A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
Superboys of Malegaon is a Hindi-language coming-of-age film that tells the true story of Nasir Shaikh, an amateur filmmaker from Malegaon, India. In the 90s, Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), the son of a movie parlor owner, grows tired of the Bollywood films he feels obliged to showcase at the theater and craves something new.
Starting today, tickets and passes are now available to the public for the 50th Seattle International Film Festival. While we’re digging through the schedule and plotting our own agendas, we thought we’d start by each highlighting a film (or two) from the program that we’re most excited to see or recommend.
Two couples, four best friends, Min (Han Gi-chan of kdrama Where Your Eyes Linger) and Chris (Bowen Yang of Crazy Rich Asians), Angela (Kelly Marie Tran, of several Star Wars films) and Lee (Lily Gladstone of Killers of the Flower Moon), live at the same address, share their lives and love each other. Nothing special or grandiose about their stories, there’s love, frustrations, insecurities, but these are things we all share as humans. While Chris is working through his issues with worthiness, aimlessness and fear of the future, Angela is trying to reconcile her frustrating and hurtful relationship with her mother while apprehensively preparing to become one herself with Lee’s second attempt at IVF looming.
Following his indie debut, Ryan Coogler was launched into a string of astronomically successful films built on longstanding intellectual property: Marvel’s Black Panther and the Rocky franchise’s Adonis Creed. That the up-and-coming Oakland-based director was able to play in these existing worlds and make films that were both commercially viable and artistically satisfying is a rare feat. With Sinners, it feels like he’s working with a blank check to tell a wholly original story. Here, he again teams-up with his perpetual leading man to answer a question the world’s long been pondering: are two Michael B. Jordans better than one?
Two formerly close friends, Rickey (Michael Angarano) and Glenn (Michael Cera) embark on a road trip after the former pops in for a visit to the latter. Rickey seems lost in grief after his father’s passing the year before and Glenn has gone off the deep end, swallowed up by fear of his impending role as a father. Rickey manages to get Glenn to head to Sacramento to supposedly carry out his late father’s last wishes, but has more than just scattering remains in mind. Along the way, they find their friendship again but also seem to create a sort of co-dependence that exacerbates their self-centered midlife crises.
After embedding audiences with fictional photojournalists covering a Civil War yet to come, director Alex Garland has teamed up with that film’s battle coordinator (himself a Navy SEAL veteran) Ray Mendoza to bring viewers into the heart of a 2006 surveillance mission gone sideways in Ramadi, Iraq. Constructed from the memories of the soldiers themselves, it’s an inarguably impressive feat of technical filmmaking, immersively told, and unfolding in nerve-rattlingly real-time.
DROP is the latest thriller from longtime partners Christopher Landon and Blumhouse Productions, the creatives behind the Happy Death Day and Paranormal Activity franchises. Much like their previous films, DROP doesn’t take itself too seriously—something that likely saves this film in the end.
People who know me IRL (mostly) know that I’m a cross stitcher. I spend dozens of hours a week on my couch, usually 2-3 hours nightly and more on weekends stitching. Outside of work and sleeping, it takes up the next biggest block of my time. I’ve even made some stitching projects that combine my hobby with movies. This is all to say that I am delighted that SIFF is offering one of their theaters for crafty movie fans this Sunday at noon, promising a place to congregate while the beloved (though not by me) movie Labyrinth plays on screen.
The record-breaking game of Sleepy Floyd of the Golden State Warriors against the Los Angeles Lakers on May 10, 1987, Freaky Tales. The film tells the story of a mysterious green power that swept through Oakland in the ‘80s.
Stay in a shopping mall for a whole week without getting kicked out by security? Sounds like an initiation rite for a fraternity pledge, but in 2003 it became an all-consuming immersive project for eight artists in Providence, Rhode Island, that stretched on beyond the initial prank for four years.
