Category: Site Index

The Great Battle (Kim Gwang-Sik) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Qismat (Jagdeep Sidhu) Fri-Thurs
Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) Sun & Weds Only

Schlock (John Landis, 1973) Sat Only
The Guilty (Gustav Moller) Sun Only
1945 (Ferenc Torok) Tues Only
Bad Reputation (Kevin Kerslake) Weds Only
Survivors Guide to Prison (Matthew Cooke) Weds Only
Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, and the NRA (Robert Greenwald, 2016) Thurs Only Free Screening

Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker) Fri-Thurs
Schlock (John Landis, 1973) Sat Only
Let the Corpses Tan (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani) Sat Only Our Review
What Keeps You Alive (Colin Minihan) Fri & Sat Only
Haikyu!! The Movie: Battle of Concepts (Susumu Mitsunaka & Tetsuaki Watanabe) Sat & Sun Only

Lizzie (Craig Macneill) Fri-Thurs
Stree (Amar Kaushik) Fri-Thurs
Manmarziyan (Anurag Kashyap) Fri-Thurs
Batti Gul Meter Chalu (Shree Narayan Singh) Fri-Thurs
Nannu Dochukunduvate (R.S. Naidu) Fri-Thurs
U Turn (Pawan Kumar) Fri-Thurs
Sailaja Reddy Alludu (Maruthi) Fri-Thurs
Saamy 2 (Hari ) Fri-Thurs
Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) Sun & Weds Only

Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker) Fri-Thurs

Local Sightings Film Festival Fri-Thurs Full Program

Lizzie (Craig Macneill) Fri-Thurs
The Road Not Taken (Tang Gaopeng) Fri-Thurs

Miss Granny (Joyce E. Bernal) Fri-Thurs
The Hows of Us (Cathy Garcia-Molina) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

Lizzie (Craig Macneill) Fri-Thurs

Seattle Art Museum:

White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) Thurs Only 35mm

Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place (Catherine Hunter) Tues & Weds Only

Lizzie (Craig Macneill) Fri-Thurs
Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) Sun & Weds Only

SIFF Uptown:

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs
Pick of the Litter (Dana Nachman & Don Hardy) Fri-Thurs
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) Fri-Thurs
Cat Video Fest 2018 Sat & Sun Only

Continue reading “Let the Corpses Tan (2017, Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)” →

Bel Canto (Paul Weitz) Fri-Thurs
I Think We’re Alone Now (Reed Morano) Fri-Thurs
3100 Run and Become (Sanjay Rawal) Fri-Thurs
Love, Gilda (Lisa Dapolito) Fri-Thurs
Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) Weds Only

In Wide Release:

Mission: Impossible–Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie) Our Review
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) Our Review
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed) Our Review

Let the Corpses Tan (2017, Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)

September 14, 2018September 15, 2018 ~ Ryan Swen ~ 1 Comment

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There are few aspects of film more alternated praised and criticized than so-called “excessive” style. Whether manifested in languor or in freneticism, rapid bursts of images or gorgeously exacting frames, the excesses of the styles of one director or the other has been dissected, castigated, fawned over, and put back together again in mountains of words written in the past decade alone. And yet, despite all of this sometimes heated and passionate discourse, such overt manifestations of filmmaking still seem even more subjective, even less explainable than most other determining factors of a film.

One of the most overt examples of this in recent years comes in the form of Let the Corpses Tan, a neo-Western crime film directed by Hélène Catte and Bruno Forzani, best known for their prior giallo efforts Amer and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears. Though this time the gloriously pulpy title is taken from the source material, a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, the sensibility and eye for relentless stylization is unmistakeable. For better and for worse, this is an unfiltered vision, throwing in so many techniques and formal devices that it somehow becomes a unified aesthetic.

Friday September 14 – Thursday September 20

September 13, 2018September 20, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Shaun the Sheep Movie at the Grand Cinema

It’s a weird week for me to pick a Featured Film because I haven’t seen any of the coolest looking titles of the week: the Northwest Film Forum’s one night only screening of Khalik Allah’s latest film, Black Mother, with the director in attendance; a revival of Smokey and the Bandit in memory of the late, great Burt Reynolds playing at various multiplexes across town; Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s Let the Corpses Tan at the Grand Illusion; Lois Weber’s restored silent The Dumb Girl of Portici; the latest from Indian auteur Anurag Kashyap, Manmarziyan, playing exclusively at the Lincoln Square; or Frank Perry’s The Swimmer, part of the NWFF’s 1968 series. But since my daughter turns 7 years old this week, I’ll go with one of her favorite movies, the free screening of the Shaun the Sheep Movie, playing Saturday morning only at the Grand in Tacoma. Her Shaun the Sheep, glued to her side since she saw the movie, her first ever trip to a theatre, back in 2015, is pictured above.

Playing This Week:

Admiral Theater:

Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) Sun & Weds Only

AMC Alderwood:

Where Hands Touch (Amma Asante) Fri-Thurs

Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) Fri-Sun, Tues & Weds Subtitled Sat & Tues
Scanners (David Cronenberg, 2001) Fri-Sun, Tues & Weds Hecklevision Weds

Cinerama:

70mm Film Festival Full Program

Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) Sun & Weds Only

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs
Shaun the Sheep Movie (Richard Starzak & Mark Burton, 2015) Sat Only Free Screening
Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973) Sat Only Our Podcast
Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, 2008) Tues Only
The Dumb Girl of Portici (Lois Weber, 1916) Weds Only

Let the Corpses Tan (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani) Fri-Thurs
What Keeps You Alive (Colin Minihan) Fri & Sat Only
Haikyu!! The Movie: Battle of Concepts (Susumu Mitsunaka & Tetsuaki Watanabe) Weds & Next Sat & Sun Only

Where Hands Touch (Amma Asante) Fri-Thurs
Stree (Amar Kaushik) Fri-Thurs
Manmarziyan (Anurag Kashyap) Fri-Thurs
C/O Kancharapalem (Maha Venkatesh) Fri-Thurs
Seema Raja (Ponram) Fri-Thurs
U Turn (Pawan Kumar) Fri-Thurs
Sailaja Reddy Alludu (Maruthi) Fri-Thurs
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) Sun & Weds Only

Smokey and the Bandit (Hal Needham, 1977) Fri-Thurs

I am Not a Witch (Rungano Nyoni) Fri-Thurs
The Peacemaker (James Demo) Fri-Sun
The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968) Sat Only
Black Mother (Khalik Allah) Thurs Only Director in Attendance

Where Hands Touch (Amma Asante) Fri-Thurs

Ya veremos (Pedro Pablo Ibarra) Fri-Thurs
The Hows of Us (Cathy Garcia-Molina) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs

A Whale of a Tale (Megumi Sasaki) Fri-Sun

Smokey and the Bandit (Hal Needham, 1977) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Uptown:

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs
Pick of the Litter (Dana Nachman & Don Hardy) Fri-Thurs
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) Fri-Thurs

Don’t Leave Home (Michael Tully) Fri-Thurs
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan) Fri-Thurs
3100 Run and Become (Sanjay Rawal) Fri-Thurs
American Chaos (James D. Stern) Fri-Thurs

In Wide Release:

Mission: Impossible–Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie) Our Review
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) Our Review
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed) Our Review
Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross) Our Review

Friday, September 7 – Thursday September 13

September 6, 2018September 13, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Andrei Rublev at the SIFF Film Center

The Northwest Film Forum has a fine lineup of documentaries this week, led by In the Intense Now and Cielo, and including Andy Warhol’s Mrs. Warhol, and the Cinerama kicks off its annual 70mm film festival (my highlights: Howard the Duck and Days of Thunder), but our Featured Film this week is an easy choice, as Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev is quite simply one of the greatest films ever made, and it’s playing here for the first time in quite awhile, as far as I can remember. The sweeping portrait of a famed icon painter and the medieval world he lived in, the Film Center has it in its latest restoration. If you haven’t seen it, this is the unmissable film event of the week.

Playing This Week:

Tremors (Ron Underwood, 1990) Fri-Weds Hecklevision Wednesday
The Sandlot (David Mickey Evans, 1993) Fri-Tues
Waking the Sleeping Giant (Jon D. Erickson & Jacob Smith) Weds Only

Cinerama:

70mm Film Festival Full Program

SIFF Egyptian:

The Wife (Björn Runge) Fri-Thurs

Mar Gaye Oye Loko (Simerjit Singh) Fri-Thurs
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) Sun & Weds Only Our Podcast

Woman Walks Ahead (Susanna White) Fri-Thurs
Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs
Arizona (Jonathan Watson) Sat Only
The Catcher was a Spy (Ben Lewin) Tues Only

SECS Fest Fri-Sun
Never Goin’ Back (Augustine Frizzell) Sun-Thurs
An Invisible College: Illuminated Jewels by Elder Masters of Experimental Cinema, 1936 – 1978 Tues Only 16mm

The Wife (Björn Runge) Fri-Thurs
Stree (Amar Kaushik) Fri-Thurs
Geetha Govindam (Parasuram) Fri-Thurs
C/O Kancharapalem (Maha Venkatesh) Fri-Thurs
Manu (Phanindra Narsetti) Fri-Thurs
Premaku Rainchek (Akella Peri Srinivas) Fri-Thurs
Silly Fellows (Bhimaneni Srinivasa Rao) Fri-Thurs
Savita Damodar Paranjape (Swapna Waghmare Joshi) Sat & Sun Only
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) Sun & Weds Only Our Podcast

Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) Mon Only

In the Intense Now (João Moreira Salles) Fri-Sun Our Review
Betty: They Say I’m Different (Phil Cox) Fri-Sun, Weds & Thurs
Mrs. Warhol (Andy Warhol, 1966) Sat Only
Cielo (Alison McAlpine) Weds Only Our Review
**Mammon, Moloch, and the False Maria: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the Cult of Capitalism** Thurs Only

Destination Wedding (Victor Levin) Fri-Thurs

Ya veremos (Pedro Pablo Ibarra) Fri-Thurs
The Hows of Us (Cathy Garcia-Molina) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs

Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966) Fri-Thurs

Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) Mon Only
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) Sun & Weds Only Our Podcast

SIFF Uptown:

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs
We the Animals (Jeremiah Zagar) Fri-Thurs

Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan) Fri-Thurs
3100 Run and Become (Sanjay Rawal) Fri-Thurs

In Wide Release:

Mission: Impossible–Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie) Our Review
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) Our Review
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed) Our Review
Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross) Our Review

In the Intense Now (João Moreira Salles, 2017)

September 6, 2018September 6, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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One of the better documentaries of the year plays this weekend only at the Northwest Film Forum. In the Intense Now is built out of archival images, some shot by director João Moreira Salles’s mother, when she visited China in 1966, but mostly from amateur and independent film footage of France and Czechoslovakia and Brazil in the revolutionary summer of 1968. It’s one of the centerpiece presentations of the Film Forum’s fall series 1968: Expressions of a Flame, which is presenting a wide variety of films, fiction and non-, well-known and obscure, from that year. It would also have been a fine addition to their Home Movies series, which began this spring and continues this weekend with Andy Warhol’s Mrs. Warhol, with its focus on filmmakers documenting and exploring their own families (which we highlighted here when they played Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide II and Chantal Akerman’s News from Home). In the Intense Now is built around this tension, between the personal and the political, as much as it is about the disconnect between the hopes of the past and the failures of the present.

Reminiscent of the films of Chris Marker, the film is entirely composed of archival images, over which the director narrates his thoughts in a soft, unassuming voice. His mother’s trip to China, where she appears not to notice the Cultural Revolution going on around her in favor of the sheer beauty of the country and its landscape, forms the apolitical counterpoint to the footage of the May protests in France two years later, where students march in the streets in support of striking workers (who seem generally bemused by the students, whom the refer to as “their future bosses”). Moreira Salles focuses less on the ideology of the protestors or their opponents, exemplified by young firebrand Daniel Cohn-Bendit on the one side and aged General DeGaulle on the other, than on the small moments captured almost accidentally by the filmmakers: minute gestures; expressions of unself-conscious joy and happiness; the fact that there are hardly any black people in the movement, and that they always are wearing suits; and so on. This fine eye for detail gives us a new way of looking at old footage, and a new angle on well-worn territory.

As does the film’s second half, the aftermath of the events of May, not just in Czechoslovakia, where Soviet tanks bring an end to the flowering Prague Spring, but in France, where the youth movement fizzles out and is co-opted by commercial interests. In fact, those interests were there from the start, fueling some of the most enduring memories of ’68, the slogans, bite-sized sentiments more surreal than Marxist that were not the organic output of youth rebellion they seemed to be at the time. For all the expressions of optimism and joy captured in the early days of the movement, In the Intense Now is ultimately a tragedy, a story of how movements fade away, how people, left and right, become grist for the content mills. In the face of all this inevitability, the film becomes a call to focus instead on experience, the individualized moment, the textures of existence, as a break from systemic thought or dreams of collective action. That it was made by the heir of one of Brazil’s most powerful banking families, a man worth close to 4 billion dollars, is probably important.

The Seattle Screen Scene Top 100 Films of All-Time Project

September 1, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman

When the new Sight & Sound poll came out in 2012, Mike and I each came up with hypothetical Top Tens of our own. For the next few years, we came up with an entirely new Top Ten on our podcast, The George Sanders Show every year around Labor Day. The podcast has ended, but the project continues here at Seattle Screen Scene.

The idea is that we keep doing this until the next poll comes out, by which time we’ll each have a Top 100 list. Well, I will. Mike will have only 98 because he repeated two from his 2012 list on the 2013 one.

Here are Mike’s Top Ten Films of All-Time for 2018:

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1. The Skeleton Dance (Walt Disney, 1929)

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2. Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949)

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3. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

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4. Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)

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5. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)

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6. The Train (John Frenkenheimer, 1964)

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7. Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973)

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8. Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976)

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9. Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984)

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10. Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)

And here are Sean’s Top Ten Films of All-Time for 2018:

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1. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

2. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)

3. A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1944)

4. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)

5. I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)

6. Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985)

7. Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989)

8. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)

9. The Matrix (Lana & Lilly Wachowski, 1999)

10. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004)

Cielo (Alison McAlpine, 2017)

August 30, 2018August 30, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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The images in Alison McAlpine’s Cielo are the primary draw and are probably themselves worth the price of admission. Not just the starscapes, captured in the pristine thin air of the Atacama desert, gorgeous sweeping vistas of galaxies and nebulae, planets and stars, shot in crisp digital images, time-lapsed over sunsets and dawns, but the images of the land as well: a slo-motion cloud of dust, a man descending into a hole in the earth, his sky several tons of rock, his only light a single bulb worn loosely around his neck. McAlpine breathlessly muses upon the meaning of the sky, the stars, and she interviews many of the denizens of the desert, all of whom have their unique relationship to the world above. Planet hunters, astronomers who use machines and high-tech imaging to scour the universe for other worlds, are contrasted with more ancient occupations: shepherds and storytellers, and the aforementioned miner, who writes poetry in his spare time.

The transitions are deftly made, and slowly the film’s main idea comes into focus: that of the interconnection between sky and land, mirroring the fluidity of past and future. The night sky is both. Light from stars that traveled through the void for hundreds, thousands, millions of years only to become visible to us in the present, representing our hopes for a future, which are then reflected back into the sky. The machines of the scientists, overwhelming, massive constructions that distort the space around them, McAlpine films in the style of the Sensory Ethnography Lab, or something like Mauro Herce’s Dead Slow Ahead, imposing impositions upon the natural world. The locals though are filmed in the desert itself, in run-down shacks, rickety tents, or the open air itself. The film comes dangerously close to ethnographic condescension in some of these scenes, with a poor couple and a UFO hunter. But the miner/poet is charming and the film’s ultimate star is the folklorist who recites old stories, examines petroglyphs, and comes closest to unifying the film’s disparate elements.

One thing McApline does not cover is what became the ultimate subject of Patricio Guzmán’s 2010 film Nostalgia for the Light: the fact that the Atacama, while an ideal site for star-gazing, is also home to countless bodies of people disappeared and murdered under Chile’s military dictatorship. It was probably wise to avoid repeating Guzmán, of course, but the total absence of the subject from Cielo is unusual. In focusing so much on the people who actually live and work in the desert, she seems to be prioritizing the specificity of this single place. But in cutting it off from one of the most tragic and telling passages in its history, she leaves a black hole. The desert becomes a no-place, a mere place-holder for a general concept of “land” and its subjects in turn merely “people”, relevant only for their relation to an impassive, distant, omnivorous sky.

Friday August 31 – Thursday September 6

August 30, 2018September 6, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Support the Girls at the Grand Illusion

Crystal Moselle’s fine Skate Kitchen opens this week at the Meridian and the Uptown, but I’m sticking with Support the Girls as our Featured Film because not only is it one of the very best films of the year (and the best American film I’ve seen so far in 2018), but because it’s Labor Day weekend and no film currently on Seattle Screens is more appropriate. Regina Hall plays the manager of a Hooters-like sports bar and restaurant in freeway sprawl Texas, and the film follows a day, a night, and a dawn in her life as she juggles staff new and old, a depressed husband, obnoxious customers, and a worthless boss. Few films have captured customer service management with such depth of feeling and nuance, with marvelous performances (from Hall and Haley Lu Richardson in particular, but also James LeGros as the physical embodiment of slimy capital) and assured direction from the former shining light of mumblecore.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs

The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982) Fri-Tues
Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985) Fri-Tues Hecklevision Tuesday

Mar Gaye Oye Loko (Simerjit Singh) Fri-Thurs

Woman Walks Ahead (Susanna White) Fri-Thurs
Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs
Summer of ’84 (François Simard, Anouk Whissell & Yoann-Karl Whissell) Sat Only
En el séptimo día (Jim McKay) Tues Only

Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski) Fri-MOn, Weds
Terminator 2L Judgement Day (James Cameron, 1991) Sat, Sun & Thurs Only 35mm
The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin, 1996) Fri, Sun, Mon & Weds Only 35mm

Stree (Amar Kaushik) Fri-Thurs
Geetha Govindam (Parasuram) Fri-Thurs
Imaikkaa Nodigal (R. Ajay Gnanamuthu) Fri Only
Narthanasala (Srinivas Chakravarthi) Fri-Thurs
60 Vayadu Maaniram (Radha Mohan) Fri-Thurs

Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle) Fri-Thurs
Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) Thurs Only

Cielo (Alison McAlpine) Fri-Sun Our Review
Love, Cecil (Lisa Immordino Vreeland) Fri-Sun, Tues-Thurs
Investigation of a Flame and El pueblo se levanta (Lynne Sachs, 2003 and Third World Newsreel Film Collective, 1971) Sat Only
MEX AM NW – Animated Shorts for Youth Sun Only
Oulaya’s Wedding (Hisham Mayet, Cyrus Moussavi & Brittany Nugent) Weds Only Directors in Attendance
Betty: They Say I’m Different (Phil Cox) Starts Thurs

AMC Oak Tree:

Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs

Big Brother (Kam Ka-wai) Fri-Thurs Our Review
L Storm (David Lam) Fri-Thurs

Ya veremos (Pedro Pablo Ibarra) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs

1 Reel Film Festival Fri-Sun
The Third Murder (Kore-eda Hirokazu) Tues-Thurs

Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) Thurs Only

SIFF Uptown:

The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet) Fri-Thurs
Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle) Fri-Thurs
Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs

Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs

In Wide Release:

Mission: Impossible–Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie) Our Review
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) Our Review
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed) Our Review
Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross) Our Review
Solo (Ron Howard) Our Review

Big Brother (Kam Ka-wai, 2018)

August 29, 2018August 29, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

Into the hallowed tradition of high school movies wherein juvenile delinquents are straightened out by an unconventional teacher steps none other than Donnie Yen, his furious fists solemnly taking up the mantle of Blackboard Jungle, Stand and Deliver, and Dangerous Minds. It’s clearly a project that means something to Donnie, built around his persona as a deeply felt act of giving back to his community, which is why it hurts so much to say that it is the corniest movie I’ve seen in a very, very long time.

Donnie drops into a high school teetering on the edge of closure. Its graduates haven’t been going to college and local developers are eager to seize the land, both of which would be interesting social problems were they to be explored at all, in particular the complicity between developers, local gangsters and the local school board. Instead we’re introduced to five kids, four boys and a girl, each of whom is failing at school. Donnie, with his bright smile and wacky methods (he truly does break all the rules) spends the first half of the movie getting to know each kid in turn and solving their problem for them. One boy, whose family emigrated to Hong Kong three generations ago, wants to be a singer but suffers from stage fright caused by years of discrimination. Donnie helps him by just having him sing in public, which solves racism. The girl wants to be a race car driver but her dad thinks she’s worthless, because she’s a girl. And so Donnie reunites them by having them race minicars through the streets of Hong Kong (Donnie alone does not wear a helmet). This solves sexism. And so on to cure alcoholism, poverty, gangsterism and study-drug addiction.

In the second half of the film comes Donnie’s inevitable downfall, with first a brawl in a locker room before a big MMA match, and then when a student falls victim to a tragic plotline from Dead Poets Society. There’s a showdown with a gang and a last-minute race to take a standardized test. It’s all well-meaning and extremely shallow, with no understanding of or interest in either the institutional problems of the education system, the social environment of underprivilleged students, or any idea of what real reform would look like. Donnie’s solution is basically that everyone just needs to communicate better and try harder.

Coming on the heels of Weeds on Fire, which was similarly plagued with cliché but at least had a strong sense of place, or Bad Genius, which managed to both seriously explore the real class conflicts at work in contemporary high schools while also being a first-rate thriller, let alone an incendiary masterpiece like Ringo Lam’s now 30 year old School on Fire, Big Brother is at best a hollow gesture, of interest mostly for its star’s performance, and what it tells us about how he regards himself. In the middle of the film is a flashback montage showing how Donnie ended up at this school, taking him from his delinquent days through moving to America, joining the Marines and seeing combat in the Middle East. The horrors of war lead him on a further montage of world travel, discovering humanity to the plaintive sounds of a James Blunt tune. The result of his enlightening journey is his commitment to giving back to his community, which is surely a noble impulse. But it’s one that requires more than this movie to fulfill. But at least it makes me want to see Donnie remake of The Razor’s Edge.

Friday August 24 – Thursday August 30

August 23, 2018August 30, 2018 ~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Support the Girls at the Grand Illusion

In what is a terrific week for art house debuts, I’m picking Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls as our Featured Film this week. That’s partially because I haven’t yet seen the two films opening at the Northwest Film Forum (Minding the Gap and Milla), though both are highly acclaimed by reliable sources. And it’s partially because I’m not the world’s biggest Kore-eda Hirokazu fan, though his The Third Murder, opening at the Uptown, is an interesting digression from his recent domestic dramas. But mostly it’s because Support the Girls is really good. Regina Hall plays the manager of a Hooters-like sports bar and restaurant in freeway sprawl Texas, and the film follows a day, a night, and a dawn in her life as she juggles staff new and old, a depressed husband, obnoxious customers, and a worthless boss. Few films have captured customer service management with such depth of feeling and nuance, with marvelous performances (from Hall and Haley Lu Richardson in particular, but also James LeGros as the physical embodiment of slimy capital) and assured direction from the former shining light of mumblecore.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs
The Spy Gone North (Yoon Jong-bin) Fri-Thurs
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Fri-Thurs

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Göran Olsson, 2011) Thurs Only

Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, 1991) Fri-Tues Our Podcast Hecklevision Monday
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007) Fri-Tues
Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzik, 1983) Weds Only

The Spy Gone North (Yoon Jong-bin) Fri-Thurs
Guru Da Banda (Jassi Chana) Fri-Thurs
South Pacific (Joshua Logan, 1958) Sun & Weds Only

Cinerama:

Sound and Vision Film Festival Full Program

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan) Fri-Thurs
Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs
Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, 1991) Sat Only Our Podcast
The Cakemaker (Ofir Raul Graizer) Tues Only
Deconstructing The Beatles: Yeah Yeah Yeah Thurs Only

Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski) Fri-Thurs
Pit Stop (Jack Hill, 1968) Fr & Tues Only
Summer of ’84 (François Simard, Anouk Whissell & Yoann-Karl Whissell) Sat & Sun Only
Laughing Under the Clouds: Gaiden Part 1 & 2 (Tetsuya Wakano) Sat-Mon Only

Lakshmi (A. L. Vijay) Fri-Thurs
Neevevaro (Hari Nath) Fri-Thurs In Telugu with No subtitles
Geetha Govindam (Parasuram) Fri-Thurs
Gold (Reema Kagti) Fri-Thurs
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Fri-Thurs
Aatagallu (Murali Paruchari) Fri-Thurs
Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi (Mudassar Aziz) Fri-Thurs
Kolamavu Kokila (Nelson Dilipkumar) Fri-Thurs
South Pacific (Joshua Logan, 1958) Sun & Weds Only

The Island (Huang Bo) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Minding the Gap (Bing Liu) Fri-Weds
Milla (Valérie Massadian) Fri-Sun
Shame (Ingmar Bergman, 1968) Sat Only
Love, Cecil (Lisa Immordino Vreeland) Starts Thurs

AMC Oak Tree:

The Island (Huang Bo) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs

Oolong Courtyard: Kung Fu School (Kevin Chu) Fri-Thurs
Go Brother (Cheng Fenfen) Fri-Thurs

Buybust (Erik Matti) Fri-Thurs
Gold (Reema Kagti) Fri-Thurs
The Day After Valentine’s (Jason Paul Laxamana) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (Matt Tyrnauer) Fri-Thurs

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (Matt Tyrnauer) Fri-Thurs

AMC Southcenter:

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Fri-Thurs

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Fri-Thurs
South Pacific (Joshua Logan, 1958) Sun & Weds Only

SIFF Uptown:

The Third Murder (Kore-eda Hirokazu) Fri-Thurs
Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub) Fri-Thurs
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan) Fri-Thurs