Arts This Weekend at the Movies
posted by on July 6 at 16:05 PM
It’s a slightly sluggish weekend at the movies, because the big’uns (the tolerable Transformers and the execrable License to Wed) opened early for the Fourth. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (I saw it yesterday, and it’s pretty bad, except for Imelda Staunton) opens next Tuesday.
But that’s cool, because SIFF Cinema is launching this week with fourteen noirs of various shades and cross-genre pollinations. It should be awesome, and you should be there. Buy tickets at the SIFF website.
In On Screen this week: Transformers (“Transformers is loud, extravagant, and void of logic, but for the most part it lives up to what we expect from a Transformers movie—which is to say, it has giant robots crashing, puny humans scattering, and Optimus Prime preaching,” says Bradley Steinbacher), You Kill Me (Andrew Wright: “No matter how played out the introspective hit man concept feels by now, though, the film often still runs like a dream, courtesy of director John Dahl’s knack for finding room for such dependable heavies as Phillip Baker Hall, Bill Pullman, and (especially) Dennis Farina to shine.”), the Robin Williams-meets-The Office disaster License to Wed (“Sorry,” writes Lindy West, “but I don’t even understand what this movie is about.”), Fido (“worthwhile for the less demanding horror fan,” admits Andrew), and a quick preview of my picks for Noir City.
In Film Shorts this week, check out Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern at Northwest Film Forum, where the local filmmaker Linas Phillips’s excellent doc Walking to Werner is also holding over for another week. There’s another batch of killer monster double features at Grand Illusion this week: Stop in Friday through Sunday for Troll and Troll 2 or Monday through Thursday for Swamp Thing with The Gate. Plus, Sigourney Weaver as an autistic lady in Snow Cake at the Varsity, and some hot summer Shaft at Central Cinema. Enjoy.
After seeing both Walking to Werner and Transformers, I heartily recommend seeing the former on the big screen at NWFF, and waiting until the latter comes out on Netflix and then renting something else.
Transformers, more like commercial for the army with occasional "blow-job faced" hot girl sprinkled in for good measure...yeah, two and a half fucking hours of it! Jeez!
Someone should do some Transformers porn at the next HUMP. I would, but I don't have the equipment.
Ah, Raise the Red Lantern. I watched it in high school, and it made me want to slit my wrists. Great movie.
Hey, why didn't you like Harry Potter? Just curious (I loved the first two, haven't like the last two, but am nevertheless dying to see it).
Good thing the HP movies don't have to be good for me to watch them anyway!
(Haven't loved any of them, oh well)
You know, they say that cat Shaft is a bad mother-
They don't pay critics enough to have to sit through shit like Transformers.
Lighten the fuck up. Transformers was extremely well made dumb summer fun. If you don't like dumb summer fun movies, don't go see it. It wasn't any more pro-military than "Aliens". You don't have to love the War in Iraq to like seeing gunpowder and steel raining down on evil space aliens.
Or just wait for the next lighthearted Lars von Trier or Vincent Gallo opus.
So, is like Michael Bay paying the Stranger to promote Transformers? Because you guys are posting pics of it and babbling about it constantly. It's like some kind of viral marketing thing where even multiple negative reviews shown repetitiously effectively promotes it. Enough with the fucking Transformers. It sucked when we were kids, it sucks now.
It's odd don't you think, that nobody is discussing how SIFF just plowed into SAM with its noir festival? I mean come on... first annual? I think SAM's been doing this for longer than the 10 years I've been living in this town. WTF!
There's more than enough noir to spread around. (Especially if SIFF remains content to unearth such negligible noirs as "Deadline at Dawn"...)
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