Local & Repertory
Buffalo Field Campaign Roadshow Film clips and discussion are part of the effort to save the lumbering denizens of Yellowstone National Park. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St. See buffalofieldcampaign.org for price and ticket info. 4:30 p.m. Sat.
Flagler Films Long-Distance Hiking Cinema Tour Friday, hikers tackle the Appalachian Trail. On Saturday, it’s the Continental Divide Trail. (NR)
Grand Illusion. See flaglerfilms.com for tickets. 6:30 p.m. Fri. & 2:30 p.m. Sat.
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Vol. 1 Short films document the local puppetry scene, curated by Heather Henson. (NR)
Grand Illusion, price TBD. 7 p.m. Mon.
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House Cult movies should be mistakes, not intentional. In his 1977 feature debut, there’s no indication that Nobuhiko Obayahshi meant for House to appear—three decades later, to non-Japanese viewers—completely insane. But it is: batshit, Technicolor, fairy-tale-meets-softcore-porn insane. Seven teenage schoolgirls visit the creepy old mansion inhabited by the spinster aunt of heroine Gorgeous (all the girls are similarly type-named); there they begin to disappear Ten Little Indians-style. But who’s killing whom, and why, are the least interesting questions about this effects-saturated dreamscape. Gorgeous is in love with her dashing father and despises his evil fiancee (whose hair and dress are permanently aflutter with a wind machine). Her schoolmates have a crush on their teacher, and her aunt is still pining for a soldier who died in WWII. All that thwarted love leads to flying heads, flashbacks, severed limbs, a ravenous piano, demonic cat, and tidal wave of blood. Obayashi crams every scene of House with giddy, gaudy visual excess; it’s like Douglas Sirk on acid. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $6-$8. 9:30 p.m. Sat.-Tues.
Nymphomaniac: Extended Director’s Cut Brace yourself: This is a five and one-half hour fusion of Lars von Trier’s two movies from last year, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg as the woman sharing her sexual history with Stellan Skarsgård. Or something like that. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. 6:30 p.m. Mon.
Seattle Latino Film Festival Chile is the focus of this year’s programming, though countries including Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, and Cuba are naturally represented with over a dozen documentaries and features. (NR)
Pacific Place and other venues. Info: slff.org. Fri., Oct. 3-Sun., Oct. 12.
Seattle Polish Film Festival Titles in this two-week series, which includes a group of repertory classics selected by Martin Scorsese, include The Saragossa Manuscript and A Short Film About Killing. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum and other venues. Info: polishfilms.org. Sun., Oct. 5-Sun., Oct. 19.
Ongoing
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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period—Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance
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Gone Girl What’s exceptional about Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of her 2012 novel, directed with acid fidelity by David Fincher, is that Gone Girl doesn’t like most of its characters. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) soon falls under suspicion of murdering his missing wife Amy (Rosamund Pike). The small-town Missouri police investigation (led by Kim Dickens) goes entirely against Nick for the first hour. He behaves like an oaf and does most everything to make himself the prime suspect, despite wise counsel from his sister (Carrie Coon) and lawyer (a surprisingly effective, enjoyable Tyler Perry). Second hour, still no body, but flashbacks turn us against the absent Amy. As we slowly investigate the Dunnes’ very flawed marriage, funny little kernels of bile begin to explode underfoot. How the hell did these two end up together? Flynn’s foundational joke answers that question with a satire of marriage. The movie poster and tabloid-TV plot suggest a standard I-didn’t-kill-my-wife tale, but matrimony is what’s being murdered here. Amid the media circus, Nick becomes the scorned sap because of his untruths; but what really damns him in the movie’s intricate plot is his credulity—he believed in Amy too much. Gone Girl is all about manipulation—Fincher’s stock in trade, really, which helps make the film such cynical, mean-spirited fun. (R) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Meridian, Bainbridge, Cinebarre, Bellevue Square, Big Picture, Sundance, Majestic Bay, Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace, others
Hector and the Search for Happiness The title of this whimsical though ultimately conventional quest-com spells it out for you. Hector (Simon Pegg) is an upright British shrink with a committed girlfriend named Clara (Rosamund Pike), amusingly eccentric patients, and a very neat apartment. What he needs is an adventure, very much like Tintin, so he embarks on a world tour to find out what makes people happy. (The final answer will be Clara, but you knew that already.) Hector’s travels take him to Shanghai, the Himalayas, Africa, and Los Angeles. En route he meets a gruff business tycoon (Stellan Skarsgård), a gorgeous Chinese woman (Ming Zhou), a Tibetan monk, a drug lord (Jean Reno), an old flame (Toni Collette), and a sage neuroscientist (Christopher Plummer). Back home, we can understand why impatient Clara keeps shutting off their Skype chats: So much virtue can be a bore. (R) B.R.M. Seven Gables
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Last Days in Vietnam How, short of total victory, do you end a war? The question has been haunting our military and political leaders since Korea. And though Rory Kennedy’s sobering new doc focuses on the last few desperate days of the Vietnam War, 40 years ago, its lessons are surely applicable today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and whatever the hell it is we call ISIS. The bulk of the testimony here comes from guys who were actually on the ground in Saigon—soldiers (American and Vietnamese), a CIA agent, embassy staffers, and the stray journalist or two. These fresh interviews are coupled with vivid archival news footage filmed on both sides of the U.S. embassy walls as a terrified tidal wave of humanity sought evacuation before the North Vietnamese Army overran Saigon in late April 1975. With a deluded ambassador in charge, his men began a covert evacuation plan that would also include thousands of Vietnamese (despite orders and U.S. immigration laws): girlfriends, wives and families, friends, and brothers-in-arms. (“We gotta save the tailor!” says one attache whose suits he made.) There’s intrigue in these brave tales that occasionally recalls Argo, only with an unhappy outcome for all those natives left behind. (NR) B.R.M. Varsity
This Is Where I Leave You The fractious Altman clan gathers for an awkward and altogether irreverent weeklong mourning period (sitting shiva) for its deceased patriarch, at the command of an imperious new widow (Jane Fonda) who wears her conspicuous boob job with blithe pride. All of which greatly discomfits her four grown children. Among them, Corey Stoll is the son who stayed to run the family business; Adam Driver is the ne’er-do-well youngest son who fled to the West Coast; Tina Fey is the unhappily married wife and mother, also visiting; and Jason Bateman is the New York radio producer whose marriage just imploded. There’s a lot of ground to cover in this cluttered adaptation of Jonathan Tropper’s 2009 novel (he did the adaptation), directed with no great subtlety by Shawn Levy. (R) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Guild 45th, Kirkland Parkplace others
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Tracks The place is the Australian desert, where in 1975 a young woman named Robyn Davidson determined she would walk the 1,700 miles from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. In writing a National Geographic article and subsequent best-selling book about the trek, Davidson offered little explanation for her impulse, and the movie is blunt about acknowledging that no coherent justification can be made on that score. She just needed to do it. Mia Wasikowska’s skeptical gaze and stony delivery are ideal for this tough character, and the actress never makes a bid for likability. We do hear Davidson’s words on the soundtrack, but for the most part the movie simply forges ahead; the romance-of-the-desert familiar from Lawrence of Arabia is kept at bay. This isn’t about conquering the land, but it’s not a reassuring journey of self-discovery, either. (PG-13) R.H. Sundance, others
