The light at the end of the Seattle International Film Festival is getting closer, but there’s still plenty of popcorn and cinema to enjoy between now and Sunday evening. Before you dash off to your next screening, be sure to check the SIFF updates page to see which films are already sold out or are selling fast. Notable updates include the addition of El Bulli: Cooking In Progress to the festival lineup and the placement of extra screenings of  Late Autumn, Burke & Hare, Flamenco, Flamenco, Small Town Murder Songs, and The Poll Diaries in the Sunday TBA spots. Just like Al Pacino before him, this year’s tribute to Warren Miller has also been postponed due to scheduling conflicts. Finally, tonight’s pairing of local singer-songwriter Damien Jurado and the Russian Avant Garde has been consolidated to a single live performance tonight at the Triple Door. These presentations of live original soundtracks for archival films is a consistent SIFF strong suit; tickets are going fast — buy now or regret later.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the films Team SunBreak has watched during the beginning of this weekas well as the films that we’re most looking forward to seeing over the next couple days. Individual tickets for most films cost $11 for the public and $9 for SIFF members. Matinées are a bit cheaper ($8/$7), as are slightly discounted packs of tickets in bundles of 6 or 20. Note that this week features a “Gay-la” presentation of August on Thursday (7:00 p.m. @ Egyptian, followed by a party at Pacific Place in Pnk Ultra Lounge; tickets to the party + film are $25).

WHAT WE SAW:

Tony: Since the last check-in, I saw Tabloid, the latest feature from the doc genre’s resident Orson Welles, Errol Morris. It tells the truly bizarre story of Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen who sent the UK press into a frenzy in 1978 when she travelled from Utah to England to kidnap (and allegedly rape) her erstwhile fiancee, a Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson. It’s delivered with Morris’s customary editing and structural elan, though sometimes the director grabs for cheap laughs by treating his interviewees with a gawker’s sense of condescension. (Thursday, 9:30 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema; Sunday, 3:45 p.m. @ Admiral)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame had its last screening on Monday, but if this sumptuous and rousing period drama/mystery/action flick doesn’t get a theatrical run in Seattle at some point, I’ll be surprised. Andy Lau plays a forensics genius attempting to solve the mysterious deaths of several Chinese officials on the eve of the ascent of China’s first female emperor. Hong Kong’s resident Steven Spielberg Tsui Hark delivers outrageous peripheral characters and a gaggle of gorgeous visuals: thrilling martial arts sequences, nifty spontaneously-combusting victims, sawblade-bristling robots, log fu, and the first instance of deer fu that I’ve seen on film. What’s not to love?

MvB: All I saw was Bobby Fischer Against the World. It’s a biographical documentary that gives you a good introduction to Fischer as a person, but, if you’re familiar with Fischer already, it suffers from not taking up a particular perspective and examining it in-depth.

Josh: I may have liked the Bobby Fischer documentary just a little bit more than MvB did. Mainly, I appreciated how well it captured the very unlikely worldwide feverish fascination with chess as yet another Cold War proxy. It portrays Fischer as a brilliant weirdo who wins a world championship and loses his mind, not necessarily in that order. I’m not sure whether it was intentional, but the shift in the film’s momentum following the title match made the champion’s descent into madness and occasional returns to the public spotlight all the more uncomfortable to watch. Although there were plenty of insightful commentators and historical footage to tell his story, the real star of the film was gorgeous set of recently-released portraits made by LIFE magazine’s Harry Benson, one of the few people who seemed to have a healthy and supportive relationship with the reclusive, unstable, prodigy. (today, 4:30 p.m. @ Harvard Exit; also HBO Summer Documentary Series)

I feel bad picking on the Green Wave, given the importance of its subject matter — pervasive human rights abuses in Iran, particularly surrounding the swell of protests surrounding the tainted 2009 elections. However, it suffers from its reliance on two young bloggers whose stories are plaintively narrated against laconically animated drawings that too frequently descend into caricature. While their stories are tragic, the film drags along slowly, paging through out-of-order overwrought young adult journal entries and occasionally interspersing scant video footage and occasional interviews.

On the non-documentary front, Tilt also revisited the Cold War era by way of Bulgaria during the slow collapse of the Iron Curtain. A bunch of teens skateboard, play pinball, and have a run-in with a fanatical police colonel over some low-level sales of contra-band pornography. When the Berlin Wall falls, the skaters make a break for odd jobs, extra cash, and cramped quarters in West Germany. There’s a star-crossed love story at the heart of this comedy that takes a dark turn when the boys return from the west to find that their old nemeses have mobbed up and cashed in on post-Soviet chaos. The screening provided one of this year’s cuter Q&A moments when the producer called his brother (the film’s director) so that he could hear the audience’s applause across ten time zones.

Finally, High Road was a  loosely scripted comedy packed with Upright Citizen’s Brigade alums that follows a small time drug dealer somewhat mistakenly on the run from the law. Dashing away from town, his girlfriend, and depression over his band’s sudden break-up, our hero becomes an inadvertent kidnapper when his sixteen-year-old neighbor joins him on the road to escape being sent to military school. The story of mistaken identities, general incompetence, and good intentions won’t change your life, but the performances are winning and the humor is generous.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:

Wednesday, June 8

• The White Meadows MvB called it “slow-moving and enigmatic” noting that “the surreal salt formations of Iran’s Lake Urmia are stunning, but it’s the film’s quiet outrage that leaves the theatre with you.” (June 8, 4:30 p.m. @ the Neptune)
• Sushi: the Global Catch chronicles the way that modern fishing techniques and growing demand are rapidly and catastrophically depleting the world’s fish stocks. (7:00 p.m. @ Admiral; June 10, 4:30 p.m. @ Harvard Exit)
• Buck If you don’t already have tickets to this documentary about the real-life Horse Whisperer, be prepared to camp out on the standby lines to see his inspirational story. (7:00 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema; Thursday, 6:30 p.m. @ Kirkland)
• The Catechism Cataclysm A priest and his friend take an ill-fated canoe trip, meeting a pair of Japanese students who are trying to recreate Huck Finn along the way. All of the surrealism, parables, and promised gross-out humor were shot right here in beautiful Washington. (tonight, 7:00 p.m. and Thursday, 4:30 p.m. @ Neptune)
• Heading West A film essay about a woman’s life in Amsterdam over the course of a year. (7:00 p.m. @ Pacific Place; June 10, 4:30 p.m. @ Egyptian)
• The Redemption of General Butt Naked A Liberian warlord and recruiter of child soldiers emerges as an evangelist demanding forgiveness. (9:30 p.m. @ Egyptian; Thursday, 4:30 p.m. @ Egyptian)
• Qarantina Set in post-war Iraq, this contemplative drama focuses on a Baghdad family destabilized by the presence of a hitman in their midst. (9:30 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema)

Thursday, June 9

• Hot Coffee American tort reform as told through the once-famous story of the woman who sued McDonalds when her lap was scalded by an improperly contained beverage. (7:00 p.m; also June 11, 11:00 a.m. and June 12, 9:00 p.m. all @ Harvard Exit)
• The Sound of Noise Musical anarchists terrorize a tone deaf policeman with guerilla performances around town using unlikely instruments. (7:00 p.m. and June 11, 1:15 p.m. @ Neptune)
• August A languid love triangle is re-formed when one of its vertices returns from Barcelona, told in a muddled timeline with delicate guitars. (7:00 p.m. and June 11, 3:00 p.m.@ Egyptian)
• On Tour Finds Mathieu Amalric leading an American “New Burlesque” troupe around the harbor towns of France, captures the sense of being constantly on the move without really going anywhere in a hybrid of documentary and narrative. (9:30 p.m. & June 11, 3:30 p.m. @ the Neptune)
• Tabloid Show up to see if irate SIFF reviewer “truthteller” hijacks the screening! (9:30 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema; Sunday, 3:45 p.m. @ Admiral)