Slog

Hello! Sorry about the yelling earlier. I can’t stay mad at you guys.

Opening this week, regardless of temperature:

I liked the quiet and angry XXY: “Alex’s fierce, battered confidence in the rightness of her own body; her father’s heartbreaking pronoun confusion; and XXY’s gentle refusal to judge anyone’s choices (or, more importantly, to force choice on anyone) make it a powerful—and refreshingly sensitive—lesson on modern gender.”

Paul Constant calls Choke “an inept, poorly made movie for die-hard Palahniuk fans only.”

But he liked Humboldt County slightly better: “Though three-quarters of the film’s characters make their living solely from the cultivation of marijuana, there isn’t even one fusty pot pun in the whole movie.”

Charles Mudede details Year of the Fish’s many failures: “Seeing the exploitation of the teenager indirectly (through the thick and colorful lens of a fairy tale—the Chinese version of the Cinderella story) distorts the reality to such an extent that the serious elements (sex slavery, sweatshops, urban loneliness) cannot be taken seriously. What one wants to see instead is an unforgiving, unremitting, and undistorted indictment of global capitalism—a monster that makes life impossible for billions of people every day.”

I am here to tell you that The Lucky Ones is weird and dumb: “Daring to ask the question, “What would happen if three tired movie clichés had post-traumatic stress disorder?” the film seems to be based entirely on some screenwriter’s precious bon mot: They survived Iraq, but how will they survive on the battleground OF AMERICAN LIFE?!”

And Megan Seling would have enjoyed Eagle Eye, if real life weren’t so goddamned scary already: “Any other day, I’d watch it, eat my popcorn, cheer for the good guy, and be done with it. But given my current state of paranoia, I left the theater scared shitless that my cell phone was going to ring and it’d be Dick Cheney trying to ‘activate’ me.”

In Concessions, I wrote about some stupid straight-to-DVD shit.

And in Limited Runs:

Couch Fest Films sounds like fun (see our Suggests page). Northwest Film Forum is hosting the Decibel Festival Optical Multimedia Showcase tonight and tomorrow; Jasper Johns something-or-other Painters Painting starting on Sunday; and, as per usual, the totally fun Sprocket Society Secret Sunday Matinee. Central Cinema has, like, five straight nights of Dirty Dancing. I Vitelloni and Mafioso are playing at SIFF Cinema as part of Festa Italiana; also at SIFF Cinema, Still Life. Late nights are The Host (Egyptian) and Repo Man (Grand Illusion). The Grand Illusion also has The Corporal’s Diary, a war documentary. And all weekend long it’s the Tasveer Independent South Asian Film Festival at Broadway Performance Hall.

Ta-daaah! Have a lovely weekend, everyone.
Don’t forget that you can comment on articles!

Update: And, of course, there’s the Port Townsend Film Festival going on all weekend in uber-lovely Port Townsend.