Last night’s SIFF premiere of indie film November blew my mind. The movie is purposely and artfully fractured, using a disjointed narration style, a disjoined star (a mentally disheveled Courtney Cox, who successfully moves past the Friends kitsch), and dark, sickly lighting to tell a story that moves in emotional depth rather than logistical time and space. It’s hard to describe the movie without giving away too much, but the film touches on issues of infidelity, insanity, and the violence of having someone forcefully taken from your life—on many different levels. If you can leave aside the need to have loose ends tied tidy at the end of a film, November will leave your wheels spinning long after it ends.

Later this week (Thurs, June 9 to be exact) I’d like to recommend the first of two SIFF screenings of Police Beat, a beautifully poetic movie written by our own Charles Mudede. The film is loosely based on his morosely addictive column for this here paper—but it’s actually much more romantic in tone then you would ever guess from Charles’ cynical exterior. We all now know he’s a softie at heart. The music, the grey Seattle skies, and the thoughtful nature of the lead character (a bicycle cop concerned about the whereabouts of his lover) come together like a dream. The film plays Thurs at 7 at the Egyptian.