Local & Repertory

Almost Human Chainsaws and bloodthirsty Maine yokels figure in this new horror flick. (NR)

SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Fri., March 28, 9:30 p.m.; Sat., March 29, 9:30 p.m.

As You Like It This nine-title retrospective of British cinema begins with 1937’s Storm in a Teacup, adapted from a stage play, with investigative reporter Rex Harrison falling in love with the daughter (Vivien Leigh) of a corrupt politician he just exposed. (NR)

Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 series, $8 individual, Thu., March 27, 7:30 p.m. Through May 1.

DocBrunch Local director Leah Warshawski will introduce her Finding Hillywood, about a traveling outdoor movie screening circuit in Rwanda. Free movies are projected on an inflatable screen in rural areas—often near mass graves from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide of ethnic Tutsis by the majority Hutus. As she told SW last year, when her movie played during SIFF, “People show up with no shoes, in all kinds of inclement weather. They walk for miles and stand together in this precarious situation where you don’t know who you’re standing next to”—meaning Hutu perpetrator or Tutsi survivor. “There’s a huge issue of trust there still, years after the genocide. And that’s a little different than going to Sundance.” (NR)

SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Sun., March 30, 12:30 p.m.

Earthquake The Science on Screen series brings WSU seismologist John Vidale to discuss this cheesy disaster film from 1974, starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, and others. (PG)

SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Mon., March 31, 7 p.m.

A Field in England Along with its arty approach and unexplained allegorical premise, the movie explodes into full-on psychedelia after a certain stage—all the weirder for being in black-and-white. The movie’s a little Waiting for Godot and a little Magical Mystery Tour, with Vincent Price’s character from Witchfinder General hanging around. The actual setting has nothing to do with Swinging London; the film’s summary says it’s set in the mid-17th century, so that’s what we’ll go with. All of the action takes place in featureless fields, where a small group of soldiers trudges along after fleeing a battle. The most talkative of them, Whitehead, is actually a scholarly servant out doing the bidding of his unseen “master.” He and his filthy fellow deserters fall under the sway of an Irishman, who claims to be an alchemist and says that if they begin digging holes in the field, they will find gold. Oh, and they all get high on mushrooms. Directed by Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Sightseers), A Field in England probably has more sock for UK viewers, to say nothing of the fact—for this hearing-impaired Yank, at least—that maybe a third of the dialogue is unintelligible. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Fri.-Sat. 10 p.m.

Human Rights Watch Film Festival Beginning the fest at 6:30 p.m. Friday is Camp 14 – Total Control Zone, about the horrific prison camps in North Korea. Its main subject, Shin Dong-Huyk, was also recently the main figure in local author Blaine Harden’s book Escape From Camp 14; in it, one of Shin’s few benefactors “explained that the world was round” to the young escapee. See siff.net and ff.hrw.org for full schedule of the nine documentaries being screened. Subjects include genocide in Cambodia, the U.S prison system, and ethnic violence in Afghanistan. (NR)

SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Fri.-Sun., March 28-30.

The Image Revolution Associated with this weekend’s Emerald City Comicon, director Patrick Meaney will introduce his new documentary about the artists and writers behind Image Comics. (NR)

Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Thu., March 27, 8:45 p.m.

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Raiders of the Lost Ark Unlike the ill-advised Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the 1981 Raiders is a movie freed from the responsibility of fatherhood, much less adulthood. Then 39, Harrison Ford was more like the embodiment of the boyish dreams of producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg. Sure, he makes manly eyes at Karen Allen, but the lust—like the violence, in which movie-Nazis can be killed like flies—is only as real as in the movie serials that inspired the Indy franchise. In a thoroughly satisfying, always kinetic way, this first Jones flick lives inside its own archetypes, and Ford is too disciplined an actor to wink at the artifice. He always seems sincerely, physically invested in this iconic role, whether he’s outrunning boulders, being dragged under trucks, or recoiling from snakes. He’s a moonlighting, grave-robbing, rogue scholar, nobody’s hero. Here is Indy as we remember him: cocky, an improviser, irresponsible, but true to his course. He’s a man you want to be—not the same thing as being a role model. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, March 28-April 2, 7 p.m.; Sat., March 29, 3 p.m.

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Raising Arizona SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 21.

Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring Newly elected city council member Kshama Sawant has brought socialism back to the national spotlight. Now there’s an entire film retrospective that will program titles (some still pending) looking back to our 1999 WTO protests, the great strike of 1919, and other touchstones of the left. See nwfilmforum.org for ongoing schedule. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, $6-$11, Through May 1.

The Sprocket Society’s Saturday Secret Matinees The 1949 serial Batman & Robin will be screened in weekly installments. March’s surprise features will have a B-movie monster theme. (NR)

Grand Illusion, $5-$8 individual, $35-$56 pass, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Ends March 29.

Ongoing

Bad Words Jason Bateman cussin’ out a 10-year-old and terrorizing the other tween participants in a national spelling bee ought to be more fun than it is. Bateman’s also the director of Bad Words, and he brings a suitably curdled approach to the misanthropic material, which is rather too familiar. Guy Trilby is an angry 40-year-old proofreader with a secret. Why has he gamed the rules of the bee to compete against kids? He’s not saying, not even to his sponsoring website’s woman-on-the-ground, journalist Jenny (Kathryn Hahn, fiercely funny but in need of a real role). Bateman the actor can play surly asshole in his sleep, and Bateman the director never pushes him out of that comfort zone. The hostile behavior—and later, inappropriate mentoring—Guy directs at his precocious rival Chaitanya (Rohan Chand), dubbed “Slumdog,” is never less than predictable. And Guy’s secret, I’m sorry, is easy to guess. (R) B.R.M. Lincoln Square, Sundance

A Birder’s Guide to Everything Fifteen-year-old David (Kodi Smit-McPhee, Viggo’s son in The Road ) and his two best pals are avid ornithologists with their own school birdwatching club. Which is another way of stating the obvious: They’re outcasts, virgins, and nerds. Into their company, however, comes photographer Ellen (Katie Chang, possessing a Danesian assurance and transparency). David thinks he’s spotted an extinct duck, so the four pile into a “borrowed” VW and drive to a Connecticut lake, where they hope to make history. (Ben Kingsley plays their grouchy, one-legged, Ahab-like ornithologist mentor.) David’s mother, seen in flashback, has died of cancer. His father (the ursine James Le Gros) is about to remarry, perhaps the real reason for David’s flight before the wedding weekend. Birder’s Guide is an indie-film anomaly in today’s marketplace: predictable, pleasing, and more than a little passe—virtually extinct, in other words, like that odd, elusive duck. (PG-13) B.R.M. Sundance

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Dallas Buyers Club Making a straight white Texas homophobe the hero of a film about the ’80s AIDS crisis doesn’t seem right. It’s inappropriate, exceptional, possibly even crass. All those qualities are reflected in Matthew McConaughey’s ornery, emaciated portrayal of Ron Woodroof, a rodeo rider and rough liver who contracted HIV in 1985. Fond of strippers, regularly swigging from his pocket flask, doing lines of coke when he can afford them, betting on the bulls he rides, Ron has tons of Texas-sized character. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, the unruly Dallas Buyers Club goes easy on the sinner-to-saint conversion story. McConaughey and the filmmakers know that once Ron gets religion, so to speak, their tale risks tedium. As Ron desperately bribes and steals a path to off-label meds, his allies and adversaries do read like fictional composites. Best among them is the transvestite Rayon, who becomes Ron’s right-hand woman (Jared Leto). They’re both fellow gamblers who delight in beating the house. (R) B.R.M. Sundance

Enemy A schlumpy Toronto history professor who drones on about totalitarian societies, Adam walks with a crabbed, defeated gait. He comes down with a severe case of heebie-jeebies upon discovering his exact physical double in the form of a bit player in a minor movie. The actor’s name is Anthony Clair, he lives in town, and he’s a much more aggressive guy than Adam. They both have beards, and they are both played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Enemy gives Gyllenhaal a dramatic workout, and he is up to the challenge. As the guy who played Donnie Darko, Gyllenhaal has experience operating in parallel lives, and he proves deft at navigating this film’s grim, enigmatic strategy. Based on Jose Saramago’s 2002 Portuguese novel The Double, adapted by Javier Gullon, Enemy aims for the paranoid, closed-system intensity of vintage Roman Polanski. We infer there’s something out of whack here even before we happen to notice a giant spider looming over the city—surely that’s a vision from a character’s nightmare, but whose? Director Denis Villeneuve needs to deliver on all this well-managed buildup, and Enemy admittedly stumbles in that department. However, the abrupt final sequence should have cult-movie mavens chattering online for some time. (R) R.H. Sundance, SIFF Cinema Uptown

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The Grand Budapest Hotel By the time of its 1968 framing story, the Grand Budapest Hotel has been robbed of its gingerbread design by a Soviet (or some similarly aesthetically challenged) occupier—the first of many comments on the importance of style in Wes Anderson’s latest film. A writer (Jude Law) gets the hotel’s story from its mysterious owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham, a lovely presence). Zero takes us back between world wars, when he (played now by Tony Revolori) began as a bellhop at the elegant establishment located in the mythical European country of Zubrowka. Dominating this place is the worldly Monsieur Gustave, the fussy hotel manager (Ralph Fiennes, in absolutely glorious form). The death of one of M. Gustave’s elderly ladyfriends (Tilda Swinton) leads to a wildly convoluted tale of a missing painting, resentful heirs, a prison break, and murder. Also on hand are Anderson veterans Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson—all are in service to a project so steeped in Anderson’s velvet-trimmed bric-a-brac we might not notice how rare a movie like this is: a comedy that doesn’t depend on a star turn or a high concept, but is a throwback to the sophisticated (but slapstick-friendly) work of Ernst Lubitsch and other such classical directors. (R) R.H. Ark Lodge, Big Picture, Guild 45th, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Lynwood Theater, Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Woodinville

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The Great Beauty Paolo Sorrentino’s fantastic account of an aging playboy journalist in Rome casts its eye back to La Dolce Vita (also about a playboy journalist in Rome). Yet this movie looks even further back, from the capsized Costa Concordia to the ruins and reproachful marble statues of antiquity. “I feel old,” says Jep (the sublime Toni Servillo) soon after the debauch of his 65th birthday party. He’s been coasting on the success of his first and only novel, 40 years prior, content with his goal to be king of Rome’s high life. Jep is a dandy with thinning hair brushed back and a girdle beneath his silk shirt. False appearances are all that count, but it takes intelligence to deceive. Disgust—and then perhaps self-disgust—begins to color his perception of the whole “debauched country.” Servillo’s wry glances are both mocking and wincing, appropriate for a movie that’s simultaneously bursting with life and regret. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance

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Her Spike Jonze’s unlikely romance is set in a smooth, efficient near-future Los Angeles. There are no poor people, no upsetting stories on the news. Technology works perfectly. Everyone ought to be happy, and that’s the problem for mopey Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix). Gradually it emerges that he’ separated from his wife (Rooney Mara), but won’t sign the divorce papers. Impulsively deciding to upgrade his phone and home PC, Theodore opts for the new OS1. He chooses a female voice (Scarlett Johansson’s) called Samantha, which soon takes over his life. Before long they’re going on dates together—and more. In this ingenious and unexpectedly touching story, both humans and programs worry about being alone. And both yearn to connect across the digital divide between sentience and software. (R) B.R.M. Crest, Sundance

Particle Fever If nothing else, this doc confirms something you’ve probably always suspected: Really brilliant physicists are almost exactly as nerdy as the average sci-fi geek. Director Mark Levinson was probably wise to focus on the personalities working on the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva. Their quirkiness allows a human portal into the science behind this massive underground lab, which went live in 2008 and confirmed important results just last year. We are guided in this journey by a batch of physicists, from esteemed veterans in the field to the puppy-dog enthusiasm of Monica Dunford, who treats the word “data” the way the average person might describe a Powerball jackpot. Particle Fever serves as a needed reminder of the excitement of science, a practice that need not be left exclusively to nerds. (NR) R.H. Varsity