Month: August 2017

Friday September 1 – Thursday September 7

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

All that Jazz at the Northwest Film Forum

Bob Fosse’s loosely auto-biographical film, about a Broadway director with health and overwork problems (inspired by his attempt to stage Chicago and edit Lenny simultaneously), is the last great musical of the Hollywood studio style, features the best performance of Roy Scheider’s distinguished career and the grandest work of that system’s most distinctive choreographer, and is the best movie of 1979. It plays this week on Saturday and Sunday only on 35mm. Also at the NWFF this weekend is a double feature of documentaries about tap-dancing from George Nierenberg that look really cool: No Maps On My Taps & About Tap, playing Friday and Saturday only.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

Valley of Bones (Dan Glaser) Fri-Thurs
A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon) Fri-Thurs
I Do. . . Until I Don’t (Lake Bell) Fri-Thurs
Midnight Runners (Kim Joo-hwan) Fri-Thurs

Central Cinema:

Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948) Fri-Weds
The Big Lebowski (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1998) Fri-Weds

Cinerama:

Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982) Fri Only
Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) Fri Only
Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959) Sat Only
West Side Story (Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins, 1961) Sat Only
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Nicholas Meyer, 1991) Sat Only
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Sat & Weds Only
Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970) Sun Only
Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) Sun Only
Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) Sun Only
Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) Mon Only
Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins) Mon Only
Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014) Tues Only
The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987) Tues Only
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Weds Only

Century Federal Way:

A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon) Fri-Thurs
Midnight Runners (Kim Joo-hwan) Fri-Thurs
Office Space (Mike Judge, 1999) Sun & Weds Only

Grand Cinema:

The Trip to Spain (Michael Winterbottom) Fri-Thurs
The Little Hours (Jeff Baena) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984) Fri Only
In Transit (Albert Maysles, et al) Tues Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

The Vault (Dan Bush) Fri-Thurs

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

I Do. . . Until I Don’t (Lake Bell) Fri-Thurs
Paisa Vasool (Puri Jagannadh) Fri-Thurs
Puriyatha Puthir (Ranjit Jeyakodi) Fri-Thurs
Arjun Reddy (Sandeep Reddy Vanga) Fri-Thurs
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (Rs Prasanna) Fri-Thurs
Do It Like an Hombre (Nicolás López) Fri-Thurs
A Gentleman (Krishna D.K. & Raj Nidimoru) Fri-Thurs
Baashaho (Milan Luthria) Fri-Thurs
Office Space (Mike Judge, 1999) Sun & Weds Only

Regal Meridian:

Gook (Justin Chon) Fri-Thurs Our Review
A Gentleman (Krishna D.K. & Raj Nidimoru) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

No Maps On My Taps and About Tap (George T. Nierenberg, 1979 & 1985) Fri & Sat Only
Automatic at Sea (Matthew Lessner) Fri & Sat Only Director in Attendance
All that Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979) Sat & Sun Only 35mm

AMC Oak Tree:

Deep (Julio Soto Gurpide) Fri-Thurs

AMC Pacific Place:

Wolf Warrior 2 (Wu Jing) Fri-Thurs Our Review
I Do. . . Until I Don’t (Lake Bell) Fri-Thurs

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Gook (Justin Chon) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Finally Found Someone (Theodore Boborol) Fri-Thurs
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (Rs Prasanna) Fri-Thurs
A Gentleman (Krishna D.K. & Raj Nidimoru) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

Gook (Justin Chon) Fri-Thurs Our Review
I Do. . . Until I Don’t (Lake Bell) Fri-Thurs

AMC Southcenter:

Valley of Bones (Dan Glaser) Fri-Thurs
The Layover (William H. Macy) Fri-Thurs
Do It Like an Hombre (Nicolás López) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Uptown:

The Trip to Spain (Michael Winterbottom) Fri-Thurs
Columbus (Kogonada) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Rumble (Catherine Bainbridge & Alfonso Maiorana) Fri-Thurs

Varsity Theatre:

Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
Unlocked (MIchael Apted) Fri-Thurs

In Wide Release:


Baby Driver (Edgar Wright) Our Review
The Big Sick (Michael Showalter) Our Review
Wind River (Taylor Sheridan) Our Review
Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie) Our Review
Leap! (Eric Summer & Éric Warin) Our Review
Ingrid Goes West (Matt Spicer) Our Review

The Frances Farmer Show #14: True Grit

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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Fresh from Melissa introducing the film at the Pickford Film Center in Bellingham, we talk about three versions of True Grit: the 1968 novel by Charles Portis, the 1969 film version directed by Henry Hathaway and starring John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell, and the 2010 adaptation by the Coen Brothers, with Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon.

You can listen to the show by downloading it directly, or by subscribing on iTunes or the podcast player of your choice.

Note: Zama, which we’ll be reading for the Vancouver Film Festival, is a Spanish language novel by Argentinian writer Antonio di Benedetto.

Friday August 25 – Thursday August 31

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

70mm Festival at the Cinerama

Two terrific American indies open this week in wide release: Ingrid Goes West and Good Time, but we’d remiss not to highlight the latest version of the Cinerama’s festival of 70mm film. The calendar is packed with the usual suspects (Lawrence of Arabia, Vertigo, Aliens, Baraka), but if you’ve never had a chance to see them, the next two weeks will be something special. The highlight of the festival, outside the canonical classics, is undoubtedly Sleeping Beauty, which remains the best of Disney’s animated films. I’d also challenge anyone to only go see Khartoum and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World while skipping everything else.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon) Fri-Thurs
Vivegam (Siva) Fri-Thurs In Tamil & Telugu, Check Showtimes
Midnight Runners (Kim Joo-hwan) Fri-Thurs

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs

Central Cinema:

Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991) Fri-Tues
South Park (Trey Parker & Matt Stone, 1999) Fri-Tues

Cinerama:

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) Fri-Sun
Khartoum (Basil Dearden, 1966) Fri Only
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sat Only
Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) Sat Only
Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959) Sun Only
Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) Sun Only
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) Mon Only
Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992) Mon Only
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (Stanley Kramer, 1963) Tues Only
The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino, 2015) Tues Only Our Review
Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) Weds Only
Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) Weds Only
The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982) Thurs Only
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) Thurs Only

SIFF Egyptian:

Patti Cake$ (Geremy Jasper) Fri-Thurs

Century Federal Way:

Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon) Fri-Thurs
Midnight Runners (Kim Joo-hwan) Fri-Thurs
The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) Sun & Weds Only

Grand Cinema:

Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan & Damon Davis) Fri-Thurs
Score: A Film Music Documentary (Matt Schrader) Fri-Thurs
Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
The Little Hours (Jeff Baena) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour) Sat Only
Promised Land (Sarah Salcedo & Vasant Salcedo) Tues Only
Deconstructing the Beatles Sgt. Pepper (Scott Freiman) Weds Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Lemon (Janicza Bravo) Fri-Thurs
Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011) Sat Only

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

Vivegam (Siva) Fri-Thurs In Tamil & Telugu, Check Showtimes
Arjun Reddy (Sandeep Reddy Vanga) Fri-Thurs
Bareilly Ki Barfi (Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari) Fri-Thurs
Patti Cake$ (Geremy Jasper) Fri-Thurs
A Gentleman (Krishna D.K. & Raj Nidimoru) Fri-Thurs
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (Shree Narayan Singh) Fri-Thurs
The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) Sun & Weds Only

Regal Meridian:

Gook (Justin Chon) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Adventurers (Stephen Fung) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (Shree Narayan Singh) Fri-Thurs
A Gentleman (Krishna D.K. & Raj Nidimoru) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan & Damon Davis) Fri-Thurs
Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 3 Fri Only
Il Boom (Vittorio Di Sica, 1963) Sat & Sun Only
In Pursuit of Silence (Patrick Shen) Weds & Thurs Only

AMC Oak Tree:

Deep (Julio Soto Gurpide) Fri-Thurs

AMC Pacific Place:

Wolf Warrior 2 (Wu Jing) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Regal Parkway Plaza:

A Gentleman (Krishna D.K. & Raj Nidimoru) Fri-Thurs
Finally Found Someone (Theodore Boborol) Fri-Thurs
Kita Kita (Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Film Center:

The Girl Without Hands (Sébastien Laudenbach) Fri-Sun, Weds & Thurs

AMC Southcenter:

Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs

Regal Thornton Place:

In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi) Fri-Thurs Our Review

SIFF Uptown:

In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Columbus (Kogonada) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
The Trip/The Trip to Italy (Michael Winterbottom, 2010, 2014) Mon Only Double Feature

Varsity Theatre:

Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
69 Kill (Trent Haaga) Fri-Thurs
Maudie (Aisling Walsh) Fri-Thurs

In Wide Release:


Baby Driver (Edgar Wright) Our Review
The Big Sick (Michael Showalter) Our Review
Wind River (Taylor Sheridan) Our Review
Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie) Our Review
Leap! (Eric Summer & Éric Warin) Our Review
Ingrid Goes West (Matt Spicer) Our Review

Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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The Safdie Brothers’ Heaven Knows What was one of the singular films of VIFF 2014, a harrowing, grimy, close-up look at the life of a homeless junkie and her estranged boyfriend, enlivened by a remarkable performance from Arielle Holmes, upon whose life the film was largely based. With a pounding score and aggressive handheld close-up images from cinematographer Sean Price Williams, the film delivered a kind of extreme realism, like a Neveldine/Taylor movie for the socially conscious art house crowd. The Safdies’ follow-up, which premiered at Cannes and opens at SIFF this week, is more explicitly a genre film, if only because instead of a real person playing the lead, they now have a bona fide movie star, Robert Pattinson. It’s a One Crazy Night story, with Pattinson digging himself ever deeper into trouble in the wake of a bank robbery he pulls with his brother, played by Benny Safdie. During the escape Benny is arrested, and later hospitalized after getting into a fight in jail. Pattinson tries to sneak him out of the hospital, which leads to the kinds of unanticipated snags and increasing lunacy that is the hallmark of this kind of film (the movie’s poster explicitly points to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours). As an exercise in suspense filmmaking, the movie is excellent, the music (this time by Oneohtrix Point Never) and Williams’s images perfectly suited to the manic nervousness and driving obsessions of the scenario. Pattinson is, as always, equal parts charismatic and deeply disturbing (would be interesting to pair this with his other great city film, David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis). The supporting cast as well is marvelously weird, headlined by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Oscar nominee Barkhad Abdi, but also including newcomers like Taliah Webster, Eric Peykert, Peter Verby, and Buddy Duress (who was also in Heaven Knows What), who has rightfully drawn comparison’s to the great oddball character actor Timothy Carey. One performance though has me baffled, and that is Benny Safdie’s as Pattinson’s developmentally- and hearing-impaired brother. I don’t know what to make of the film’s bookends, with Benny in a hospital undergoing treatment, first answering free-association questions from his psychiatrist (Verby), later in a group exercise. It’s been a couple weeks and I still haven’t come up with a satisfactory explanation for these scenes, but they don’t feel right to me at all. But in-between them lies the most exciting American movie of the year so far.

The Legend of the Naga Pearls (Yang Lei, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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In what has been a strong summer for Chinese language releases here in Seattle (with Our Time Will Come, Wolf Warrior 2, Meow, Once Upon a Time, and The Adventurers following SIFF’s minifestival of Hong Kong films and their presentation of the restored Taipei Story last week), Legend of the Naga Pearls shrugs its way on screen for the last week of August. The latest in a string of fantasy films built around special effects and photogenic stars, it’s set in the universe of Novoland, which is apparently a popular fictional construction in China, home to more than thirty novels by various authors. This story follows 25 years after a war between humans and the villainous Winged Tribe. A gang of evil former Winged People are trying to assemble a weapon with which to unleash a horde of deadly flying tapirs (seriously) on the human population, which has built their city, Uranopolis, atop the ruins of the Winged Tribe’s city in the clouds. A rag tag team of adventurers unites to steal the key item first. They include the daughter of a good Winged Person, the callow son of a human prince, and a thief with a mysterious blue mark on his hand that turns out to be connected to the eponymous MacGuffin.

Continue reading “The Legend of the Naga Pearls (Yang Lei, 2017)” →

Ingrid Goes West (Matt Spicer, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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Aubrey Plaza graces Seattle Screens for the second time this summer, following the extended run of the raucous Boccaccio farce The Little Hours at SIFF (and now expanded around town), with the defining stalker movie of the Web 2.0 age. Plaza’s Ingrid is introduced in a psychotic rage, trashing the wedding of an apparent friend, though we soon learn that she didn’t know the person at all: Ingrid just followed her on Instagram. After a sojourn in therapy, and a bit of backstory where it’s revealed that Ingrid has been caring for her sick mother who has since died and left her a tidy sum of cash, Ingrid develops a new Instagram obsession, an ultra-trendy blonde named Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen) and moves to Los Angeles to track her down. Using her internet sleuthing skills, she manufactures random encounters with Taylor and eventually insinuates herself into her life, meeting her husband, her brother and for all appearances becoming her friend. Meanwhile, she strikes up a friendship and romantic relationship with her landlord (O’Shea Jackson, Jr), almost by accident. As Taylor loses interest in Ingrid (dazzled by brighter stars on her own social climbing quest) and Taylor’s brother (the menacingly beefy Billy Magnussen) begins to suspect Ingrid’s lunacy, Plaza’s performance shifts from comically manic to seriously unhinged, Ingrid’s desperate need for acceptance among the beautiful people blinding her to the wonders of her Batman-loving boyfriend (Jackson’s easy-going performance matches in grounded realness Plaza and Magnussen’s hyperactive villainy). I suppose every new stage in communication technology spawns a new variation on the stalker narrative, and it’s tempting to reduce Ingrid Goes West to a statement about The Way Things Are Now, but I don’t know that it has anything more to say about social media than To Die For did about local news celebrity or Play Misty for Me did about talk radio or Single White Female did about Manhattan real estate. The medium changes, but the essential truths of human loneliness and the pathologies we develop in the attempt to cure it, remain the same. More tantalizingly, the film offers itself up in the end as a Taxi Driver for our marginally less violent, but much more ephemeral age.

Leap! (Eric Summer & Éric Warin, 2016)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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The movie Ballerina, cruelly renamed Leap! for American audiences, which goes to show that the Weinsteins’ desire to give distinctive non-American movies the most generic titles possible has not diminished since their heyday of butchering Hong Kong releases, is easily the best animated film I’ve seen in the theatre with my daughter since Shaun the Sheep two years ago. That’s not saying a whole lot considering the competition (Sing, Despicable Me 3, The Peanuts Movie, LEGO Batman), and Ballerina has many of the same faults: generic plotting and a reliance on the chase sequence as a substitute for real drama or suspense. But these flaws are balanced by a commitment to art and the work necessary to become good at it, and its rendering of both its Paris locations and the movements of dance is thrilling, relatively (compare for example the first time we see the grand school of the Paris Opera Ballet, the sense of wonder as we linger of its elaborate details, to the blurry, partial and indistinct images we get of the library in the remake of Beauty and the Beast).

For the American release, several voice actors were replaced (bringing in Mel Brooks, Kate McKinnon and Nat Wolfe) but I don’t know if any of the plotting has been altered, scenes reshot or not. Elle Fanning plays an orphan named Félicie who wants to become a dancer. She and her best friend Victor escape their orphanage (in the film’s most egregiously silly chase) and head to Paris, where she quickly cons her way into a dance class. Victor meanwhile gets a job working for Gustave Eiffel, who is simultaneously working on both the tower that bears his name and the Statue of Liberty, just one of the many historical errors in the film (the Statue is already green, for example, when its copper wouldn’t become so oxidized until it had been in New York for some time). Félicie’s story follows the traditional training arc: given the illogical demands of a plot-structuring contest (one dancer will be eliminated every class until the final one wins a part in the Nutcracker), she works hard doing a variety of non-dance things to build strength and skills. In the meantime, she’s wooed by a handsome, wealthy, blond Russian dancer, setting up a love triangle with Victor, which has largely-ignored class overtones (your classic Ducky/Blaine scenario). The real conflict of interest though is in the repeated question: “Why do you want to dance?” Her opponent, a petite combination of Ivan Drago and Todd Marinovich has one answer, and Félicie has another, but its a knee-jerk response, one produced without ay real thought: it’s her dream. That’s not enough though: until she learns a depth of self-understanding largely absent from kid movies (a shamefully phony world where even Charlie Brown is revealed as a winner), she’ll never be a great dancer. It’s not quite the psycho-sexual conflict between art and romance at the heart of The Red Shoes, but for a soon to be six year old who just signed up for her third year of ballet class, it’ll work.

Far-Flung Visions [BRONX GOTHIC & HARMONIUM]

~ Ryan Swen

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Truth be told, there are very few aspects that tangibly connect these two films. It is more a quirk of coincidence than anything else: both are being programmed by Northwest Film Forum, both are rather good and undeniably fascinating, and I happened to review both of them for one of my other writing gigs (at The Film Stage, with links to the respective pieces down below). But though one is a documentary-performance hybrid focused on a black woman, and the other is a drama about grief and the past visiting the present, the two movies represent no shortage of a certain kind of daring vision, one that, if a bit modest in its aims, then is still arresting nonetheless.

Take, for example, the disquieting and haunting diptych Harmonium, directed by Kôji Fukada. Straddling the lines between domestic drama and thriller in a manner that can reasonably be described as a cross between Ozu and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (and starring regular Kurosawa contributor Tadanobu Asano to boot), the movie gains its power from the skillfully woven relationships that arise when a figure (Asano) unexpectedly visits and moves in with an old friend’s family.

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Fukada makes much out of appearances and little mannerisms that never quite feel telegraphed or played up. Though a sense of unease worms its way into the viewer from the very first shot of Asano clad in a spotless white shirt, the viewer can’t help but feel a bit disarmed by the veneer of politeness, even as it is shattered by a mid-film jump to eight years into the future of the family. The developments immediately preceding said ellipse are immensely upsetting, and the second half is one long slide into abject despair, but it is handled with the appropriate amount of distance and sensitivity all the same.

Bronx Gothic, in this light, could scarcely be a contrast. Directed – but not solely created – by Andrew Rossi, it follows the last tour of the solo performance piece of the same name, conceived and performed by Okwui Okpokwasili. Much of the film is given over to the lengthy, confrontational, and visibly strenuous performances, interspersed with interviews with Okpokwasili and various collaborators and audience talk-backs. This is no attempt at biography; aspects of Okpokwasili’s background are only brought up when necessary, and instead much of the cultural aspects that are woven into the piece arise rather naturally.

Bronx Gothic, the piece, is plainly semi-autobiographical, consisting largely of letters read aloud by the performer between her as an eleven-year-old and her more sexually active and experienced friend, and explores notions of maturity and race in a very specifically New York context. Perhaps expectedly, the piece and the film feel just as much about movement, about the extensive and elongated rhythmic dances that move just as deeply as the spoken moments – the piece begins with thirty minutes (not rendered fully in the film) of Okpokwasili dancing in a corner as the audience takes their seats. And yet, Rossi never loses sight of the human element, of Okpokwasili as something more than an avatar for black self-expression. The documentary looks to the future, not only for her as an artist, but her as a mother: the final scene is of unambiguous domestic bliss.

Friday August 18 – Thursday August 24

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Taipei Story at the SIFF Film Center

The new restoration of Edward Yang’s 1985 classic Taipei Story comes to SIFF for three days only this week. A seminal film of the New Taiwan Cinema, Yang’s second feature was co-written by him along with Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chu T’ien-wen (who would co-write all of Hou’s subsequent films), and stars Hou, Wu Nien-jen (accomplished screenwriter, director of A Borrowed Life, star of Yang’s Yi yi) and Tsai Chin (a popular singer). The film chronicles the dissolution of the relationship between Hou and Tsai as they’re caught between the conflicting forces of past and present, capitalism and tradition, at work in rapidly a modernizing Taiwan. Long unavailable in anything like its original form in the US, its restoration (and recent release as part of a Criterion Collection boxset) is one of the cinematic events of the year.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

Wind River (Taylor Sheridan) Fri-Thurs Our Review
A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon) Fri-Thurs
Velaiilla Pattadhari 2 (Soundarya Rajinikanth) Fri-Thurs
Jab Harry Met Sejal (Imtiaz Ali) Fri-Thurs
Battleship Island (Ryoo Seung-wan) Fri-Thurs

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs

Central Cinema:

Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012) Fri-Weds
Dune (David Lynch, 1984) Fri-Weds

SIFF Egyptian:

The Little Hours (Jeff Baena) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Landline (Gillian Robespierre) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Century Federal Way:

Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon) Fri-Thurs
Rocky Mental (Vikram Thori) Fri-Thurs
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934) Sun & Weds Only

Grand Cinema:

Maudie (Aisling Walsh) Fri-Thurs
Brigsby Bear (Dave McCary) Fri-Thurs
Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
The Little Hours (Jeff Baena) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985) Sat Only Free Screening
68 Kill (Trent Haaga) Sat Only
Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison) Tues Only Our Review
Deconstructing the Beatles White Album (Scott Freiman) Weds Only
From the Ashes (Michael Bonfiglio) Weds Only Free Screening
Ask Us Who We Are (Bess O’Brien, 2011) Thurs Only Free Screening

Grand Illusion Cinema:

The Ghoul (Gareth Tunley) Fri-Thurs

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi) Fri-Thurs Our Review Dubbed and Subtitled, Check Listings
Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs
Bareilly Ki Barfi (Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari) Fri-Thurs
Nene Raju Nene Mantri (Teja) Fri-Thurs
Velaiilla Pattadhari 2 (Soundarya Rajinikanth) Fri-Thurs
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (Shree Narayan Singh) Fri-Thurs
LIE (Hanu Raghavapudi) Fri-Thurs
Anando Brahma (Mahi V Raghav) Fri-Thurs
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934) Sun & Weds Only
Ondu Motteya Kathe (Raj B. Shetty) Sat & Sun Only

Regal Meridian:

The Adventurers (Stephen Fung) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Brigsby Bear (Dave McCary) Fri-Thurs
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (Shree Narayan Singh) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977) Fri-Sun
Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan & Damon Davis) Fri-Thurs
NOddIN Japanese Film Collective Fri Only
Bronx Gothic (Andrew Rossi) Sun Only
Harmonium (Kôji Fukada) Weds & Thurs Only

AMC Pacific Place:

Once Upon a Time (Zhao Xiaoding) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Wolf Warrior 2 (Wu Jing) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Jab Harry Met Sejal (Imtiaz Ali) Fri-Thurs
Finally Found Someone (Theodore Boborol) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

Brigsby Bear (Dave McCary) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Film Center:

Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985) Fri-Sun

AMC Southcenter:

Brigsby Bear (Dave McCary) Fri-Thurs
Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs

Regal Thornton Place:

In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi) Fri-Thurs Our Review

SIFF Uptown:

In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Columbus (Kogonada) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Step (Amanda Lipitz) Fri-Thurs

Varsity Theatre:

Dave Made a Maze (Bill Watterson) Fri-Thurs
13 Minutes (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2015) Fri-Thurs
Maudie (Aisling Walsh) Fri-Thurs
The Little Hours (Jeff Baena) Fri-Thurs Our Review

In Wide Release:


Baby Driver (Edgar Wright) Our Review
The Big Sick (Michael Showalter) Our Review
Wind River (Taylor Sheridan) Our Review

In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi, 2016)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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The obvious point of comparison for In This Corner of the World, an anime set on the home front during World War II, is with Isao Takahata’s 1988 Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies. But in spirit it’s more akin to Takahata’s later work: the world-dissolving subjective images of memory in Only Yesterday and the episodic focus on the family of My Neighbors the Yamadas. Fireflies is about devastation, about the terrible consequences of war and, more specifically, of the cruel pride that makes for such wars, but Corner is about resilience, about a people to whom war is happening, with or without their complicity: it’s more Mrs. Miniver than anything else. Beginning before the war and skipping quickly through the early life of Suzu Urano, an artistic girl who lives near the city of Hiroshima. After short episodes from her childhood, the film settles down once she gets married and moves to Kure, a nearby town that is a center of naval manufacturing, in 1943. In these early scenes, the war is merely a background element: characters speak of the navy, the construction of a factory displaces the family’s seaweed business, ships are seen in the distant harbor, new ration recipes with variable results are tried, while the drama centers on Suzu’s integration into her new family and her rivalry with her new sister-in-law. But the war plays a bigger and bigger role as we proceed through time: a wrong turn into a red light district populated by displaced young women, air raid drills followed by actual bombardments, a visit from an old school friend who admonishes Suzu to “stay ordinary, stay sane”. Finally, in the summer of 1945, the horror of war becomes nigh unbearable, culminating the the atomic bombing of the city on the other side of the mountain. But even in the blasted hellscape that follows, the loss of so much humanity, Suzu and her family endure.