Local & Repertory

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The Act of Killing Like Armenia and Rwanda, Indonesia belongs to that second tier of genocides outside modern European borders. In making this Oscar-nominated documentary, Joshua Oppenheimer somehow ingratiated himself with Indonesian killers, convincing them to make a movie that would garishly, heroically re-enact their past misdeeds. His naive yet murderous subjects frequently ask his opinion, off-camera, as if he were a sympathetic participant in the project. In the studio and a few bizarre outdoor tableaux with grinning showgirls, the perpetrators ritually restage their murders and massacres—it’s celebratory for them, perhaps cathartic on some level, but you could never imagine Nazis being treated in this grotesque, ironic manner. Instead of the banality of evil, we have the kitsch of evil. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Sun., Feb. 16, 2 p.m.

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DocBrunch Granted remarkable access to the lives of struggling Japanese artists Ushio and Noriko Shinohara in this poignant documentary, debut director Zachary Heinzerling follows the couple through the most mundane details of their marriage and art in the Oscar-nominated Cutie and the Boxer. The very spry Ushio, now 81, spends half the movie shirtless as he brushes his teeth, cooks, pounds paint onto canvas with boxing gloves, and kvetches in their cluttered Brooklyn loft about his lack of commercial success. Noriko is determined to escape his artistic shadow. With Ushio away in Japan, she goes to dance class and works in her notebooks. “I feel so free when you’re not around,” she later tells him. Heinzerling plainly loves both his subjects, but it’s impossible for him and the viewer not to love long-suffering Noriko more. I think many women—even if married only a few years—will see themselves in Noriko. (NR) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Sun., Feb. 16, 1 p.m.

The Golden Age of Italian Cinema The minute young Ermanno Olmi took his first job at Italy’s Edison Electric, he knew he couldn’t bear to stay there. But he did stay until age 33, and turned his confinement into his first masterpiece, 1961’s Il Posto (translated: The Job), about a tyro clerk in Milan struggling to escape dronehood and court a cute coworker despite bureaucratic obstacles. Using non-actors (the autobiographical hero actually grew up to be a supermarket manager), financed by coworkers, and shooting on weekends in the real office, Olmi crafted a subtle, precise, sometimes puckish world quite distinct from his neorealist contemporaries. It’s not as full-blooded as his mature masterpiece, 1978’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs, but it’s a worthy forerunner of Clerks, Office Space, and in a mild way, even the Kafkaesque satire of Brazil. (NR) TIM APPELO Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 (series), Wed., Feb. 12, 7:30 p.m.; Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through March 13.

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Harold and Maude In Hal Ashby’s 1972 countercultural touchstone, suicidal Bud Cort falls for lively Ruth Gordon, each of them learning valuable life lessons along the course of their, ahem, romance. One indication of how times have changed is how Cort, then dressed like a dweeb of his era, could almost pass for a Williamsburg hipster today. (NR) B.R.M. SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Fri., Feb. 14, 6:30 & 8:30 p.m.

Mauvais Sang From 1986, Leos Carax scored his first hit with this amped-up, future-set love story starring Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant. With a criminal plot that revolves around illness and remedies, there’s a direct nod to the mounting AIDS epidemic, but the plot ends not mattering so much as sheer youthful energy and mad glorious love—meaning the love that Carax (Holy Motors) has for the movies. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $6-$11, Feb. 14-20, 7 & 9 p.m.; Mon., Feb. 17, 3 p.m.

Museum Hours SIFF continues its Monday night “Recent Raves!” series with Museum Hours, a small-scale drama that writer/director Jem Cohen begins in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Johann (Bobby Sommer) is a museum guard, now calm and gray but once a rock musician. Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara) is visiting from Canada, called to Austria because a cousin has gone into a coma and Anne is her only surviving relative. The solitary Johann is available to guide Anne through drizzly Vienna. Johann’s single stray mention of a past male partner is enough to cancel any expectation of romance here, and indeed such a conventional plot turn would be too much for this quiet little study, which plays like Lost in Translation half asleep. It sounds as though Cohen—a veteran documentarian directing his first feature—is approximating a conversational Richard Linklater vibe, but Museum Hours isn’t going there, either. (NR) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Mondays, 7 p.m. Through Feb. 24.

Pretty in Pink John Hughes wrote this 1986 teen hit for his Molly Ringwald. (Howard Deutch directs.) The film is as much about class as adolescence, as Ringwald’s princess from the wrong side of the tracks is asked to the senior prom by rich prince Andrew McCarthy. (PG-13)

Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, Feb. 14-18, 7 p.m.; Sat., Feb. 15, 3 p.m.; Sun., Feb. 16, 3 p.m.

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Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise Trilogy All three installments of the beloved trilogy are screened, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. See siff.net. for schedule. (R)

SIFF Film Center, $6-$11, Sat., Feb. 15; Sun., Feb. 16.

Seattle Black Panther Film Festival As part of this salute to Black History Month, this weekend festival will include figures like Bobby Seale and Angela Davis among its programming. (NR)

Ark Lodge, 4816 Rainier Ave. S., brownpapertickets.com, $12, $30-$65 series, Feb. 14-16.

Trouble Every Day Basically a French vampire flick (with most dialogue in English), Claire Denis’ 2001 Trouble belongs to that realm of spectacularly bad films that can’t even be redeemed by camp snickers. Vincent Gallo plays an American doctor honeymooning in Paris with his wife with the secret agenda of finding a Dr. Frankenstein-like physician whose own wife (Beatrice Dalle) has been transformed into a nympho-cannibal monster. The thin valence between eros and violence is a staple of the Dracula genre, but there’s too much Gallic sulking here, not enough honest vampire action. “I want to go home,” announces a weary Gallo after 101 minutes of Trouble; viewers will feel the same way 10 minutes into the movie. Note: no 7 o’clock show on Monday. (NR) B.R.M. Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11, Feb. 14-19, 7 & 9 p.m.; Mon., Feb. 17, 1 & 3 p.m.

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We Are Alive! The Fight to Save Braddock Hospital Director Tony Buba will discuss his new doc., set in the declining Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. This screening is especially notable given the link to Born by a River, the photo show by LaToya Ruby Frazier currently at SAM, since she also addresses the loss of her hometown’s old community center, i.e. the hospital. See that show first, and Buba’s doc should be that much more enlightening. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, $6-$11, Sun., Feb. 16, 7 p.m.