Local & Repertory
Hallucinatory Maps A two-hour program of experimental films and videos by Georg Koszulinski is screened. (NR)
Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org. $5-$9. 7 p.m. Tues.
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Noir de France Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 Le Cercle Rouge is a breath of bitingly crisp air, even in an atmosphere thick with smoke from too many Gauloises. It makes its American gangster predecessors—and every faux Melville to come—seem slightly coarse and obvious compared to these elegant, trench-coated men with their inviolate codes of behavior and predestined fates. A Melville film never hurries, never raises its voice. Why would anything this cool need to? Melville serves up three loners: Corey (Alain Delon), just released after a five-year prison stint; high-risk criminal Vogel (Gian Maria Volonte who escapes while being transported by train; and alcoholic Jansen (Yves Montand), a marksman ex-cop. Their lives will later intersect for a heist, all the while pursued by the film’s linchpin, Capt. Mattei (Andre Bourvil), on whose watch Vogel escaped. Yet the silent, silken robbery is almost a throwaway; watching the codes by which all the characters behave, within and above the law, is the real fascination. (NR) SHEILA BENSON Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $63–$68 series, $8 individual. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through May 21.
Rad From 1986, this is a BMX adventure drama directed by Hal Needham (of Smokey and the Bandit fame). Unfortunately there is no Burt Reynolds cameo. (PG)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Wed.
Roar Noel Marshall’s 1981 folly stars his then-wife Tippi Hedren and stepdaughter Melanie Griffith alongside a bunch of lions and tigers. Hedren was mauled on the set. No surprise that she divorced Marshall soon thereafter. See website for showtimes. (PG)
Grand Illusion, $5-$9. Sun.-Thurs.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show Tim Curry and company camp it up in this 1975 cult film. (R)
SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. 11:55 p.m. Sat.
Translations: The Seattle Transgender Film Festival This year’s fest opens with the sports doc Game Face, about MMA fighter Fallon Fox, who’ll appear at the screening. Also on the schedule are titles dealing with animation, identity, Seattle history, and the follies of dating. Panels and social events are also part of the fest. (NR)
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. (plus 12th Avenue Arts Building), threedollarbillcinema.org. $8-$15 individual, $70 series. Thurs.-Sun.
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2001: A Space Odyssey British journalist Jon Ronson (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed) was once invited to the estate of the late Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), who spent the second half of his life in England. There, at the behest of Kubrick’s widow, Ronson began searching through the director’s storage boxes for a 2008 documentary, only to discover that the boxes contained still more boxes, and the archives were such an obsessive labyrinth of notes, ephemera, and just plain weirdness, that Kubrick couldn’t be condensed or digested. (Ronson later wrote about the experience in the Guardian). All of which is a roundabout way of addressing 2001, which likewise resists synopsis or explanation. It’s a mystery about a mystery that only expands—unlike, say, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which gradually diminished in depth. Released in 1968, Kubrick’s sci-fi quest was immediately labeled a trip movie and embraced by baby boomers, even if few actually dropped acid for the screenings. Four decades later, whether you believe Keir Dullea’s astronaut has been transmogrified to the starchild or not, 2001 is a fitting memorial to its director, as aloof and majestic as the big, black monolith standing sentinel on the moon. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, $7-$9. 8 p.m. Thurs.
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Event Yadda. (NR)
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Ongoing
Adult Beginners Nick Kroll’s His brash NYC tech maven Jake watches as a planned product launch goes down in flames, losing all his and his investors’ money, then retreats—a broken man, ashamed, tail between legs—to his childhood home in New Rochelle. Lazy and late to market in the post-recession flop-com genre, Adult Beginners’ script is contrived to add skimpy notions of growth to Jake: reconciling with his married suburban sister (Rose Byrne, no damage to her career), forgiving his doofus brother-in-law (Bobby Cannavale, coasting more than he should), and bonding with their icky-sweet 3-year-old son (cue the poop jokes, please). As Jake glides easily toward self-validation in this rote, predictable dramedy, it’s the sister’s fate than haunts you after the final hugs. (Her discontents are like those of Kristen Wiig’s character in The Skeleton Twins, compounded by the child that keeps her trapped below potential.) Jake can move on, charming and childless, while she’s stuck in New Rochelle. If there are other options for such women, Adult Beginners ends without exploring them. (R) B.R.M. Varsity
American Sniper Clint Eastwood’s deliberately neutral take on this real-life war tale is a measured approach likely to disappoint those looking for either a patriotic tribute to the troops or a critique of war and its effects. Chris Kyle (ably played by a hulked-up Bradley Cooper) was a sharpshooter whose action in four Iraq War tours reportedly made him the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history. His life had a lurid ending—a terrible irony that reframes his story in a larger context of troubled veterans and PTSD. The film, scripted by Jason Hall from Kyle’s memoir, has some standard-issue military bonding and uneven dialogue. What really works is the way it’s structured around parallel sequences, nowhere more intensely than the repeated images of the sniper at his gun, scanning the world for insurgents. One such sequence is the film’s most unnerving: As Kyle idly looks through his gunsight at passersby on the street below, he talks to his wife (Sienna Miller, now a real actress) on the phone, half a world away. Their conversation could be taking place in an Applebee’s, or a suburban backyard, but the finger stays on the trigger and the eye searches for threats. In other places in the film, Eastwood’s uninflected approach has a flattening effect. Here it creates one of the most chilling scenes in recent American film. (R) ROBERT HORTON Crest
Avengers: Age of Ultron Writer/director Joss Whedon balances comedy and derring-do with dexterity, and this sequel to 2012’s top grosser doesn’t stall the franchise. Plus it’s got new characters to geek out about, villains especially. Ultron is an artificial-intelligence “murderbot” inadvertently created by billionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.)—also known as Iron Man, of course—and scientist Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), aka the Hulk. Ultron changes robotic shape during the film, but his voice is provided by James Spader, who sounds like a tiger mellowed out on expensive brandy. He’s fun, if perhaps overly humorous for a creature who seeks to end mankind’s dominance on Earth. But Whedon, an encyclopedia of pop culture, can’t help himself—earnestness about this nonsense is for 20th-century suckers. It’s not easy to out-irony Downey, but Spader succeeds; Ultron wouldn’t be out of place as a campy Austin Powers villain. “I’m glad you asked that,” says Ultron in response to one of Stark’s questions. “Because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan.” He then destroys everything in sight. (PG-13) R.H. Cinerama, Sundance, Ark Lodge, Majestic Bay, Kirkland, Bainbridge, Admiral, others
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Clouds of Sils Maria Like the clouds that garland the titular valley, Olivier Assayas’ drama of three woman laboring in showbiz has an odd, evanescent quality: Now you see it, now you don’t. Film star Maria (Juliette Binoche) arrives in Zurich to pay tribute to the eminent old playwright who launched her career. Inconveniently, he kills himself, but a rising stage director then proposes a new adaptation of that signature project. But here’s the catch: Maria originally played the pert young seductress; now she’s being offered the role of the tragic older woman. It’s a dilemma she discusses fitfully with her personal assistant, a very competent yet unformed young woman named Valentine (Kristen Stewart, excellent). Their conversations wind along Alpine roads and hiking trails, continuing through cigarette smoke and too much late-night wine. Running lines for the play, the two drop in and out of those scenes to comment on the material. The line between art and life becomes increasingly blurred (sometimes frustrating the viewer). Youth is represented by the Lohanesque tabloid troublemaker cast as Sigrid: Jo-Ann (Chloe Grace Moretz, arriving steely and late), who fascinates Maria with her volatile TMZ meltdowns. Though Clouds has a few welcome laughs, it’s a film about time and a woman’s passages through time—and how aging forces new roles on women, despite their wishes. (R) B.R.M. Seven Gables
Danny Collins As related in this simultaneously hackneyed and likable rock-’n’-roll redemption tale, there really was a guy who, 40 years after the fact, discovered that John Lennon had written him a letter telling him to stay true to his art. Al Pacino plays Danny as a music celebrity living high on his legacy, doing what looks like a lounge-act version of Mick Jagger on the casino circuit. He’s on showbiz autopilot, performing his greatest hits for the AARP demo. The belated arrival of the Lennon letter sends Danny to a sleepy New Jersey Hilton. From there, he hopes to finally connect with his neglected son Tom (Bobby Cannavale), born from a backstage hookup. It’s hard to get worked up over the emotional journey of a spoiled celeb who’s milked a bubblegum pop anthem into a fortune. What exactly happened to the earnest young folk singer of the prologue? We never learn. Yet such questions fade as Danny becomes part of Tom’s family. Pacino’s chemistry with Cannavale and Annette Bening (as his not-quite-but-getting-closer-to-age-appropriate love interest) overrides the plot contrivances. Like Danny, Pacino has also been a showman verging on—if not spilling over into—self-parody in recent decades, but he turns Danny’s showmanship into a character trait, a reflexive instinct to connect with and charm everyone he meets, whether a sold-out concert hall or a gobsmacked parking valet. Even in a momentary bit of banter, Pacino makes that moment feel genuine. (R) SEAN AXMAKER Kirkland
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The Imitation Game A ripping true story can survive even the Oscar-bait effect. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the brilliant English code-breaker Alan Turing as a borderline-autistic personality, a rude brainiac who during World War II fiddles with his big computing machine while his colleagues stand around scratching their heads. Turing’s homosexuality only gradually enters the picture, and even when he proposes marriage to fellow code-breaker Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), it isn’t treated as a really big deal. Even if the movie sketches simplistic conflicts among its principal characters, the wartime world is so meticulously re-created and the stakes so compelling that it emits plenty of movie-movie sparks. (Morten Tyldum, of the ridiculously entertaining Headhunters, directs.) But the real reason to like this movie is that it’s so diligently pro-weirdo. Especially in Cumberbatch’s truly eccentric hands, Turing stays defiantly what he is: an oddball who uses rationality to solve problems. The film suggests that Turing does not have to become a nicer person—he beat the Germans’ Enigma code and won WWII, so let him be. (PG-13) R.H. Crest
True Story In this somber, fact-based account, journalist Mike Finkel (Jonah Hill) is soon booted from his plum gig at The New York Times Magazine for using composite characters. Back in snowy Montana with his girlfriend (Felicity Jones, from The Theory of Everything), his career is seemingly over. Then news comes that a Newport, Oregon, man named Christian Longo (James Franco) has been arrested for killing his wife and three kids. Chris was arrested in Mexico while impersonating Mike—he’s a fan who later grants Mike exclusive jailhouse interviews. Mike hopes his book (published in 2005) will prove his redemption, but should we really be surprised that Chris is using him? The stars and British director Rupert Goold are sure that Mike’s ingratiating himself with Chris, who has an agenda of his own, must mean something. Their character flaws and parallels will pay off, right? Hill has a knack for portraying earnest, sweaty, awkward characters lacking self-awareness; he’s good in his role, though Franco gives the superior, quieter performance—free of his recent tics and mannerisms. Still, this rather pat and schematic movie movie never gets beyond the obvious. While Mike keeps insisting on his “second chance,” you wish the film weren’t so aligned with that goal. (R) B.R.M. Pacific Place, Lincoln Square, others
The Water Diviner Part of Russell Crowe’s immense credibility as an actor is how grounded he is—woo-woo stuff is really not for him. Yet in his directorial debut, he plays Joshua Connor, a dowser who’ll use that a talent to search for the bodies of his three sons, all lost on the same day in the disastrous World War I battle of Gallipoli. Yet in 1919 Turkey (the Ottoman Empire having collapsed), Crowe’s convincing depiction of grief morphs into melodrama. Connor strikes up a friendship with hotelkeeper Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her impish son, escapes from a train ambush on horseback, and runs afoul of political unrest. As a director, Crowe is earnest and old-fashioned, and there are movie-watching pleasures to be had here. Lord of the Rings cinematographer Andrew Leslie knows how to look at big open spaces so you sense the bones beneath the surface. The film gets bogged down in its many flashbacks and sidebar dramas, and finally uncorks one too many unlikely coincidences. The sacrifice of thousands of soldiers from Australia and New Zealand was vividly told in Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli. Three decades later, The Water Diviner feels almost too careful in its desire to hit all the right notes and do justice to all sides. Which makes it more of a war memorial than a living, breathing movie. (R) R.H. Lynwood (Bainbridge), others
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What We Do in the Shadows The premise is ’90s-stale: basically MTV’s The Real World cast with vampires, presented as direct-address documentary. This droll comedy comes from the brain trust behind 2007’s Eagle Vs. Shark: Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi, who play neck-biters Vladislav and Viago, respectively. Our three main vamps are a hapless lot. They can’t get invited into any of the good clubs or discos—ending up forlorn in an all-night Chinese diner instead. After all the aestheticized languor of Only Lovers Left Alive (and the earnest teen soap opera of Twilight), the silly deadpan tone is quite welcome. Clement and Waititi know this is a sketch writ large (forget about plot), so they never pause long between sneaky gags. The amsuing and essential conflict here is between age-old vampire traditions and today’s hook-up customs. These neck-biters have been at it so long that they’re only imitating old vampire stereotypes. Things have gotten to the point, Vladislav admits, where they’re even cribbing from The Lost Boys. (NR) B.R.M. Admiral
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While We’re Young In outline, this is a routine Gen-X midlife-crisis movie: documentary filmmaker Josh (Ben Stiller) and producer wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are stalled in careers and marriage. He can’t complete his weighty, unwatchable opus (something to do with geopolitics and a disheveled Chomskyian scholar; together they’ve IVF’d once for kids, failed, and are settling into a staid, childless rut. They need a shakeup, and it arrives in the form of a spontaneous, fun-loving Brooklyn couple half their age: would-be documentarian Jamie (Adam Driver) and wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Noah Baumbach’s lively, career-best comedy sends cynical Josh into unexpected bromance, and much of the movie’s charm lies in our being swept along, too. Is Josh deluded and ridiculous? Of course he is, and yet that’s not the movie’s real source of laughter and inspiration. In denial about his fading eyesight and arthritis, Josh will discover that being foolish and confounded is good for the system, a tonic. If Jamie is a hustler, he’s also like a personal trainer—pushing his client (who forever picks up the lunch tab) into discomfort. Baumbach’s female characters aren’t so sharply drawn, though he provides nice supporting roles for Adam Horowitz (the Beastie Boys), as the only guy who can speak truth to Josh’s blind infatuation; and for Charles Grodin, who brings welcome, sour appeal as Josh’s disapproving father-in-law. (NR) B.R.M. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Lynwood (Bainbridge)
White God Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo begins White God with a promising, eerie prologue on the bad-dog side of the fence: an empty city with a small 13-year-old girl riding her bike through the desolate streets. Behind her, a marauding pack of feral dogs slowly grows in size, numbering into the hundreds, until they finally, deliberately pursue her. Lili (Zsofia Psotta) pumps her legs madly, totemic trumpet in her backpack, until she’s finally overtaken. Rendered in slo-mo, it’s a strikingly good sequence, a nightmare. Then the movie loops back to the start of its story, revealing the snarling future pack leader to be Lili’s beloved gentle pet. How did good dog Hagen turn bad? I wish, after that auspicious opening, the answer were more magical and enchanting. White God initially suggests fairy tale or fable, then splits into familiar, parallel accounts of two rebels brutalized by the cruel system. There’s a nice potential irony to global insurrection being led by the family dog curled up by the hearth, but Mundruczo doesn’t have the tools or the ambitions to push beyond the symbolic Lila/Hagen dyad. (NR) B.R.M. Ark Lodge
Woman in Gold The last time Helen Mirren went up against the Nazis, in The Debt, it was really no contest. So you will not be surprised to learn that the Austrian art thieves of the Third Reich fare no better against her Holocaust refugee Maria Altmann. Woman in Gold takes its title from the alternate, Nazi-supplied moniker for Gustav Klimt’s 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Adele was Maria’s beloved aunt, and Maria became the plaintiff in a long-fought art-restitution case, begun in 1998, against the Austrian government. As Maria’s sidekick in this true-life-inspired tale, Ryan Reynolds plays the unseasoned young attorney Randy Schoenberg (forever judged against his genius forebear Arnold Schoenberg). This odd couple is obviously going to prevail against the stubborn, post-Waldheim Austrian establishment. As Maria says, “If they admit to one thing, they have to admit to it all.” Were the writing better, this would’ve made a good courtroom procedural (Elizabeth McGovern and Jonathan Pryce show up as judges), but director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) instead chooses to add copious flashbacks to the Anschluss era and Maria’s narrow escape from the Nazis. So while this is a serviceable star vehicle that depends on Mirren’s reliably purring V-12 engine, two other actresses play Maria at different ages—depriving us of the regular pleasure of her smackdowns upon poor Randy. (PG-13) B.R.M. Guild 45th, Pacific Place, Kirkland Parkplace, others
