Local & Repertory
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Alien This is likely Ridley Scott’s 2003 director’s cut of the sci-fi classic, which hardly needed improvement back in 1979, when it had its world premiere at SIFF. Here’s what’s interesting three decades later: AIDS and ebola and SARS have given a whole new mortal resonance to Sigourney Weaver’s (disregarded) concerns about quarantine and infection. The bickering, class-divided shipmates reflect the movie’s origins in Thatcherite England. They’re fractious proles in the service of a corporate overlord whose computer proclaims, “All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable.” (R) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, Jan. 3-8, 9:30 p.m.
Here Comes the Devil In this ‘70s-style horror homage by Adrian Garcia Bogliano, two little kids go missing, then return to their parents as demonic killers. Or something like that. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org, $5-$8, Opens Jan. 3, Fri., Sat., 10:15 p.m. Through Jan. 11.
The Spectacular Now SIFF begins its Monday night “Recent Raves!” series with this agreeable adaptation of a 2008 young-adult novel by Tim Tharp. Teen protagonist Sutter (Miles Teller) leads a wildly unsupervised life of partying and blown-off homework. He wakes up on a lawn, unsure where he left the car, which introduces him to smart-girl Aimee (Shailene Woodley). They’re total opposites, and The Spectacular Now is the story of their unlikely yet plausible romance. (Oh, and Sutter is plainly an alcoholic, though that term is curiously omitted here.) Director James Ponsoldt’s young duo behaves with a likable, naturalistic ease. There are no Hughesian quips or ridiculously hunky/beautiful high-schoolers here. Both these kids are from families close to slipping out of the middle class, shadowed by the recession. In response to such stresses (absent fathers, etc.), Sutter’s credo is “Live in the now,” while ever-striving Aimee’s goals are to own a horse farm and work for NASA. Reality intrudes in a clunky third act, as a road trip to find Sutter’s father (Kyle Chandler) yields predictable results. The storytelling here surpasses the story. Every generation needs its new Say Anything. This isn’t that movie, but it earns points for trying. (R) B.R.M. SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Opens Jan. 6, Mondays, 7 p.m.
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The Thin Man SEE PICK LIST, PAGE 18.
Wrong Cops From Quentin Dupieux (Rubber, Wrong) comes this future-set tale of errant LAPD officers, one of them played by Marilyn Manson. The Village Voice called it “a tedious exercise in hipster lowbrow comedy,” not that there’s anything wrong with that. (NR)
Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Jan. 3-5, 8:30 p.m.; Jan. 6-8, 9 p.m.
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Young Frankenstein SEE PICK LIST, PAGE 18.
Ongoing
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American Hustle The latest concoction from David O. Russell is full of big roundhouse swings and juicy performances: It’s a fictionalized take on the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s, in which the FBI teamed with a second-rate con man (here called Irving Rosenfeld, played by Christian Bale) in a wacko sting operation involving a bogus Arab sheik and bribes to U.S. congressmen. Along with the FBI coercing him into its scheme, Irving is caught between his hottie moll Sydney (Amy Adams) and neglected wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence). Even more complicated for Irving is that one of the targets of the undercover operation, a genially corrupt yet idealistic Jersey politico (Jeremy Renner), turns out to be a soulmate. Equally unhappy is the presiding FBI agent (Bradley Cooper, his permed hair and his sexual urge equally curled in maddening knots), who’s developed a crush on Sydney that is driving him insane. Russell encourages his actors to go for it, and man, do they go for it. If this isn’t a great movie, and it’s not, it sure is a fireworks display. The movie’s fun to watch, if seemingly untethered. It would be nice to be able to avoid comparing it to vintage Scorsese, but the ricocheting camera and syncopated use of pop songs do seem awfully familiar, and just a little ersatz. (R) ROBERT HORTON Alderwood 16, Pacific Place, Ark Lodge, Big Picture, Cinebarre, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Thornton Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Sundance, others
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Will Ferrell and Adam McKay have frittered nearly a decade since their 2004 hit Anchorman. Maybe they’ve overthought the character of Ron Burgundy a tad too much. While Ron has moved from San Diego in the mid-’70s to New York in the early ’80s, more time has passed outside the multiplex. So Ferrell and McKay are torn: Should they reassemble the old cast, add some fresh cameos, and package a bunch of sketches; or should they endeavor to actually say something about the news business? Both approaches are crammed into one sporadically funny movie, but neither half will have you blowing soda out your nose. Fans will expect more Burgundy catchphrases and inanities from his cohort (Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, and David Koechner). Those are there, but all the ad-libs can feel like a late show at the improv club after the audience has gone home. Ferrell hasn’t grown into the role of Ron so much as grown past it. There are giant Motorola cell phones and predictable ’80s radio hits here, but Ron’s crybaby petulance—hidden beneath the macho bluster and hairspray—feels too small. (PG-13) B.R.M. Alderwood 16, Pacific Place, Cinebarre, Kirkland Parkplace, Varsity, Lincoln Square, Thornton Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, others
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Gravity George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are stranded in orbit, menaced by regular bombardments of space debris. The oxygen is running out and there’s no prospect of rescue from Earth. Their dilemma is established in an astonishing 12-minute opening sequence, seamlessly rendered via CGI by director Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien). The camera occupies no fixed position. There is no up or down in the frame as it pushes and swoops among the wreckage and flailing astronauts. (Here let’s note that the 3-D version is essential; don’t even consider seeing the conventional rendering.) Dr. Stone (Bullock) at first can’t get her bearings; and the rest of the film consists of her navigating from one problem to the next. Gravity is both space-age and hugely traditional, though with a modern, self-aware heroine. (PG-13) B.R.M. Thornton Place, Sundance, Pacific Science Center IMAX, others
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Her Spike Jonze’s unlikely romance is set in a smooth, efficient near-future Los Angeles. There are no poor people, no upsetting stories on the news. Technology works perfectly. Everyone ought to be happy, and that’s the problem for mopey Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix). Gradually it emerges that he’ separated from his wife (Rooney Mara), but won’t sign the divorce papers. Impulsively deciding to upgrade his phone and home PC, Theodore opts for the new OS1 ( “It’s not just an operating system, it’s a consciousness”). He chooses a female voice (Scarlett Johansson’s) called Samantha, which soon takes over his life. Before long they’re going on dates together—and more. (Meanwhile, Sam is evolving at a startling rate; “Tell me you love me,” she implores.) When Theodore finally spills his secret, his friend Amy (Amy Adams) treats it like no big news—everyone’s falling in love with an OS, she tells him. In this ingenious and unexpectedly touching story, both humans and programs worry about being alone. And both yearn to connect across the digital divide between sentience and software. (R) B.R.M. Harvard Exit, Lincoln Square
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Part 2 of Peter Jackson’s three-year Hobbit project, Smaug improves on last year’s rambling An Unexpected Journey by sticking to a clean, headlong storyline and jettisoning much of Part 1’s juvenile humor. Our hero, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), is traveling with his crowd of bumptious dwarfs, intent on finding a magical stone inside a mountain crammed with treasure. Wee wrinkle: The mountain is home to a dragon named Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), who likes to emerge periodically from his lair and burn down neighboring Laketown. This is really the only plot. Wizard leader Gandalf (Ian McKellen) breaks off from the travelers for his own jaunt; elfin archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) returns to the fray from his LOTR stint; and a new elf character named Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) provides woman-warrior action. The tightened storytelling (even at 156 minutes!) is welcome, and the movie looks cool. However, one serious caveat: Jackson misplaces Bilbo Baggins. In the bustle and the rapid-fire close-ups of the dwarfs , good old Bilbo is relegated to member-of-the-gang status—but this really is his journey, isn’t it? (PG-13) R.H. Alderwood 16, Pacific Place, Southcenter, Ark Lodge, Cinebarre, Cinerama, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Majestic Bay, Thornton Place, Sundance, others
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Inside Llewyn Davis While there are funny bits in this simple story of a struggling folk musician in 1961 Greenwich Village, very loosely inspired by Dave Van Ronk’s memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the situation for Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is fairly dire. He has no money, no apartment, and no real prospects in the music industry—apart from an album that isn’t selling. He’s the wrong guy at the right moment, as the movie’s poignant final scenes make clear. The Coen brothers aren’t really making a comedy here, and you should temper your expectations to appreciate the movie’s minor-key rewards. Isaac can really sing and play guitar; the sterling soundtrack, by T Bone Burnett, is built around live music performances; and the catchiest tune—an astronaut ditty called “Please, Mr. Kennedy”—is a knowingly cornball novelty song. But Llewyn’s a jerk to fellow musicians and benefactors, rude to his sister, and dismissive of others’ talent—possibly because he’s unsure of his own. Llewyn is a self-described asshole offstage; he’s only at his best onstage. If music can’t save him or provide a career, it’s also his only succor against life’s crushing disappointments. (R) B.R.M. Sundance, Harvard Exit, Lincoln Square
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom Sad to report, this biopic is a routine movie. The attempt to tell the whole long story puts a burden on leading man Idris Elba, the strong British actor lately seen in Pacific Rim but still best known for The Wire. Elba handles the task with aplomb, adjusting his performance from the cocky clotheshorse and fiery leader of youth to the calm visionary with the post-prison healing touch. There’s also a whole separate movie to be made around Naomie Harris’ ferocious performance as Winnie Mandela, a very complicated person who bashes around during the film’s midsection. Mandela’s death at 95 on December 5 brought an enormous, and appropriate, onslaught of media coverage. Mandela can’t help but seem like an extension of this, albeit dramatized and given length (146 minutes). The life is dutifully told, but unless you’re going to set a wildly distinctive moviemaker loose on the material (director Justin Chadwick is strictly a journeyman), I still think the right approach to historical figures is not the lifespan model but the snapshot. (PG-13) R.H. Alderwood 16, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Sundance
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Nebraska Whether delusional, demented, or duped by a sweepstakes letter promising him $1 million, it really doesn’t matter about the motivations of Woody (the excellent and subdued Bruce Dern). What counts is the willpower of this cotton-haired, ex-alcoholic Montana geezer. His son David (Will Forte, surprisingly tender) becomes the enabler/Sancho Panza figure on their trek to Nebraska, where Woody expects to get his prize. There is a lifetime of regret and bad parenting to reveal in Alexander Payne’s black-white-movie, which makes it sound more bleak than it is. There’s both comedy and pathos as Woody makes his triumphant return to Hawthorne, en route to the sweepstakes office in Lincoln, Nebraska. Supposedly a prospective millionaire in his old hometown, he’s a big shot at last, grander than his bullying old business partner Ed (Stacy Keach). If the locals mistakenly gush over Woody’s good fortune, and if his own ridiculous family, the Grants, come begging for riches, he enjoys the acclaim. Also visiting Lincoln is Woody’s wife, the movie’s salty truth-teller. Kate (June Squibb, a hoot) cheerfully defames the dead, ridicules Woody’s lottery dreams, and gives zero fucks about offending anyone. With its mix of delusion, decency, and dunces, Nebraska is a little slow for my taste but enormously rewarding in the end, one of the year’s best films. (R) B.R.M. Oak Tree, Guild 45th, Meridian, others
Philomena Based on actual events, our film begins with journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a brittle Oxbridge type, newly out of a job and lowering himself to write a human-interest story. That’s how he meets Philomena (Judi Dench), an Irish lady with the kinds of questions that perhaps only a reporter could answer. As a teenager in the 1950s, Philomena got pregnant, was sent to a Catholic convent to hide her sin, and gave birth there. She remained at the convent as unpaid labor, and her little boy was taken at age 3, never to be seen or heard from again. The pair’s discoveries are a matter of record now, but we’ll hold off on the revelations . . . except to say that there are some doozies. Maybe it’s Coogan’s acerbic personality (he scripted, with Jeff Pope), or director Stephen Frears’ unpretentious take on the material, but Philomena generally succeeds in distinguishing itself from the average weepie. The calm roll-out is effective; Coogan’s performance is shrewd; and anytime the camera gets near the convent, the Irish chill is almost palpable. (PG-13) R.H. Seven Gables, Oak Tree, Meridian
Saving Mr. Banks Here we have congenial Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, who’s wooing prickly author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to authorize his studio’s planned musical Mary Poppins. Disney he wears his despotism lightly. “Call me Walt,” he keeps insisting—yet another irritant to Travers, sulkily visiting L.A. to approve the project (or not, as she continually threatens). A self-made woman who bolted Australia to refashion herself as a starchy, acerbic Englishwoman, Mrs. Travers—as she imperiously commands informal Americans call her—both needs the cash and despises her need. There’s enough conflict here for a good comedy of manners during the sunset of the studio system, but the movie—competently directed by John Lee Hancock—is too timid to take many liberties in 1961, preferring instead to intercut the parallel story of Travers’ difficult girlhood in 1906 Australia. Little “Ginty,” so in thrall to the confabulations of her charismatic father (a charming yet vulnerable Colin Farrell), must inevitably be wounded in childhood. Just as inevitably, 50 years later, that wound must be healed—with music, laughter, and a generous heaping of Disney stardust. As Walt and company sweetened and simplified several Poppins books into one hit movie, Travers’ rocky biography has been ironed out here. “We instill hope,” says Disney. Travers is too cowed to correct him: Hollywood sells hope. And happy endings. (PG-13) B.R.M. Alderwood 16, Pacific Place, Southcenter, Ark Lodge, Cinebarre, Kirkland Parkplace, Varsity, Lincoln Square, Majestic Bay, Thornton Place, others
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Adapting James Thurber’s 1939 story, director and star Ben Stiller is mostly in a thoughtful vein here. Walter is a nebbish who works in the photo department for LIFE magazine, and the film’s early going is punctuated with his fantasies about heroically impressing a co-worker (Kristen Wiig, absurdly limited by her role). Then Walter’s daydreaming side is back-burnered as he goes on an actual adventure: He needs to find a charismatic, Robert Capa–like photographer (Sean Penn). Like a James Bond movie that needs to fire its location manager, the film leads Walter to Greenland and Iceland, where he indeed finds a backbone. All of which steers toward a placidly nice message, if not very close to Thurber’s Walter Mitty. But that original character, a portrait of quiet desperation resigned to the bittersweet escape of daydreaming, would be far too depressing for a holiday picture. Mitty is sunny-side-up, not Stiller’s best mode. (PG) R.H. Alderwood 16, Southcenter, Cinebarre, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Thornton Place, Sundance, others
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12 Years a Slave Made by English director Steve McQueen, this harrowing historical drama is based on a memoir by Solomon Northup (here played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man from Saratoga, New York, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. Solomon passes through the possession of a series of Southern plantation owners. One sensitive slave owner (Benedict Cumberbatch) gives Solomon—a musician by trade—a fiddle. Then he’s sold to the cruel cotton farmer Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), who also owns the furiously hard-working Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). Patsey, like Solomon, is caught inside the terror of not knowing how to play this hand. Do they keep their heads down and try to survive, or do they resist? This is no Amistad or Schindler’s List, tackling the big story, but a personal tale. Instead of taking on the history of the “peculiar institution,” the film narrows itself to a single story, Solomon’s daily routine, his few possessions. The film’s and-then-this-happened quality is appropriate for a memoir written in the stunned aftermath of a nightmare. Along the way, McQueen includes idyllic nature shots of Louisiana, as though to contrast that unspoiled world with what men have done in it. The contrast is lacerating. (R) R.H. Guild 45th, Meridian
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The Wolf of Wall Street Hugely, rudely entertaining, Martin Scorsese’s three-hour tale of rogue stock traders during the early ‘90s stars a ferociously funny Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, upon whose jailhouse memoir the movie is based. Wolf almost seems like a remake of Scorsese’s Goodfellas—or two of them, given its length. Here again are the crazed, colorful criminals, the mountains of blow, the army of hookers, the venal vitality of a life lived outside the law. The crucial difference, however, is the absence of mobsters and violence; this film is a greed-com, and the clowns include Jonah Hill, Rob Reiner, Matthew McConaughey, Jean Dujardin, and Spike Jonze. In a way, this is the movie Brian De Palma tried and failed to make out of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (a book Belfort read in prison, inspiring his memoir). Belfort is a guy programmed to sell, fuck, steal, and get high, only fun to watch while engaged in those core activities. In the film’s coda, Belfort finally recognizes as much: The only thing worse than being poor is being bored. Fortunately for us, Scorsese’s Wolf is the opposite of boring. (R) B.R.M. Southcenter, Cinebarre, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Thornton Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Sundance, others
