SIFF 2017: Closing Weekend Picks

Here we go, film friends, three days left to soak up the Seattle International Film Festival. Along with a weekend full of regularly scheduled screenings, SIFF goes out with a bang.

Sunday morning features the presentation of the Golden Space Needle and other jury awards. Later, Closing Night features a gala presentation of Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx with a North American premiere at the Cinerama followed by a big party at MOHAI. In liberal Seattle, tickets for a film about sexy young revolutionaries sold especially fast; so if you didn’t get a ticket in time, there are a couple other ways to buy yourself into the party (score one for capitalism!).  The first is via a ticket to Aubrey Plaza instagram stalker comedy Ingrid Goes West,  which plays at Pacific Place and includes the option to upgrade your ticket to party mode.

Or, economics be damned, just skip the movies and go straight to the party. A ticket actually costs slightly less than a film add-on. How’s that for revolution?

If you’d rather fit in one last movie instead of partying, SIFF is filling in some of its “TBA” spots with new additions and repeats of early audience favorites like The Hippopotamus, Handsome Devil, Bad Black, and Take Every Wave.

Josh

• The Landing. A very serious-looking documentary on the occasional of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the entirely fictional crash of NASA’s Apollo 18 mission in the remote Takla Makan desert of western China.
  • FRIDAY, JUNE 9 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 9:15 PM
  • SUNDAY, JUNE 11 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 3:30 PM
    (Directors David Dodson & Mark Dodson, Prod/Actor Don Hannah, and Select Cast/Crew scheduled)
• A Ghost Story. Reuniting his principal cast from Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, director David Lowery put Casey Affleck under a sheet to watch Rooney Mara from the afterlife. David Ehrlich called this meditation on love and loss “the best film of Sundance”. Other raves from Film Twitter — including an infamous scene involving the consumption of a pie — has made this my most anticipated film of the festival.
  • FRIDAY, JUNE 9 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 9:30 PM (Director David Lowery scheduled to attend)
  • SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 2:30 PM

Also on my radar: Chasing Coral (follow-up to Chasing Ice, this time looking at what’s left of the reefs. Director Jeff Orlowski and other guests scheduled to attend Friday and Saturday screenings); Have A Nice Day (animated noir recently pulled from another festival by the Chinese government);

Odawni

• Escape Room. I’m a huge puzzle geek and a thriller fan so this film ought to be a fun one. Girl surprises boy with 30th birthday celebration in an underground escape room where they must solve puzzles to unlock the doors, girl doesn’t know that it’s a life-or-death situation. Saw-like horror ensues as the clock ticks-and-tocks toward the deadline.
  • FRIDAY, JUNE 9 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 9:30 PM (Director Will Wernick scheduled to attend)
  • SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – AMC Pacific Place – 9:30 PM (Director Will Wernick scheduled to attend)
• Going to Brazil. Based on the trailer, I’m picking up on a French femme version of Very Bad Things, except, the girls bring the party to Brazil instead of Las Vegas and they accidentally kill a drug dealer instead of a prostitute. Will have to get back to you on whether or not they bury the body in the desert. This is French filmmaker Patrick Mille’s second film as writer and director.
  • SUNDAY, JUNE 11 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 6:00 PM
• Bad Black. Truthfully, it was difficult to watch the trailer for this due to overstimulation (lots of yelling and super lofi footage) but I am too intrigued to not check it out. A ‘Wakaliwood’ comedy shot on a micro-budget in Wakaliga, Uganda. SIFF says, “A scrappy local boy named Wesley Snipes who teaches commando-approved Kung Fu… and there’ll be wonderfully cheap CGI effects.” SOLD. (Winner of Audience Award at Fantastic Fest.)
  • SUNDAY, JUNE 11 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 9:30 PM

Also on my radar: Quest (Director Jonathan Olshefski makes his feature-length documentary debut with a film shot over eight years about the Rainey’s, an African-American family in North Philly, who navigate race and class issues); New Chefs on the Block; (Aside from the title of this film reminding me of my school-girl crush on Joey McIntyre, I’m a bit of a foodie; this documentary is about two chefs’ journeys to opening their first restaurants in D.C. Will they succeed?); The Oath (Psychological thriller set in Iceland – that’s all I need. Director Baltasar Kormakur stars in the movie.)

Chris

• The Feels. If there’s one category I want film festivals to program more of, it’s the raunchy comedy. This one sounds like a lot of fun: Constance Wu (from “Fresh Off the Boat”) stars in a comedy where she and her soon-to-be-bride and some friends have a wild weekend planned and over the course of the partying, we learn that one of the brides has yet to have an orgasm.
  • FRIDAY, JUNE 9 – AMC Pacific Place – 7:00 PM (World Premiere; director Jenée LaMarque & Producer Steven Berger scheduled to attend)
  • SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – AMC Pacific Place – 1:30 PM (director Jenée LaMarque & Producer Steven Berger scheduled to attend)
• The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Director David France (from How To Survive a Plague fame) has a new documentary about the legendary “black, transgender activist and Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson.” I’m a sucker for documentaries that shed more light on under-recognized heroes.
  • FRIDAY, JUNE 9 – SIFF Cinema Uptown – 6:30 PM (producer L.A. Teodosio scheduled to attend)
  • SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 3:45 PM (producer L.A. Teodosio scheduled to attend)

Also on my radar: The Landing (A wildly-inventive documentary about NASA’s ill-fated Apollo 18 mission. Never heard of the Apollo 18 mission? Neither has anyone else); In the Radiant City (moving family drama about a man that returns to his hometown 20 years after his testimony helps send his brother to prison) and Taste of Cherry (twentieth anniversary of the Iranian classic, from the late director Abbas Kiarostami).

Tony

• The Witches. This 1990 Nicholas Roeg adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book screens as part of SIFF’s tribute to Anjelica Huston. The movie’s one of the best dark fairy tales of the last twenty-plus years. And yeah, Huston is brilliant as the slinky, ultimately terrifying leader of an international coven..
  • SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 1:30 PM
• Better Watch Out. I’m holding out hope that SIFF’s last midnighter of 2017, a holiday-set Aussie shocker about a kid and his babysitter running afoul of a psycho, is more Black Christmas (1974 version) and less Don’t Open ‘til Xmas.
  • SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 11:55 PM
  • SUNDAY, JUNE 11 – SIFF Cinema Egyptian – 6:30 PM

Also on my radar: The Landing, A Ghost Story, Bad Black, and Escape Room, all capably summarized/recommended above.

Keep track of the SunBreak’s SIFF coverage on our SIFF 2017 page, plus news updates and micro-reviews on Twitter @theSunBreak.