SIFF Take: Legends of Valhalla: Thor
{Legends of Valhalla: Thor screens at SIFF on June 2, 11am, at Pacific Place} I’ll start by damning with faint praise: this is the sort of movie…
SIFF Take: Robot and Frank
{Robot and Frank screens May 20, 6:00 PM at Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center.} The near future, as imagined by Jake Schrier in his feature…
Boy, at the Varsity all week (with live appearances by the director!)
Note: I reviewed this when it played at SIFF last summer, and time has only enhanced my opinion of it. It’s playing a one-week run…
SIFF Double Take: Tornado Alley and The Bengali Detective
Tornado Alley is pretty standard IMAX documentary fare: extremely well-produced, slightly slender on detail, and laden with breathtaking shots of its titular subject—in this case,…
SIFF Take: A Cat in Paris
I sometimes like to play a little game while watching animated films called “Why Is This Movie Animated?” Animation is not a genre—we can all…
SIFF Take: Boy
The film Boy, by Taika Watiti, is about a boy whom everyone calls Boy. He’s earnest and guileless, and prone to fisticuffs, but basically a…
SIFF Take: The Wedding Cake
Each year the giddy joy of perusing the new SIFF roster gives way inevitably to a sense of fatigue at trying to differentiate, by 25-word…
Deep SIFF: 3 Minute Masterpieces
Every year the Seattle Times sponsors a competition for SIFF called “3 Minute Masterpieces,” challenging people to create their own films that run 3 minutes…
SIFF Take: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
What a fascinating person Joan Rivers is. Driven, tireless, generous, intelligent, articulate, glamorous, but above all, fucking hilarious. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, by…
SIFF Take: Art & Copy
Art & Copy is a lovely, pleasant film about, well, advertising. Director Doug Pray does something interesting and subtle with what’s a temptingly fat target…