Month: May 2018

Friday May 11 – Thursday May 17

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

News from Home at the Northwest Film Forum

Arguably the great Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s best film, News from Home plays one show only this Saturday afternoon at the Northwest Film Forum. It’s part of their long-running and excellent “Home Movies” seres, in which “filmmakers document their families.” It’s the series that brought us Oxhide II last month, and News from Home is every bit the masterpiece that one is. Over images of New York City, its streets and cars and people and subways, bust and still, crowded and empty, Akerman reads letters from her mother back home in Belgium. It’s simultaneously a symphony of a city, New York at its most vibrantly grotesque, and an unconventional portrait of a family. We never hear Akerman’s responses to her mother and that absence makes her letters all the more poignant, it’s the sound of a mother left behind while her child explores the wonders, and dangers, of the wider world. The images of the city might be her response, a visual card sent home to mom, or they may just be what she sees everyday, with the distant words from home lingering behind the noise of America.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

Raazi (Meghna Gulzar) Fri-Thurs

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968) Fri-Thurs
Spaceballs (Mel Brooks, 1987) Fri-Thurs

Central Cinema:

Serial Mom (John Waters, 1994) Fri-Sun
Freaky Friday (Mark Waters, 2003) Fri-Sun
The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014) Mon & Tues Only

Century Federal Way:

Daana Paani (Tarnvir Singh Jagpal) Fri-Thurs
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) Sun & Weds Only

Grand Cinema:

Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey (Dave O’Leske) Fri-Thurs
The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì) Fri-Thurs
Ghost Stories (Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman) Fri-Thurs
November (Rainer Sarnet) Sat Only
Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton) Tues Only
Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952) Weds Only
Hitler vs. Picasso and the Others (Claudio Poli) Thurs Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004) Fri-Sun, Tues & Thurs
Revenge (Coralie Fargeat) Fri-Thurs

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

Lu Over the Wall (Masaaki Yuasa) Fri-Thurs Our Review Dubbed & Subtitled, Check Listings
Mehbooba (Puri Jagannadh) Fri-Thurs
Raazi (Meghna Gulzar) Fri-Thurs
Naa Peru Surya (Vakkantham Vamsi) Fri-Thurs
Mahanati (Ashwin Nag) Fri-Thurs
102 Not Out (Umesh Shukla) Fri-Thurs
Irumbu Thirai (P.S. Mithran) Fri-Thurs
Nude (Ravi Jadhav) Sun Only
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) Sun & Weds Only

Regal Meridian:

Lu Over the Wall (Masaaki Yuasa) Fri-Thurs Our Review Dubbed & Subtitled, Check Listings
Racer and the Jailbird (Michaël R. Roskam) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Looking at the Stars (Alexandre Peralta) Fri-Sun
What We Started (Bert Marcus & Cyrus Saidi) Fri & Sun Only
News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977) Sat Only
Cassette Commander (Various) Sun Only
Reunification (Alvin Tsang) Weds Only Filmmaker in Attendance
Qui trop embrasse… (Jacques Davila, 1986) Weds Only 35mm
Hurricane Bianca 2: From Russia with Hate (Matt Kugelman) Starts Thurs
A Skin So Soft (Denis Côté) Thurs Only Our Review

AMC Pacific Place:

A or B (Ren Pengyuan) Fri-Thurs
I Am Your Mom (Xiao Zhang) Fri-Thurs

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Raazi (Meghna Gulzar) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz) Fri-Thurs

Seattle Art Museum:

Dial ‘M’ for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) Thurs Only

SIFF Film Center:

Lu Over the Wall (Masaaki Yuasa) Fri-Sun Our Review Dubbed & Subtitled, Check Listings

AMC Southcenter:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Regal Thornton Place:

Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) Sun & Weds Only

SIFF Uptown:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Tues, Thurs Our Review
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
1945 (Ferenc Török) Fri-Thurs

Varsity Theatre:

Wildling (Friedrich Böhm) Fri-Thurs
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) Weds Only

In Wide Release:

Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony & Joe Russo) Our Review
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg) Our Review
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) Our Review
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) Our Review

Lu Over the Wall (Masaaki Yuasa, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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Things have been bleak on the family film front lately on Seattle Screens, at least as far as I have seen. The last movie I took my kids to was The Last Jedi, and there hasn’t been anything they or I have really been interested in since then. After seeing several toy tie-in cartoons over the last few years (really the only animated film we saw with any kind of heart to it was the ballet movie Leap!, which even then diminished itself with kid-movie cliché chase sequences), something like Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall is an absolute joy, worth taking the kids to even in its English-dubbed version (I assume: the version I watched was Japanese with English subtitles). The mash-up of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea and Linda Linda Linda we don’t know we needed, Lu is the best variation on The Little Mermaid of 2017.

Lu is a ningyo, a creature from Japanese folklore roughly analogous to a mermaid. In a reversal of Greek myth, she’s drawn to the shore by music, specifically the pop-rock stylings of a middle school trio named “Seiren”. Moved by the tunes, Lu sings and then jumps onto the land (a protective bubble of water around her head), sprouts legs and dances wildly. The legs go away when the music stops, and after some initial confusion the band members, especially the shy Kai, befriend her. It seems the small fishing village in which the action takes place has a complicated history with the merfolk, with stories of them eating people circulating among the elderly (in particular Kai’s grandfather, who saw his mother get bitten and disappear under the sea). There’s a giant island in the town’s harbor, a Gibraltar casting a shadow over the sleepy village and separating it from the wider ocean and the island where the merfolk are said to dwell. It’s a literalization of the walls separating the village from the outside world, the people from the spirits and nature around them, and Kai from other people. Catchy music and simple messages (“Like everyone!”) are the medium through which Lu breaks down all these walls.

While much of the animation and plotline recalls Ponyo (with a little bit of Kiki’s Delivery Service thrown in), Lu Over the Wall isn’t nearly as derivative as the otherwise pleasant Mary and the Witch’s Flower from earlier this year. Yuasa has a goofier touch than Miyazaki, trading the mystical beauty of Ghibli’s nature for a more Looney Tunes aesthetic. In an interesting twist, Yuasa’s merfolk are vampiric: they are allergic to sun, they can transform creatures into the undead with a bite, and they appear to have to hypnotic power to make people dance in spite of themselves. This leads to some of the film’s most memorable images: denizens of a dog pound transformed into an army of merpups; undead fish dancing their way out of a sushi restaurant. The film’s crisp primary colors and cartoonish character movements are both flatter and more fun than what we’ve seen in recent Japanese animated films like Makoto Shinkai’s experiments in photo-realism (Your Name.) or the more traditional anime Napping Princess, and the look of the film is vastly more appealing than the CGI blandness of recent American efforts. I haven’t yet seen Yuasa’s Mind Game, which is reputed to be quite good. It’s playing this week at the Grand Illusion, and I’m guessing pairing it with this would make for an excellent double bill. Probably want to leave the kids behind for that one though.

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

~ Melissa Tamminga

The following is a loose transcript of a presentation I gave on Meek’s Cutoff, a film that was part of the Pickford Film Center’s repertory series, West of What?!, that ran from June 2017-May 2018. The presentation included a slideshow; the images below correspond to the slideshow images.


Meek

Good afternoon and welcome to the screening of the Kelly Reichardt’s 2010 film, Meek’s Cutoff.

Today’s film is a part of the Pickford’s West of What?! Westerns series, and, so before we begin the film, I’m going to talk for a little while about the film and its place in this series.

The Westerns genre is, of course, a significant part of the American cinematic landscape, and it was, for a certain period, enormously popular.

Between 1930-1954, approximately 2,700 Westerns were released. (Source: http://www.b-westerns.com/graphs.htm )

 

Meek's Slide 1

The Westerns genre, though, contained some troubling ideas or myths that are important to recognize.

For example,

  • The genre often promoted myths of westward expansion – the idea of Manifest Destiny – this sort of God-given right (to white people) for westward expansion into the indigenous peoples’ land.
  • It often defined a very narrow, traditional view of masculinity
  • It presented often absurd, gender stereotypes for women. Women were often depicted as purely domestic beings, side characters mostly useful as a civilizing force over men
  • It often normalized genocide, specifically of Native Americans

One of the most interesting things about Westerns is that the popularity of the genre might have a lot more to do with how many Americans tend to see and explain themselves (Looking at Movies, Barsam and Monahan), rather than with a connection to historical accuracy or to the true, often troubling, complexity of our country’s checkered history.

So one of the goals of the West of What?! series – given these things – has been to consider the problematic ideas or ideologies in the Western genre both by looking at Westerns that contain them and by looking at Westerns that subvert them in some way.  Continue reading “Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)” →

Manhunt (John Woo, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

manhunt001

After a decade in which all he put out were two two-part epics, one of which is great (Red Cliff) the other of which is half-great (The Crossing), it’s nice to see John Woo relax back into the kind of goofy genre fare that has always been his comfort zone. The plot is too complicated by half, with Zhang Hanyu framed by a pharmaceutical research company for murder because he wants to quit being their lawyer, or something, with a dogged cop played by Masaharu Fukuyama on his trail along with a variety of assassins. But the two leads are solid (Zhang you recall from Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain and Dante Lam’s Operation Red Sea, and Fukuyama from the Koreeda Hirokazu movies Like Father, Like Son and The Third Murder (coming soon to SIFF)) and they’re surrounded by all kinds of women: an earnest heartbroken potential love interest and a callow go-getter on the good side, and assassins of both the cold-blooded and heart of gold variety on the less good side (and wow is it both weird and a lot of fun to see John’s daughter Angeles Woo flying around as the more ruthless killer. She had a small part in The Crossing, but she almost steals the movie here). There’s even a small part for Yasuaki Kurata, enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately with key roles as well in Gordon Chan’s God of War and Chapman To’s The Empty Hands (also coming soon to SIFF). The action is exciting, with some truly exceptional moments, the rest of it is tolerable. In the battle of great 80s Hong Kong auteurs taking on corruption in the 21st Century medical-industrial complex, Woo is an easy winner over Ringo Lam.

Friday May 4 – Thursday May 10

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Meek’s Cutoff at the Pickford Film Center

Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist Western, about a lost wagon train and the man who thinks he knows the way to safety, was one of the best films of 2010, with a strong performance from frequent Reichardt star Michelle Williams and a haunting sound design. It will be playing for one show only this Sunday at the Pickford in Bellingham. And introducing it will be Seattle Screen Scene’s own Melissa Tamminga. If the commute up north is a bit too far for you, another weird Western is playing Wednesday night at the Grand Illusion: Sergio Corbucci’s classic The Great Silence, starring Klaus Kinski and Jean-Louis Trintignant. And that show will be introduced one-time SSS contributor, Scarecrow Video‘s Matt Lynch.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005) Fri-Thurs
Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot, 1999) Fri-Thurs
Director’s Cut (Adam Rifkin, 2016) Thurs Only

Central Cinema:

Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989) Fri-Tues Our Podcast Subtitled Sat, Sun & Tues
Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977) Fri-Tues

SIFF Egyptian:

RBG (Julie Cohen & Betsy West) Fri-Mon, Weds & Thurs

Century Federal Way:

Daana Paani (Tarnvir Singh Jagpal) Fri-Thurs
Traffik (Deon Taylor) Fri-Thurs

Grand Cinema:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì) Fri-Thurs
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Thurs
The Green Fog (Guy Maddin) Sat Only Our Review
Keep the Change (Rachel Israel) Tues Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin) Fri-Thurs
The Devil and Father Amorth (William Friedkin) Fri-Sun
Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple (Takuya Igarashi) Sat & Sun Only
The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1968) Weds Only Intro by Matt Lynch

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
RBG (Julie Cohen & Betsy West) Fri-Thurs
Naa Peru Surya (Vakkantham Vamsi) Fri-Thurs
Bharat Ane Nenu (Koratala Siva) Fri-Thurs
102 Not Out (Umesh Shukla) Fri-Thurs
Cycle (Prakash Kunte) Sun Only

Regal Meridian:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
RBG (Julie Cohen & Betsy West) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Salesman (Albert & David Maysles, & Charlotte Zwerin) Fri-Sun
Half Life in Fukushima (Mark Olexa & Francesca Scalisi) Fri-Sun, Weds & Thurs
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) Sat Only
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1968) Weds & Thurs Only

AMC Pacific Place:

A or B (Ren Pengyuan) Fri-Thurs
The Trough (Nick Cheung) Fri-Thurs

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Never Not Love You (Antoinette Jadaone) Fri-Thurs

Pickford Film Center:

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) Sun Only Intro by Melissa Tamminga
The Personals (Chen Kuo-Fu, 1998) Tues Only Intro by Sam Ho

AMC Seattle:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Thurs
Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz) Fri-Thurs

Seattle Art Museum:

Stage Fright (Alfred Hitchcock, 1950) Thurs Only

SIFF Film Center:

Cézanne – Portraits of a Life (Phil Grabsky) Fri-Sun

AMC Southcenter:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Regal Thornton Place:

Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple (Takuya Igarashi) Sat & Sun Only
The Boxcar Children – Surprise Island (Mark A.Z. Dippé, Anna Chi & Daniel Chuba) Tues Only

SIFF Uptown:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Tues, Thurs Our Review
The Endless (Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead) Fri-Weds
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Sophie Fiennes) Fri-Weds
1945 (Ferenc Török) Fri-Thurs

Varsity Theatre:

Final Portrait (Stanley Tucci) Fri-Thurs
Love After Love (Russell Harbaugh) Fri-Thurs
The Boxcar Children – Surprise Island (Mark A.Z. Dippé, Anna Chi & Daniel Chuba) Tues Only

In Wide Release:

Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony & Joe Russo) Our Review
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg) Our Review
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) Our Review
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) Our Review