A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
After a topsy-turvy couple of years in which big films tiptoed back into cinemas, Nope, the third feature from Jordan Peele lands in theaters this weekend. In a bombastic blockbuster season of big planes and superhero bloat, Peele’s cryptic tale of weird happenings in a lonely gulch of inland California might just be the best time you can have at a movie theater all summer. Chase and I saw a promo screening this week and couldn’t wait to talk about it.
A narrator makes all the difference in the world. One can easily imagine the story of French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, who died together while observing the eruption of Mount Unzen, told with withering nihilistic disbelief by Werner Herzog. Or their matching red knit caps as the centerpiece of the production design for a twee fictionalized version of molten melancholy by Wes Anderson, perhaps the Life Volcanic. Instead, in her compilation of the couple’s own photos and films, Sara Dosa has enlisted the talents of Miranda July, who conveys the story of their lives together with boundless wonder and aching romance.
Set during an experimental art collective’s stay at an elite monthlong creative residency in an English country manor house, Peter Strickland’s latest cinematic provocation will certainly raise both eyebrows and questions. Peter Strickland’s newest film played as part of this spring’s Seattle International Film Festival, Tony and I saw it separately, and enjoyed the cinematic feast with varying levels of indigestion. Regardless, we both agree that for those of certain appetites, it’s worth your time. With the film getting a theatrical run this weekend, we revisit our warmed-over festival reactions.
As he demonstrated with Shithouse, Cooper Raiff is so incredibly great at making deeply sentimental movies about the extremely emotionally available as they experience fleeting life-changing moments that you suspect he gives them silly titles as a handicap. Writing, directing, and casting himself in a starring role with Dakota Johnson as his love interest is enough to make you hate the upstart auteur if the results weren’t such an absolutely joyous delight.
At long last, Pixar returns to theaters with “the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on”. It’s less complicated that it seems, but nevertheless a blockbuster that’s fun for the whole family.
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.
