Day: June 19, 2015

Friday June 19th – Thursday June 25th

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

The Fifth Element at the Central Cinema

Luc Besson’s 1997 comic sci-fi epic comes to the Central Cinema with an exhilaratingly unstable mix of actors (Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker) and comic book mythology, a bright pop masterpiece of form and energy over the mundane demands of logical plotting. 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:

Central Cinema:

Howl’s Moving Castle (Mahayo Miyazaki, 2004)  Fri-Mon (Subtitled Mon Only)
The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997) Fri-Mon, Weds Our Preview
Pride (Mathew Warchus) Tues Only

SIFF Cinema Egyptian:

The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle) Fri-Thurs
Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958) Fri Midnight Only
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975) Sat Midnight Only

AMC Loews Factoria 8:

Dil Dhadakne Do (Zoya Akhtar) Fri-Thurs

Century Federal Way:

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) Sun & Weds Only

Grand Cinema:

5 Flights Up (Richard Loncraine) Fri-Thurs
Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011) Mon Only
Tangerines (Zaza Urushadze) Tues Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Elektro Moskva (Elena Tikhonova & Dominik Spritzendorfer, 2013) Fri-Thurs
Angst (Gerald Kargl, 1983) Sat Only
Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay (Amélie Ravalec & Travis Collins ) Fri & Sat Only

Cinemark Lincoln Square Cinemas:

ABCD 2 (Remo D’Souza) Fri-Thurs
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) Sun & Weds Only

Regal Meridian 16:

The Ark of Mr. Chow (Xiao Yang) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, 1982) Fri-Sun
Christiania – 40 Years of Occupation (Robert Lawson and Richard Jackman) Sat Only
Field Niggas (Khalik Allah) Mon Only
The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy) Tues Only
The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980) Weds Only 35mm
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983) Thurs Only 16mm

Paramount Theatre:

Snow White (J. Searle Dawley, 1916) Mon Only 35mm

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Dil Dhadakne Do (Zoya Akhtar) Fri-Thurs

Scarecrow Video Screening Lounge:

Song of the Sea (Tomm Moore) Fri Only
Krull (Peter Yates, 1983) Fri Only
Channeling Yourself Presents: The Golden Age of Seattle Public Access Sat Only Filmmakers in Attendance
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Various, 1937) Sun Only
Gadjo Dillo (Tony Gatlif, 1997) Sun Only
Chris Marker Group Mon Only
Big in Japan (John Jeffcoat) Tues Only DVD Signing
Dragons Forever (Sammo Hung & Corey Yuen, 1988) Weds Only
Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) Thurs Only

Seattle Asian Art Museum:

Desperately Seeking Helen (Eisha Marjara, 1998) Thurs Only

Landmark Seven Gables:

The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Film Center:

Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll (John Pirozzi) Fri-Weds Our Preview
I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (Dave LaMattina & Chad Walker) Fri-Thurs

Sundance Cinemas Seattle:

Marie’s Story (Jean-Pierre Améris) Fri-Thurs
Madame Bovary (Sophie Barthes) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Cinema Uptown:

Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello) Fri-Thurs (No shows Saturday)
The 100 Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Felix Herngren) Fri-Thurs

Varsity Theatre:

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) Sun & Weds Only

The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997)

~ Sean Gilman

The-Fith-Element

This week the Central Cinema, home of Seattle’s most adventurous double features, revives one of the key oddities of the late 1990s, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, as unstable a collection of genres, tones and actors as you’re likely to find in the mainstream cinema. 300 years from now, Bruce Willis, bleached but otherwise comfortably within his Die Hard star persona, is an ex-military agent who has the key to saving the universe fall into his lap (almost literally). That key is the by definition perfect form of Milla Jovovich, a genetically supreme being that is the fifth part of a machine some aliens have installed in the Egyptian desert as a device to defeat the periodically occurring onslaught of Evil, which takes the form of a planet sized black hole that devours everything like Orson Welles in Transformers the Movie. Because of Luke Perry, we’re not as prepared for Evil’s arrival as we should be and a bumbling priest (played by Ian Holm at the peak of the bumbling priest phase of his career) is the only one who knows what’s really going on: Evil has allied itself with Gary Oldman (playing Ross Perot with Hitler’s hair) to steal the magic rocks that make up the rest of the Milla-machine from an alien opera singer. And Chris Tucker is there playing Prince if Prince was really, really loud.

Continue reading “The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997)” →