Film • A Hard Day’s Night The music business is fond of

Film

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A Hard Day’s Night The music business is fond of remastering old tracks and selling us new versions of familiar songs. You get that, plus a full visual restoration, in this 50th-anniversary edition of A Hard Day’s Night. Beatlemania was famously launched in the U.S. with the band’s February 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and mini-tour. Returning to the States that summer, the Beatles played Seattle on August 21, their third stop on a 23-city tour. But what if you weren’t lucky enough to live in one of those cities? Or what if you needed extra incentive to purchase the records, buy concert tickets, or watch their Ed Sullivan appearances? That’s what A Hard Day’s Night, cannily released in August (with the eponymous album), was all about. It’s both a genius marketing device and an enjoyably shaggy comedy-with-music. American teenagers already knew the songs in ‘64 (“Can’t Buy Me Love,” “She Loves You,” etc.), and they’d seen the Beatles on newsreels and TV. But what the first Beatles movie did was cement these four personalities in the public imagination. Never mind that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were the somewhat-manufactured roles devised by Brian Epstein, their manager; A Hard Day’s Night gave these characters room to roam. Director Richard Lester and screenwriter Alun Owen built upon each moptop’s popular persona, layering gag upon gag on what we thought we knew about them. Was Ringo really the lazy, irresponsible one or George the quiet one? No, and it really doesn’t matter. The Beatles were cheerfully selling themselves in a vehicle that combines English music-hall humor with the cinematic energy of the French New Wave. Fifty years later, we’re still happily buying. (Also plays SIFF Cinema Uptown.) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, July 28, 2014

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) BRIAN MILLER Seven Gables, 911 N.E. 50th St., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, July 28, 2014

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, 2115 N. 45th St., Seattle, WA, 98103 $10.50 Monday, July 28, 2014

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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) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Monday, July 28, 2014

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Cannibal Manuel Martin Cuenca’s Spanish horror film is a minimalist affair, cued to the deadpan central performance by Antonio de la Torre (the bisexual pilot from Almodovar’s I’m So Excited!). He plays Carlos, a meticulous old-school tailor whose skill at cutting suits is matched by his precision at-well, you know. His nosy neighbor (Olimpia Melinte) asks one too many personal questions and abruptly disappears, after possibly finding out too much about Carlos’ fridge. We assume Carlos has done his thing. Then her sister Nina (also played by Melinte) arrives to investigate, a process Carlos goes out of his way to aid. This cannibal-meets-girl setup is just a little too tidy to take flight as a really original idea, but Cuenca’s control as a filmmaker turns Cannibal into a thoroughly engrossing experience anyway. The film is so beautifully lit and framed that it’s almost as though Carlos is calling the shots, creating a movie world in which everything fits neatly into place. But Cuenca has an intriguing final act prepared, and he doesn’t push us to settle on a single metaphorical meaning for Carlos’ cannibalism-we can make of it what we will. (R) ROBERT HORTON Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$11 Monday, July 28, 2014

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. And even Oliver Platt, as the churlish food critic who becomes involved in a Twitter war with Carl, turns out to be a decent guy, not an asshole at all. (Wait, what?) So what are the obstacles here? There are none. 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. It even adds a road trip-Miami to L.A.-and a wedding as extra toppings. Just expect no salt. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Monday, July 28, 2014

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) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, July 28, 2014

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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) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Call for price Monday, July 28, 2014

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. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, July 28, 2014

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Ida After the calamity of World War II, your family exterminated by the Nazis (or their minions), how important would it be to reclaim your Jewish identity? That’s the question for Anna, 18, who’s soon to take her vows as a Catholic nun in early-’60s Poland. Now early-’60s Poland is not a place you want to be. The Anglo-Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love) films his black-and-white drama in the boxy, old-fashioned Academy ratio, like some Soviet-era newsreel. Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), she discovers, is a Jew-an orphan delivered to the church as an infant during the war, birth name Ida. Her heretofore unknown aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) insists they find their family homestead, and a desultory road trip ensues. The surly peasants won’t talk to them; Wanda smashes their car; and Anna’s too shy to flirt with a handsome, hitchhiking sax player (Dawid Ogrodnik) who invites them to a gig. The usual Holocaust tales celebrate endurance or escape. Ida suggests something simpler and deeper about survival and European history in general. Pawlikowski and his co-writer, English playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz, poke at the pit graves and pieties of the Cold War era and find an unlikely sort of strength for their heroine: the courage to turn her back. (Rated PG-13, also plays at SIFF Cinema Uptown.) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, July 28, 2014

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Jaws Let us revisit the greatest summer movie ever made: Jaws, which became the top-grossing film of all time (not allowing for inflation) after its June 1975 release. When pitched Peter Benchley’s novel, the 28-year-old director Steven Spielberg realized, “This is kind of a sequel to Duel!” In place of the marauding big rig, a marauding shark. In place of the small car piloted by Dennis Weaver, we have the famously too-small boat containing Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss. The constant, of course, is the fear of a larger, more powerful adversary whose elusive presence is more felt-thanks to John Williams’ rumbling ostinato-than seen. Filming off Martha’s Vineyard was protracted and delayed by the malfunctioning mechanical sharks, but this ultimately worked in Spielberg’s favor. He shot around the missing fish, concentrating on scenes where his three heroes are frantically searching for it. Everyone’s vainly scanning the horizon in Jaws, staring into the water and looking through binoculars. Spielberg may be a master of spectacle, but its opposite is the terrifying lack of visual information, the malevolent unseen. As for the plot, which we all know, Captain Quint takes his crew on a boat trip they’ll never forget. Buy yourself a ticket for the ride. Like Shaw says, “For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.” (Rated PG-13, 7 p.m. Fri.-Tues. & 3 p.m. Sat./Sun.) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$8 Monday, July 28, 2014

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Life Itself For the last 25 years of his life, Roger Ebert was the most famous film critic in America. In his final decade-he died in April 2013-Ebert became famous for something else. He faced death in a public way, with frankness and grit. This new documentary about Ebert focuses perhaps too much on the cancer fight. This is understandable; director Steve James-whose Hoop Dreams Ebert tirelessly championed-had touching access to the critic and his wife Chaz during what turned out to be Ebert’s last weeks. It’s a blunt, stirring portrait of illness. The movie’s no whitewash. The most colorful sections cover Ebert’s young career as a Chicago newspaper writer, which included hard drinking and blowhardiness. Some friends acknowledge that he might not have been all that nice back then, with a nasty streak that peeked out in some of his reviews and in his partnership with TV rival Gene Siskel. Life Itself gives fair time to those who contended that the Siskel and Ebert TV show weakened film criticism. Ebert’s own writing sometimes fills the screen, along with clips of a few of his favorite films, yet this isn’t sufficient to explore Ebert’s movie devotion, which was authentic. Still, this is a fine bio that admirably asks as many questions as it answers. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98102 $10.50 Monday, July 28, 2014

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Obvious Child Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre, this movie has already been pegged as the abortion rom-com, which is great for the posters and pull-quotes but isn’t strictly accurate. The movie doesn’t embrace abortion. It doesn’t endorse cheesy love matches between unlikely partners. What it does-winningly, amusingly, credibly-is convey how a young woman right now in Brooklyn might respond to news of an unplanned pregnancy. And this fateful information comes for Donna (SNL’s excellent Jenny Slate) after being dumped by her boyfriend, told that her bookstore day job is about to end, and rejected at her comedy club, where a drunken stand-up set of TMI implodes into self-pity and awkward audience silence. Obvious Child is foremost a comedy, and it treats accidental pregnancy-caused by an earnest, likable Vermont dork in Top Siders, played by Jake Lacy from The Office-as one of life’s organic pratfalls, like cancer, childbirth, or the death of one’s parents. But as we laugh and wince at her heroine’s behavior, Robespierre gets the tone exactly right in Obvious Child. The movie doesn’t “normalize” abortion or diminish the decision to get one. Rather, we see how it doesn’t have to be a life-altering catastrophe, and how from the ruins of a one-night stand a new adult might be formed. (R) BRIAN MILLER Ark Lodge, 4816 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118 $10.50 Monday, July 28, 2014

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) BRIAN MILLER Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 Price varies Monday, July 28, 2014

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Siddharth In the very first scene, we see 12-year-old Siddharth packed onto a bus, headed north from Delhi to the Punjab, where his mother’s brother-in-law has found him a job in a factory. When the boy’s father Mahendra (Rajesh Tailang) goes home, we understand why this child labor is necessary: The Saini family is poor, living in a single concrete walled room, with a small daughter to support. Mahendra is a “chain wallah” who repairs zippers for a few rupees a day. Months later Siddharth fails to return for a scheduled visit. How can Mahendra find his son? With no money and no connections, he becomes an intrepid but overmatched detective. Here’s where technology-and India’s bureaucracy-begins to fail, and the cruel codes of caste and feudal obligation assert themselves. Canadian director Richie Mehta based his script on an actual incident, when a poor stranger asked him about a possibly nonexistant place called “Dongri,” where stolen children were supposedly taken. So too does Mahendra ask as he plies his trade in the bustling, indifferent city. We might think, like Mehta, that Dongri is merely urban folklore, the dark analogue of Neverland in Peter Pan. Whether real or not, that place gives Mahendra, and us, the small consolation of hope. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Varsity Theatre, 4329 University Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, July 28, 2014

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) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105 $10.50 Monday, July 28, 2014

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The Pleasures of Being Out of Step Now 89, Nat Hentoff is the very definition of a living anachronism. An East Coast Jew who came of age during the postwar era, he earned his early journalistic reputation for his astute jazz criticism in Downbeat magazine. Later he began writing political commentary for the then-nascent Village Voice, from which he was unceremoniously booted in 2008. As is made clear in David L. Lewis’ probing documentary, filled with archival interviews, jazz performances, and talking heads, Hentoff was always an iconoclast-a man willing to challenge the dominant narratives (whether political or musical), often redefining them in the process. Lewis isn’t shy about delving into the more controversial aspects of Hentoff’s character. At the staunchly liberal Voice, his unwavering First Amendment views famously set him in conflict with readers and editors, particularly when defending Chicago Nazis’ right to parade in Skokie, Illinois, in 1977. What we are left with is not the hagiography of a hallowed writer, but a complex story of a thinking man who eschewed the prevailing ideology for his own sense of truth, no matter how unpopular. Like I said, an anachronism. (NR) MARK BAUMGARTEN Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 N.E. 50th St, Seattle, WA 98105 $5-$7 Monday, July 28, 2014

Visitors Shot in super-high-def black-and-white digital video, this is the latest state-of-the world doc from Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi, etc.), and he doesn’t like what he’s seeing. He also doesn’t like how we’re seeing the world, which increasingly means small, flat screens held in our hands and laps. Absent any narration, as usual for Reggio, the film presents a succession of somber images that eventually settles into cliche: a gorilla’s face, an abandoned amusement park, a giant hand manipulating a computer mouse, sports fans watching a game in slo-mo, a mangrove swamp, an albino posed between two black people (yes, really), the lunar surface, a New Orleans cemetery, and so on. With his score, Philip Glass at least escapes Reggio’s banal image sequencing. (NR) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Monday, July 28, 2014, 7 – 8pm

Point Break Ah, take us back to a simpler pre-Matrix Keanu era, as Reeves plays an uptight FBI man in Kathryn Bigelow’s sun-washed, Zen-infused 1991 police procedural. He goes undercover as a surfer to infiltrate the gang of daredevil thieves led by Patrick Swayze. No amount of plot description can quite capture the zany action charm of this SoCal document of its extreme-sports times. (Bigelow’s then hubby, James Cameron, had a finger in the film’s thrills and pacing.) And it’s hard not to like a film that lets Swayze make like Yoda, uttering such classic lines as “Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.” Dude, that is so right. (R) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., Seattle, WA 98122 $6-$8 Monday, July 28, 2014, 9:30 – 10:30pm

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The Magnificent Andersons SIFF continues this unlikely pairing of Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson with The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Tues.) and Punch-Drunk Love (Weds.) (R)

SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 7 – 8pm

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The Magnificent Andersons SIFF continues this unlikely pairing of Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson with The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Tues.) and Punch-Drunk Love (Weds.) (R)

SIFF Film Center, 305 Harrison St. (Seattle Center), Seattle, WA 98109 $6-$11 Wednesday, July 30, 2014, 7 – 8pm

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Movies at Magnuson Park 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 who inevitably begins talking to herself-”You gotta be kidding me!”-to fight the loneliness and complain of each new setback. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98115 $5 Thursday, July 31, 2014, 7 – 8pm

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Fremont Outdoor Movies This popular al fresco screening series begins with a free movie, courtesy of Talenti Gelato, which will probably be offering samples. Back in 2001, it wasn’t clear what kind of career Wes Anderson would enjoy after The Royal Tenenbaums; besides gathering what would almost become a repertory company of actors for him, the movie crystalized a number of key themes to recur in his later works. As in Moonrise Kingdom, there’s a longing for the protected cloister of childhood. As in The Grand Budapest Hotel, architecture provides a familiar embrace, a ritual-filled redoubt against the swift-running currents of time. As with Fantastic Mr. Fox, there’s the invigorating thrill of the caper-the illicit act, however small (like catching a ride on a garbage truck), that may not keep you young, but reminds you what it was like to be young. Made when he was only 31, Anderson’s third feature is permeated with the kind of nostalgic detail you’d associate with a man much older. Indeed, the period and place of Tenenbaums-like most of his other movies-are entirely imagined, not something he knew firsthand. You get the feeling Anderson identifies more with the regretful yet rascally old family patriarch (Gene Hackman) than the film’s younger characters (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Luke and Owen Wilson). I suppose you could call the picture a comedy of disappointment. Other titles on the schedule, running mostly on Saturdays through August 30, include Rushmore, Wet Hot American Summer (presented with Three Dollar Bill Cinema), Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, and that perennial Fremont favorite, The Big Lebowski. Some screenings are 21-and-over events. (R) BRIAN MILLER Fremont Outdoor Cinema, 3501 Phinney Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103 $5 Saturday, August 2, 2014

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Movies at the Mural From 1987, Rob Reiner’s charming PG-rated adaptation of the classic William Goldman children’s tale The Princess Bride is sweet, funny, and well played down the line for both parents and kids. Cary Elwes and Robin Wright are the handsome, occasionally quarrelsome lovers; Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, and the late Andre the Giant help get them together after many amusing adventures. Don’t be surprised or offended if people call out their favorite lines (especially “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”), since this is a very informal, family-oriented series. Also stake out your places early on the relatively small lawn. It’s best to get take-out food first from one of the restaurants inside the Armory; then have a picnic while waiting for the movie to begin. Extra sweaters are also recommended after the sung goes down. Other titles screening Saturday nights through August 23 are Gravity, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the recent Leo DiCaprio version of The Great Gatsby, and Star Trek Into Darkness. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Saturday, August 2, 2014, 9pm

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Film • A Hard Day’s Night The music business is fond of

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