WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8
Dinand van der Wal/SIFF
It's all about the bike for Visser (with Koen Borkent) in Heading West.
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McKinney with her kidnapping cohort Keith May in Tabloid.
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Sevdah for Karim 4:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema
Ostensibly the story of a tense love triangle that leads to a tragic fracturing of two ex-soldiers' relationship in post-9/11 Bosnia (where they work clearing old land mines), Sevdah for Karim is a pointless, scattered, atonal mess of a film. The most engaging character—a coke-snorting, womanizing, tight-shirted tough named Juka—only serves to reinforce turbo-trash Eastern European stereotypes. The lone message that can be gleaned here is that Muslims abroad aren't all that crazy about American imperialism. Wow, what a revelation! It's Part Go, part M*A*S*H, and part Inventing the Abbotts (three pictures that should never be mentioned in the same breath), with a rape/torture scene thrown in for good measure. Nice. MIKE SEELY (Also: Pacific Place, 7 p.m. Fri., June 10.)
The Catechism Cataclysm 7 p.m., Neptune
Seen at Northwest Film Forum four years back, Todd Rohal's The Guatemalan Handshake had a certain wacky panache, taking a gentle if aimless view of a half-dozen Midwestern eccentrics. This time around, shooting in rural Washington state, he confines himself mainly to a canoe duo. Reverend Billy (Steve Little, Eastbound & Down) is an almost idiotically good-natured, incompetent young Catholic priest who convinces his old high-school hero Robbie (Robert Longstreet) to go for an afternoon's paddle. A graying old rocker/writer now working as a roadie for the Ice Capades, Robbie has no recollection of worshipful Billy ("my only fan") from 20 years ago, and their trip is played mainly for laughs. At first it's not a bad idea, like Deliverance-lite, as they bicker and trade life disappointments on the river, Robbie chugging ever more cans of Rainier, wondering what (lost) promise Billy ever saw in him. Their encounter with two Japanese tourist gals fixated on Huckleberry Finn would seem to portend more comedy. But as the pentagram/death-metal opening credits suggest, Rohal has other things in mind. After the trip takes an abrupt, bloody turn, a frightened, confounded Billy prays to God, "I don't know why you're screwing with me!" His faith has been upended in a manner that can't be reduced to a neat Sunday-morning parable. Rohal, too, refuses a tidy story, suggesting that enigmas are more worthy of our belief. BRIAN MILLER (Also: 4:30 p.m. Thurs., June 9.)
[PICK] Heading West 7 p.m., Pacific Place
Attention, PubliCola readers and message-board denizens of the Cascade Bicycle Club! Have I got a movie for you! The heroine of this Dutch year-in-the-life character study bicycles almost everywhere—sometimes even in Amsterdam's dedicated cycle paths! A single mother, she pedals her young son to school (with no helmets, it must be noted). She even breaks her arm (off-camera) when taking a rolling cell-phone call. And she hooks up with a new boyfriend when he—roguishly or accidentally—locks his bike to hers. Cute! (In a Seattle-set remake, they'd probably meet at a Critical Mass rally.) Looking like a young Geneviève Bujold, Susan Visser plays Claire, age 38 and getting older. Divorced, living in a cheap part of town, teaching special-needs kids, and enduring a meddling mother, Claire deserves a little happiness. And she gets some, plus disappointments, tears, sex, minor triumphs, and minor tragedies. The pace for all this in Nicole van Kilsdonk's film is unhurried, episodic, and very Euro. There is no great catharsis, no prince on horseback, no self-satisfied Julia Roberts moment of serene sublimity. Instead of Eat Pray Love, it's Bike Eat Endure. The one time Claire drives, she gets pulled over for speeding. Trying to talk her way out of a ticket, she protests, "But I recycle everything!" BRIAN MILLER (Also: Egyptian, 4:30 p.m. Sat., June 11.)
Sushi: The Global Catch 7 p.m., Admiral
When making sushi, a Tokyo chef insists in Mark Hall's eco-documentary, the rice is as important as the fish. But diners worldwide are fixated on the latter, creating a potential environmental crisis, according to the experts who populate this polemic (essentially Food, Inc. at sea). Sushi corrals chefs, wholesalers, scientists, and fish ranchers who bemoan the skyrocketing demand for bluefin tuna—China's bottomless hunger looms like a thundercloud over such discussions—and the corresponding depletion of Atlantic tuna stocks. "No species has fared worse at the hands of humans," says one expert. (Really? Not even whales or Atlantic salmon?) We also meet an Australian entrepreneur who's farm-raising tuna; the doc suggests bluefin abstinence until he's perfected the technique. Oh, and there's even a handy "Seafood Watch" app for your iPhone. Like so many advocacy docs, Sushi oversimplifies the issues. After establishing sushi's global reach by poking fun at the sweet, saucy rolls sold in Poland by a former pizzeria owner and mocking the rib-eye, cilantro, and jalapeno rolls popular in Texas, the film can't pin all the bluefin blame on new sushi eaters, who are generally eating California rolls packed with fake crab. Another problem: The starkly saturated images of fresh tuna meat are more gorgeous than Hall realizes. As I overheard at the press screening: "Makes you never want to eat sushi again, huh?", a moviegoer was asked. His reply: "Actually, it kind of makes you crave it." HANNA RASKIN (Also: Harvard Exit, 4:30 p.m. Fri., June 10.)
