{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 opens in Seattle 11/19 and is playing at the Metro, the Neptune, the Majestic Bay, Pacific Place, IMAX® at the Pacific Science Center, and the newly re-opened Cinerama}

As anyone who pays even slight attention to these things knows, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is just a set-up for the LAST HARRY POTTER MOVIE EVER (queue shrieking teenage girls), so it’s one long 146 minute tease with a huge cliffhanger at the end, and you won’t find out what happens until next year….unless you read the books, that is.  Since I’m assuming almost everyone in the audience HAD read them, I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone there that 3 people die within the first 20 minutes, although the hysterically sobbing girls next to me seem to suggest otherwise.

Anyhoo, HP & the DH showed some promise initially, starting out with a bang in the form of the Potter kids organizing the removal of Harry to a safe house in the country, juxtaposed against a long table of gothy villains led by creepy no-nose Lord Voldemort. All the “volunteers” change into Harry doppelgangers (which leads to some obligatory laughs), while the bad guys discuss some mumbo-jumbo about how Voldemort’s wand won’t work against Harry’s so he needs a new one (HELLO FORESHADOWING)—and oh yeah, they murder someone too and feed them to a snake.

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{Boxing Gym opens in Seattle on Friday, November 12th at the Northwest Film Forum}

Boxing Gym is a documentary, perhaps unsurprisingly about a boxing gym.  If you closed your eyes and imagined what it'd be like to be invisible at a boxing gym for a period, incapable of interacting with your surroundings and suffering from selective attention deficit disorder, then you would have a good sense what to expect with this film.  Except of course for the fact that your preconceived notions about such an environment may not 100% match up with the true voyeuristic experience...except when it does.

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{Four Lions opened in Seattle Friday, November 5th, and is playing at the Varsity Theatre}

“We’ve got women talking back...
We’ve got people playing stringed instruments...
It’s the end of days.”
- Barry

“I may ask you to blow yourself up, but I will never ask you to wiz in your own mouth.”
- Omar

Four Lions is a bold piece of outside-the-norm filmmaking. It made me laugh out loud even while often cringing simultaneously; both at the bleakness of humor and at how the film made me care about Omar, the much put upon leader of what one would only charitably refer to as misfit wanna-be terrorists.  

This is clearly not a film for all tastes. If wordy seriously black comedy isn't ever going to push your buttons well...there are a lot of other good choices out there. But if you feel you might fancy something smartly written and edgy to the point of uncomfortable, at least until the next laugh, this is one of the better choices (and probably the most unusual) you're likely to find in a theater this year in that genre.

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{Monsters opens in Seattle Friday, November 5th at the Varsity Theatre. It is also available on VOD and via ITunes}

In the opening minutes of Monsters, the plot's major backstory points are swiftly covered. Some years ago NASA detected alien life outside of earth. A ship bearing samples was on the way back for study when it crashed in Mexico. In an example of space age imperialism, within a few years, new creatures started appearing on the scene. The Mexican and US military have been fighting a holding action against these new beings ever since.

Keeping them quarantined (supposedly) within Mexico, held back by military power and a tremendous border wall; it seems the era of MTV Spring Break Cancun is over.  Onto this new world order, the filmmakers have grafted a more classic relationship/road movie, bringing a little bit of something for everyone.

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{Carlos opens in Seattle on Friday, November 5th, and is playing in 3 parts at the Northwest Film Forum}

Carlos is an epic length treatment of the life and times of “Carlos the Jackal.” It’s spread out over quite a few hours, including dialog spoken in more languages than you likely have fingers and shot across a wide range of locations.  In short, this French film covers a lot of ground. Depending on your mood and worldview it’s either;

(a) an extended history lesson on one of the more famous terrorists of the late 20th century, and how states used terrorists as pawns during the cold war to their immoral advantage.
(b) an extended history on a freedom fighter for the world’s oppressed peoples.
(c) a metaphor of how the young start out with the best of intentions and ideals only to be ground down though the myriad petty distractions and corruptions of life.
(d) just another story about a guy too in love with his penis.

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{The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest opens in Seattle on Friday, October 29th, and is playing at The Harvard Exit}

" ...but I’ve got a fuck off attitude. And that’s something that should be kept. In a...fucked up world"
- The Dead Milkmen - VFW

There are a lot of reasons people bond with the character of Lisbeth Salander of the Millenium (aka The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) Trilogy. Maybe it’s her leet hacking skillz, cool photographic memory, or your sympathy for her being screwed over every which way from Sunday. But personally I think it’s her total "screw you" attitude (in the diminutive package) that makes the character work both on the page and on the big screen.

This film neatly closes off the series based on the books of the same name, giving Noomi Rapace as Salander plenty of screen time to bring the author’s image to life.  I probably enjoyed this film the most of the three, even though it did leave me somewhat befuddled regarding Swedish courtroom procedures.

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{Life As We Know It opened in Seattle Friday, 10/8 and is playing at The Metro, Thornton Place and AMC Pacific Place}

Yet another effort to turn out a money-making romantic comedy (psst – hey guys? There will never be another When Harry Met Sally), Life As We Know It should be re-titled “Life As We Know It if Everyone Looked Perfect and Had Amazing Houses and Jobs”.

*ahem*

So get this, Katherine Heigl (as Holly) and Josh Duhamel (as Messer) play polar opposites who hate each other but get stuck raising their best friends’ baby together after a car accident and then GUESS WHAT HAPPENS. Actually, you don’t need to guess, as that part is all in the preview.

After brief deliberation, they determine that keeping little Sophie and raising her together is the best option, since all of the friends’ family members are completely incompetent (guy w/oxygen tank, couple with 9 kids, a touring stripper!).  And then, my friends, hilarity ensues –but you’ve also seen all of that in the preview.

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{The Town opened in Seattle on Friday, September 17th at the Guild 45th, Oak Tree Cinemas and AMC Pacific Place}

Ben Affleck’s second feature, The Town, proves to me once again that he’s a better director than actor. This is only unfortunate because he also plays the main character and he’s in almost every scene—but even I can put up with his blank, open-mouthed stare for a movie with enough action to keep me interested, which The Town totally is.

Opening with a few statistics about Charlestown, Boston and the excessive criminal population therein, the film thrusts us directly into a bank heist with 4 men wearing Slipknot masks. When an alarm is pulled, one of the men promptly beats the dude he suspects to a pulp, and grabs bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) as a hostage.

After the job, we meet the men: tortured, wanting-to-change Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), short-fuse-guy “Jem” Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), muscle and getaway driver Albert Magloan (Slaine) and safe-cracker/alarm expert Desmond Elden (Owen Burke).

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{Going the Distance opened Friday, September 3 in Seattle and is playing at The Metro, Thornton Place and AMC Pacific Place cinemas}

Nanette Bernstein’s (American Teen & The Kid Stays in the Picture) first non-documentary feature, Going the Distance, could have easily been a disaster (as most romantic comedies are), but there’s something about the realness of the two main characters that makes it all work.

Would-be journalist Erin (Drew Barrymore) and hip record label employee Garrett (Justin Long) meet at a bar in New York, and agree after a fun night together that they’ll continue to date, despite Erin’s caveat that she’s leaving in six weeks to finish school back in San Francisco, and Garret’s “just-got-out-of-a-relationship-last-night” jitters.

Of course, those six weeks are ultimately fabulous and they fall in love (DUH), deciding to embark on a long-distance relationship to see what happens. The question is, will the miles between them make them grow apart? Or closer together?

Pretty standard stuff – but this movie makes some surprisingly real choices, instead of going for an easy over-the-top resolution.

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{Inception opened in Seattle Friday, July 16 and is playing at the Metro, The Neptune, The Majestic Bay, The Big Picture (Seattle) and Thornton Place IMAX®}

I was a little nervous going in to this; mostly because Director Christopher Nolan’s lockdown on any and all information left us with a vague teaser trailer that made me think of the “tuning” in Dark City – but I needn’t have worried: Inception is mind-blowingly AWESOME.

The breakdown: Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are “extractors”, hired to thieve secrets from people’s dreams, and are contracted by one of their former victims to try something new: inception, AKA planting an idea instead of stealing one.

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