Month: May 2015

Friday May 15 – Thursday May 21

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

The Seattle International Film Festival

SIFF 2015 begins and highlights of the first week include the latest and possibly final film from Studio Ghibli, the powerhouse follow-up to The Act of Killing, a pair of intriguing experimental films, all-time greats from Powell & Pressburger and Sergei Parajanov, the latest from superstar Sammi Cheng and much more. We’ll have reviews posting throughout the festival and here is our Week One Preview.
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Playing This Week:

Admiral Theater:

The Wrecking Crew (Denny Tedesco, 2008) Fri-Thurs
Iris (Albert Maysles) Fri-Thurs

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado) Fri-Thurs

Central Cinema:

Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988) Fri-Mon
Pootie Tang (Louis C. K., 2001) Fri-Tues

Century Federal Way:

The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980) Sun and Weds Only

Crest Cinema Center:

Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón) Fri-Thurs Our Preview 
What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

SIFF Cinema Egyptian:

2015 Seattle International Film Festival Program Details Our Preview

AMC Loews Factoria 8:

Bombay Velvet (Anurag Kashyap) Fri-Thurs

Grand Cinema:

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas) Fri-Thurs Our Preview
Looney Tunes Collection Sat Only
Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón) Tues Only Our Preview 
The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) Weds Only
The Dark Side of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) Weds Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Elevator presents John Wiese Fri Only Video & Live Music
Animals (Collin Schiffli) Fri-Thurs
Epic of Everest (Captain John Noel, 1924) Sat-Thurs
VHS Über Alles presents Never Too Young to Die Sat Only VHS

Harvard Exit Theatre:

2015 Seattle International Film Festival Program Details Our Preview

Cinemark Lincoln Square Cinemas:

Bombay Velvet (Anurag Kashyap) Fri-Thurs
Piku (Shoojit Sircar) Fri-Thurs
The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980) Sun and Weds Only
2015 Seattle International Film Festival Program Details Our Preview

Regal Meridian 16:

Bombay Velvet (Anurag Kashyap) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Heaven Adores You (Nikolas Rossi) Fri-Thurs
Dance Film Salon: One Day Pina Asked. . . (Chantal Ackerman, 1983) Mon Only
Slovenian 8mm Experiments: Karpo Godina and Davorin Marc (1965-1981) Weds Only Super 8mm/35mm/digital video
Workers Film and Photo League Newsreels Thurs Only

AMC Pacific Place:

Left Ear (Alec Su) Fri-Thurs
2015 Seattle International Film Festival Program Details Our Preview

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Bombay Velvet (Anurag Kashyap) Fri-Thurs

Scarecrow Video Screening Lounge:

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) Fri Only
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004) Fri Only
Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) Sun Only
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012) Sun Only
St. Helens (Ernest Pintoff, 1981) Mon Only
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963) Tues Only
Prom Queen: Midnight Veil Weds Only
Showgirls w/Commentary (Paul Verhoeven, 1995) Thurs Only

Seattle Art Museum:

Black Box 2.0: Landscapes, Revisited Fri Only
Confidentially Yours (François Truffaut, 1983) Thurs Only 35mm

Landmark Seven Gables:

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

SIFF Film Center:

2015 Seattle International Film Festival Program Details Our Preview 

Sundance Cinemas Seattle:

Iris (Albert Maysles) Fri-Thurs
5 Flights Up (Richard Loncraine) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Cinema Uptown:

2015 Seattle International Film Festival Program Details Our Preview

Varsity Theatre:

Every Secret Thing (Amy J. Berg) Fri-Thurs

SIFF 2015: Snow on the Blades (Setsurô Wakamatsu, 2014)

~ Sean Gilman

This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.

SnowOnTheBlades_Still02

A measured, thoughtful samurai film set in the transition years between the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the rapidly modernizing Meiji period, in 1860s Japan, Snow on the Blades follows a lone samurai’s quest for redemption as the world changes around him. Sporting the glossy sheen that’s become the dominant visual style of historical epics in recent years, every snowflake a brilliant white, every earth tone deep and rich, every camellia a signifier, it presents a sharp ideological break with its forebears, the contemplative samurai epics of the 1950s and 60s, most especially Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri (and its 2011 remake by Takashi Miike). Rejecting the simple one-to-one allegory of the samurai ethos as stand-in for the military dictatorship that so disastrously led Japan into World War II, director Setsurô Wakamatsu’s film seeks out a kind of middle ground, condemning the brutality at the heart of the code while extolling the heroism of the men and women who killed (themselves and others) to enforce it.

Continue reading “SIFF 2015: Snow on the Blades (Setsurô Wakamatsu, 2014)” →

SIFF 2015: Virtuosity (Christopher Wilkinson, 2014)

~ Michael Strenski

This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.

virtuosity clapboard

Every four years the best young pianists in the world descend upon Fort Worth, Texas for the Cliburn Competition, the World Series of people playing impossibly complex classical music. The eventual winner is bestowed with an instant career of studio recordings and global performances. The losers get by, biding their time before entering their name again 48 months later. Christopher Wilkinson’s serviceable if occasionally busy documentary tracks roughly a half dozen contestants at the 2013 competition.

Documentaries that shine a light on a specialized subset of society have become so commonplace that it feels as though every two-bit convention and cult oddity has already been unearthed and overexposed. With this saturation comes a familiarity with the narrative’s conventions. To Virtuosity‘s detriment, we can tell just by the camera’s focus who is going to make the finals, long before the names are announced. On the other hand, the film has a natural villain hanging out on the margins and it chooses to let him recede, sidestepping an easy angle. (It would have been a fun bit of schadenfreude to see this confident man fail, however, had he been given more opportunities to hang himself.)

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 10.55.03 PM

While the film is mostly focused on the performances and the personalities of the pianists (“artists” doesn’t feel like the right word for these technically impressive but creatively quiet individuals) the narrative does find time to wander down a few side avenues. The most interesting thread highlights two different critical analyses of the same performer that basically exposes the whole notion of competition at this expert level as a sham, dependent upon the fickle whims of an older generation the world has already passed by.

Speaking of getting passed by, the most tantalizing story here is the one left untold. What happens to these talented individuals once the competition ends? What paths do these kids follow once they’re considered simply the the sixth best pianist in the world? One character alludes to being dropped back on the street. That is a sequel worth paying to see. Call it Reality.

(Virtuosity plays 5/20 at SIFF Cinema Uptown, 5/21 at the Harvard Exit, 5/24 at Lincoln Square.) 

SIFF 2015: Seoul Searching (Benson Lee, 2015)

~ Michael Strenski

This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.seoul searching ladies

Seoul Searching is set in 1986 at a summer camp created for foreign-born Korean teens to get reacquainted with the culture of their ancestors. Kids from all over the world are flown in to learn of Korean traditions and history. The opening voiceover explains that the program, which was indeed an actual project undertaken by the government, was ultimately abandoned because the unruly youth were too much to handle. Their counselors and teachers could not keep the kids in check. There’s a lot of potential here for comedy in the cultural clash and drama in the generational divide. Unfortunately, Seoul Searching chooses to rely on tired tropes instead of showing us something–frankly, anything–new. Continue reading “SIFF 2015: Seoul Searching (Benson Lee, 2015)” →

SIFF 2015: Temporary Family (Cheuk Wan-chi, 2014)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 2 Comments

This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.19912102

Reading the description for this comedy about people in the Hong Kong forced to share a luxury flat while they try to flip it in an over-competitive bubble market, I was hoping for a Hong Kong version of The More the Merrier, the 1943 George Stevens movie in which Jean Arthur and Joel McRea are forced to share an apartment in wartime Washington DC and are maneuvered into love by their third roommate, the portly, angelic goofball Charles Coburn. And my hopes were more or less fulfilled. Like the Stevens film, it’s a screwball but with a slower pace and deeper heart that its immediate generic predecessors (for the earlier film, the verbal anarchy of Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges; for the new one, the tangled webs of Wai Ka-fai and Johnnie To’s consumerist rom-coms like The Shopaholics or the Don’t Go Breaking My Heart movies). Both movies have thin premises stretched almost farther than they can go, a delicate balance of cynical humor and dopey romanticism with a liberal amount of schmaltz.

Continue reading “SIFF 2015: Temporary Family (Cheuk Wan-chi, 2014)” →

SIFF 2015 Preview: Week One

~ Sean Gilman

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 11.11.58 PM

The 2015 edition of the Seattle International Film festival kicks off this Thursday, May 14th and we here at Seattle Screen Scene are planning some extensive coverage. We’ll be watching and reviewing as many festival films as we can over the next several weeks, and highlighting some you may want to check out. As a preview, here’s a list of some of our most-anticipated films from the festival’s first week. We’ll add links to the titles as we review them.

Week of May 15 – May 21:

The Look of Silence – The much-buzzed about sequel to The Act of Killing focuses on the families of those lost in Indonesian genocide.

Results – The latest from Andrew Bujalski, the director of Computer Chess, is a romantic comedy with Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders and Kevin Corrigan. The first of two movies starring Cobie Smulders at this year’s festival.

Seoul Searching – A comedy about diasporic Korean teens at a summer camp from Korean-American director Benson Lee.

When Marnie Was There – Possibly the last ever feature from Studio Ghibli, a gothic ghost story/coming of age tale from director Hiromasa Yonebayashi (The Secret of Arietty) that recalls some of the best films of Val Lewton.

The Red Shoes – A new restoration of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 film about the incompatibility of music, ballet and life that is simply one of the best movies ever made.

The Coffin in the Mountain – Three stories linked by the discovery of a mysterious corpse in a remote Chinese village. Directed by Xin Yukun.

Snow on the Blades – Director Setsuro Wakamatsu’s film about a samurai’s 13 year quest for vengeance in the 1860s, during the waning days of the Tokugawa shogunate as Japan begins rapidly modernizing.

Beyond Zero 1914-1918 – Director Bill Morrison’s excavation of never-before-seen World War I footage combined with a new score commissioned by the Kronos Quartet.

natural history – Experimental filmmaker James Benning’s exploration of the Museum of Natural History in Vienna.

Little Forest: Summer/Autumn – First two parts of a four-part movie about a woman who moves to the country and finds meaning in the growing and cooking of food. Like a Food Network version of Only Yesterday or No Regrets for Our Youth.

Little Forest: Winter/Spring – The other two parts. Directed by Junichi Mori.

Haemoo – First feature from director Shim Sungbo, who co-wrote Bong Joonho’s acclaimed Memories of Murder. A thriller about a fisherman’s disastrous attempt to smuggle Chinese immigrants into Korea.

A Hard Day – Another Korean thriller, this one about a cop who accidentally kills someone and tries to cover it up, like a black comic variation on Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Virtuosity – A documentary about a quadrennial piano competition held in Ft. Worth, Texas, where the young and elite compete for a chance at classical music stardom.

Temporary Family – Hong Kong screwball comedy about a man who has one year to buy an apartment so his girlfriend will marry him. So he invests in a luxury apartment with three other people in the hope of flipping it. I’m imagining a HK version of The More the Merrier. Starring Sammi Cheng, Nick Cheung and Angelababy and directed by Cheuk Wan-chi.

The Color of Pomegranates – Restored version of Sergei Parajonov’s 1968 film about Armenian poet Sayat Nova that is surely one of the most oblique, and weirdly beautiful biopics ever made.

Friday May 8 – Thursday May 14

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

The Triplets of Belleville at the Central Cinema

Sylvain Chomet’s 2003 animated classic about cycling, jazz and questionable eating habits comes to the Central Cinema as part of an unlikely pair of films about bicycles. It’s an art nouveau Finding Nemo as designed by Jacques Tati. Our Preview.
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Playing This Week:

Admiral Theater:

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

White God (Kornél Mundruczó) Fri-Thurs

Central Cinema:

The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003) Fri-Tues
Rad (Hal Needham, 1986) Fri-Weds

Century Federal Way:

Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989) Sun Only

SIFF Cinema Egyptian:

Iris (Albert Maysles) Fri-Weds
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975) Sat Midnight Only

Grand Cinema:

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas) Fri-Thurs Our Preview
Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako) Tues Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival Program Details
Roar (Noel Marshall) Sun, Weds and Thurs Only
Hallucinatory Maps (Georg Koszulinski) Tues Only Video & 16mm
Out of Print (Julia Marchese) Weds Only 35mm Director in attendance
Grindhouse Releasing presents Trailer Apocalypse Thurs Only 35mm

Cinemark Lincoln Square Cinemas:

Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989) Sun Only

AMC Pacific Place:

Maggie (Henry Hobson) Fri-Thurs
Left Ear (Alec Su) Fri-Thurs

Scarecrow Video Screening Lounge:

Mother’s Day (Charles Kaufman, 1980) Fri Only
The Guy from Harlem (Rene Martinez Jr, 1977) Sat Only
Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) Sun Only
Trigger, Jr (William Witney, 1950) Mon Only
Baffled (Philip Leacock, 1973) Tues Only
True Stories (David Byrne, 1986) Weds Only
Exterminators of the Year 3000 (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1983) Thurs Only

Seattle Art Museum:

Black Box 2.0: Landscapes, Revisited Fri Only
One Deadly Summer (Jean Becker, 1983) Thurs Only 35mm

Landmark Seven Gables:

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

SIFF Film Center:

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Fri-Sun Our Preview 

Sundance Cinemas Seattle:

Iris (Albert Maysles) Fri-Thurs
5 Flights Up (Richard Loncraine) Fri-Thurs
Lambert & Stamp (James D. Cooper) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Cinema Uptown:

Tangerines (Zaza Urushadze) Fri-Weds

Varsity Theatre:

Adult Beginners (Ross Katz) Fri-Thurs

The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

triplets-of-belleville

We at Seattle Screen Scene find ourselves deep in preparation for the Seattle International Film Festival (we’re planning extensive coverage, look for our preview sometime early next week), but before we start rolling that out, here’s our Featured Film of the week, Sylvain Chomet’s 2003 Oscar nominee for Best Animated Film, The Triplets of Belleville. Like that year’s Oscar winner, Finding Nemo, the movie is about a parent searching for their lost child, questing through a strange and wondrous world, having adventures and finding help along the way. But otherwise the two films couldn’t be more different, Bellville abandoning the impressive photo-realism of Pixar’s crisp computer images for a highly stylized reality, bodies and shapes distended and distorted in extreme art nouveau parodies of pale yellows, browns and greens, earthy and bilious, daring you to call it ugly.

It opens, as all great films do, with a cartoon. A black and white parody of the 1930s Warner Bros animated shorts that featured celebrity caricatures, with a Django Reinhardt (who looks weirdly like William Powell), a Josephine Baker (the men in the audience, transformed by the eroticism of her dance, turn into psychotic monkeys who rush the stage and steal all the bananas off her skirt) and Fred Astaire who tap dances right out of his shoes, which then grow mouths and devour him like carnivorous Cronenbergian beasts. Right away you know you’re in for something special.

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The quest plot follows a woman’s search for her grandson. He’s kidnapped while cycling in the Tour de France and she (along with his faithful dog Bruno) follow his abductors to the city of Belleville, a version of New York City. She’s aided in the search by the eponymous trio, elderly jazz musicians (they sang in the opening cartoon, in their youth) who find rhythm in unlikely household objects and have questionable dietary practices. Food is actually pretty disgusting throughout the film, a part of Chomet’s twin critiques of French and American culture: America is fat and disgusting, the source of overcrowded and soulless modernity; France is pretty gross too, but at least has an appreciation for the finer things in life like wine, jazz and bicycling.

Almost entirely lacking in dialogue (what there is it isn’t necessary to translate), the film is nevertheless resolutely aural, every effect a calculated addition to the symphonic whole, following in the tradition of Jacques Tati (even if you didn’t know Chomet would go on to adapt Tati’s The Illusionist, the reference is obvious: Belleville prominently features a M. Hulot’s Holiday poster, a weather vane in the shape of Tati from Jour de fête and even an actual clip from that same film (in which Tati plays a bicycle-riding mailman)). Similarly, while severely distorted, the bodies in the film follow a ruthlessly inviolable logic: giant mobsters with huge upper bodes and tiny legs dwarf the cars they ride in, as they stand through the sun-roofs of those cars in the final chase sequence, the balance of the vehicle is thrown off and sharp turns cause them to flip over, the villains doomed by their own enormity; a maitre’d so literally spineless in his obsequity that he literally leans over backwards, his head flopping back-to-front and side-to-side. What appears to be simple chaotic weirdness is in fact carefully constructed and calculated to achieve a specific effect, which I guess is a reasonably good definition of jazz.

A wickedly funny, strangely poignant and wildly inventive film, The Triplets of Belleville plays Friday through Tuesday this week at the Central Cinema, whose clever programmers have paired it with another classic about bicycling, the 1986 Hal Needham BMX film, Rad, with Lori Laughlin.

Friday May 1 – Thursday May 7

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Clouds of Sils Maria at the Seven Gables

Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart headline the latest from director Olivier Assayas, opening this week at the Seven Gables. Binoche plays a middle-aged actress reluctantly taking on the role of the older half of a poisonous relationship in a play she performed the younger role in in her own youth. Stewart is her steadfast assistant as the two discuss the play, acting in general and internet gossip in the Swiss Alps. Our Preview.
Sign up for our newsletter and get the best of Seattle arthouse and repertory programming in your Inbox every Friday morning.

Playing This Week:

Admiral Theater:

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

Central Cinema:

My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988) Fri-Weds
Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005) Fri-Weds
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1969) Thurs Only

Century Federal Way:

Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986) Sun Only

SIFF Cinema Egyptian:

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (Brett Morgen) Fri-Sun Only
Gimme Shelter (Albert & David Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin, 1970) Mon-Weds Only
The Rolling Stones: Crossfire Hurricane (Brett Morgen, 2012) Mon-Weds Only

Grand Cinema:

Ballet 422 (Jody Lee Lipes) Fri-Mon, Weds-Thurs Our Preview
1971 (Johanna Hamilton) Fri-Thurs
Backcountry (Adam MacDonald) Fri-Thurs
An Honest Liar (Justin Weinstein, 1979) Fri-Sun, Tues-Thurs
Seymour: An Introduction (Ethan Hawke) Fri-Thurs
The Wrecking Crew (Denny Tedesco, 2008) Fri-Thurs
Merchants of Doubt (Robert Kenner) Fri-Thurs
The Hunting Ground (Kirby Dick) Sat-Thurs
Return of the River (John Gussman & Jessica Plumb) Tues Only
Endless Abilities (Tripp Clemens & Harvey Burrell) Weds Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival Program Details

Landmark Guild 45th:

The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado) Fri-Thurs

Cinemark Lincoln Square Cinemas:

Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986) Sun Only

Majestic Bay Theatre:

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

Northwest Film Forum:

Man from Reno (Dave Boyle) Fri-Mon
BFE: DVD Release Party! (Shawn Telford) Sat Only
Gringo Trails (Pegi Vail) Sun Only
Balikbayan #1 (Kidlat Tahimik) Tues Only

AMC Pacific Place:

Kung Fu Killer (Teddy Chan) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

Regal Parkway Plaza:

You’re My Boss (Antoinette Jadaone) Fri-Thurs

Scarecrow Video Screening Lounge:

The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955) Fri Only
Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood (Christopher Speeth, 1973) Sat Only
Freaky Friday (Gary Nelson, 1976) Sun Only
Daisies (Vera Chytilová, 1966) Sun Only
Randy Rides Alone (Harry L. Fraser, 1934) Mon Only
Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) Tues Only
A Gnome Named Gnorm (Stan Winston, 1990) Weds Only
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (Lou Adler, 1982) Thurs Only

Seattle Art Museum:

Black Box 2.0 Opening Night Program Details
Le cercle rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970) Thurs Only 35mm

Landmark Seven Gables:

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

SIFF Film Center:

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Fri-Sat Our Preview 
Song of the Sea (Tomm Moore) Mon Only
In Country (Mike Attie & Meghan O’Hara) Fri-Sun Only

Sundance Cinemas Seattle:

Felix and Meira (Maxime Giroux) Fri-Thurs
Misery Loves Comedy (Kevin Pollack) Fri-Thurs
Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón) Fri-Thurs Our Preview
What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Fri-Thurs Our Preview

SIFF Cinema Uptown:

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi) Sun-Weds Our Preview
Adult Beginners (Ross Katz) Fri-Thurs
Best of HUMP! Tour 2015 Fri-Sat Only
Frozen (Jennifer Lee, 2013) Sat Only Sing-along
Song of the Sea (Tomm Moore) Sat-Sun Only

Varsity Theatre:

Adult Beginners (Ross Katz) Fri-Weds