Local & Repertory
•
Blowing Up Cinema: The Art of Michelangelo Antonioni They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Jack Nicholson kept the slow, existential 1975 thriller The Passenger off the U.S. market for decades. Among those who aren’t so keen on the pacing of Blow-Up or L’Avventura, The Passenger won’t earn Antonioni any new fans. Nicholson expertly plays a reporter, failed in career and marriage, who makes a fresh start by assuming the identity of a dead man. We follow him from North Africa through various European cities, as do his wife and some ominous agents of an African dictatorship. He picks up a girl (Maria Schneider, best left to the ’70s) who tells Nicholson this new identity gives him a purpose, some political meaning: “That’s what you wanted.” But such beliefs are dangerous for the formerly indifferent reporter. It’s like The Bourne Identity played at half speed—deliberate, but never dull. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum.org. $8–$12 individual, $35–$54 series. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through March 24.
•
Cinema Italian Style Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, an account of an aging playboy journalist in Rome, casts its eye back to La Dolce Vita (also about a playboy journalist in Rome). Yet this movie looks even further back, from the capsized Costa Concordia to the ruins and reproachful marble statues of antiquity. “I feel old,” says Jep (the sublime Toni Servillo) soon after the debauch of his 65th birthday party. He’s been coasting on the success of his first and only novel, 40 years prior, content with his goal to be king of Rome’s high life. Jep is a dandy with thinning hair brushed back and a girdle beneath his silk shirt. False appearances are all that count, but it takes intelligence to deceive. Disgust—and then perhaps self-disgust—begins to color his perception of a Botox party, the food obsessions of a prominent cardinal, the splatter-art demonstration of a child artist, and the whole “debauched country.” Servillo’s wry glances are both mocking and wincing, appropriate for a movie that’s simultaneously bursting with life and regret. (NR) B.R.M. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $63–$68 series, $8 individual. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through March 19.
•
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Shot-for-salivating-shot, this boasts the highest “wow” quotient of anything in the formidably ecstatic Marilyn Monroe oeuvre. The 1953 movie, directed by Howard Hawks, opens with an edible MM and full-figured gal pal Jane Russell bursting onto the screen in skin-tight, feather-hatted, red-sequined regalia like a couple of carnivorous cake toppings. It eventually ogles its way through not only the now legendary “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Friend” routine but an audacious “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love” number, where Russell offers to take on the entire U.S. Men’s Olympic Team. (G) STEVE WIECKING Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 7 p.m. Fri. & Sun.-Tues. plus 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun. matinees
•
Growing Up Baumbach On Wednesday the 18th we have Noah Baumbach’s 1995 fairly witty campus comedy Kicking and Screaming, which made good use of Eric Stoltz, Chris Eigeman, and Josh Hamilton. Following on the 25th is 2013’s Frances Ha, about which our Robert Horton wrote, “Co-written by and starring Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha is Noah Baumbach’s unabashed 2013 tribute to her distinctive (don’t you dare say “quirky”) charms. The outline of a typical indie picture is in place, as we follow 27-year-old Frances and her New York apartment-hopping over the course of a few months. Frances dreams of being a dancer, as though nobody’d told her that if you haven’t made it as a dancer by 27, your dream should probably be in the past tense. The appeal of Frances Ha comes from Gerwig’s pluck and the film’s sprightly sense of play.” (R)
SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net. $5. 7 p.m. Wednesdays through April 1.
•
Seattle Jewish Film Festival The fest continues with fun documentary profiles of composer Marvin Hamlisch and comic performer Sophie Tucker. Above and Beyond relates how the Israeli Air Force was created in 1948 by a few WWII vets flying German-designed fighters and wearing secondhand Luftwaffe uniforms(NR)
Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, and Stroum Jewish Community Center (Mercer Island). $5–$18. Tickets & info: 324-9996, seattlejewishfilmfestival.org. Ends Sun., March 22.
