SIFF enters its second weekend, which also happens to be Memorial Day weekend. Members of the SunBreak staff can be found at Sasquatch!, Crypticon, Folklife, and elsewhere. For those staying closer to town and looking for some cinematic escapism, there will be some big events and great movies, starting tonight, including the hometown showing of Megan Griffiths’s Lucky Them and the documentary A Brony Tale, with director Brent Hodge and Queen of the Bronies Ashleigh Ball on hand (and presumably tons of adult males who happen to love “My Little Pony”).
The Saturday night party/film combo is I Origins, which SIFF describes as “An existential, metaphysical science fiction drama about a molecular biologist studying human eye evolution, his first-year lab partner, and his mysterious, free-spirited lover.” Following the movie, the party will continue to Kaspar’s.
Here are some of our recommendations for the three day weekend:
Night Moves: Kelly Reichardt turns from close focus character portraits (Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff) to a pulse-pounding eco-terrorist thriller starring Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Saarsgard, and Dakota Fanning? I’m intrigued.
- May 23, 2014 Friday 7:00 PM Lincoln Square Cinemas
- May 26, 2014 Monday 12:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
Zombeavers No SIFF is complete without at least one pilgrimage to the Egyptian for midnight movie madness. This movie is called ZOMBEAVERS, which should make your decision very easy. It’s ostensibly has a plot involving college co-eds in the woods plagued by undead rodents. What else could you possibly need to know?
- May 25, 2014 Sunday 11:55 PM Egyptian Theatre
- May 26, 2014 Monday 8:30 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
Grand Central: In France, going to work in a nuclear power plant is kind of the modern equivalent to working in a coal mine. But it’s also a little bit like summer camp for grown-ups, living in idyllic rural settings among co-workers. It’s hard to say whether the threat of radiation exposure or succumbing to raging hormones is more dangerous.
- May 26, 2014 Monday 1:30 PM Egyptian Theatre
Chris’s picks:
The Foxy Merkins: Director Madeleine Olnek returns to SIFF after her great, campy low-budget sci-fi comedy Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (see my interview with Olnek and two of the stars after SIFF 2011). Her new movie, The Foxy Merkins, involves Jo, an asthmatic, lesbian street hustler. The comedic possibilities are endless. I am really looking forward to this one.
- May 23, 2014 Friday 9:30 PM Harvard Exit
- May 25, 2014 Sunday 4:00 PM Harvard Exit
You Must Be Joking: A movie where a paralegal finds her true passion for stand comedy, starring Sas Goldberg and Hannibal Burress, making its world premiere at SIFF? OK, I’ll listen.
- May 23, 2014 Friday 7:00 PM Pacific Place
- May 24, 2014 Saturday 4:00 PM Pacific Place
Tony’s Picks:
Electro Chaabi: There are some docs with subjects so compelling that all the filmmakers likely need to do is point their cameras and let things happen. This looks like one of them. Traditional Egyptian wedding music gets slammed together with hip-hop and electronica, and the lower class of Cairo find their musical voice.
- May 24, 2014 Saturday 5:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
- May 25, 2014 Sunday 2:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
Why Don’t You Play in Hell?: If you’ve ever found flash-mobbers annoying enough to make you want to smack them, this Japanese thriller may represent some extreme wish fulfillment. A guerrilla film/flash mob crew finds itself in the middle of a major Yakuza rumble.
- May 24, 2014 Saturday Midnight Egyptian
- May 26, 2014 Monday 9:45 PM Lincoln Square
The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears: Helene Cattet’s and Bruno Forzani’s feature debut, Amer, was one of the most divisive features of SIFF 2010 (I adored it, and interviewed the two directors for our 2010 SunBreak SIFF coverage). The jumping-off point is once again the Italian horror sub-genre known as the giallo.
- May 24, 2014 Saturday 7:30 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
- May 28, 2014 Wednesday 9:45 PM Harvard Exit
Unforgiven: There are surely worse things in life than a remake of Clint Eastwood’s revisionist western, set in Meiji-era Japan and starring Ken Watanabe.
- May 24, 2014 Saturday 1:00 PM Pacific Place
- May 27, 2014 Tuesday 9:30 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
- May 31, 2014 Saturday 8:30 PM Kirkland PC
Keep track of the SunBreak’s SIFF coverage on our SIFF 2014 page, plus news updates and micro-reviews on Twitter @theSunBreak.
