Jason Reitman’s hyperkinetic dive into the unbelievable 90 minutes of chaos before the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live is hardly a study in extreme competence, but it’s a hell of a ride.
Seattle Queer Film Festival opens tomorrow, goes online Monday
Maybe due to the changing of the seasons, October’s a big month for film festivals in the Pacific Northwest. Hot on the heels of Local Sightings and just as SIFF’s Docs Fest is winding down, the Seattle Queer Film Festival rises.
Joker: Folie à Deux sends in the (sad, sociopathic, murderous) clowns
The old adage that the original is always better than the sequel certainly applies here. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that Joker: Folie à Deux is the most unpleasant experience I’ve had in a movie theater since SIFF decided to screen the (almost literally) nauseating The Greasy Strangler for press and passholders.
In The Outrun a stellar Saoirse Ronan searches for recovery, grace, and little birds
There’s nothing quite like a sobriety memoir to put an actor through their paces and Saoirse Ronan goes on a full marathon as an alcoholic searching for recovery, grace, and little birds in the harsh windswept beauty of the outer Orkney Islands
Are We Not Film? SIFF DocFest returns this week
Tomorrow begins one of my favorite mini-festivals in Seattle: SIFF’s annual DocFest. It’s a week-long festival celebrating some of the best new-ish documentaries out there (and in true Seattle fashion, this week goes from Thursday to Thursday, so it is actually eight days long).
Megalopolis still has me scratching my head
Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is a genius inventor who discovered/created a new element he dubbed Megalon. This material is incredibly durable, easily manipulated and can do any number of things in any number of ways to create stuff we need across many aspects of our lives (ie the load-bearing structure of a building or material for a dress, it can apparently run the gamut). Cesar considers this new compound the answer to many of mankind’s problems including homelessness and war. Ever the optimist, he wants to create a utopia, Megalopolis, with Megalon as its backbone both literally and metaphorically.
Kyle MacLachlan to receive SFCS Award at SIFF Downtown next month
Some exciting news for fans of the vast and fascinating career of Yakima-born actor Kyle MacLachlan: he’ll be in town on October 30th to receive the Seattle Film Critics Society’s John Hartl Pacific Northwest Spotlight Award.
Sweetheart Deal is a moving story of heartbreak and tragedy on Aurora Avenue
Sweetheart Deal is 98 minutes of tragedy and heartbreak but it also felt so vital and important to tell the stories of these women who suffer from so much abuse and marginalization. “Sex work is work” and “my body, my choice” are good, rhetorical, platitudes (that I believe) but they are also too vague to meaningfully represent anyone whose choice and autonomy are often taken out of the equation, often by situations far beyond their control.
The Wild Robot takes flight with gorgeous animation and voice acting
A movie about a lost robot and a cynical loner fox raising an orphaned goose, plus the power of unlikely animal friendships? It’s as if this gorgeously animated marvel was built in a lab specifically to make me weep. Task accomplished, satisfaction rating 10/10.
Kate Winslet brings a spotlight to a pioneering photojournalist in Lee
In the title role of Lee Miller, Kate Winslet embodies the humanity of a pioneering photographer who was driven to bravely document the front lines of World War II.