SIFF is down to its final five days. Here are some reviews of movies I’ve seen that are playing between now and the end of the festival.
Captain Fantastic (2016, USA, dir. Matt Ross, 120 minutes)
Expectations are high on this locally-shot Viggo Mortensen vehicle, and it’s mostly great. The SIFF tribute recipient plays a father of 6 who raises his family off-the-grid. When the troubled and ill mother passes away, Mortensen has to bring his family back into society to attend the funeral. This movie does for off-the-grid hippies what Roadhouse did for bar bouncers, whatever that means.
- June 11, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 1:30pm (Viggo Mortensen tribute)
- June 12, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 3:30pm (tickets on standby)
Chicken People (2016, USA, dir. Nicole Lucas Haimes, 83 minutes)
This joyously weird movie is a documentary about people who are passionate about raising the perfect chicken. It’s its own subculture and director Nicole Lucas Haimes does a great job of lovingly documenting that passion. It’s like a real-life take on Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, with Errol Morris’s entire oeuvre mixed in.
- June 10, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 7pm
- June 11, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3:30pm
The Greasy Strangler (2016, USA, dir. Jim Hosking, 87 minutes)
This is quite literally the most disgusting movie this John Waters sycophant have ever seen. If that doesn’t bother you (or even excites you), this is the movie for you. If not, don’t say you weren’t warned.
- June 10, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 11:55pm
- June 12, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 8:30pm
Life, Animated (2016, USA, dir. Roger Ross Williams, 91 minutes)
This moving documentary is about political journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind and his family, namely how he and his family have been able to connect with his son Owen, who was diagnosed with regressive autism at age 3. It was through the magic of Disney films. It really is a touching movie and you can’t help but find yourself pulling for Owen to succeed. Also, I’ve been a fan of Gilbert Gottfried’s absurdist comedy for decades but this might be the first time a cameo of his has ever made me tear up.
- June 8, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7pm
- June 9, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 4:30pm
Middle Man (2016, USA, dir. Ned Crowley, 100 minutes, World Premiere)
Jim O’Heir makes his star turn here as Lenny Freeman, a sad-sack accountant who dreams of becoming a stand-comedian. The problem is that he worships and memorizes Abbott and Costello routines but has no sense of what people in comedy clubs want now. He meets a charismatic drifter named Hitch who becomes his manager and guides him through a quickly flourishing moment in the sun, while dead bodies somehow keep piling up. It’s a kind of road trip the Coen Brother might take you on. Thumbs up.
- June 10, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 9pm
- June 12, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 11:3oam (tickets on standby)
Nuts! (2016, USA, dir. Penny Lane, 79 minutes)
Director Penny Lane’s (yes, that’s her given name) newest film is exactly as inventive and fun as a documentary about a “doctor” accused of quackery for creating the practice of curing male impotence through goat testicle transplants should be. That means, of course, that it’s brilliant. It also works as a warning for taking charismatic con artists at face value when they promise much that sounds too good to be true. It’s one of my favorite documentaries at SIFF this year.
- June 8, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:30pm
- June 9, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 4:30pm
Sand Storm (2016, Israel, dir. Elite Zexer, 90 minutes)
Set in a Bedouin village in Israel, Sand Storm is a two-generational story about a mother and daughter getting caught up in patriarchal religious traditions that have control over their lives, and how they try (or don’t try) to resist them. Daughter Layla has the conveniences of the modern world (driving lessons, a cellphone) but her love for a boy is strictly verboten. Mother Jalila has to host the wedding of her husband to a younger wife. It’s a moving story and beautifully filmed and acted.
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June 3, Pacific Place, 11am - June 8, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 9:30pm
- June 9, Kirkland Performance Center, 8:30pm
Southside with You (2016, USA, dir. Richard Tanne, 81 minutes)
This piece of fan fiction wonders what the first date that Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson went on back in 1989 was like. The movie was lacking any subtlety, and, surprise, it’s mostly hagiography. Yet weirdly it also basically confirms the Nobama crowd’s vision of our 43rd president as a bit of a player. I’m sure many will find the movie charming and romantic, but I’m just not one of them.
- June 11, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7pm
- June 12, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 7pm
