SIFF scores yet another week of weather-to-see-movies-to! With the festival almost at its midway point, I don’t think there’s been a single day I’ve had to decide between sun and movie theater. Below are some films of note showing over the next two days. For all film screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $11/$9 (and matinees $8/$7), except for special presentations which cost more.
Tuesday brings previously recommended Some Days Are Better Than Others and local high-school effort Senior Prom.
Bilal’s Stand Based on a true story, 25-year-old Sultan Sharrief’s first feature-length film introduces you to Bilal, a Detroit kid heading to the University of Michigan if he can win an ice-sculpting competition and convince his Muslim family he’s not selling them out. Be warned: It’s either “bursting with heart” or “incredibly hamfisted.” (May 31, 6:30 p.m. & June 2, 4 p.m. @ Pacific Place)
Waste Land It’s already won best documentary at both the Sundance and Berlin International Film Festivals, so there you go. New York artist Vik Muniz visits Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, outside of Rio de Janeiro, and enlists garbage pickers to help him create a new artwork. (June 1, 7 p.m. & June 2, 9:30 p.m. @ Pacific Place)
Henri Georges Clouzot’s Inferno In this documentary, Serge Bromberg investigates the 13 hours of 1964 footage shot by The Wages of Fear and Diabolique director Henri-Georges Clouzot before his heart attack shut down what was already a troubled production. It’s like a sketchbook for a new cinema. (June 1, 7 p.m. @ the Harvard Exit)
Secrets of the Tribe The Yanomami Indians have launched many an anthropologist’s career; now director José Padilha’s (Bus 174, Elite Squad) documentary studies the “tribe” of intellectuals and academics who are experts on the Yanomami, contrasting their findings with what the Yanomami actually think. (June 1, 7 p.m. & June 2, 4 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema, June 7, 9:15 p.m. @ the Harvard Exit)
Stigmata First-time Spanish director Adan Aliaga has “hauntingly” translated a graphic novel in which gentle giant Bruno wakes up with stigmata, and it’s not exactly the blessing you’d hope. Filmed in black-and-white, so you know it’s serious and moody and symbolic. (June 1, 9:30 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema; June 3, 4:15 p.m. @ Pacific Place)
I Killed My Mother French-Canadian prodigy Xavier Dolan directed this uneven but wickedly funny gay-son-vs.-mom movie when he was just 21. It’s as much about him learning to direct as it is a comic coming of age story, so it should be fun for filmsters who like their moms, too. (June 2 & 6, 7 p.m. @ the Egyptian)
Mother Joan of the Angels On the classics front, this 1961 Polish masterpiece about the 17th-century exorcism of a Mother Superior has no pea-soup vomit to offer, but instead delves into what repression does to people. Which is actually scarier, if you think about it. (June 2, 7 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema)
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child I know, I know–Basquiat already got a biopic and you’ve haven’t got one. It’s not fair, but Tamra Davis didn’t know you and she did know Jean-Michel. She has footage from when he was 25, and also shows you works you may not have seen before. “Thoroughly engaging,” I’m told. (June 2, 5 p.m. @ Everett Performing Arts Center)
Garbo: The Spy Not that Garbo. When Catalan Juan Pujol offers his spy-fu to the British during WWII, they turn him down, but undaunted, he turns freelance double agent, and provides the Germans with a mixture of true and invented information they take seriously. True story! (June 3, 7 p.m. & June 5, 11 a.m. @ Pacific Place)
Reykjavik-Rotterdam Audrey says to see the original before the American remake with Mark Wahlberg. I say to see all Icelandic films, no matter what they’re about. This one’s a drama about booze smugglers on the Reykjavik-to-Rotterdam run–it’s a “One last job and then I’m out!” thriller but without a ton of shooting because Icelanders don’t really go in for that. (June 3, 9:30 p.m. @ Pacific Place; June 7, 7 p.m @ Kirkland Performance Center)