A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
The road from conception to production to premiere can be long and winding for any film, let alone a regionally-filmed indie, and all the more so for one whose launch is muddled by something like a global pandemic that drastically disrupted theatrical releases. Such is the case for J. Rick Castañeda’s All Sorts, which was filmed in Central Washington way back in 2018. When it had its virtual premiere during SIFF 2021, it was a consensus favorite at the SunBreak.
Somewhere around the sagging midpoint of the latest installation the Jurassic franchise, Laura Dern’s “iconic paleobotanist” Ellie Sattler pauses to cuddle a baby triceratops nasutoceratops bound for a life in captivity in yet another dinosaur refuge. Delighting in the infant creature’s wide eyed attention, she muses “It never gets old, does it?” If only the filmmakers shared that reverence or even a fraction of Dern’s rare longstanding capacity to really see the dinosaurs and convey a true sense of wonder, this closing chapter might have been anything other than a long perfunctory drag.
In what’s becoming an ongoing series of autobiographically-influenced autobiographies of influential poets, British director Terence Davies follows up his stirring 2016 portrait of Emily Dickinson (A Quiet Passion) with the story of decorated turn-of-the-century war poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Two years after it’s initially-scheduled release, the Top Gun sequel fires up its afterburners and buzzes into real, live, actual movie theaters this Memorial Day weekend. A rare case of a sequel that surpasses the original, this cinematic airshow was worth the wait. As much as a dose of propagandist fantasia might’ve tided us over during the spring 2020 “lockdowns”, this spectacle of military prowess rendered in air ballet really does benefit from the huge screen, big sound, rowdy audience experience. If you can set aside the many obvious reservations, give your brain a little vacation. The sky is dope, revel mindlessly in its majesty.
Less a feature film than an occasion to binge-watch a mini-season in a theater with friends who will cackle along at the cuttingly droll humor and gasp in synchrony with each revelation or faux pas, the new Downton Abbey is an utter delight of fan service. Just as some will pack the multiplexes whenever a bunch of Marvel heroes assemble, I will happily pile in with a bag of popcorn and peanut M&Ms whenever the Granthams and their sprawling team of indentured servants deign to get the gang back together for yet another round of utterly inconsequential drama that can be tidily wrapped up, two hours later, with an elegant bow.
It’s not often that you feel sorry for the world’s biggest studio Goliath having the misfortune to follow in the shadow of a plucky indie release, but here we are in the season of dueling multiverses at the multiplex.
Seattle rarely looks as good on film as when Zia Mohajerjasbi’s directing. Having made his name over a decade ago with breakout videos for Blue Scholars and Macklemore, picked up a Stranger Genius Award, and built a resume with short films, he’s returned to familiar geographies for his feature film debut. In collaboration with cinematographer Nicholas Wiesnet, he brings the rich textures of the city to the screen in a poetic narrative about the wayward path of an oversized suitcase on its way from the Central District to East Africa.
The overriding objective of Brettan Hannam’s film of self-discovery is conveying the multifaceted diversity of the Mi’kma’ki people and territory in Nova Scotia. While the plot armature to support that ambition is veers between melodramatic and creaky, it does succeed in presenting a rich array of compelling images and communicating heartfelt feelings.
In her feature film debut, Annika Pinske brings an insightful slice-of-life to the screen. Concerned with the intersecting identities of German woman, her nuanced portrait centers on a Clara, a philosophy PhD candidate in Berlin who’s creating a “second act” for herself on the precipice of turning forty.
Some things that we learn from Christoffer Sandler’s sweet-hearted coming-of-age story: there’s apparently no Swedish word for the concept of “easy going” and there are people in Sweden who fall through the social safety net and can’t get their prescriptions filled at the pharmacy. So much for the Scandinavian image of social democracy utopia.
