Local & Repertory
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 Diego 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., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $6-$8. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat. & Mon.-Weds.
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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., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $8 individual, $42-$45 series. 7:30 p.m. Thurs. Ends. Aug. 14.
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Fremont Outdoor Cinema It’s 1976 all over again in Richard Linklater’s 1993 pot-hazed high-school confidential Dazed and Confused. Yet beneath the cannabis clouds there’s surprising insight into the inner lives of slackers, stoners, and jocks. Throughout, Linklater’s laid-back observational style reveals all the longing, languor, and half-understood notions of self that define what it means to be 18. And you can’t beat Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion.” Keep your (red) eyes peeled for Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Nicky Katt (The Limey), Joey Adams (Chasing Amy), a young Wiley Wiggins (Waking Life), and Matthew McConaughey, whose muscle-car Romeo memorably declares, “That’s what I like about these high school girls: I keep getting older; they stay the same age.” Somehow Linklater almost makes that seem poignant. This is a 21-and-over screening, meaning booze. (R) B.R.M. 3501 Phinney Ave. N., 781-4230, fremontoutdoormovies.com. $30 series, $5 individual. Movies start at dusk. Sat. Aug., 2.
K Missing Kings This is the continuation of the Japanese anime series that began with K, again concerning teens and their fraught emotions. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org. $15. 6 p.m. Fri. & Mon. 3 p.m. Sun.
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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.
Moonlight Cinema Take my breath away. Tom Cruise stars as the cocksure fighter pilot in Top Gun, a very big hit from 1986. The volleyball scene with Val Kilmer adds camp appeal to its Reaganite muscle. (R)
Redhook Ale Brewery, 14300 N.E. 145th St., Woodinville, 425-420-1113. $5. Outdoor movie screens at dusk. Thursdays through Aug. 14.
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Movies at Magnuson Park Show me a woman between the ages of 28 and 35 who didn’t have a crush on Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), the superfox dreamboat of John Hughes’ classic 1984 teen wish-fulfillment fantasy Sixteen Candles, and I’ll show you, well, a lesbian. Hughes, the man who would go on to make The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, and just about every other great ’80s movie never remotely eligible for an Oscar, found his first and best muse in Molly Ringwald, the ordinary/extraordinary everygirl. Her pouty lips, gawky body, and frequent eyeball rolls—not the flawless, uber-confident sexpot represented by Jake’s bitchy queen-bee girlfriend—truly captures the agony and ecstasy of being a teenager. The role of Samantha was a breakout for Ringwald, but Anthony Michael Hall, as the jittery, froggy-voiced captain of the geek squad, and John and Joan Cusack in two of their earliest roles, are just as much fun to watch. (R) LEAH GREENBLATT Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E., moviesatmagnuson.com. $5. Thursdays. 7 p.m.
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Movies at the Mural 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. (PG-13) B.R.M. Seattle Center Mural Amphitheater, 684-7200, seattlecenter.com. Free. Movies begin at dusk. Saturdays through Aug. 23.
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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, $6-$8. 7 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 3 p.m. Sat./Sun., 7 p.m. Mon. Weds.
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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 (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net. $6-$11. 6 & 8:30 p.m. Fri.-Weds.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper’s wildly influential and frightening grindhouse hit from 1974 has been given a new 4K digital restoration. The blood will be that much redder and Leatherface that much more scary. (NR)
SIFF Cinema Uptown, $6-$11. 10:15 p.m. Fri.-Sun.
Ongoing
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, Kirkland Parkplace, others
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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)
Harvard Exit, Sundance, Lincoln Square
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. 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. Just expect no salt. (R) B.R.M. Sundance, others
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) B.R.M. Sundance
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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) R.H. Sundance, Admiral, others
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) R.H. Sundance
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. (NR) R.H. Sundance, others
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) B.R.M. Seven Gables, Kirkland Parkplace, others
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) B.R.M. Lincoln Square, others
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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) R.H. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Lynwood (Bainbridge)
