Sketches of Frank Gehry
Sony Picture Classics
Part documentary, part dialogue between filmmaker and subject, Sketches is a modest, personal look at one of the most innovative, controversial architects of our time. Director Sydney Pollack (The Interpreter) alternates artless shots of a shambling Gehry (driving his car, talking about his wife and his therapist, etc.) with beautifully composed images of his inspired sculptural constructions, such as Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum and L.A.'s Disney Hall. Seattle's Experience Music Project—whose shell was designed by Gehry, though not all of its interior—rates only about a half-dozen shots among the hundreds of images here. And most of those appear in the portion of the film devoted to the architect's critics, reminding us once again that Seattle is the owner in perpetuity of a second-rate building by one of our era's only truly first-rate architects. (PG-13) LYNN JACOBSON Harvard Exit: 6:30 p.m. Fri., May 26; 4:15 p.m. Mon., May 29.
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Seattle International Film Festival
Cinema Sprawl
More titles. More venues. Just plain more. Seattle's annual movie overload is about to begin. An introduction.
SIFF Ticket Info
Thursday, May 25, through Sunday, June 18.
In the SIFF Spotlight
17 must-see titles, surveyed by our critics.
SW Picks for SIFF
Our 36 sight-blind choices for the festival, not otherwise covered in this guide. In addition to a few repertory titles, inclusion here means (a) the film has great buzz, (b) a trusted colleague has seen it, or (c) it has incredible locations or someone incredibly sexy in it.
Lucky Bounce
How a neophyte Seattle director stumbled into making a surefire, lump-in-your-throat sports documentary. But would you give up seven years of your life for a deal with Miramax?
Local Heroes
We meet some of the local figures and explore area connections at SIFF.
Old Master, Fresh Ears
Radio, theater, movies—there's not much difference to America's great cinematic champion of the human voice.
Britons Behind Bars
Whether innocent or guilty, this arresting post-9/11 docudrama shows, one size of orange-jumpsuit justice fits all.
Mr. Franken Goes to Washington?
A Q&A with the comic turned author turned documentary subject ... and now, possible senator?
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Three Times
Wafting across the decades, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times presents the same romantic couple, played by Shu Qi and Chang Chen, in a trio of psychologically fraught settings and historically charged situations. Hou's latest opens, mid-'60s, in a small-town Taiwanese billiards parlor, goes back 45 years to a brothel in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, and concludes amid the tech- no-driven confusion of contemporary Taipei. My first impression of Three Times was that it was high-middling Hou— conceptually bold but unevenly executed. But it improves on a second viewing. Hou's sense of motion pictures as a temporal medium seems all the more profound. Is there another filmmaker who can so fluidly celebrate the moment as well as the epoch, and do so in the same shot? (NR) J. HOBERMAN Pacific Place: 1:30 p.m. Sat., June 10. Harvard Exit: 6:30 p.m. Tues., June 13.
13 (Tzameti)
Palm Pictures
Part of an impoverished Georgian family in France, 20-year-old Sébastien (George Babluani) gets a job doing roof repair for an aged drug addict. The guy kicks the bucket before he pays up, but Sébastien has gotten wind of what sounds like a hugely profitable arrangement. He appropriates his employer's train ticket and Paris hotel room and just follows instructions, with horrific results. With shades of The Passenger, Hostel, and Seven, Géla Babluani's assured and terrifically tense black-and-white debut is an unnerving noir on the sin of covetousness, even if the last act loses steam. (NR) JESSICA WINTER Pacific Place: 9:30 p.m. Fri., June 2. Neptune: 9:30 p.m. Sun., June 4.
Wah-Wah
Samuel Goldwyn / Roadside Attractions
How anything this harrowing can also be this hilarious rests entirely with the buoyancy of Richard E. Grant, who survived, barely, his tumultuous boyhood in Swaziland in the late '60s and early '70s, the twilight of England's "ruling" class in that breathtaking country. In his writing-directing debut, Grant's wit is at its sharpest in the pan-excesses of these preening colonials, whose "toodle-pip!" antics seem faintly mad. On the dangerous side of mad, there's the consuming love of 11-year-old Ralph's father (Gabriel Byrne) for his mother (Miranda Richardson). When she leaves them for another husband in this nearly incestuous gang, Byrne turns desperate and bitter. A few years later, home during boarding-school recess, Ralph (About a Boy's Nicholas Hoult) finds a new stepmother, spirited Yank Ruby (Emily Watson). She puts Ralph solidly on her side when she calls the Brits' airs and jargon pure "wah-wah," and when she helps with his intricate puppet theater. Yet Richardson's "Mummy" is never entirely gone, poisoning the chances of this second marriage. Played against this stunning scenery, Wah-Wah (the first film made in Swaziland) is a bravura debut, with an entire cast of full-blooded characters and an astonishing vein of tenderness. (R) SHEILA BENSON Egyptian: 4:30 p.m. Fri., May 26. Pacific Place: 6:30 p.m. Sun., May 28.
Wordplay
In Patrick Creadon's diverting doc, New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz emerges as the benignly sadistic lord of a realm of word-crazy puzzleheads—the kind of folks who can't help but notice that the flip of a consonant turns Dunkin' Donuts into "Unkind Donuts." Creadon follows Shortz to the national championship in Stamford, Conn., pausing for profiles of the contenders as well as puzzle master Merl Reagle, whose nimble tutorial on the history, form, and construction of crossword puzzles is riveting. Enjoy Creadon's film as a peek inside an obsessive subculture—or simply your chance to watch puzzle fan Jon Stewart rack his brain alongside Ken Burns, Mike Mussina, Bill Clinton, and the Indigo Girls. (NR) JIM RIDLEY Neptune: 11 a.m. Sat., May 27; 6:30 p.m. Sun., May 28.
