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BY BRIAN MILLER
Opening FADING GIGOLO John Turturro’s new New York-set
comedy has received some awful reviews. In it he plays a florist-turned-gigolo, with Woody Allen as his pimp. Expect plenty of double entendres and mildly smutty jokes. Sofia Vergara and Vanessa Paradis are among Turturro’s unlikely clients. (R) Seven Gables, Opens Fri., May 9. TEENAGE Matt Wolf’s new documentary chronicles the invention of the teenager, using a wide array of archival footage, plus readings from various sources by Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, and others. An electronica score comes courtesy of Bradford Cox, of the band Deerhunter. (NR) Varsity, Opens Fri., May 9.
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OFFICIAL SELECTION
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014
2014
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WINNER FIPRESCI PRIZE
OFFICIAL SELECTION
TORONTO
CANNES
FILM FESTIVAL
FILM FESTIVAL
2013
2013
“EASILY THE
MOST SUSPENSEFUL” AMERICAN-GabeFILM OF THE YEAR. Toro, INDIEWIRE
GIANT Our favorite film of 1999. The Iron • THE IRON is rendered in traditional animation, not CG. It’s
Giant a pure and simple animated fable that—among other things—gently introduces the notion of mortality to kids. Brad Bird (The Incredibles) takes the standardissue Cold War tropes of sci-fi invasion and A-bomb anxiety to create something genuinely special in 1958 Maine. Jennifer Aniston voices the single-parent mother of our 9-year-old hero, Hogarth; Vin Diesel— perfectly named here—supplies the mechanical utterances of said giant. Without stooping to parentoriented humor, The Iron Giant is still better most of today’s feature-length toons. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 9-13, 7 p.m.; Sat., May 10, 3 p.m.; Sun., May 11, 3 p.m. FICTION SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 19. • PULP potions, blood, • ROSEMARY’S BABY Delirious with and anagrams, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is the definitive cinematic treatment of what Mia Farrow’s onscreen husband John Cassavetes patronizingly calls the “pre-partum crazies.” (Does it mean anything that the sinister name “Roman Castevet” invokes both the director and one of the stars?) Superbly acted (especially by bone-thin Farrow and Ruth Gordon as the ultimate neighbor from hell), it’s a satantango in the land of Is-this-real-or-am-I-crazy?, with a luridly literal ending that doesn’t negate the previous, more interior terrors. (R) ED PARK SIFF Film Center $6-$11, Sun., May 11, 4 p.m. • SCI-FI FILM FESTIVAL The fest continues with worthwhile titles including John Carpenter’s The Thing, Planet of the Apes, The Matrix, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Cinerama, $9, Through May 12. SEATTLE TRUE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL Well over a dozen oddball indies, plus many shorts, will be screened at the Grand Illusion, Wing-It Productions, and Lucid Lounge. See trueindependent.org for prices, schedule, and other details. (NR) Through May 10. TOTAL RECALL: It’s now possible to feel nostalgia not only for 1990-style sci-fi, but also for Arnold Schwarzenegger at that brief shining moment when he and director Paul Verhoeven teamed up to make this superior adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story (“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”). No Blade Runner, Total Recall is still a smart amalgam of action and paranoia, with the valence between reality and implanted memory always in doubt. Does Arnold’s hero save the red planet in his mind only? And what’s his true identity? Faithful to Dick’s ambiguities, Total Recall won’t fully answer either question. This is not to be confused with the 2012 starring Colin Farrell. (R) B.R.M. Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 9-13, 9:30 p.m.
Ongoing
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 If Tobey Maguire was
all open-faced wonder about his accidental arachnid skill set, Andrew Garfield’s more of a brooder—Peter Parker hiding in his room despite the entreaties of Aunt May (Sally Field). He’s given a welcome few goofy grace notes with girlfriend Gwen (Emma Stone), but most of the time we’re watching his masked CG avatar swing seamlessly through Manhattan canyons, not the actual thespian. The dazzling computer effects have advanced so far from the Sam Raimi/Maguire pictures that most viewers won’t even notice the absence. Everything slowly builds after a zingy first hour to a two-part finale that’s more coded than directed. Where are the actors? No one cares. Neither do Garfield, Stone, their castmates, or director Marc Webb. Returning from Part I, Webb keeps the tone light,
THRILLING, SPARE AND HEARTBREAKING.” “
-William Goss, MSN MOVIES
EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT
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SEATTLE Sundance Cinemas Seattle (206) 633-0059
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caps the sulking, and limits the inside jokes. The plot and dialogue are elementary—subtitles not required anywhere on the planet. Also worth the 3-D IMAX ticket price is the roster of supporting talent: Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz, Chris Cooper, Colm Feore, Denis Leary, and Paul Giamatti. Given the money invested in Spidey’s aerial ballets with the camera (totally untethered, as in Gravity), it’s nice to see the budget padded with so many pros. (PG-13) B.R.M. Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace, Majestic Bay, Bainbridge, Sundance, others CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER Unlike 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, which existed purely to set up Marvel’s 2012 ensemble summit meeting The Avengers, Winter Soldier is actually a movie: It has a story, a subtext, and a few fun pulp surprises along the way. Chris Evans returns to the title role; his cheerful calm is the closest anybody in this cycle has come to summoning Christopher Reeve’s buoyant comic-book presence from the first couple of Supermans. Cap finds his 1940s-era mindset challenged by the surveillance-state approach of a government minister (Robert Redford, cleverly cast), and his existence threatened by the mysterious Cold War–era nasty known as the Winter Soldier. The computer-generated climax will either be tedious or thrilling, depending on your tolerance for the digital battlefield, but there’s something to be said for the movie’s basic competence. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, Sundance, Thornton Place, Bainbridge, others FINDING VIVIAN MAIER The biggest discovery of 20th-century photography was made in 2007 by Chicago flea-market maven/historian John Maloof. Vivian Maier was a nanny who died soon thereafter, indigent and mentally ill, a hoarder. Maloof bought trunks of her negatives with no idea what they contained. The revelation of those images, in a series of art shows and books, immediately placed her in the front rank of street photographers like Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand. But who the hell was she? Now Maloof and Charlie Siskel have directed a kind of documentary detective story about the enigmatic spinster (1926–2009). It’s an irresistible quest, as Maloof interviews the now-grown kids Maier cared for, plus a few fleeting friends and acquaintances, who had no idea of her gifts. Maier was almost pathologically secretive (“sort of a spy,” she said), but all photographers hide behind the camera. Would she have wanted her images seen by the public? Maloof conclusively answers that question. Would she have wanted his movie to be made? All her grown charges say the same: No. (NR) B.R.M. Varsity THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL By the time of its 1968 framing story, the Grand Budapest Hotel has been robbed of its gingerbread design by a Soviet (or some similarly aesthetically challenged) occupier—the first of many comments on the importance of style in Wes Anderson’s latest film. A writer (Jude Law) gets the hotel’s story from its mysterious owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham, a lovely presence). Zero takes us back between world wars, when he (played now by Tony Revolori) began as a bellhop at the elegant establishment located in the mythical European country of Zubrowka. Dominating this place is the worldly Monsieur Gustave, the fussy hotel manager (Ralph Fiennes, in absolutely glorious form). The death of one of M. Gustave’s elderly ladyfriends (Tilda Swinton) leads to a wildly convoluted tale of a missing painting, resentful heirs, a prison break, and murder. Also on hand are Anderson veterans Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson—all are in service to a project so steeped in Anderson’s velvet-trimmed bric-a-brac we might not notice how rare a movie like this is: a comedy that doesn’t depend on a star turn or a high concept, but is a throwback to the sophisticated (but slapstickfriendly) work of Ernst Lubitsch and other such classical directors. (R) R.H. Guild 45th, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Bainbridge, others JODOROWSKY’S DUNE I don’t believe for one second this documentary’s central claim: Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky’s planned ’70s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is the Rosetta Stone of all subsequent sci-fi, from Star Wars to Alien to The Matrix. But the irrepressible director, now 85, is the first guy you’d want to invite to a dinner party, no matter how outrageous and unsustainable his tales. Director Frank Pavich tries to recap the chapters of Jodorowsky’s varied career: avant-garde theater in Mexico during the ’60s; midnight-movie success in the ’70s with his head-trips El Topo and The Holy Mountain (both excerpted); and finally Jodorowsky’s ill-fated, Frenchfinanced 1975 attempt at Dune. The renderings and storyboards in Jodorowsky’s 3,000-page illustrated script are amazing; and it’s no surprise to see how his
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