctable dissolution of marital trust that haunts you. See nwfilmforum.org for exact schedule. (NR) B.R.M. Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380. $6-$11. Fri.-Thurs.
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The New Black Yoruba Richen’s recent documentary follows Delaware’s 2012 ballot referendum Question 6, which asked voters to uphold or affirm the Democratic legislature’s new marriage-equality law. As with our Referendum 74 and California’s Proposition 8, out-of-state money and the religious right invested in a local fight; but what makes Richen’s film so valuable is its focus on the black faith community. She treats both sides non-judgmentally: Pastors fret about the rise from slavery to respectability being tainted by scandalous sex talk; activists patiently doorbell households that are inclusive inside, but Scripture-spouting on the stoop. Propriety is important. The topic is still fraught for African-Americans—“dual oppression” versus “black first,” says one advocate. Even a preacher who’s come around to the pro-equality camp can joke of the traditional black church’s view of homosexuality as “a white man’s disease.” Panel discussion follows. (NR) B.R.M. Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave., 622-9250, fryemuseum.org. Free. Noon. Sunday.
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Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece recently bumped Citizen Kane off the top of the decadal Sight & Sound poll. No, I didn’t vote, but I rank the film as the the most emotionally resonant tragedy of Hitchcock’s long career. Jimmy Stewart is the San Francisco cop, afraid of heights, who falls for Kim Novak, loses her, and then gradually loses his mind while trying to recreate her image with another woman (also Novak, unbeknownst to him). The psycho-thriller is less overtly Freudian than, say, Psycho, but plunges deepest into the psyche of a guy so in love with a dead woman (who claims to be a reincarnation) that his urges push a live woman—who can’t live up to his ideal—to her death. Also note Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. (NR) B.R.M. Central Cinema, $6-$8. 7 p.m. Fri.-Weds.
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. Yes, there are suitors for both girls; and yes, there are rash proposals, teary confidences, concerned aunts, unexpected inheritances, and significant walks in the park. Yet Dido’s slavery-equality dilemma deepens the usual courtship complications. Belle never surprises you, but it satisfyingly combines corsets and social conscience, love match and legal progress. (PG) B.R.M. Guild 45th, Lincoln Square, Pacific Place
Cold in July The genre of Cold in July is the modern-dress Western, drawn from a novel by Joe R. Lansdale. Richard (Michael C. Hall), a mild picture-framer in a Texas town, shoots a home intruder in the opening scene. It’s the 1980s, which we know because Dexter star Hall sports a hideous mullet. The dead man was a real bad guy, and Richard was protecting his wife (Vinessa Shaw) and child; in fact the shooting is so justified that the sheriff (screenwriter Nick Damici) is downright eager to bury the body and close the case. Alas, the dead man’s hard-case father (Sam Shepard) shows up in menacing form—his introduction, suddenly looming within the off-kilter frame of a car window, is one of director Jim Mickle’s visual coups. His previous films, Stake Land and We Are What We Are, delved into horror, but with wry detachment and flickering humor. Cold in July is an uneven but densely packed drama that also contains some alarming shifts in tone—suddenly we’re careening from suspenseful noir to buddy-movie hijinkery to solemn vengeance against the purveyors of snuff movies. One of the bigger shifts comes with the arrival of a private detective (Don Johnson, whose good-ol’-boy routine temporarily dissipates the film’s tension). Based on his previous work, these radical turns seem intentional on Mickle’s part—momentarily confusing as they might be, they keep us alert and wondering what kind of movie we’re watching. Mickle might be just a couple of steps from making a masterpiece, and while Cold in July is certainly not that, “stylish and unpredictable” is not a bad foundation on which to build. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance
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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
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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) R.H Cinebarre, Guild 45th
