Day: April 18, 2019

Friday April 19 – Thursday April 25

~ Sean Gilman

ossjs6qnxld21.jpg

Featured Film:

True Stories at the Northwest Film Forum

The highlights for this week on Seattle Screens are mostly movies I haven’t seen yet. Claire Denis’s High Life expands throughout the area, as does the Aretha Franklin doc Amazing Grace. The Pacific Place has the new Emily Dickinson film Wild Nights with Emily, while the new Mike Leigh joint plays at the Meridian and the Theatre Formerly Known as the Metro. The Cinerama has a whole series of anime, I’d recommend Mamoru Hosada’s Wolf Children as the one that doesn’t get revived all that often but is nonetheless as great as the best of the oft-screened Ghibli classics. SAM’s playing Kind Hearts and Coronets, if you’re in the mood to see Alec Guinness get killed as like a dozen different characters. And the Grand Illusion has an actual Jean Grémillon movie, can’t remember the last time we’ve had a chance to see one of those around here. But while I haven’t seen it yet, I have seen the video for “Wild Wild Life” and I’m gonna be super jealous of all of you who get to go see True Stories at the NWFF on Saturday night. It’s on 35mm!

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack) Fri-Thurs 

Central Cinema:

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam, 1975) Fri-Weds
Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968) Fri-Weds 

Cinerama:

Anime Film Series Fri-Thurs Full Program

SIFF Egyptian:

SPLIFF Film Fest Fri & Sat Only 
Hail Satan? (Penny Lane) Sun-Thurs 

Century Federal Way:

Manje Bistre 2 (Baljit Singh Deo) Fri-Thurs 

Grand Cinema:

High Life (Claire Denis) Fri-Thurs 
Woman at War (Benedikt Erlingsson) Fri-Thurs 
Buddy (Heddy Honigmann) Fri-Thurs 
Cat Video Fest 2019 Fri-Thurs 
Kid Flicks Two Sat Only 
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998) Sat Only 
Anote’s Ark (Matthieu Rytz) Tues Only 
The New Frontier (Kanani Koster) Thurs Only 

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Penguin Highway (Hiroyasu Ishida) Fri–Thurs Dubbed Mon & Weds
Hagazussa (Lukas Feigelfeld) Fri, Sun, Mon, Weds & Thurs 
Little Woods (Nia DaCosta) Fri & Next Sat-Mon Only
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan) Sat & Sun Only Our Review In 2D
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Danny Leiner, 2004) Sat Only 
Drone Cinema Film Festival – Selected Works Sat Only 
Pattes blanches (White Paws) (Jean Grémillon, 1949) Tues Only 

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

High Life (Claire Denis) Fri-Thurs 
Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack) Fri-Thurs 
Finding Julia (Igor Sunara) Fri-Thurs 
Chitralahari (Kishore Tirumala) Fri-Sun
Vellaipookal (Vivek Elangovan) Fri-Sun
Jersey (Gowtam Tinnanuri) Fri-Thurs 
Kalank (Abhishek Verman) Fri-Thurs 
Kanchana 3 (Raghava Lawrence) Fri & Sat Only
Athiran (Vivek) Sat & Sun Only 
Kavaludaari (Hemanth Rao) Sat & Sun Only 
Okko’s Inn (Kitarō Kōsaka) Mon & Tues Only Subtitled Tuesday

Regal Meridian:

Peterloo (Mike Leigh) Fri-Thurs 
Kalank (Abhishek Verman) Fri-Thurs 

Northwest Film Forum:

Ramen Shop (Eric Khoo) Fri-Thurs Our Review 
The Venerable W. (Barbet Schroeder) Fri & Sun Only 
Mosquita y Mari (Aurora Guerrero, 2011) Sat Only Director Q&A 
True Stories (David Byrne, 1986)  Sat Only 35mm
The Eyes of Orson Welles (Mark Cousins) Sun & Next Sat & Sun Only 
Tomorrow Never Knows (Adam Sekular) Weds Only Director Q&A
Cadence Video Poetry Festival Thurs Only 

AMC Pacific Place:

Wild Nights with Emily (Madeleine Olnek) Fri-Thurs 

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Kalank (Abhishek Verman) Fri-Thurs 

AMC Seattle:

Peterloo (Mike Leigh) Fri-Thurs 
High Life (Claire Denis) Fri-Thurs 
Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack) Fri-Thurs 
The Brink (Alison Klayman) Fri-Thurs 

Seattle Art Museum:

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949) Thurs Only 

SIFF Film Center:

Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1980) Fri-Sun 

AMC Southcenter:

Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack) Fri-Thurs 
Finding Julia (Igor Sunara) Fri-Thurs 

Regal Thornton Place:

High Life (Claire Denis) Fri-Thurs 

SIFF Uptown:

Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack) Fri-Thurs 
Diane (Kent Jones) Fri-Thurs 
High Life (Claire Denis) Fri-Thurs 

Varsity Theatre:

Mary Magdalene (Garth Davis) Fri-Thurs 
Breaking Habits (Rob Ryan) Fri-Thurs 

In Wide Release:

Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck) Our Review Our Other Review 

Ramen Shop (Eric Khoo, 2018)

~ Sean Gilman

ramen_shop_still-h_2018.jpg

Opening this weekend at the Northwest Film Forum is this perfectly fine food drama by one of Singapore’s leading directors. After his father, a successful ramen chef, dies, a young man heads to Singapore in search of his mother’s family. Gauzy flashbacks fill in his parents’ back story in-between meetings with his estranged uncle and grandmother. His father, Japanese, and his mother, Chinese, married against her mother’s wishes, her hostility a result of lingering hatred of the Japanese following their occupation of the city-state during World War II. But as resentments and hatred are passed down through the generations, so too are recipes, taught from parent to child, adding personal touches learned from their own life experience. The cuisine of Singapore, with its influences from throughout East and South Asia as well as Europe is the blunt instrument of metaphor in Eric Khoo’s quiet, yet maudlin melodrama. The young man’s journey is as much about learning the recipes of his mother’s family as it is reconciling himself to the past atrocities of his father’s homeland. English serves as the lingua franca, bridging the gap between ancient hatreds, facilitating the fusion of Japanese ramen (itself a combination of Japanese flavors with Chinese noodles) with Singaporean pork rib soup (a combination of Chinese soup with Southeast Asian flavors).

As a vision of transnational solidarity dramatized by a Japanese person’s trip to Singapore, it’s vastly more conventional and less interesting than Daisuke Miyazaki’s Tourism, which also played at last year’s Japan Cuts festival but which is not getting, as far as I know, even a very limited North American release. Probably because the food, at least, looks much better. Though even that pales in comparison to the food in the quiet Korean drama Little Forest (a second adaptation of a manga, the first of which, a Japanese version, played in two parts at SIFF a few years ago), which likewise won’t see American theatres, but you can stream it on Amazon.

Regardless, I too hope to one day pass down to my grandchildren my own ramen recipe, which I’ll also share with you here:

1. In a small pot, bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add noodles, breaking up if desired. Cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Remove from heat. Stir in seasoning from soup base packet.
3. Try adding an egg, vegetables, or meat as desired.