Local & Repertory
Balikbayan #1 Director Kidlat Tahimik will introduce his Filipino essay film, about the history of the Philippines and its colonial legacy. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum.org. $6-$11. 7 p.m. Tues.
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BFE: DVD Release Party Seen during SIFF last year, local actor/director Shawn Telford’s low-key teen drama has its roots in his unsupervised Idaho panhandle upbringing. The titular acronym stands for “Bum Fuck, Egypt,” he told us during the fest last year. Shot in lovely widescreen by Ty Migota, B.F.E. puts you in mind of The Last Picture Show and Dazed and Confused—all are looks back at youth that are by turns bitter, nostalgic, angry, and wondering. The kids are mostly unsupervised (or party with their irresponsible parents); the specter of meth hangs overhead; and teenage pregnancy is a fact of life. None of the misbehavior depicted is autobiographical; rather, says Telford, “It reflects the sense of the place, the wildness. The setting of the film is a character in itself.” (NR) BRIAN MILLER Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11. 7:30 p.m. reception, 8:15 p.m. screening, Sat.
Crossfire Hurricane/ Gimme Shelter Directed by Brett Morgen (of the new Kurt Cobain doc), Crossfire is his 2012 tribute to The Rolling Stones, alternating with the Maysles brothers great (and disturbing) 1970 concert doc. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. 7 p.m. (Crossfire) & 9:15 p.m. Mon.-Wed.
Frozen Sing-Along Don’t pretend you don’t already know the lyrics to “Let It Go.” (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. Noon, Sat.
Gringo Trails This new doc by Pegi Vail examines the environmental costs of eco-tourism. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11. 5 p.m. Sun.
Kumu Hima This recent doc looks at the transgender community in Hawaii. (NR)
Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. 1 p.m. Sun.
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My Neighbor Totoro If you’ve got kids, or even if you don’t, Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 enchanted anime adventure film is sure to bring a smile. The gentle tale concerns two sisters who encounter woodland spirits when they move to the country. (G)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 7 p.m. Fri.-Wed. & 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun.
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Noir de France As allusive as its title, Jean-Pierre Melville’s all-but-unknown Army of Shadows, a French resistance saga made—and tepidly received—in 1969, emerges from the mists of time as a career-capping epic tragedy. Adapted from Joseph Kessel’s wartime novel, Shadows follows a taciturn resistance agent (the bulky, self-contained Lino Ventura) through a series of arrests, escapes, and betrayals. Wearing glasses and carrying a briefcase, he looks like an accountant and thinks like a chess master. Ventura is reason made tangible, exuding a purity of purpose beyond mere action. Moving from rainy prison camps through sun-baked Marseilles and blitzed London to the bleak windswept towns of northern France, Shadows sustains an atmosphere of total paranoia, occasionally leavened with existential pathos. Only when Melville’s vision reaches its chilling conclusion is it apparent that the title is absolutely literal. This really is an army of shadows. They are, all of them, dead men. (NR) J. HOBERMAN Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $63–$68 series, $8 individual. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through May 21.
Serenity This 2005 sci-fi Western by Joss Whedon is a brainy valentine to fans of the short-lived Fox show Firefly. A gaggle of tough-talking, gun-slinging space cowboys (and -girls) rocket through the 26th-century cosmos, pilfering cash from the sinister Alliance and sometimes swearing in Chinese. Confused neophytes may find solace in several witty fight scenes, a Whedon trademark, in which the jabs exchanged are alternately verbal and physical. And though Serenity is a bit too cerebral for its own good, that same quality lifts it above the vast majority of sci-fi flicks. (PG-13) NEAL SCHINDLER Central Cinema, $7-$9. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Wed.
Song of the Sea Dazzling in its visual presentation, though not so thrilling in its conventional storytelling, the Irish-animated Song features a plot is drawn from Celtic folklore, specifically the tradition of the selkie, those mythological shapeshifters who can live on land or sea, as humans or seals. Our hero is Ben, a young lad whose mother vanishes under dramatic circumstances the night his mute younger sister Saoirse is born. They live on a wee shard of an island with their mournful father, a red-bearded lighthouse-keeper, but a series of marvelous events lead Ben into a secret world of magical creatures and spell-spinning songs. Director Tomm Moore and the Cartoon Saloon crew seem more interested in creating the gorgeous vistas that occupy virtually every frame. (PG) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996. $7-$12. Sat.-Mon. See siff.net for showtimes.
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Event Yadda. (NR)
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Event Yadda. (NR)
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Ongoing
Cinderella When the mood strikes me, I also can be swept up in watching two beautiful people fall in love. And beautiful they are: Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden as Prince Charming (in some very flattering tight pants) and Downton Abbey’s Lily James as the demure and free-spirited Ella, who wears butterflies in her hair because that’s just her brand of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. (Let’s also here bestow the praising-hands emoji upon James’ eyebrows, the boldness of which is unprecedented by any other Disney princess.) The familiar plot has been gently tweaked. Prior to the fateful ball, Ella now meets Prince Charming in the forest, where he claims to be a humble apprentice working at the palace. Ella’s also been given more agency. Unlike most adaptations of the Perrault folk tale, this Ella is hardly embarrassed by her low station. She soon adopts a strong take-me-as-I-am attitude, surely designed to appeal to girls raised on Frozen. After being christened “Cinderella” by her evil stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and stepsisters, she chooses to reclaim the demeaning nickname and make it her own. Is that the best message for how to respond to bullying? Perhaps not the worst. (PG) DIANA M. LE Varsity
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Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck This fascinating documentary portrait will have strong appeal in Seattle—even among viewers for whom, like me, Cobaniana seems a completely exhausted subject, two decades after the Nirvana front man’s suicide. It’s a vivid, impressionistic, and often contradictory profile that reaches deep into the Cobain family archives. Director Brett Morgen spent an arduous eight years on the project; the movie’s too long, though never less than engrossing, and you can see why Morgen wrestled so long with the editing. What a short, rich, and troubled life his subject lived. Cobain’s cassette-tape journals from the late ’80s spring into animated vignettes. The most remarkable of them, about trying to lose his virginity with a possibly disabled girl in Aberdeen, reminds me of a Raymond Carver story: concise, unsparing, brutal in its details, yet oddly compassionate toward all thwarted, unhappy parties. The episode ends in shame and a suicide attempt. There’s a mournful self-awareness here that colors the rest of the film. Even as Cobain grasps for success, there’s the parallel feeling that it’s undeserved and fraudulent. Long before heroin entered his life, self-disgust had seeped into his veins. (NR) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Egyptian
The Salt of the Earth This is an unwieldy documentary portrait of the great Brazilian humanist photographer Sebastiao Salgado, made by two authors: Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, etc.), a professed fan who provides voiceover praise; and Juliano Salgado, the artist’s elder son, who’s part of the family enterprise. Stacked with stunning images (almost like a pedestal), this overlong doc can feel like a promo reel for Salgado’s ongoing Genesis photo series. No outside voices or critics dare interrupt the master or his tribute. Acclaim came in the ’70s and ’80s, as Salgado began haunting war zones, sites of famine and displacement, and scenes of brutal, back-breaking labor in the Third World. I have to say now that such stoic scenes of human misery and endurance have become commonplace, but that’s the legacy of Salgado’s success. Salgado himself speaks in contented aphorisms—sometimes sounding like Bono, so secure in his compassion for the world’s poor and downtrodden, all of whom remain voiceless within his expensive, expressive frames. (PG-13) B.R.M. Guild 45th
True Story In this somber, fact-based account, journalist Mike Finkel (Jonah Hill) is soon booted from his plum gig at The New York Times Magazine for using composite characters. Back in snowy Montana with his girlfriend (Felicity Jones, from The Theory of Everything), his career is seemingly over. Then news comes that a Newport, Oregon, man named Christian Longo (James Franco) has been arrested for killing his wife and three kids. Chris was arrested in Mexico while impersonating Mike—he’s a fan who later grants Mike exclusive jailhouse interviews. Mike hopes his book (published in 2005) will prove his redemption, but should we really be surprised that Chris is using him? The stars and British director Rupert Goold are sure that Mike’s ingratiating himself with Chris, who has an agenda of his own, must mean something. Their character flaws and parallels will pay off, right? Hill has a knack for portraying earnest, sweaty, awkward characters lacking self-awareness; he’s good in his role, though Franco gives the superior, quieter performance—free of his recent tics and mannerisms. Still, this rather pat and schematic movie movie never gets beyond the obvious. While Mike keeps insisting on his “second chance,” you wish the film weren’t so aligned with that goal. (R) B.R.M. Pacific Place, Lincoln Square, others
The Water Diviner Part of Russell Crowe’s immense credibility as an actor is how grounded he is—woo-woo stuff is really not for him. Yet in his directorial debut, he plays Joshua Connor, a dowser who’ll use that a talent to search for the bodies of his three sons, all lost on the same day in the disastrous World War I battle of Gallipoli. Yet in 1919 Turkey (the Ottoman Empire having collapsed), Crowe’s convincing depiction of grief morphs into melodrama. Connor strikes up a friendship with hotelkeeper Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her impish son, escapes from a train ambush on horseback, and runs afoul of political unrest. As a director, Crowe is earnest and old-fashioned, and there are movie-watching pleasures to be had here. Lord of the Rings cinematographer Andrew Leslie knows how to look at big open spaces so you sense the bones beneath the surface. The film gets bogged down in its many flashbacks and sidebar dramas, and finally uncorks one too many unlikely coincidences. The sacrifice of thousands of soldiers from Australia and New Zealand was vividly told in Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli. Three decades later, The Water Diviner feels almost too careful in its desire to hit all the right notes and do justice to all sides. Which makes it more of a war memorial than a living, breathing movie. (R) R.H. Sundance, Bainbridge, Thornton Place, Pacific Place, Lincoln Square
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What We Do in the Shadows The premise is ’90s-stale: basically MTV’s The Real World cast with vampires, presented as direct-address documentary. This droll comedy comes from the brain trust behind 2007’s Eagle Vs. Shark: Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi, who play neck-biters Vladislav and Viago, respectively. Our three main vamps are a hapless lot. They can’t get invited into any of the good clubs or discos—ending up forlorn in an all-night Chinese diner instead. After all the aestheticized languor of Only Lovers Left Alive (and the earnest teen soap opera of Twilight), the silly deadpan tone is quite welcome. Clement and Waititi know this is a sketch writ large (forget about plot), so they never pause long between sneaky gags. The amsuing and essential conflict here is between age-old vampire traditions and today’s hook-up customs. These neck-biters have been at it so long that they’re only imitating old vampire stereotypes. Things have gotten to the point, Vladislav admits, where they’re even cribbing from The Lost Boys. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance, Admiral, SIFF Cinema Uptown & Film Center, Majestic Bay
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While We’re Young In outline, this is a routine Gen-X midlife-crisis movie: documentary filmmaker Josh (Ben Stiller) and producer wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are stalled in careers and marriage. He can’t complete his weighty, unwatchable opus (something to do with geopolitics and a disheveled Chomskyian scholar; together they’ve IVF’d once for kids, failed, and are settling into a staid, childless rut. They need a shakeup, and it arrives in the form of a spontaneous, fun-loving Brooklyn couple half their age: would-be documentarian Jamie (Adam Driver) and wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Noah Baumbach’s lively, career-best comedy sends cynical Josh into unexpected bromance, and much of the movie’s charm lies in our being swept along, too. Is Josh deluded and ridiculous? Of course he is, and yet that’s not the movie’s real source of laughter and inspiration. In denial about his fading eyesight and arthritis, Josh will discover that being foolish and confounded is good for the system, a tonic. If Jamie is a hustler, he’s also like a personal trainer—pushing his client (who forever picks up the lunch tab) into discomfort. Baumbach’s female characters aren’t so sharply drawn, though he provides nice supporting roles for Adam Horowitz (the Beastie Boys), as the only guy who can speak truth to Josh’s blind infatuation; and for Charles Grodin, who brings welcome, sour appeal as Josh’s disapproving father-in-law. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance, Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace, others
Wild Tales The opening sequence to Damian Szifron’s Argentine anthology movie sets up a Twilight Zone-style series of revelations, compressed into just a few minutes. Passengers riding on a suspiciously underfilled plane begin to realize that there might be a reason for their presence there, beyond the obvious business of getting to a destination. Szifron wants to get his movie started with a bang, and he does—though the rest of Wild Tales doesn’t live up to the wicked curtain-raiser. But there are enough moments of irony and ingenuity to make it worthwhile. In one episode, a lone driver has a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, which allows the slowpoke he antagonized earlier to stop by and exact revenge. In another, an explosives expert becomes enraged by a parking ticket—rage that leads him to lose everything. But there’s a twist. A lot of these segments rely on a twist, a technique that doesn’t quite disguise how in-your-face the lessons are. The twists also can’t disguise the way some of the tales rely on illogical behavior to allow their plots to develop. Wild Tales is a showy exercise (you can see why Pedro Almodovar signed on as a producer), and Szifron has undoubtedly punched his ticket for bigger and better things. (R) R.H. Sundance
Woman in Gold The last time Helen Mirren went up against the Nazis, in The Debt, it was really no contest. So you will not be surprised to learn that the Austrian art thieves of the Third Reich fare no better against her Holocaust refugee Maria Altmann. Woman in Gold takes its title from the alternate, Nazi-supplied moniker for Gustav Klimt’s 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Adele was Maria’s beloved aunt, and Maria became the plaintiff in a long-fought art-restitution case, begun in 1998, against the Austrian government. As Maria’s sidekick in this true-life-inspired tale, Ryan Reynolds plays the unseasoned young attorney Randy Schoenberg (forever judged against his genius forebear Arnold Schoenberg). This odd couple is obviously going to prevail against the stubborn, post-Waldheim Austrian establishment. As Maria says, “If they admit to one thing, they have to admit to it all.” Were the writing better, this would’ve made a good courtroom procedural (Elizabeth McGovern and Jonathan Pryce show up as judges), but director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) instead chooses to add copious flashbacks to the Anschluss era and Maria’s narrow escape from the Nazis. So while this is a serviceable star vehicle that depends on Mirren’s reliably purring V-12 engine, two other actresses play Maria at different ages—depriving us of the regular pleasure of her smackdowns upon poor Randy. (PG-13) B.R.M. Guild 45th, Pacific Place, Ark Lodge, Lynwood (Bainbridge), Kirkland Parkplace others