Film

4 Minute Mile Filmed around Seattle, this routine sports melodrama is weak on athletics and no stronger on story. There’s a swift but troubled teen (Kelly Blatz) being raised by a single mother (Kim Basinger); his older brother (Cam Gigandet) is a tattooed ex-con; and living next door is a cranky old alcoholic (Richard Jenkins) who used to coach record-breaking milers. The kid needs to win a scholarship to Berkeley to follow his crush (Analeigh Tipton), and the coach needs redemption. The hackneyed script and stereotypical characters put director Charles-Olivier Michaud at an immediate disadvantage. The movie falls to the back of a pack of superior running pictures like Pre and Chariots of Fire. Blatz, a bland and vaguely LaBeouffian TV actor, is too blocky for the role. And Basinger, the most intriguing casting choice here, just stands around looking haggard and sad, with nothing to say, eloquent in her character’s resignation. Jenkins, Oscar-nominated for The Visitor, can’t do much with his stock role. The kid lopes on long-distance runs-some to mule drugs for his brother-through downtown and along the Duwamish. The coach has him do wind sprints in the briny shallows by the Ballard locks and quarter-mile repeats on the hard concrete of Fisherman’s Terminal. All this is wildly inaccurate, as any boxer would tell you of Rocky; but The Karate Kid is more the model here. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, August 4, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, August 4, 2014

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A Summer’s Tale The movie of the summer in 1996 should have been A Summer’s Tale, a wise and bittersweet romance by then-septuagenarian filmmaker (and French New Wave co-founder) Eric Rohmer, who he died, in 2010, at 89. A would-be musician named Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) who travels to the Brittany seaside for a summer break before his grown-up duties beckon. Three young women are in his mind: loquacious waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet), with whom he can talk about his problems; assertive singer Solene (Gwenaelle Simon), ripe for a summer fling; and his quasi-girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin), who’s supposed to be showing up any day now. The situation is far more nuanced than this romantic choice would suggest, and Gaspard faces long days of exploring and reassessing his attitudes about romance, most of which are charmingly in error. Nothing in the movie is glibly scenic, but the locations are beautifully and precisely captured. So is the shapelessness of youthful summer days, which could be why the movie lasts 114 minutes; if it moved quicker it might not get that drowsy quality right. And Rohmer, as always, has the touch when it comes to tracking the tiny shifts in intensity between people. The belated arrival of this neglected gem is an unusual pleasure-maybe even the movie of the summer. (NR) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, August 4, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Monday, August 4, 2014

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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Monday, August 4, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Monday, August 4, 2014

Code Black Bad doctors, in social settings, brag about their jobs. The good ones are less self-aggrandizing, so it’s not initially obvious how to approach Dr. Ryan McGarry’s five-year documentary study of the Los Angeles County Hospital ER where he and his fellow residents arduously trained. That these people are idealistic, hardworking, well-spoken, and rather photogenic shows some healthy self-regard, but McGarry’s lens is wider than that. He wants to say something about the current state of post-ACA healthcare in America. However, what that something is, much less its timeframe-starting before and finishing after Obamacare?-is never clearly established. We get personalities and anecdotes, but not much data, especially when it comes to costs. We watch some patients live and others die, the social safety net in action, our tax dollars at work. It’s controlled chaos, where physicians are permitted to improvise on the fly. Then, at some point during McGarry’s long project, a new hospital is built and new procedures are implemented. He and his colleagues complain about the paperwork, the constant computer data entry, the new distance from their patients. The younger physicians seem to favor a single-payer system, but that debate is past. Code Black is admirably focused as a tribute to a noble profession, but some political context and outside perspective would help McGarry’s diagnosis. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, August 4, 2014

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Edge of Tomorrow Earth has been invaded by space aliens, and Europe is already lost. Though no combat veteran, Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is thrust into a kind of second D-Day landing on the beaches of France, where he is promptly killed in battle. Yes, 15 minutes into the movie Tom Cruise is dead-but this presents no special problem for Edge of Tomorrow. In fact it’s crucial to the plot. The sci-fi hook of this movie, adapted from a novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, is that during his demise Cage absorbed alien blood that makes him time-jump back to the day before the invasion. He keeps getting killed, but each time he wakes up he learns a little more about how to fight the aliens and how to keep a heroic fellow combatant (Emily Blunt) alive. The further Cage gets in his progress, the more possible outcomes we see. It must be said here that Cruise plays this exactly right: You can see his exhaustion and impatience with certain scenes even when it’s our first time viewing them. Oh, yeah-he’s been here before. There’s absurdity built into this lunatic set-up, and director Doug Liman-he did the first Bourne picture-understands the humor of a guy who repeatedly gets killed for the good of mankind. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Monday, August 4, 2014

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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Monday, August 4, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, August 4, 2014

Llyn Foulkes One Man Band The maverick Los Angeles artist Llyn Foulkes ran in the same avant-garde ‘60s circles along with Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, and company. Some of those artists prospered, but Foulkes dropped out of the gallery scene for decades, becoming a curio musician who performed his Dixieland-meets-Weimar cabaret music on The Tonight Show as a novelty act, like Tiny Tim. More recently, Foulkes was doggedly and sympathetically followed for seven years (to age 77) by filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty. I wish I could report their faith was more well-placed. Various curators and peers testify to Foulkes’ young talent, but his landscape and political/historical tendencies make him seem revanchist even today. He missed the boat on conceptualism or Pop, stubbornly changed course when any painting series proved popular, then spent futile decades cutting up and reworking a few large assemblages-on-plywood, the paint heaped high for depth, animal carcasses and even TV sets appended into the textured tableaux. Foulkes is like some old cowboy sage in a Sam Shepard play, both rueful and wise about his past misbehaviors toward ex-wives, tastemakers, and gallery owners. “I coulda played the game . . . “ he begins; then, like one of his paintings, he abruptly edits the thought: “Nah, I couldn’t have played the game.” One Man Band is an engrossing if overlong portrait of an overlooked artist. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$11 Monday, August 4, 2014

Mood Indigo Michel Gondry, the French director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind is on some kind of perpetual adolescent overdrive, his brain inventing new bits of business as though nobody’d ever asked him to be normal. We meet a young man named Colin (Romain Duris) whose wealth allows him to fritter away the days with his multifaceted advisor/manservant Nicolas (Omar Sy, from The Intouchables) and a talking mouse. Colin invents things, such as a piano that mixes cocktails based on the melody being played. Colin falls for Chloe (Audrey Tautou, not so far from her old Amelie stomping grounds), but their bliss cannot last, and Chloe soon contracts an illness that involves a water lily growing inside her lung. Gondry is a kind of wizard. Nobody does a four-minute music video with as much magical inventiveness, but there’s a vast miscalculation here about how this amount of whimsy wears over time. A fun opening half-hour is followed by an increasingly tiresome hour of hyperactivity. Wes Anderson is positively grave by comparison. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Varsity Theatre, 4329 University Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, August 4, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Monday, August 4, 2014

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Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, August 4, 2014

The Grand Seduction For all its super-nice intentions, attractive players, and right-thinking messages, this thing might’ve come out of a can. It is, literally, from formula: an English-language remake of the French-Canadian film Seducing Dr. Lewis, seen at SIFF ‘04 and written by Ken Scott. A dying Canadian harbor town will see its only shot at landing a new factory shrivel away unless a full-time doctor settles there. The local fishing industry’s broken, but the movie mostly blames government regulation, not overfishing. By hook and crook, they get a young M.D. (Taylor Kitsch) to take a month’s residency; now every townsperson must connive to convince the guy this is the only place to live. I’m sorry to say that the great Brendan Gleeson is the leader of the Tickle Point conspiracy, supported by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (Away From Her) in the Wilford Brimley crusty-curmudgeon role. Kitsch comes off rather well; he looks far more relaxed here than in the blockbuster haze of John Carter and Battleship, perhaps because he isn’t shamelessly twinkling at every turn. The French-language original was just as overbearing. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, August 4, 2014

K Missing Kings This is the continuation of the Japanese anime series that began with K, again concerning teens and their fraught emotions. Screens at 6 p.m. Fri. & Mon. 3 p.m. Sun. (NR)

Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 N.E. 50th St, Seattle, WA 98105 $15 Monday, August 4, 2014, 6 – 7pm

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Stop Making Sense Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads concert movie isn’t just a live recording of memorable performances by a trailblazing American band then hitting its stride. It is an unparalleled film experience, thanks to Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, etc.), who rightfully receives equal billing with Talking Heads. The film-being shown in celebration of its 30th anniversary-can be viewed as a sort of musical evolution, starting with David Byrne famously playing “Psycho Killer” to the sole accompaniment of a boombox (though this apparent nod to the band’s scrappier punk roots is pure showmanship; the backing track was actually coming from the mixing board). The concert progresses and the band, literally, builds behind Byrne as they play songs from Speaking in Tongues, the album that broke Talking Heads into the mainstream with “Burning Down the House”-and unexpectedly onto the dance charts with beat-driven songs like “Life During Wartime,” proving that, yes, this is in fact a disco. Plus there’s a Tom Tom Club song; the band’s rousing rendition of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River”; and, yes, you get to see Byrne in that big white suit, even bigger on the big screen (Through Thursday.) MARK BAUMGARTEN SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, August 4, 2014, 6 – 7:30pm

Locke LOCKE Tom Hardy is cast as a methodical Welsh structural engineer who specializes in concrete. This is a film where you will learn a lot about how that material is poured and processed. There is only one location to the movie: Locke’s BMW as he heads south through the night from Birmingham toward London-away from a critical job he is abandoning-to attend the birth of a child from a drunken one-night stand. Steven Knight’s Locke is essentially a radio play made into a movie. The camera moves up high to track Locke’s journey; there are some visual flourishes; but basically we’re listening to Hardy’s soft rumbling voice for 85 minutes. It’s a one-man dialogue, with calls to and from his wife and two sons, the hospital, his irate bosses, and a panicked Irish underling back at the job site. Locke keeps telling others, “Everything will be all right,” but he’s really trying to reassure himself against the existential void, the potential loss of job, family, and self-control. Hardy gives Locke a calm, steady self-assessment, a kind of lucid despair. He’s a guy forced to realize in one night that his life has no foundation. (R) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11. 7 p.m. Mon. SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, August 4, 2014, 7pm

Sabrina Man did the 1995 remake stink up Billy Wilder’s 1954 original with Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden. Sabrina’s plot is pure

Broadway hokum (rich bachelor brothers vie for their chauffeur’s daughter, now all grown up and babe-a-licious), but Wilder gives the material enough spin to save it from saccharine sweetness. Because, as with her prior Roman Holiday (and subsequent Love in the Afternoon), there’s always just something faintly smutty-which Wilder, of course, adores-about the tacit subject of a virgin’s imminent deflowering. Holden asks, “I’ve been trying to write her a poem. What rhymes with ‘glass?’” Bogie deadpans back, “Glass…hmm…I know, ‘alas.’” Hepburn more than holds her own against these older men, and there’s something touchingly comic and off-balance about Bogie’s cranky businessman falling for a woman half his age. Never mind the real-life subtext of Lauren Bacall; here he makes you share his surprise at finding a fresh start when he didn’t even know one was required. (NR) B.R.M. Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$8 Monday, August 4, 2014, 7pm

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Monday, August 4, 2014, 7:30pm

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To Have and Have Not Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were first and fatefully paired in this very loose 1944 adaptation of the Hemingway novel, about gun-runners in the Caribbean during World War II. But really the two stars were trioed, if you will, with director Howard Hawks, who gave their screen romance-which led to off-screen romance and marriage-exactly the right kind of sultry, matter-of-fact equality. Bacall’s Slim was the Hawksian ideal of a woman: smart, sexy, independent, nobody’s passive prize or possession. And Bogart’s taste in women was shaped, as was that of most ‘40s filmgoers, by the Hawksian stamp. Not yet 20, in her first screen role, Bacall instantly became an icon of strong, self-confident womanhood, a dame who gave as good as she got. Many have commented that the source novel was freely tailored to resemble Casablanca-an influence here just as much as THHN later influenced Key Largo. The genius of the studio system is to find and repeat formulas, to create fixed movie-star personae that can be transported easily from one picture to the next. Both Hollywood veterans, Hawks and Bogie knew how to work that system, how to build on their past successes. Part of what makes THHN so much fun is the appreciation these two older men-Bogie by 25 years, sorry-show for this new brand of Hollywood heroine, this new template. Without her, you couldn’t have Angelina Jolie today. (Also starring Bogie and Bacall, Hawks’ The Big Sleep opens Sat.; the two films alternate through Wed.) BRIAN MILLER Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 N.E. 50th St, Seattle, WA 98105 $5-$8 Monday, August 4, 2014, 8 – 9:30pm

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY Master of the jazz flute and of his ‘70s TV news domain, anchorman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is threatened by the arrival of Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), the bulldozer blonde who storms the all-male KVWN channel. Naturally the first “anchorlady” in San Diegan history drives Burgundy mad. So, does hilarity ensue in this 2004 comedy? In Ferrell’s hands, Burgundy is a diverting collection of quirky behaviors, but he never coheres as a comic creation the way, say, Austin Powers did. Ferrell clowns his way through Anchorman instead of acting; the erection gags and retard jokes are mostly D.O.A.; and director Adam McKay ineffectively “satirizes” newsroom misogyny, so the harassment Veronica encounters feels less jokey than genuinely creepy. (PG-13) NEAL SCHINDLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$8 Monday, August 4, 2014, 9:30pm

4 Minute Mile Filmed around Seattle, this routine sports melodrama is weak on athletics and no stronger on story. There’s a swift but troubled teen (Kelly Blatz) being raised by a single mother (Kim Basinger); his older brother (Cam Gigandet) is a tattooed ex-con; and living next door is a cranky old alcoholic (Richard Jenkins) who used to coach record-breaking milers. The kid needs to win a scholarship to Berkeley to follow his crush (Analeigh Tipton), and the coach needs redemption. The hackneyed script and stereotypical characters put director Charles-Olivier Michaud at an immediate disadvantage. The movie falls to the back of a pack of superior running pictures like Pre and Chariots of Fire. Blatz, a bland and vaguely LaBeouffian TV actor, is too blocky for the role. And Basinger, the most intriguing casting choice here, just stands around looking haggard and sad, with nothing to say, eloquent in her character’s resignation. Jenkins, Oscar-nominated for The Visitor, can’t do much with his stock role. The kid lopes on long-distance runs-some to mule drugs for his brother-through downtown and along the Duwamish. The coach has him do wind sprints in the briny shallows by the Ballard locks and quarter-mile repeats on the hard concrete of Fisherman’s Terminal. All this is wildly inaccurate, as any boxer would tell you of Rocky; but The Karate Kid is more the model here. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Tuesday, August 5, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

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A Summer’s Tale The movie of the summer in 1996 should have been A Summer’s Tale, a wise and bittersweet romance by then-septuagenarian filmmaker (and French New Wave co-founder) Eric Rohmer, who he died, in 2010, at 89. A would-be musician named Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) who travels to the Brittany seaside for a summer break before his grown-up duties beckon. Three young women are in his mind: loquacious waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet), with whom he can talk about his problems; assertive singer Solene (Gwenaelle Simon), ripe for a summer fling; and his quasi-girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin), who’s supposed to be showing up any day now. The situation is far more nuanced than this romantic choice would suggest, and Gaspard faces long days of exploring and reassessing his attitudes about romance, most of which are charmingly in error. Nothing in the movie is glibly scenic, but the locations are beautifully and precisely captured. So is the shapelessness of youthful summer days, which could be why the movie lasts 114 minutes; if it moved quicker it might not get that drowsy quality right. And Rohmer, as always, has the touch when it comes to tracking the tiny shifts in intensity between people. The belated arrival of this neglected gem is an unusual pleasure-maybe even the movie of the summer. (NR) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Code Black Bad doctors, in social settings, brag about their jobs. The good ones are less self-aggrandizing, so it’s not initially obvious how to approach Dr. Ryan McGarry’s five-year documentary study of the Los Angeles County Hospital ER where he and his fellow residents arduously trained. That these people are idealistic, hardworking, well-spoken, and rather photogenic shows some healthy self-regard, but McGarry’s lens is wider than that. He wants to say something about the current state of post-ACA healthcare in America. However, what that something is, much less its timeframe-starting before and finishing after Obamacare?-is never clearly established. We get personalities and anecdotes, but not much data, especially when it comes to costs. We watch some patients live and others die, the social safety net in action, our tax dollars at work. It’s controlled chaos, where physicians are permitted to improvise on the fly. Then, at some point during McGarry’s long project, a new hospital is built and new procedures are implemented. He and his colleagues complain about the paperwork, the constant computer data entry, the new distance from their patients. The younger physicians seem to favor a single-payer system, but that debate is past. Code Black is admirably focused as a tribute to a noble profession, but some political context and outside perspective would help McGarry’s diagnosis. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Tuesday, August 5, 2014

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Edge of Tomorrow Earth has been invaded by space aliens, and Europe is already lost. Though no combat veteran, Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is thrust into a kind of second D-Day landing on the beaches of France, where he is promptly killed in battle. Yes, 15 minutes into the movie Tom Cruise is dead-but this presents no special problem for Edge of Tomorrow. In fact it’s crucial to the plot. The sci-fi hook of this movie, adapted from a novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, is that during his demise Cage absorbed alien blood that makes him time-jump back to the day before the invasion. He keeps getting killed, but each time he wakes up he learns a little more about how to fight the aliens and how to keep a heroic fellow combatant (Emily Blunt) alive. The further Cage gets in his progress, the more possible outcomes we see. It must be said here that Cruise plays this exactly right: You can see his exhaustion and impatience with certain scenes even when it’s our first time viewing them. Oh, yeah-he’s been here before. There’s absurdity built into this lunatic set-up, and director Doug Liman-he did the first Bourne picture-understands the humor of a guy who repeatedly gets killed for the good of mankind. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Tuesday, August 5, 2014

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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Tuesday, August 5, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Llyn Foulkes One Man Band The maverick Los Angeles artist Llyn Foulkes ran in the same avant-garde ‘60s circles along with Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, and company. Some of those artists prospered, but Foulkes dropped out of the gallery scene for decades, becoming a curio musician who performed his Dixieland-meets-Weimar cabaret music on The Tonight Show as a novelty act, like Tiny Tim. More recently, Foulkes was doggedly and sympathetically followed for seven years (to age 77) by filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty. I wish I could report their faith was more well-placed. Various curators and peers testify to Foulkes’ young talent, but his landscape and political/historical tendencies make him seem revanchist even today. He missed the boat on conceptualism or Pop, stubbornly changed course when any painting series proved popular, then spent futile decades cutting up and reworking a few large assemblages-on-plywood, the paint heaped high for depth, animal carcasses and even TV sets appended into the textured tableaux. Foulkes is like some old cowboy sage in a Sam Shepard play, both rueful and wise about his past misbehaviors toward ex-wives, tastemakers, and gallery owners. “I coulda played the game . . . “ he begins; then, like one of his paintings, he abruptly edits the thought: “Nah, I couldn’t have played the game.” One Man Band is an engrossing if overlong portrait of an overlooked artist. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$11 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Mood Indigo Michel Gondry, the French director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind is on some kind of perpetual adolescent overdrive, his brain inventing new bits of business as though nobody’d ever asked him to be normal. We meet a young man named Colin (Romain Duris) whose wealth allows him to fritter away the days with his multifaceted advisor/manservant Nicolas (Omar Sy, from The Intouchables) and a talking mouse. Colin invents things, such as a piano that mixes cocktails based on the melody being played. Colin falls for Chloe (Audrey Tautou, not so far from her old Amelie stomping grounds), but their bliss cannot last, and Chloe soon contracts an illness that involves a water lily growing inside her lung. Gondry is a kind of wizard. Nobody does a four-minute music video with as much magical inventiveness, but there’s a vast miscalculation here about how this amount of whimsy wears over time. A fun opening half-hour is followed by an increasingly tiresome hour of hyperactivity. Wes Anderson is positively grave by comparison. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Varsity Theatre, 4329 University Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Tuesday, August 5, 2014

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Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

The Grand Seduction For all its super-nice intentions, attractive players, and right-thinking messages, this thing might’ve come out of a can. It is, literally, from formula: an English-language remake of the French-Canadian film Seducing Dr. Lewis, seen at SIFF ‘04 and written by Ken Scott. A dying Canadian harbor town will see its only shot at landing a new factory shrivel away unless a full-time doctor settles there. The local fishing industry’s broken, but the movie mostly blames government regulation, not overfishing. By hook and crook, they get a young M.D. (Taylor Kitsch) to take a month’s residency; now every townsperson must connive to convince the guy this is the only place to live. I’m sorry to say that the great Brendan Gleeson is the leader of the Tickle Point conspiracy, supported by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (Away From Her) in the Wilford Brimley crusty-curmudgeon role. Kitsch comes off rather well; he looks far more relaxed here than in the blockbuster haze of John Carter and Battleship, perhaps because he isn’t shamelessly twinkling at every turn. The French-language original was just as overbearing. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Tuesday, August 5, 2014

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Stop Making Sense Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads concert movie isn’t just a live recording of memorable performances by a trailblazing American band then hitting its stride. It is an unparalleled film experience, thanks to Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, etc.), who rightfully receives equal billing with Talking Heads. The film-being shown in celebration of its 30th anniversary-can be viewed as a sort of musical evolution, starting with David Byrne famously playing “Psycho Killer” to the sole accompaniment of a boombox (though this apparent nod to the band’s scrappier punk roots is pure showmanship; the backing track was actually coming from the mixing board). The concert progresses and the band, literally, builds behind Byrne as they play songs from Speaking in Tongues, the album that broke Talking Heads into the mainstream with “Burning Down the House”-and unexpectedly onto the dance charts with beat-driven songs like “Life During Wartime,” proving that, yes, this is in fact a disco. Plus there’s a Tom Tom Club song; the band’s rousing rendition of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River”; and, yes, you get to see Byrne in that big white suit, even bigger on the big screen (Through Thursday.) MARK BAUMGARTEN SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 6 – 7:30pm

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 7:30pm

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To Have and Have Not Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were first and fatefully paired in this very loose 1944 adaptation of the Hemingway novel, about gun-runners in the Caribbean during World War II. But really the two stars were trioed, if you will, with director Howard Hawks, who gave their screen romance-which led to off-screen romance and marriage-exactly the right kind of sultry, matter-of-fact equality. Bacall’s Slim was the Hawksian ideal of a woman: smart, sexy, independent, nobody’s passive prize or possession. And Bogart’s taste in women was shaped, as was that of most ‘40s filmgoers, by the Hawksian stamp. Not yet 20, in her first screen role, Bacall instantly became an icon of strong, self-confident womanhood, a dame who gave as good as she got. Many have commented that the source novel was freely tailored to resemble Casablanca-an influence here just as much as THHN later influenced Key Largo. The genius of the studio system is to find and repeat formulas, to create fixed movie-star personae that can be transported easily from one picture to the next. Both Hollywood veterans, Hawks and Bogie knew how to work that system, how to build on their past successes. Part of what makes THHN so much fun is the appreciation these two older men-Bogie by 25 years, sorry-show for this new brand of Hollywood heroine, this new template. Without her, you couldn’t have Angelina Jolie today. (Also starring Bogie and Bacall, Hawks’ The Big Sleep opens Sat.; the two films alternate through Wed.) BRIAN MILLER Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 N.E. 50th St, Seattle, WA 98105 $5-$8 Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 8 – 9:30pm

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY Master of the jazz flute and of his ‘70s TV news domain, anchorman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is threatened by the arrival of Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), the bulldozer blonde who storms the all-male KVWN channel. Naturally the first “anchorlady” in San Diegan history drives Burgundy mad. So, does hilarity ensue in this 2004 comedy? In Ferrell’s hands, Burgundy is a diverting collection of quirky behaviors, but he never coheres as a comic creation the way, say, Austin Powers did. Ferrell clowns his way through Anchorman instead of acting; the erection gags and retard jokes are mostly D.O.A.; and director Adam McKay ineffectively “satirizes” newsroom misogyny, so the harassment Veronica encounters feels less jokey than genuinely creepy. (PG-13) NEAL SCHINDLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$8 Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 9:30pm

4 Minute Mile Filmed around Seattle, this routine sports melodrama is weak on athletics and no stronger on story. There’s a swift but troubled teen (Kelly Blatz) being raised by a single mother (Kim Basinger); his older brother (Cam Gigandet) is a tattooed ex-con; and living next door is a cranky old alcoholic (Richard Jenkins) who used to coach record-breaking milers. The kid needs to win a scholarship to Berkeley to follow his crush (Analeigh Tipton), and the coach needs redemption. The hackneyed script and stereotypical characters put director Charles-Olivier Michaud at an immediate disadvantage. The movie falls to the back of a pack of superior running pictures like Pre and Chariots of Fire. Blatz, a bland and vaguely LaBeouffian TV actor, is too blocky for the role. And Basinger, the most intriguing casting choice here, just stands around looking haggard and sad, with nothing to say, eloquent in her character’s resignation. Jenkins, Oscar-nominated for The Visitor, can’t do much with his stock role. The kid lopes on long-distance runs-some to mule drugs for his brother-through downtown and along the Duwamish. The coach has him do wind sprints in the briny shallows by the Ballard locks and quarter-mile repeats on the hard concrete of Fisherman’s Terminal. All this is wildly inaccurate, as any boxer would tell you of Rocky; but The Karate Kid is more the model here. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Wednesday, August 6, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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A Summer’s Tale The movie of the summer in 1996 should have been A Summer’s Tale, a wise and bittersweet romance by then-septuagenarian filmmaker (and French New Wave co-founder) Eric Rohmer, who he died, in 2010, at 89. A would-be musician named Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) who travels to the Brittany seaside for a summer break before his grown-up duties beckon. Three young women are in his mind: loquacious waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet), with whom he can talk about his problems; assertive singer Solene (Gwenaelle Simon), ripe for a summer fling; and his quasi-girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin), who’s supposed to be showing up any day now. The situation is far more nuanced than this romantic choice would suggest, and Gaspard faces long days of exploring and reassessing his attitudes about romance, most of which are charmingly in error. Nothing in the movie is glibly scenic, but the locations are beautifully and precisely captured. So is the shapelessness of youthful summer days, which could be why the movie lasts 114 minutes; if it moved quicker it might not get that drowsy quality right. And Rohmer, as always, has the touch when it comes to tracking the tiny shifts in intensity between people. The belated arrival of this neglected gem is an unusual pleasure-maybe even the movie of the summer. (NR) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Code Black Bad doctors, in social settings, brag about their jobs. The good ones are less self-aggrandizing, so it’s not initially obvious how to approach Dr. Ryan McGarry’s five-year documentary study of the Los Angeles County Hospital ER where he and his fellow residents arduously trained. That these people are idealistic, hardworking, well-spoken, and rather photogenic shows some healthy self-regard, but McGarry’s lens is wider than that. He wants to say something about the current state of post-ACA healthcare in America. However, what that something is, much less its timeframe-starting before and finishing after Obamacare?-is never clearly established. We get personalities and anecdotes, but not much data, especially when it comes to costs. We watch some patients live and others die, the social safety net in action, our tax dollars at work. It’s controlled chaos, where physicians are permitted to improvise on the fly. Then, at some point during McGarry’s long project, a new hospital is built and new procedures are implemented. He and his colleagues complain about the paperwork, the constant computer data entry, the new distance from their patients. The younger physicians seem to favor a single-payer system, but that debate is past. Code Black is admirably focused as a tribute to a noble profession, but some political context and outside perspective would help McGarry’s diagnosis. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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Edge of Tomorrow Earth has been invaded by space aliens, and Europe is already lost. Though no combat veteran, Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is thrust into a kind of second D-Day landing on the beaches of France, where he is promptly killed in battle. Yes, 15 minutes into the movie Tom Cruise is dead-but this presents no special problem for Edge of Tomorrow. In fact it’s crucial to the plot. The sci-fi hook of this movie, adapted from a novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, is that during his demise Cage absorbed alien blood that makes him time-jump back to the day before the invasion. He keeps getting killed, but each time he wakes up he learns a little more about how to fight the aliens and how to keep a heroic fellow combatant (Emily Blunt) alive. The further Cage gets in his progress, the more possible outcomes we see. It must be said here that Cruise plays this exactly right: You can see his exhaustion and impatience with certain scenes even when it’s our first time viewing them. Oh, yeah-he’s been here before. There’s absurdity built into this lunatic set-up, and director Doug Liman-he did the first Bourne picture-understands the humor of a guy who repeatedly gets killed for the good of mankind. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Wednesday, August 6, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Llyn Foulkes One Man Band The maverick Los Angeles artist Llyn Foulkes ran in the same avant-garde ‘60s circles along with Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, and company. Some of those artists prospered, but Foulkes dropped out of the gallery scene for decades, becoming a curio musician who performed his Dixieland-meets-Weimar cabaret music on The Tonight Show as a novelty act, like Tiny Tim. More recently, Foulkes was doggedly and sympathetically followed for seven years (to age 77) by filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty. I wish I could report their faith was more well-placed. Various curators and peers testify to Foulkes’ young talent, but his landscape and political/historical tendencies make him seem revanchist even today. He missed the boat on conceptualism or Pop, stubbornly changed course when any painting series proved popular, then spent futile decades cutting up and reworking a few large assemblages-on-plywood, the paint heaped high for depth, animal carcasses and even TV sets appended into the textured tableaux. Foulkes is like some old cowboy sage in a Sam Shepard play, both rueful and wise about his past misbehaviors toward ex-wives, tastemakers, and gallery owners. “I coulda played the game . . . “ he begins; then, like one of his paintings, he abruptly edits the thought: “Nah, I couldn’t have played the game.” One Man Band is an engrossing if overlong portrait of an overlooked artist. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$11 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Mood Indigo Michel Gondry, the French director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind is on some kind of perpetual adolescent overdrive, his brain inventing new bits of business as though nobody’d ever asked him to be normal. We meet a young man named Colin (Romain Duris) whose wealth allows him to fritter away the days with his multifaceted advisor/manservant Nicolas (Omar Sy, from The Intouchables) and a talking mouse. Colin invents things, such as a piano that mixes cocktails based on the melody being played. Colin falls for Chloe (Audrey Tautou, not so far from her old Amelie stomping grounds), but their bliss cannot last, and Chloe soon contracts an illness that involves a water lily growing inside her lung. Gondry is a kind of wizard. Nobody does a four-minute music video with as much magical inventiveness, but there’s a vast miscalculation here about how this amount of whimsy wears over time. A fun opening half-hour is followed by an increasingly tiresome hour of hyperactivity. Wes Anderson is positively grave by comparison. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Varsity Theatre, 4329 University Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

The Grand Seduction For all its super-nice intentions, attractive players, and right-thinking messages, this thing might’ve come out of a can. It is, literally, from formula: an English-language remake of the French-Canadian film Seducing Dr. Lewis, seen at SIFF ‘04 and written by Ken Scott. A dying Canadian harbor town will see its only shot at landing a new factory shrivel away unless a full-time doctor settles there. The local fishing industry’s broken, but the movie mostly blames government regulation, not overfishing. By hook and crook, they get a young M.D. (Taylor Kitsch) to take a month’s residency; now every townsperson must connive to convince the guy this is the only place to live. I’m sorry to say that the great Brendan Gleeson is the leader of the Tickle Point conspiracy, supported by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (Away From Her) in the Wilford Brimley crusty-curmudgeon role. Kitsch comes off rather well; he looks far more relaxed here than in the blockbuster haze of John Carter and Battleship, perhaps because he isn’t shamelessly twinkling at every turn. The French-language original was just as overbearing. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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Stop Making Sense Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads concert movie isn’t just a live recording of memorable performances by a trailblazing American band then hitting its stride. It is an unparalleled film experience, thanks to Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, etc.), who rightfully receives equal billing with Talking Heads. The film-being shown in celebration of its 30th anniversary-can be viewed as a sort of musical evolution, starting with David Byrne famously playing “Psycho Killer” to the sole accompaniment of a boombox (though this apparent nod to the band’s scrappier punk roots is pure showmanship; the backing track was actually coming from the mixing board). The concert progresses and the band, literally, builds behind Byrne as they play songs from Speaking in Tongues, the album that broke Talking Heads into the mainstream with “Burning Down the House”-and unexpectedly onto the dance charts with beat-driven songs like “Life During Wartime,” proving that, yes, this is in fact a disco. Plus there’s a Tom Tom Club song; the band’s rousing rendition of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River”; and, yes, you get to see Byrne in that big white suit, even bigger on the big screen (Through Thursday.) MARK BAUMGARTEN SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 6 – 7:30pm

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 7:30pm

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To Have and Have Not Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were first and fatefully paired in this very loose 1944 adaptation of the Hemingway novel, about gun-runners in the Caribbean during World War II. But really the two stars were trioed, if you will, with director Howard Hawks, who gave their screen romance-which led to off-screen romance and marriage-exactly the right kind of sultry, matter-of-fact equality. Bacall’s Slim was the Hawksian ideal of a woman: smart, sexy, independent, nobody’s passive prize or possession. And Bogart’s taste in women was shaped, as was that of most ‘40s filmgoers, by the Hawksian stamp. Not yet 20, in her first screen role, Bacall instantly became an icon of strong, self-confident womanhood, a dame who gave as good as she got. Many have commented that the source novel was freely tailored to resemble Casablanca-an influence here just as much as THHN later influenced Key Largo. The genius of the studio system is to find and repeat formulas, to create fixed movie-star personae that can be transported easily from one picture to the next. Both Hollywood veterans, Hawks and Bogie knew how to work that system, how to build on their past successes. Part of what makes THHN so much fun is the appreciation these two older men-Bogie by 25 years, sorry-show for this new brand of Hollywood heroine, this new template. Without her, you couldn’t have Angelina Jolie today. (Also starring Bogie and Bacall, Hawks’ The Big Sleep opens Sat.; the two films alternate through Wed.) BRIAN MILLER Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 N.E. 50th St, Seattle, WA 98105 $5-$8 Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 8 – 9:30pm

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY Master of the jazz flute and of his ‘70s TV news domain, anchorman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is threatened by the arrival of Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), the bulldozer blonde who storms the all-male KVWN channel. Naturally the first “anchorlady” in San Diegan history drives Burgundy mad. So, does hilarity ensue in this 2004 comedy? In Ferrell’s hands, Burgundy is a diverting collection of quirky behaviors, but he never coheres as a comic creation the way, say, Austin Powers did. Ferrell clowns his way through Anchorman instead of acting; the erection gags and retard jokes are mostly D.O.A.; and director Adam McKay ineffectively “satirizes” newsroom misogyny, so the harassment Veronica encounters feels less jokey than genuinely creepy. (PG-13) NEAL SCHINDLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$8 Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 9:30pm

4 Minute Mile Filmed around Seattle, this routine sports melodrama is weak on athletics and no stronger on story. There’s a swift but troubled teen (Kelly Blatz) being raised by a single mother (Kim Basinger); his older brother (Cam Gigandet) is a tattooed ex-con; and living next door is a cranky old alcoholic (Richard Jenkins) who used to coach record-breaking milers. The kid needs to win a scholarship to Berkeley to follow his crush (Analeigh Tipton), and the coach needs redemption. The hackneyed script and stereotypical characters put director Charles-Olivier Michaud at an immediate disadvantage. The movie falls to the back of a pack of superior running pictures like Pre and Chariots of Fire. Blatz, a bland and vaguely LaBeouffian TV actor, is too blocky for the role. And Basinger, the most intriguing casting choice here, just stands around looking haggard and sad, with nothing to say, eloquent in her character’s resignation. Jenkins, Oscar-nominated for The Visitor, can’t do much with his stock role. The kid lopes on long-distance runs-some to mule drugs for his brother-through downtown and along the Duwamish. The coach has him do wind sprints in the briny shallows by the Ballard locks and quarter-mile repeats on the hard concrete of Fisherman’s Terminal. All this is wildly inaccurate, as any boxer would tell you of Rocky; but The Karate Kid is more the model here. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Thursday, August 7, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Thursday, August 7, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Thursday, August 7, 2014

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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Thursday, August 7, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Thursday, August 7, 2014

Code Black Bad doctors, in social settings, brag about their jobs. The good ones are less self-aggrandizing, so it’s not initially obvious how to approach Dr. Ryan McGarry’s five-year documentary study of the Los Angeles County Hospital ER where he and his fellow residents arduously trained. That these people are idealistic, hardworking, well-spoken, and rather photogenic shows some healthy self-regard, but McGarry’s lens is wider than that. He wants to say something about the current state of post-ACA healthcare in America. However, what that something is, much less its timeframe-starting before and finishing after Obamacare?-is never clearly established. We get personalities and anecdotes, but not much data, especially when it comes to costs. We watch some patients live and others die, the social safety net in action, our tax dollars at work. It’s controlled chaos, where physicians are permitted to improvise on the fly. Then, at some point during McGarry’s long project, a new hospital is built and new procedures are implemented. He and his colleagues complain about the paperwork, the constant computer data entry, the new distance from their patients. The younger physicians seem to favor a single-payer system, but that debate is past. Code Black is admirably focused as a tribute to a noble profession, but some political context and outside perspective would help McGarry’s diagnosis. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Thursday, August 7, 2014

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Edge of Tomorrow Earth has been invaded by space aliens, and Europe is already lost. Though no combat veteran, Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is thrust into a kind of second D-Day landing on the beaches of France, where he is promptly killed in battle. Yes, 15 minutes into the movie Tom Cruise is dead-but this presents no special problem for Edge of Tomorrow. In fact it’s crucial to the plot. The sci-fi hook of this movie, adapted from a novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, is that during his demise Cage absorbed alien blood that makes him time-jump back to the day before the invasion. He keeps getting killed, but each time he wakes up he learns a little more about how to fight the aliens and how to keep a heroic fellow combatant (Emily Blunt) alive. The further Cage gets in his progress, the more possible outcomes we see. It must be said here that Cruise plays this exactly right: You can see his exhaustion and impatience with certain scenes even when it’s our first time viewing them. Oh, yeah-he’s been here before. There’s absurdity built into this lunatic set-up, and director Doug Liman-he did the first Bourne picture-understands the humor of a guy who repeatedly gets killed for the good of mankind. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Thursday, August 7, 2014

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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Thursday, August 7, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Thursday, August 7, 2014

Llyn Foulkes One Man Band The maverick Los Angeles artist Llyn Foulkes ran in the same avant-garde ‘60s circles along with Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, and company. Some of those artists prospered, but Foulkes dropped out of the gallery scene for decades, becoming a curio musician who performed his Dixieland-meets-Weimar cabaret music on The Tonight Show as a novelty act, like Tiny Tim. More recently, Foulkes was doggedly and sympathetically followed for seven years (to age 77) by filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty. I wish I could report their faith was more well-placed. Various curators and peers testify to Foulkes’ young talent, but his landscape and political/historical tendencies make him seem revanchist even today. He missed the boat on conceptualism or Pop, stubbornly changed course when any painting series proved popular, then spent futile decades cutting up and reworking a few large assemblages-on-plywood, the paint heaped high for depth, animal carcasses and even TV sets appended into the textured tableaux. Foulkes is like some old cowboy sage in a Sam Shepard play, both rueful and wise about his past misbehaviors toward ex-wives, tastemakers, and gallery owners. “I coulda played the game . . . “ he begins; then, like one of his paintings, he abruptly edits the thought: “Nah, I couldn’t have played the game.” One Man Band is an engrossing if overlong portrait of an overlooked artist. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$11 Thursday, August 7, 2014

Mood Indigo Michel Gondry, the French director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind is on some kind of perpetual adolescent overdrive, his brain inventing new bits of business as though nobody’d ever asked him to be normal. We meet a young man named Colin (Romain Duris) whose wealth allows him to fritter away the days with his multifaceted advisor/manservant Nicolas (Omar Sy, from The Intouchables) and a talking mouse. Colin invents things, such as a piano that mixes cocktails based on the melody being played. Colin falls for Chloe (Audrey Tautou, not so far from her old Amelie stomping grounds), but their bliss cannot last, and Chloe soon contracts an illness that involves a water lily growing inside her lung. Gondry is a kind of wizard. Nobody does a four-minute music video with as much magical inventiveness, but there’s a vast miscalculation here about how this amount of whimsy wears over time. A fun opening half-hour is followed by an increasingly tiresome hour of hyperactivity. Wes Anderson is positively grave by comparison. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Varsity Theatre, 4329 University Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Thursday, August 7, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Thursday, August 7, 2014

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Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Thursday, August 7, 2014

The Grand Seduction For all its super-nice intentions, attractive players, and right-thinking messages, this thing might’ve come out of a can. It is, literally, from formula: an English-language remake of the French-Canadian film Seducing Dr. Lewis, seen at SIFF ‘04 and written by Ken Scott. A dying Canadian harbor town will see its only shot at landing a new factory shrivel away unless a full-time doctor settles there. The local fishing industry’s broken, but the movie mostly blames government regulation, not overfishing. By hook and crook, they get a young M.D. (Taylor Kitsch) to take a month’s residency; now every townsperson must connive to convince the guy this is the only place to live. I’m sorry to say that the great Brendan Gleeson is the leader of the Tickle Point conspiracy, supported by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (Away From Her) in the Wilford Brimley crusty-curmudgeon role. Kitsch comes off rather well; he looks far more relaxed here than in the blockbuster haze of John Carter and Battleship, perhaps because he isn’t shamelessly twinkling at every turn. The French-language original was just as overbearing. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Thursday, August 7, 2014

Moonlight Cinema On the schedule are: July 31, Top Gun; Aug. 7, The Big Lebowski; Aug. 14, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy; Aug. 21, Die Hard; Aug. 28, Fast & Furious 6. Food, drink, and music attend most screenings, which begin at dusk. Some events are 21 and over. Redhook Brewery, 14300 NE 145th St.

Woodinville, WA 98072 $5 Thursday, August 7, 2014, 6 – 11:30pm

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Movies at Magnuson Park The magnificent Gravity, which earned director Alfonso Cuaron an Oscar, will probably here be presented in its 2-D iteration, which will diminish the spectacle. Still, as George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are stranded in orbit, menaced by regular bombardments of space debris, the panicked breathing and frantic radio calls provide the human pulse to the terrifying scene, as bullet-speed space garbage cascades upon the shuttle and its fragile crew. For all its technical marvels and breathtaking panoramas reflected in Bullock’s visor, Gravity is a very compact and task-oriented picture. It’s both space-age and hugely traditional, though with a modern, self-aware heroine who inevitably begins talking to herself-”You gotta be kidding me!”-to fight the loneliness and complain of each new setback. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98115 $5 Thursday, August 7, 2014, 7 – 8pm

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Thursday, August 7, 2014, 7:30pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Friday, August 8, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Friday, August 8, 2014

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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Friday, August 8, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Friday, August 8, 2014

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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Friday, August 8, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Friday, August 8, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Friday, August 8, 2014

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Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Friday, August 8, 2014

Orgasm, Inc. The Strange Science of Female Pleasure Discussion follows this humorous documentary about drugs supposedly addressing “female sexual dysfunction.” (NR)

New Freeway Hall, 5018 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118 $2-$5 Friday, August 8, 2014, 7 – 10pm

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Friday, August 8, 2014, 7:30pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Saturday, August 9, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Saturday, August 9, 2014

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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Saturday, August 9, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Saturday, August 9, 2014

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Fremont Outdoor Movies This popular al fresco screening series begins with a free movie, courtesy of Talenti Gelato, which will probably be offering samples. Back in 2001, it wasn’t clear what kind of career Wes Anderson would enjoy after The Royal Tenenbaums; besides gathering what would almost become a repertory company of actors for him, the movie crystalized a number of key themes to recur in his later works. As in Moonrise Kingdom, there’s a longing for the protected cloister of childhood. As in The Grand Budapest Hotel, architecture provides a familiar embrace, a ritual-filled redoubt against the swift-running currents of time. As with Fantastic Mr. Fox, there’s the invigorating thrill of the caper-the illicit act, however small (like catching a ride on a garbage truck), that may not keep you young, but reminds you what it was like to be young. Made when he was only 31, Anderson’s third feature is permeated with the kind of nostalgic detail you’d associate with a man much older. Indeed, the period and place of Tenenbaums-like most of his other movies-are entirely imagined, not something he knew firsthand. You get the feeling Anderson identifies more with the regretful yet rascally old family patriarch (Gene Hackman) than the film’s younger characters (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Luke and Owen Wilson). I suppose you could call the picture a comedy of disappointment. Other titles on the schedule, running mostly on Saturdays through August 30, include Rushmore, Wet Hot American Summer (presented with Three Dollar Bill Cinema), Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, and that perennial Fremont favorite, The Big Lebowski. Some screenings are 21-and-over events. (R) BRIAN MILLER Fremont Outdoor Cinema, 3501 Phinney Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103 $5 Saturday, August 9, 2014

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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Saturday, August 9, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Saturday, August 9, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Saturday, August 9, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Saturday, August 9, 2014

West Seattle Outdoor Movies The series continues with Sat., Aug.: The Blues Brothers; Sat., August 16: The Goonies; Sat., Aug. 23: Frozen. Shows begin at dusk. Hotwire Online Coffeehouse (courtyard), 4410 California Ave SWSeattle, WA 98116 Free Saturday, August 9, 2014

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Saturday, August 9, 2014, 7:30pm

• 

Movies at the Mural From 1987, Rob Reiner’s charming PG-rated adaptation of the classic William Goldman children’s tale The Princess Bride is sweet, funny, and well played down the line for both parents and kids. Cary Elwes and Robin Wright are the handsome, occasionally quarrelsome lovers; Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, and the late Andre the Giant help get them together after many amusing adventures. Don’t be surprised or offended if people call out their favorite lines (especially “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”), since this is a very informal, family-oriented series. Also stake out your places early on the relatively small lawn. It’s best to get take-out food first from one of the restaurants inside the Armory; then have a picnic while waiting for the movie to begin. Extra sweaters are also recommended after the sung goes down. Other titles screening Saturday nights through August 23 are Gravity, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the recent Leo DiCaprio version of The Great Gatsby, and Star Trek Into Darkness. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Saturday, August 9, 2014, 9pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Sunday, August 10, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Sunday, August 10, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Sunday, August 10, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Sunday, August 10, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Sunday, August 10, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Sunday, August 10, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Sunday, August 10, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Sunday, August 10, 2014

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Sunday, August 10, 2014, 7:30pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, August 11, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Monday, August 11, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Monday, August 11, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Monday, August 11, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Monday, August 11, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, August 11, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Monday, August 11, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, August 11, 2014

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Monday, August 11, 2014, 7:30pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Tuesday, August 12, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Tuesday, August 12, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Tuesday, August 12, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Tuesday, August 12, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Tuesday, August 12, 2014

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 7:30pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Wednesday, August 13, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Wednesday, August 13, 2014

?? 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Wednesday, August 13, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Wednesday, August 13, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Wednesday, August 13, 2014

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Wednesday, August 13, 2014, 7:30pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Thursday, August 14, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Thursday, August 14, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Thursday, August 14, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Thursday, August 14, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Thursday, August 14, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Thursday, August 14, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Thursday, August 14, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Thursday, August 14, 2014

Moonlight Cinema On the schedule are: July 31, Top Gun; Aug. 7, The Big Lebowski; Aug. 14, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy; Aug. 21, Die Hard; Aug. 28, Fast & Furious 6. Food, drink, and music attend most screenings, which begin at dusk. Some events are 21 and over. Redhook Brewery, 14300 NE 145th St.

Woodinville, WA 98072 $5 Thursday, August 14, 2014, 6 – 11:30pm

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Movies at Magnuson Park The magnificent Gravity, which earned director Alfonso Cuaron an Oscar, will probably here be presented in its 2-D iteration, which will diminish the spectacle. Still, as George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are stranded in orbit, menaced by regular bombardments of space debris, the panicked breathing and frantic radio calls provide the human pulse to the terrifying scene, as bullet-speed space garbage cascades upon the shuttle and its fragile crew. For all its technical marvels and breathtaking panoramas reflected in Bullock’s visor, Gravity is a very compact and task-oriented picture. It’s both space-age and hugely traditional, though with a modern, self-aware heroine who inevitably begins talking to herself-”You gotta be kidding me!”-to fight the loneliness and complain of each new setback. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98115 $5 Thursday, August 14, 2014, 7 – 8pm

For Laughing Out Loud FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD In Howard Hawks’ delirious, rapid-fire newsroom screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), we have manic about-to-be-wed reporter Rosalind Russell racing in high heels after a story lead, then tackling the man to the sidewalk. “Where’s my hat?” she later demands, unaware that it’s perched on her head. She puts on her coat backward. When an inconvenient mother-in-law threatens to ruin the big prison-escape story our heroine and her editor (and ex-husband) Cary Grant are composing, the old hag is slung over the shoulder of a goon and transported to a taxi. Anytime you wonder what happened to Russell’s fiance, there’s a cutaway to screwball yeoman Ralph Bellamy behind bars again (about four stints in one day, thanks to jealous, conniving Grant). Clearly, we’re not so far from Chaplin and Keaton. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $8 individual, $42-$45 series. Thursday, August 14, 2014, 7:30pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Friday, August 15, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Friday, August 15, 2014

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Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Friday, August 15, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Friday, August 15, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Friday, August 15, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Friday, August 15, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Friday, August 15, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Friday, August 15, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Saturday, August 16, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Saturday, August 16, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Saturday, August 16, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Saturday, August 16, 2014

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Fremont Outdoor Movies This popular al fresco screening series begins with a free movie, courtesy of Talenti Gelato, which will probably be offering samples. Back in 2001, it wasn’t clear what kind of career Wes Anderson would enjoy after The Royal Tenenbaums; besides gathering what would almost become a repertory company of actors for him, the movie crystalized a number of key themes to recur in his later works. As in Moonrise Kingdom, there’s a longing for the protected cloister of childhood. As in The Grand Budapest Hotel, architecture provides a familiar embrace, a ritual-filled redoubt against the swift-running currents of time. As with Fantastic Mr. Fox, there’s the invigorating thrill of the caper-the illicit act, however small (like catching a ride on a garbage truck), that may not keep you young, but reminds you what it was like to be young. Made when he was only 31, Anderson’s third feature is permeated with the kind of nostalgic detail you’d associate with a man much older. Indeed, the period and place of Tenenbaums-like most of his other movies-are entirely imagined, not something he knew firsthand. You get the feeling Anderson identifies more with the regretful yet rascally old family patriarch (Gene Hackman) than the film’s younger characters (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Luke and Owen Wilson). I suppose you could call the picture a comedy of disappointment. Other titles on the schedule, running mostly on Saturdays through August 30, include Rushmore, Wet Hot American Summer (presented with Three Dollar Bill Cinema), Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, and that perennial Fremont favorite, The Big Lebowski. Some screenings are 21-and-over events. (R) BRIAN MILLER Fremont Outdoor Cinema, 3501 Phinney Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103 $5 Saturday, August 16, 2014

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Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Saturday, August 16, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Saturday, August 16, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Saturday, August 16, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Saturday, August 16, 2014

West Seattle Outdoor Movies The series continues with Sat., Aug.: The Blues Brothers; Sat., August 16: The Goonies; Sat., Aug. 23: Frozen. Shows begin at dusk. Hotwire Online Coffeehouse (courtyard), 4410 California Ave SWSeattle, WA 98116 Free Saturday, August 16, 2014

• 

Movies at the Mural From 1987, Rob Reiner’s charming PG-rated adaptation of the classic William Goldman children’s tale The Princess Bride is sweet, funny, and well played down the line for both parents and kids. Cary Elwes and Robin Wright are the handsome, occasionally quarrelsome lovers; Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, and the late Andre the Giant help get them together after many amusing adventures. Don’t be surprised or offended if people call out their favorite lines (especially “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”), since this is a very informal, family-oriented series. Also stake out your places early on the relatively small lawn. It’s best to get take-out food first from one of the restaurants inside the Armory; then have a picnic while waiting for the movie to begin. Extra sweaters are also recommended after the sung goes down. Other titles screening Saturday nights through August 23 are Gravity, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the recent Leo DiCaprio version of The Great Gatsby, and Star Trek Into Darkness. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Saturday, August 16, 2014, 9pm

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Sunday, August 17, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Sunday, August 17, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Sunday, August 17, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Sunday, August 17, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Sunday, August 17, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Sunday, August 17, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Sunday, August 17, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Sunday, August 17, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, August 18, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Monday, August 18, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Monday, August 18, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Monday, August 18, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Monday, August 18, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, August 18, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Monday, August 18, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, August 18, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Tuesday, August 19, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Tuesday, August 19, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Tuesday, August 19, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Tuesday, August 19, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Tuesday, August 19, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Wednesday, August 20, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Wednesday, August 20, 2014

• 

Guardians of the Galaxy Give thanks to the Marvel gods for Guardians of the Galaxy. If you’ve ever had to suppress a giggle at the sight of Thor’s mighty hammer, this movie will provide a refreshing palate-cleanser. First, understand that the Guardians of the Galaxy tag is something of a joke here; this is a painfully fallible batch of outer-space quasi-heroes. Their leader is an Earthling, Peter Quill (Lake Stevens native Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, an inspired choice), who calls himself “Star-Lord” even though nobody else does. In order to retrieve a powerful matter-dissolving gizmo, he has to align himself with a selection of Marvel Comics castoffs, who will-in their own zany way-end up guarding the galaxy. (His costars, some voicing CGI creatures, are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and the pro wrestler Dave Bautista.) Director James Gunn (Super) understands that getting character right-and keeping the story’s goals simple-can create a momentum machine, the kind of movie in which one scene keeps tipping giddily over into the next. Guardians isn’t exactly great, but it comes as close as this kind of thing can to creating explosive moments of delight. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, 2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle, WA 98107 Price varies Wednesday, August 20, 2014

I Origins Studying the evolutionary origins of the human eye, molecular biologist Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, from Last Days) and his gifted intern Karen (Brit Marling) do the lab work; meanwhile, the supremely rational Ian indulges in a whirlwind affair with exotic Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). A drastic plot twist jumps us forward seven years, and once again the rationalists are forced to examine their atheistic beliefs-as they so often are in movies. Although I found all this to be fundamentally silly, I should say that writer/director Mike Cahill is clearly a talented filmmaker. The hothouse world of super-focused scientists is convincing, and the staging of the sequence where Ian relocates Sofi (through a series of mystical coincidences) is technically accomplished. The title I Origins is, I fear, meant to be a pun on “eye,” which reduces the film’s metaphysical ideas to a glib play on words. So the movie has the title it deserves. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Sex Tape Despite the title, this marital comedy is a surprisingly tame affair, and fans expecting Jason Segel to again drop trou will be disappointed (and non-fans perhaps relieved). He and Cameron Diaz haven’t got the same antagonistic chemistry displayed in Bad Teacher (a sequel is said to be in the works). There’s not enough sex (though much talking about it), and the tape unspools too slowly. It takes 30 minutes for these tired, suburban parents to drunkenly film every position in The Joy of Sex (a weirdly out-of-date volume to be on their shelves). Not until the movie’s midpoint do they discover their video has accidentally been synced on a half-dozen iPads that Segel’s gifted away (to Diaz’s mom, her boss, friends, etc.). Anyone entering the theater already knows the plot, and that’s where Sex Tape ought to begin: with the frantic recovery effort. Apart from pacing, the pursuit becomes a journey into the heart of blandness. Not even a coked-up Rob Lowe, with Slayer blaring and tramp stamp on his back, can send the film into the wild adventure we want. Instead of an urgent screwball comedy, director Jake Kasdan and his writers keep steering the plot back to mundane marriage-counseling mode, as if we’re seriously concerned that bond will break-especially with two cute kids, who save their parents from an ominous porn magnate (cameo alert). Technology, not sex, is their real undoing. Segel wails that “nobody understands the cloud!,” and plenty of viewers will know the same shame. (R) BRIAN MILLER Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 Price varies Wednesday, August 20, 2014

• 

Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel-Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders-and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Wednesday, August 20, 2014

A Most Wanted Man Directed by the very deliberate Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control, The American), this this adaptation of a lesser 2008 John le Carre novel will, I think, be remembered as the best among Philip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous releases. In a post-9/11 world, he plays a rumpled Hamburg cop, Bachmann, with failures in his past, who’s charged with the dirty work of counter-terrorism. Crawling out of the Elbe, like a rat, is a Russian-Chechen Muslim we’ll come to know as Karpov. Bachmann and his squad (including Continental all-stars Daniel Bruhl and Nina Hoss) follow Karpov intently without arresting him, hoping he’ll lead to bigger fish. His bosses are dubious; a separate, rival German intelligence agency interferes; and he’s even got to negotiate with the CIA-represented by Robin Wright-to allow Karpov room to roam. Rachel McAdams shows up as a naive, sympathetic human-rights lawyer (riding a bike, of course). Will Karpov plant a bomb in the rush-hour subway or lead Bachmann to an important al-Qaida funding link? Related within a few days’ time and surveillance, that’s the essential plot. The recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a much better movie as it evoked the old, analog Cold War; unreliable technology meant that human relationships, and betrayals, were paramount. Hoffman would’ve been a better fit in that bygone world of smoky negotiation and curdled compromise. (R) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Thursday, August 21, 2014

Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists-and original score-this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work-not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Thursday, August 21, 2014

• 

Boyhood Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was shot in the director’s native Texas in short bursts over a 12-year period-Linklater knew the shape of the film, but would tweak its script as time marched on, incorporating topical issues and reacting to his performers. This means that unlike most movies, which remake the world and impose an order on it, Boyhood reacts to the world. Protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane), tracked from first grade to high-school graduation, is learning that life does not fit into the pleasing rise and fall of a three-act structure, but is doled out in unpredictable fits and starts. Linklater doesn’t reject melodrama so much as politely declines it, opting instead for little grace notes and revealing encounters. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are terrific as the parents, and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei is distinctive as Mason’s older sister. Other folks come and go, like people do. As we reach the final stages, there’s definitely a sense of rounding off the story, and a few appropriate nods toward lessons learned-the movie’s not as shapeless as it might seem. Let’s also appreciate how Linklater calls for us to reimagine how we might treat movies and childhood: less judgment, less organization, more daydreaming. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Thursday, August 21, 2014

Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism-apart from the constant Twitter plugs-is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene-but no, he’s only there to help. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Thursday, August 21, 2014