Local & Repertory

Band of Sisters The new pope grabs the headlines, but what about all those less-famous nuns? Toiling away to serve the poor, protesting the expulsion of undocumented migrant workers, tending to AIDS patients, founding hospitals, lobbying politicians, building low-income housing, picketing the School of the Americas, organic farming, podcasts . . . well, there’s pretty much nothing nuns can’t do in Mary Fishman’s very admiring documentary. Some rather charming archival footage and stills show the liberating effect of the 1962–65 Second Vatican Council, which allowed nuns to drop their old attire, leave their convents and cloisters, and serve the needy. “We didn’t have Volunteer Corps or Peace Corps or anything like that,” says one gray-haired Chicago nun. For a good Catholic girl of that era, serving mankind was a nobler, grander alternative to simply serving a husband. One can’t help but share Fishman’s esteem for these (mostly) older women; they’re practical Catholics working down in the trenches among the downtrodden. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Northwest Film Forum, $6-$10, Sat., April 20, 3 & 5 p.m.; Sun., April 21, 3 & 5 p.m.

Empire Records Better Than Ezra, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Evan Dando made soundtrack contributions to this soap-in-a-record shop, which introduced indie rock to mall-going teens across America back in 1995. Look for Renee Zellweger, Liv Tyler, and Robin Tunney among the cast. (PG-13)

Central Cinema, $6-$8, April 19-22, 9:30 p.m.

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Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut: French New Wave Masters How could anyone be mean to Anna Karina? Sad to say it, but her husband and director, Jean-Luc Godard, comes off looking like a misogynist jerk in the 1961 love triangle A Woman Is a Woman. She wants a baby from her sullen, no-good boyfriend (Jean-Claude Brialy, smoking an awful lot for a cyclist), who blithely suggests she get knocked up instead by their pal (Jean-Paul Belmondo, making turtlenecks look fabulous). Even if the film is putatively about women, it’s really about two guys who whisper, snicker, and conspire against the unknowable feminine other. “Is this a tragedy or a comedy?” one asks. “With a woman, you never know,” comes the reply. The colors dazzle in a restored print, and there are some funny gags, but Godard’s constant messing with the soundtrack and mocking of the prior conventions of screen romance almost spoil your appreciation of Karina’s eternal charm. Almost. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $63-$68 (series), $8 individual, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Through May 30.

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The Killing And early work (and late noir) from Stanley Kubrick, this 1956 crime tale has Sterling Hayden lead a gang in what’s supposed to be a simple heist. Naturally their plan goes to hell, with violent results. (NR)

Central Cinema, $6-$8, Wed., April 17, 7 & 9:30 p.m.

Kung Fu Grindhouse Screened in series will be For Your Height Only, Challenge of the Lady Ninja, and The Story of Ricky. 21 and over. (NR)

Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave. N.W., 784-4880, sunsettavern.com, Free, Tue., April 23, 7 p.m.

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Langston Hughes African American Film Festival Fifty features and shorts will be screened over nine days. Concluding the fest on April 21 will be the latest from director Robert Townsend, In the Hive, written by local playwright Cheryl L. West (Pullman Porter Blues). Both will also attend the fest. Full schedule and details: langstoninstitute.org, 684-4758. Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, 104 17th Ave. S., Seattle, $5-$10 individual, $50-$150 pass, Through April 21.

9/11 Explosive Evidence: The Experts Speak Out Given the recent terrorist bombing in Boston, this screening would seem extremely distasteful and ill-timed. But conspiracy theorists are welcome to attend. Discussion follows. (NR)

Keystone Congregational Church, 5019 Keystone Place N., 632-6021, keystoneseattle.org, Free, Fri., April 19, 7 p.m.

Samsara Whether it strikes you as a profound, perspective-shifting spiritual travelogue, or the cinematic equivalent of a forgettable New Age music loop, this follow-up to 1992’s Baraka by director Ron Fricke and producer Mark Magidson nails its intent as “guided meditation.” Zigzagging through 25 countries in ravishing Super Panavision 70, Samsara plumbs its titular conceit—the Buddhist/Hindu notion of cosmic cyclicity and earthly suffering—with a visual panache that short-circuits the need for narrative discipline (and dialogue. Like its predecessor, Samsara is entirely nonverbal). From corporeal subjects in an Ethiopian village and a Sao Paulo cathedral to inanimate relics on Turkey’s Mount Nemrut and in the devastated Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the film’s imagery is epic and trance-inducing. It’s the “guided” part where Samsara stumbles. Civilization’s hyper-mechanized Malthusian horror show is captured with inventive flair (a mass dance sequence in a Filipino prison is a stunning highlight), but it’s undercut by an underlying smugness and complementary mush-brained Eastern fetishism that toe right up to elitism. Cliched wraparound sequences in a Ladakh mountain monastery are the tip-off, but a preoccupation with factory grunts, office drones, destitute trash-pickers, and fat, burger-slamming Yanks as exemplars of humanity’s failings outs Fricke and Magidson as high-minded aesthete snobs. (NR) MARK HOLCOMB Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Sat., April 20, 3 & 11 p.m.

Saturday Morning Confusion Confusion indeed. This nighttime screening is a 21-and-over event sponsored by Scarecrow Video. PBR will be served along with various oddities from the VHS era, old weekend cartoons, and more. (NR)

Grand Illusion, $5-$8, Sat., April 20, 9 p.m.

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Scarface SEE THE WIRE, PAGE 21.

Waxie Moon in Fallen Jewel The local burlesque performer and dance appears in this film by Wes Hurley. (NR)

Central Cinema, $12, Thu., April 18, 8 p.m.

We Are

Winning, Don’t Forget French-born filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Periot will attend and introduce this evening of shorts. He specializes in reediting old archival reels—about WWII, the Civil Rights movement, etc.—into new essay films. (NR)

Northwest Film Forum, $6-$10, Sun., April 21, 7 p.m.

Ongoing

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Blancanieves Pablo Berger’s inventive retelling of Snow White is a silent-movie melodrama, set in the 1920s bullfighting scene of Seville. Berger draws from different inspirations—grand melodrama, flamenco, circus fantasy, and toreador worship—and mixes them with silent-film conventions and contemporary storytelling. Our heroine—called “Snowhite” in one mashed-up word—is Carmen (Macarena Garcia), the all-but-abandoned daughter of a crippled bullfighter. Her social-climbing wicked stepmother Encarna is played by Maribel Verdu (Y Tu Mama Tambien) with scheming, sadistic glee. In the enchanted corrida, amnesia-struck Snowhite becomes a matador in her own right, an adored heroine and Prince Charming all at once. No one is going to mistake this self-aware silent film for a period classic, but Berger’s creative energy and inventiveness more than justify the retro appropriation. (NR) SEAN AXMAKER SIFF Cinema Uptown

Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya’s 1972 coming-of-age novel, following a Hispanic schoolboy in a small New Mexico town during World War II, is considered a landmark of Chicano literature. That generally means a devotional, earnest adaptation. On the one hand, this is an often lovely story of growing up Hispanic in America, as seen through the amber-lit idealization of childhood memory and framed by the narration of the grown Antonio (Alfred Molina). On the other, it’s a struggle of good and evil between Ultima, the wise old medicine woman (or curandera) and the tyrannical landowner Tenorio. Meanwhile, the wise-beyond-his-years Antonio, the youngest in a sprawling clan scattered by service in the war, tries to work through the contradictions of a culture that publicly embraces Catholicism but quietly preserves the folklore and spiritual beliefs of its pre-Christian heritage. The movie is a storybook evocation of youth, darkened by the future disappointments of adulthood. (PG-13) SEAN AXMAKER Ark Lodge Cinemas

No

Mad Men for a different era, No is basically the true story of two rival 1988 ad campaigns—one for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the other for “happiness,” according to advertising hotshot Rene (Gael Garcia Bernal). After a 27-day TV blitz, voters can vote either Si (thus keeping Pinochet) or No (bringing in a new coalition government). Rene and his boss Lucho consider it a rigged contest, yet Rene is lured into running the No campaign. (Lucho will later lead the Si campaign.) Director Pablo Larrain and his writers embellish history and devise a funny, effective series of fake ads and jingles for both campaigns. “We have to find a product that is attractive,” says Rene. Product: That’s the key word, in which sense Rene can be seen as the Roger Ailes of his day. (R) BRIAN MILLER Varsity

The Place Beyond the Pines Luke (Ryan Gosling), a tattooed, muscled motorcycle stunt rider in a traveling circus, is a bad boy—just the way you like them. But then Luke discovers that a former one-night stand (Eva Mendes) has a toddler-aged son. Suddenly he turns paternal. He quits the circus, tells Romina he wants to settle down, to take care of her and the kid. Luke is now both the bad boy and the tender father—the perfect guy, except that he has no job skills but motorcycle riding and, taught by a new mentor, bank robbing. Pines is the second film by Derek Cianfrance to star the Gos (after Blue Valentine), but it turns out to be a much larger and longer ensemble piece, one that eventually skips 15 years forward from its initial story. One of Luke’s stickups is interrupted by anambitious young cop with a law degree, Avery (Bradley Cooper), who has an eye on politics. Shot in upstate New York, Pines aims to be a small-town generational saga, but only the early crime scenes have any spark to them. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, Harvard Exit, Kirkland Parkplace, Majestic Bay, others

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Room 237 Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. So goes the quote so often attributed to Freud, but it’s hard to make that case for coincidence and happenstance in the films of Stanley Kubrick. Rodney Ascher’s documentary explores five uniquely different and obsessively catalogued perspectives on Kubrick’s 1980 The Shining. It’s about the genocide of the American Indian, argues Bill Blakemore, pointing to the prominence of Native American art (and Calumet baking powder) in certain frames. Geoffrey Cocks sees it as a metaphor for the Holocaust. Ascher doesn’t make fun of his Shinologists, who lay out their theses in voiceover (no talking heads here), or the five detailed, obsessively catalogued exegeses under consideration. But then he adds his own commentary using clips from other Kubrick filmsfor counterpoint or comic effect. (NR) SEAN AXMAKER SIFF Film Center

The Sapphires

Dreamgirls meets Rabbit-Proof Fence. During the late ‘60s in the outback, on a sunny, cheerful farm, three Aboriginal sisters sing in exquisite harmony. The Sapphires is a classic example of Harvey Weinstein’s internationalist-frosted cupcake sentimentality. As our story begins, Cynthia, Gail, and Julie are suffering indignities of local talent shows. Shambling onto the scene is roving musician/talent scout Dave (Chris O’Dowd, of Bridesmaids and This Is 40). He whips them into an R&B group, adds cousin Kay, and takes them to entertain the troops in Vietnam. Based on a true story (and previously a stage musical), The Sapphires is a mom matinee, something that brings an easy smile and doesn’t require a wad of tissues. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables

Starbuck In this very broad, sentimental French-Canadian comedy, a 40-ish schlub named David (Patrick Huard) once used the code name “Starbuck” to make donations at the sperm bank. Two decades later, it’s revealed that the clinic used his sperm exclusively—meaning the still-anonymous David now has over 500 college-age offspring. A graying layabout bachelor, David is clearly unfit to be a father. You can see where this is going. His kids file a class-action suit to reveal his identity. David is aghast, then curious about his heirs, whom he secretly begins to visit and befriend. Each child creates a vignette for David to demonstrate his shaggy, bungling decency: There’s a soccer star, an actor, a heroin addict, a wheelchair kid with cerebral palsy, and so forth. There’s never any doubt as to how these antics will resolve, since David is a good guy from start to finish. How do you say mensch in French? Or Apatow, for that matter? A remake is inevitable. (R) BRIAN MILLER Kirkland Parkplace

To the Wonder Though booed at its Venice Film Festival premiere, Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder is hardly awful. It’s minor Malick, a movie that plays like something cut from his grand 2011 The Tree of Life—scraps, but worthwhile scraps. To the Wonder is essentially a love triangle, a very slow love triangle, among Neil (Ben Affleck), an Oklahoma environmental engineer, and two women. In France, Neil meets single mother Marina (Olga Kurylenko); they wander ecstatically around Mont Saint-Michel, that soaring medieval monastery ringed by tide flats, jumping on wet sand that undulates like a trampoline, marveling at the mud-cupped incoming waters. It’s achingly beautiful, one of a few priceless Malick images in the film (photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki). Back in Oklahoma, however, the wonder disappears from their new romance. The two quarrel, and Neil turns to his old sweetheart, Jane (Rachel McAdams). In the dreamy, elliptical Wonder, the exact sequence of falling in and out of love doesn’t really matter. It’s the pauses amid the rush of time that count for Malick. Yet the stakes feel smaller than Tree of Life’s family tragedy and final God-blessed reunion. Neil is just a guy who can’t commit, not unlike Father Quintana (Javier Bardem, in a thankless, poorly integrated role), the priest who can’t find his faith anymore. (R) BRIAN MILLER Guild 45th

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Trance In Danny Boyle’s art-heist head trip thriller, Simon (James McAvoy) works in a posh London auction house. When a Goya worth $41 million goes on the block, that painting is stolen in a brazen, well-planned art heist, despite the security Simon describes in such keen detail. He gets bashed on the head with a shotgun for trying to protect the Goya—surely he can’t be a bad guy, can he? The hypnotist is Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson), whom Simon picks at random on the Web for treatment. His problem is this: Simon may or may not be a bad guy, who possibly stole the painting himself or possibly double-crossed the thieves he was aiding. Either way, because of the brain injury, he can’t remember where he hid the Goya. It’s a very clever premise, compounded with themes of trust and betrayal. After trying to torture Simon, the thieves, led by Franck (Vincent Cassel), have no choice but to try, with Elizabeth’s help, to hypnotize Simon into recalling the Goya’s location. Boyle and his writers keep the surprises coming (and then some), though Trance boils down to a noir-ish love triangle among Simon, Elizabeth, and Franck. The Goya gradually recedes in importance; this is a story about not art but the tangled impulses of greed, love, and loyalty. (R) BRIAN MILLER Guild 45th, Kirkland Parkplace, others

Upstream Color Shane Carruth’s second film, after his 2004 Primer, maintains the gauzy style of its predecessor and exists in the same disorienting, dreamlike world. But there is no sci-fi gadgetry at play here. Upstream Color is a love story involving two deeply damaged individuals. Divorced financier Jeff (Carruth) is a recovering junkie with a criminal history. Broke sign-shop employee Kris (Amy Seimetz) is a heavily medicated lost soul with trust issues. Their attraction, more than physical, seems to be based on the fact that neither is completely responsible for his or her downfall. Rather, a parasitic grub is to blame. Complicating matters is a pig farmer who freelances as an audio engineer and who might be God, or maybe Jeff’s creepy boss. Upstream Color is a surreal work, and Carruth tells his story with rapid-fire jump-cuts, a depressed economy of words, and an ethereal electric-piano score (also by Carruth) that is unnerving at times and unrelenting always. The ending is clumsy and obvious, more PSA than avant-garde, but the somewhat patronizing coda makes it clear that Carruth has something more to share than confusion. (NR) MARK BAUMGARTEN SIFF Cinema Uptown

Theaters:

Admiral, 2343 California Ave. SW, 938-3456; Ark Lodge Cinemas, 4816 Rainier Ave. S, 721-3156; Big Picture, 2505 First Ave., 256-0566; Big

Picture

Redmond, 7411 166th Ave. NE, 425-556-0566; Central

Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684; Cinebarre, 6009 SW 244th St. (Mountlake Terrace)., 425-672-7501; Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 448-6680; Crest, 16505 Fifth Ave. NE, 781-5755; Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 781-5755; Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., 523-3935; Guild 45, 2115 N. 45th St., 781-5755; Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 781-5755; iPic Theaters, 16451 N.E. 74th St. (Redmond), 425-636-5601; Kirkland Parkplace, 404 Park Place, 425-827-9000; Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N, 425-454-7400; Majestic Bay, 2044 NW Market St., 781-2229; Meridian, 1501 Seventh Ave., 223-9600; Metro, 4500 Ninth Ave. NE, 781-5755; Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380; Oak Tree, 10006 Aurora Ave. N, 527-1748; Pacific Place, 600 Pine St., 888-262-4386; Seven Gables, 911 NE 50th St., 781-5755; SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996; SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), 324-9996; Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave NE, 633-0059; Thornton Place, 301 NE 103rd St., 517-9953; Varsity, 4329 University Way NE, 781-5755.