Local & Repertory
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American Comedy Classics There’s overacting and there’s over-Acting. John Barrymore provides the latter as a gloriously manic, egocentric Broadway producer in Howard Hawks’ priceless 1934 screwball comedy Twentieth Century. The pompous impresario creates a star (Carole Lombard) who becomes his lover, but his overwrought jealousy drives her to Hollywood. Two years later they meet on a train (the Twentieth Century line from Chicago to NYC), and comic pandemonium erupts. Peerless supporting players abet the insanity as Barrymore schemes to win her back. “We’re only real between curtains,” Lombard tells him, meaning those precious moments on stage. And in truth, neither is well equipped to walk among us mortals in the audience. A peerless comedienne during her short career, Lombard (1908-1942) was the pinup queen of the screwball era—swell looking, and smart with her mouth. (G) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $42–$45 series, $8 individual, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Continues through Aug. 15.
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The Fearless Freaks Leader of The Flaming Lips, in town to play the Capitol Hill Block Party, Wayne Coyne himself will introduce this 2005 documentary, directed by Bradley Beeseley. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 829-7863, nwfilmforum.org, $6-$10. 3 p.m. Sun., July 28.
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The Films of Trent Harris SEE THE WIRE, PAGE 17.
Frankenstein’s Army From Holland, this new black horror-com imagines that Nazis had a very secret weapon they hoped would turn the tide of WWII. Much gore ensues. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net, $6-$11, Fri., July 26, 10 p.m.
Fremont Ou
tdoor Movies Jason Segel puts it all out there—and, like, it’s all out there in 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It takes all of five minutes for Segel, who wrote and stars in the movie, to drop towel: His character, Peter Bretter, is on the verge of being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, middlebrow-TV actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), but she won’t actually break up with him until he puts on some clothes, and so…he doesn’t. The way Peter figures it, the moment he puts on some clothes, “it’s over.” The scene elicits big dumb laughs—That dude’s naked, haw haw. But there’s also some sad, sweet truth to it that carries over throughout the movie. Peter fits neatly into producer Judd Apatow’s now-familiar catalog of screwed-up, stunted crybaby man-boys, but he’s also Bruce Jay Friedman’s Lonely Guy—nothing more, or less, than a misfit and a mess. Outdoor movie screens at dusk. (R) ROBERT WILONSKY 3501 Phinney Ave. N., 781-4230, fremontoutdoormovies.com, $5, Sat., July 27, 7:30 p.m.
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The Hitchcock 9 SEE THE WIRE, PAGE 17.
The Man Who Fell to Earth David Bowie stars in this atmospheric but rather slow 1976 sci-fi flick, directed by Nicolas Roeg. (R)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com, $6-$8, July 26-31, 7 p.m.
The Mask Jim Carrey scored a huge hit in 1994 playing this green-faced rubbery superhero. Cameron Diaz costars. (PG-13)
Central Cinema, $6-$8, July 27-31, 9:30 p.m.
Moonlight C
inema In the 2010 Due Date, a skinny, scowly, and dryly self-referential Robert Downey Jr. meets a chubby, beardy, quasi-autistic Zach Galifianakis boarding a flight. Downey Jr. plays Peter, a Bluetoothed architect with a very pregnant wife waiting at home for him; Galifianakis’ Ethan is a would-be movie star headed to Hollywood. One nonsensical altercation later, both Peter and Ethan are kicked off the plane and barred from boarding another. Ethan rents a car and offers Peter a cross-country ride. From its breakneck pace to its stoneresque disinterest in Chekhovian payoff that’s such a balls-out fuck-you to conventional screenwriting that it’s sort of exciting, Due Date is fast, lazy, and out of control in a manner that’s basically commendable. Due Date barrels through increasingly fantastic set pieces on its way to a major rite of passage, but in this case the journey is divorced from the destination. 21 and over. Movie screens at dusk. (R) KARINA LONGWORTH Redhook Ale Brewery, 14300 N.E. 145th St. (Woodinville), 425-483-3232, redhook.com, Thursdays, 6 p.m. Through Aug. 29.
Movie Mondays In Cameron Crowe’s genial, heartfelt, autobiographical Almost Famous (2000), his protagonist (Patrick Fugit) ostensibly departs 1973 San Diego to pursue his destiny as a music journalist. Why does the kid embrace precisely that which his amusingly overprotective mother (excellent Frances McDormand) finds so abhorrent? Crowe doesn’t delve into such potentially revealing issues. Mentored by real-life rock critic Lester Bangs (grouchy, puckish Philip Seymour Hoffman), our Candide-like hero soon assembles an improvised family on the tour bus of up-and-coming band Stillwater. Members include singer Jason Lee, guitarist Billy Crudup, and groupie Kate Hudson—all united by their simple, idealistic love for music. Almost Famous is largely an episodic road movie and a familiar coming-of-age flick, yet tinged with an elegiac tone not often heard from a Marshall stack. Ticket price is your drink price. (R) BRIAN MILLER The Triple Door, 216 Union St., 838-4333, thetripledoor.net, $3, Mondays, 8 p.m. Through Aug. 19.
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Movies at Magnuson Park The animation in Pixar’s 2003 Finding Nemo does not disappoint. Its computer-generated submarine seascapes are nothing short of amazing. Behind the scaly main characters, I loved how the sandy sea bottom constantly shifted in wave-refracted pools of light and shadow—like Monet’s lily pads rendered with 0’s and 1’s. Nemo’s story is as safe and satisfying as nap time: Anxiety-ridden single-parent clownfish Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) undertakes a rescue mission when his only son, Nemo, is fishnapped from the Great Barrier Reef to an aquarium in a Sydney, Australia dentist’s office. Intercut between the two time-honored scenarios (The Searchers and The Great Escape), and you’ve got a pretty good outdoor movie, which begins tonight at dusk. (G) BRIAN MILLER Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E., moviesatmagnuson.com, $5, Thursdays, 7 p.m. Through Aug. 29.
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Movies at Marymoor From 2004, The Incredibles beats any live-action feature around for honest emotion, snappy dialogue, character integrity, and the lost art of narrative coherency. The Incredibles used to have it all: fame, superpowers, trim waists, the works. Then they were banished to a drably anonymous suburban life. Bob, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson), once thwarted multiple robbers and hell-bound trains, while wife Helen (Holly Hunter), trade name Elastigirl, saved lives with the longest arms the law ever saw. When the Incredibles get recruited out of retirement to battle embittered mad scientist Buddy Pine (Jason Lee) the action is infinitely more kinetic than almost any kaboom movie in recent memory. What makes the Incredibles great is that they tap the ultimate power: the secret of one’s own identity, individual and familial. Outdoor movie screens at dusk. (PG) TIM APPELO Marymoor Park, 6046 W. Lake Sammamish Parkway N.E. (Redmond), moviesatmarymoor.com, $5, Wednesdays. 7 p.m. Through Aug. 28.
Steel of Fire Warriors 2010 A.D. Filmmakers Travis Vogt and Kevin Clarke will introduce their locally made 2008 postapoclyptic genre mash-up. Note that the in-store VHSpresso now serves beer and wine. (NR)
Scarecrow Video, 5030 Roosevelt Way N.E., 524-8554, scarecrow.com, Sat., July 27, 8 p.m.
Terms and Conditions May Apply During the festival this year, our Daniel Person wrote of this privacy doc, “While the U.S. government is certainly guilty of obfuscating what liberties it takes with our data, director Cullen Hoback is stronger with the allegations than the clarity. After seeing Terms and Conditions, you’ll probably find yourself thinking twice about your next Google search and Facebook status update. You just won’t know exactly why.” (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, $6-$11, Thu., July 25, 7:15 p.m.
Waxie Moon in Fallen Jewel: The local dancer and drag performer is featured in this recent performance film. Call for price. (NR)
Central Cinema, Fri., July 26, 9:30 p.m.
Ongoing
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) is already an esteemed professor and public intellectual when she talks The New Yorker into hiring her to cover the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel in 1961. That’s where director Margarethe von Trotta makes an exception for one key aspect of her biopic: Eichmann is not played by an actor, but represented by the extensive newsreel footage of the trial. A small thing, but critical: An actor might have brought some distinction, some charisma, to the role of the Nazi war criminal. Arendt famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe the particular horror of the Nazis’ tidy organization of genocide. Instead of the aberrant monsters of the final solution, she proposed a population of bland bureaucrats with blood on their hands. Von Trotta shows the toll her New Yorker articles took on Arendt’s friendships. But there’s little question where the filmmaker’s sympathies lie, and Arendt’s dogged pursuit of penetrating insight in the face of comforting conventional wisdoms comes to seem austerely heroic. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Seven Gables
I’m So Excited Touted as a return to Pedro Almodovar’s zany early work, I’m So Excited is crammed with explicit sex jokes, suggested sex acts, and a brazen attitude toward hedonism at 30,000 feet. Its landing gear stuck, a jetliner can’t find an airport to crash-land, and its coach passengers have been sedated for the duration of the flight. The members of the crew are tangled in illicit relationships; the conscious passengers are a roster of eccentrics and rogues. And there’s a great deal of tequila involved (consumed by the pilots, too). Besides some obvious comedy, Almodovar has other motives in mind, which likely include a level of political comment (the plane is going around in circles and nobody cares what the economy passengers think, for starters). There’s also some early-’70s-style proselytizing on behalf of the slipperiness of sexual identity and behavior. All of which would be more fun if Almodovar were in top form for the duration, but something’s missing. By the time we reach the end of I’m So Excited, the debaucheries have added up to a surprisingly soft—and therefore unmemorable—landing. (R) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, Sundance Cinemas
Much Ado About Nothing Joss Whedon’s enjoyably playful comedy is staged in his Hollywood home. This modern-dress, black-and-white adaptation isn’t a vanity project, since Whedon’s cast members are all pros from television. Still, it has the feel of a weekend-home amateur theatrical, with everyone straining to put on a jolly good show and prove their appreciation for the Bard. Among the large ensemble cast are Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, and Reed Diamond. As quarrelsome lovers Beatrice and Benedick, Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker have a better grasp of the language, but their careful syllables don’t always match the sense of the words. Back in ’93, the Americans stood out for the same unfortunate reason among Kenneth Branagh’s mostly British Much Ado cast—poor command of the text. Absent that, there’s a lot of clowning and eye-rolling here that matches the contemporary mood. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Harvard Exit
Only God Forgives Oh God, Ryan Gosling, what are you doing? Just because you had a small, critical hit with Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, you don’t have to obey his next command. The Danish writer/director has some obsessive ideas about masculinity and mommy resentment to work through here. Their rendering is dreamy and hypnotic, set in the nighttime boxing clubs and karaoke bars of Bangkok, but more often they’re just plain silly. The older brother of Gosling’s drug dealer Julian commits a horrible crime. This begins a cycle of revenge and brings of Kristin Scott Thomas, as Julian’s mother, the most berserk and perverse villainess we’ll see onscreen this year. With her broad vowels and garish makeup, Crystal is a Medea straight from the Mall of America. Crystal and Julian are pitted against sword-wielding Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm). According to Refn, Chang is God. The film’s Thai characters revere Chang and fear his judgment; it’s only the stupid, incredulous Americans who don’t know whom they’ve offended. Only God Forgives has a slow-burn, languorous intensity in search of a story. Instead we get a half-baked parable of sin and punishment. (R) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Cinema Uptown
RED 2 The 2010 action comedy RED—an acronym for Retired and Extremely Dangerous—was a success with its shiny ensemble of Hollywood old timers including Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren. So a sequel is logical. While RED 2 delivers as much fun and more action than the original, it’s also hindered by incoherent pacing and some glaring holes in both plot and logic. (New cast-member Byung-hun Lee, convincingly playing the world’s best contract killer, fires thousands of bullets to destroy some cars without even hurting his target?) Willis and Mary-Louise Parker are gathered by Malkovich to track down a missing nuclear device. Shooting, explosions, and some exhilarating car chases ensue, as the team lurches from one international location to the next. The cast is solid, as expected, though Parker has the most fun with her off-kilter line readings. Willis plays the same character he’s been playing for the last few decades: a calm hero who hardly ever cracks a smile. New to the cast are Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones, an indication that the RED franchise is in no danger of retirement. (PG-13) NING LIU Alderwood 16, Pacific Place, Cinebarre, Bainbridge, Kirkland Parkplace, Thornton Place, Sundance, others
