Local & Repertory
Broken on All Sides Call for price and time for this new criminal-justice doc. Panel discussion follows. (NR)
Pacific Science Center, 200 Secon Ave. N. (Seattle Center), 443-2001, seattle.gov, Mon., Oct. 7.
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Enter the Dragon In his 1973 hit, released soon before his death, Bruce Lee goes undercover to bust some drug runners, entering a big kung fu competition en route—and you can guess who wins. With Lee’s furious energy, charisma, and head-popping roundhouse kicks. (R)
Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 323-0587, landmarktheatres.com, $8.25, midnight, Sat. Oct. 5.
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The Evil Dead Sam Raimi’s wildly influential and ultra-violent 1981 underground hit helped make him a future Hollywood star and also brought Bruce Campbell’s chin to a grateful world. Nobody will ever go to a cabin the remote woods again without thinking of the film, nor will filmmakers ever be able to make a movie about kids going to a cabin in the remote woods without thinking of what Raimi would do there. (R)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, Oct. 4-9, 9:30 p.m.
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Ghostbusters Who you gonna call? I think we all know the answer: the top-grossing film of 1984, Ghostbusters! Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Sigourney Weaver star in the paranormal smash comedy, which inspired only one so-so sequel and a surprising number of video games. It was, of course, a simpler time back then, when special effects weren’t quite so seamless, and the greatest threat facing New York City was the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. The movie was a total star turn for Murray, playing the loosest and least professional academic on campus. Using Aykroyd as his uptight foil, with well-timed sideline zingers from the wonky Ramis (who co-wrote the script with Aykroyd), Murray is freed to embrace his inner, off-kilter leading man. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, $6-$8, Oct. 4-9, 7 p.m.
• L’AVVENTURA SEE THE AGENDA, PAGE 29.
Mars Attacks! Tim Burton’s 1996 spoof of old alien-invasion movies has a lot of fun with its cast, which includes Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Annette Bening. (PG-13)
Central Cinema, $6-$8, Thu., Oct. 3, 8 p.m.
Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary The crux of Mumia comes midway through this partisan documentary about Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted Philadelphia cop killer who’s become a celebrated writer during his three decades on death row (a sentence commuted to life last year). Through Mumia’s first half, drawing on interviews with Cornel West, Alice Walker, Amy Goodman, and others, director Stephen Vittoria recounts the racism that pervaded Philly in the ‘70s, when journalist Abu-Jamal became personally involved in the civil-rights stories he was covering. In this way, Vittoria creates a tantalizing tension as we approach the 1981 shooting, seeing Abu-Jamal’s radicalization in advance and knowing his lonely future fate. As a result, it’s absolutely befuddling and nearly fatal to the doc when Vittoria spends a scant two minutes describing the killing of officer Daniel Faulkner. From then on, any claim of Abu-Jamal as a political prisoner—a claim Mumia repeats endlessly—rings completely hollow. (NR) DANIEL PERSON Keystone Congregational Church, 5019 Keystone Place N., 632-6021, Free, Fri., Oct. 4, 7 p.m.
Musicwood In this new eco doc, directed by Maxine Trump, guitar makers Chris Martin, Bob Taylor, and Dave Berryman visit the Alaska rainforest to learn about harvesting more sustainable wood for their coveted musical instruments. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Thu., Oct. 3, 7 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 5, 5 p.m.
Old-School Kung Fu Double Feature Screened in 35 mm will be Seven Grandmasters (1977) and The Victim (1980), both with action aplenty. (R)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Fri., Oct. 4, 8 p.m.
The Paw Project Jennifer Conrad’s documentary examines the controversial practice of declawing cats. (NR)
Grand Illusion, Free (RSVP via Facebook), Wed., Oct. 2. 7 p.m.
Portland Grindhouse Film Festival Visiting curator Dan Halsted will introduce a program of trailers, followed by Lucio Fulci’s famously gory 1980 Gates of Hell. (R)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Sat., Oct. 5, 8 p.m.
Print Generation Director J.J. Murphy will introduce his 1974 found-footage art film, in which he successively reprinted the same 36 feet of film 50 times, the image constantly degrading, something like Decasia. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $6-$10, Sun., Oct. 6, 5 p.m.
Ride the Night Continuing SAM’s fall film noir series, the 1945 Leave Her to Heaven has Cornel Wilde fall for Gene Tierney, which turns out to be a big mistake. (NR)
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63–$68 series, $8 individual, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through Dec. 5.
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Samurai Cinema Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakada star in the 1966 The Sword of Doom, in which violence eventually leads to regret. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Mondays, 7 p.m. Through Oct. 21.
Seattle South Asian Film Festival With screenings also taking place at SIFF Cinema Uptown and the UW Bothell campus, this annual fest will screen over a dozen features and documentaries, plus many short films. Topics include political tension in Kashmir, sex trafficking, and film preservation in India. Mira Nair’s very topical new The Reluctant Fundamentalist is also on the bill. Various live musical events, forums, visitors, and parties are also planned. See tasveer.org for full schedule and details. (NR)
SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), $10-$12 individual, $60-$250 series, Oct. 4-13.
Totally ‘80s Tuesdays
The Wizard and The Last Starfighter are screened (PG-13)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, $6-$11, Tuesdays, 7 & 9:15 p.m. Through Oct. 22.
Ongoing
Blue Jasmine There’s nothing comic about the downfall of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, the inspiration for Woody Allen’s miscalculated seriocom. Blue Jasmine is an awkward mismatch of pathos and ridicule, less fusion than simple borrowing. Grafted onto the story of delusional trophy wife Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) is a Madoff-like fable of the recent financial crisis. In flashback, we see her husband (Alec Baldwin) buying her consent with luxury while he swindles the Montauk set. In the present timeframe, Jasmine is broke and living with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in a shabby San Francisco apartment. Jasmine is a snob who needs to be brought low, a task relished by Ginger, her boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale), and her ex (a surprisingly sympathetic Andrew Dice Clay). You sense that Allen wants to say something about our present culture of inequality and fraud, but he only dabbles, never probes. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Kirkland Parkplace, Majestic Bay, Sundance Cinemas, others
Don Jon Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed, and stars in Don Jon, the story of a porn addict who’d be right in place amongst the braying loudmouths of Jersey Shore. However, the likable Jon is also a ladies’ man, prowling the disco for babes to bed. An encounter with the lushly named Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson, in a deft caricature) suggests that our boy may have found authentic love, but Gordon-Levitt throws in some reasonably fresh variations on the tale of an addict redeemed. One of them comes in the form of a night-school classmate (Julianne Moore) who’s got more honest life experience than most of the people in Jon’s circle. All this is in service of a very simple message, of the kind an earnest young filmmaker might feel is important to say for his generation. Which is maybe more endearing than insightful. Don Jon is a marshmallow heart wrapped in a spicy shell. (R) ROBERT HORTON Alderwood 16, Woodinville, Big Picture, Cinebarre, Varsity, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Thornton Place, others
Enough Said Nothing much happens in a Nicole Holofcener film, and that’s OK. Enough Said is yet another well-wrought example of her focus on the problems intelligent women create for themselves through their constant worry. Ten years divorced, her daughter soon to leave for college, Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) wearily lugs her massage table from client to client, hearing their petty complaints without comment, seemingly resigned to a single woman’s slide toward menopause. The large, hairy obstacle in that path is Albert (James Gandolfini). Eva has a secret pipeline to confirm her doubts about him: Albert’s ex-wife Marianne (Catherine Keener) is one of her clients. If there is a Hippocratic oath for masseuses, Eva knows she’s broken it tenfold. Yet she allows Marianne’s complaints to poison her relationship with Albert. In his last screen role, Gandolfini conveys a lumpy shyness and decency. Eva’s BFF (Toni Colette) tells her to learn to compromise in a relationship, even while constantly dissing her husband (the excellently indignant Ben Falcone). For the women of Enough Said, too much candor has its risks, but remaining silent can bring disaster. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Pacific Place, Lincoln Square, Lynwood Theater (Bainbridge), Sundance
Good Ol’ Freda Who is Freda Kelly? Merely the Beatles’ secretary for 11 years during the glory days—actually, she was working for the band before Ringo joined. Her utterly darling story is told in Ryan White’s Good Ol’ Freda, another documentary shard in the saga of the best band ever. Freda’s never cashed in on her proximity to the band; and after all this time, she has some charming stories to tell. With a fierce Liverpudlian clannishness, she kept secrets and bonded with the Fab families: Ringo’s mother became a maternal figure for the motherless Freda; Paul’s dad taught her how to drink. More personal intimacies involving the boys will remain unspoken, as Freda remains protective of her former charges, even after 40 years of settling into a normal life. (PG) ROBERT HORTON Sundance
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In a World… Carol Solomon (writer-director Lake Bell) is a voice nerd, fascinated by the accents she covertly tapes with her ever-present Dictaphone, yet her career is confined to voice coaching, not doing voiceovers for movie trailers, her family trade. When her widowed father Sam (Fred Melamed) kicks her out of the house to make way for a young new girlfriend (Alexandra Holden), he condescendingly tells Carol, “I’m going to support you by not supporting you.” Implicit in his rebuke is that women, with their higher voices, have no place in his manly profession. Then the couch-surfing Carol catches a break at a recording studio run by amiable Louis (Demetri Martin). Everything that transpires among Lake’s players is predictable, but in a pleasant, breezy way. In a World… plays like an overstuffed sitcom, with Carol’s wacky friends and neighbors dropping in for brief, effective bits (these include Nick Offerman, Rob Corddry, and Tig Notaro). It’s a knowing industry satire, but not a mean industry satire. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance
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Inequality for All The basis for this advocacy doc, Robert Reich’s Aftershock, was published three 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 is that? Using the same graphs he employs as a UC Berkeley professor, Reich shows how the inequality curve began climbing in the ’80s, accelerating with the deregulation of financial markets during the Clinton era (when he worked in the White House). It’s a 40-year trend, with technology, globalization, outsourcing, and other causes. To counter that trend, Reich advocates federal stimulus and other policies to grow the middle class and get it spending again, to raise that median income (essentially flat since the pre-OPEC ’70s). Reich would raise taxes on carbon and capital gains, and he encourages federal spending in areas like bridge repair and infrastructure. 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 Harvard Exit
Prisoners Crime movies about child abduction raise the usual alarm bells. Here’s a chance for actors to shriek and curse, to pound the floor and squeeze out those Oscar-friendly tears. Yet writer Aaron Guzikowski and director Denis Villeneuve mostly tamp down the emotional explosions in this damp, depressive thriller; there’s a mood of fatigue and resignation in the struggling Pennsylvania suburb where two girls go missing on Thanksgiving. Their fathers (Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard) join the cops in combing the woods; dirty rain turns to derelict sleet; and the mothers (Maria Bello and Viola Davis) crumple into passive grief at home. The sullen detective on the case (Jake Gyllenhaal) offers little reassurance; with his tattoos and pent-up anger, he seems not just disgusted by the kidnapping suspect (Paul Dano) but by the world in general. Prisoners runs long, and the clues and plot twists are roughly knotted into the fabric. It feels like a single-season TV series trying to develop, and the only character given room to grow is Jackman’s. Dover is a contractor whose business has been cut by the recession; he’s a disaster-prepper with a basement full of canned food and guns; and he turns into a monster when he lays hands on the prime suspect. Outside of his family, he doesn’t see much good in the world. And in a film gloomily suffused with Catholicism and prayer, though looking for innocent kids, Dover finds the sinner within. (R) BRIAN MILLER Oak Tree, Woodinville, Pacific Place, Bainbridge, Varsity, Lincoln Square, SIFF Cinema Uptown, others
Rush Ably directed by Ron Howard, Rush is the mostly true stories of two star drivers of the ’70s: the British rogue James Hunt and the Austrian technician Niki Lauda. Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is a posh, privileged, oversexed product of his times. The methodical, unlovable Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) has meanwhile paid his own way onto the circuit: He makes every car faster through strict engineering discipline, not panache. He and Hunt are yin and yang, a dynamic that screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) repeats far more often than necessary. Howard certainly remembers the ’70s, and with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire) he gives Rush a wonderfully Campari-soaked period look. The racing scenes are excitingly conveyed with vintage cars, CGI, and snippets of real race footage among the many montages. Hemsworth, an Aussie from those Thor movies, isn’t a bad actor; and Bruhl, a German-Spanish utility player, is a good actor soon to co-star in the WikiLeaks movie The Fifth Estate. I only wish the writing were up to their and Howard’s talents. Rush successfully captures the glamour and danger of its sport; only the script isn’t up to speed. (R) BRIAN MILLER Oak Tree, Woodinville Cinemas, Pacific Place, Bainbridge, Cinebarre, Guild 45th, Lincoln Square, others
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Touchy Feely In Lynn Shelton’s latest locally made charmer, two siblings experience unexplained eruptions in their professional skills: Massage therapist Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt, from Your Sister’s Sister) is suddenly repulsed by the touch of human skin, and dentist Paul (Josh Pais) develops magical healing powers that can cure his patients’ jaw problems These phenomena are suspiciously related to the everyday issues afflicting the two, as Abby has been dawdling over an invitation to move in with her boyfriend Jesse (Scoot McNairy), and Paul has passively allowed his practice to dwindle because of his super-awkward manner. Meanwhile, Paul’s college-age daughter Jenny (Ellen Page) is trapped in her job as a dental assistant, and carries around an unrequited crush on someone who probably won’t return the feeling. In the film’s exactly observed living rooms and offices, something human is going on, in a way too many movies don’t get. Maybe this film is about the need to see people in a new way, which also describes Shelton’s deep-tissue work with actors. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Vashon Theatre
The Way, Way Back Fourteen-year-old Duncan (Liam James) and his divorced mother Pam (Toni Colette) are dragged to a Massachusetts beach rental by her overbearing new bf Trent (Steve Carell). Trent. There is no way we are going to like a guy named that (and a car salesman, of course), and Duncan emphatically dislikes the bullying Trent. In this awfully broad and familiar tale, unhappy Duncan finds a sympathetic mentor in Owen (Sam Rockwell), the flippant king of the local water park where Duncan lands a summer job. Owen is the anti-Trent: goofy and fun-loving, spitting out nicknames and bald lies, treating his staff with affectionate sarcasm, and harboring a not-so-secret thing for his boss (Maya Rudolph). While the drunken adults enjoy “spring break for adults” (per Duncan’s glum crush object, played by AnnaSophia Robb), Duncan finds new pals and self-confidence. We’ve seen this story a thousand times. But what are its incidental pleasures? Rockwell, Rockwell, and Rockwell. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Kirkland Parkplace, Guild 45th, others
The World’s End In this this third Edgar Wright-Simon Pegg-Nick Frost collaboration, five grown Englishmen try to reprise a failed 1990 pub crawl. Decades later, the obnoxious black sheep Gary (Pegg) is the least successful of the bunch (how much so is gradually revealed), still stuck in the past. The rest of them—played by Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan—have accepted boring bourgeois adulthood as their due. They don’t want to leave their comfortable London lives for the leafy suburb of Newton Haven, which seems quite changed upon their return. There, however, The World’s End suddenly and enjoyably shifts genres (that being Plot Turn A). The film gets a needed jolt of energy: clumsy, comic fight scenes, panicked chases from pub to pub, and lines like, “Pop her head off like an aspirin bottle!” This works fine for a while—until, like the first section, it runs out of ideas. In their screenplay, Pegg and Frost again return to their love of cheesy old movie genres and the vicissitudes of male friendship (see Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead). But here they’ve got to write a unified ending for both disparate halves of the movie, and they don’t. Instead they cough up Plot Turn B, an epilogue that should’ve been kept for the DVD extras. For all the prior goodwill generated by the Wright-Pegg-Frost combine, The World’s End plays like three different sketches from their early days in English TV. (R) BRIAN MILLER Cinebarre, Vashon
Sharon: Make sure to save this New Version below with revised phone numbers to whereever it lives… not running in print this week….
Theaters:
Admiral, 2343 California Ave. SW, 938-3456; Ark Lodge, 4816 Rainier Ave. S, 721-3156; Big Picture, 2505 First Ave., 256-0566; Big
Picture
Redmond, 7411 166th Ave. NE, 425-556-0566; Central
Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684; Cinebarre, 6009 SW 244th St. (Mountlake Terrace)., 425-672-7501; Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 448-6680; Crest, 16505 Fifth Ave. NE, 363-6339; Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., 523-3935; Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., 547-2127; Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 323-0587; iPic Theaters, 16451 N.E. 74th St. (Redmond), 425-636-5601; Kirkland Parkplace, 404 Park Place, 425-827-9000; Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N, 425-454-7400; Majestic Bay, 2044 NW Market St., 781-2229; Meridian, 1501 Seventh Ave., 223-9600; Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380; Oak Tree, 10006 Aurora Ave. N, 527-1748; Pacific Place, 600 Pine St., 888-262-4386; Seven Gables, 911 NE 50th St., 632-8821; SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996; SIFF Film Center, Seattle Center, 324-9996; Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave NE, 633-0059; Thornton Place, 301 NE 103rd St., 517-9953; Varsity, 4329 University Way NE, 632-6412.
