Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
The Seattle International Film Festival begins its 2025 session on Thursday, May 15, these days unfolding over a mere 11 days, in contrast to its former three-and-a-half week sprawl. I've been going since 1980 (or was '79 my first year?), and most of those years I've looked ahead to a few titles in a preview piece. Here's one of those, with another one next weekend. The fest is spread out over a half-dozen venues, with an online component, too. SIFF's Film Finder has more info.
Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story. Now this is how you do a documentary profile. O'Brien, who died last year at 93, was a scandalous Irish novelist, although the scandal derived from the reactions within her censorious native country rather than her keenly honest writing. Director Sinéad O'Shea covers the major phases of O'Brien's life, but in a way that never feels rote; she has a gift for finding just the right illuminating clip (O'Brien was a reliable chat-show guest in the 1960s and 70s, even when faced with disapproving hosts) and drawing insights from talking heads, who include Gabriel Byrne, Walter Mosley, and O'Brien's two sons. The mingling of Irish countryside locations and the author's writing is effective, and it doesn't hurt to have an urgent voice speaking as Edna O'Brien: Jessie Buckley, in vivid (if unseen) form. Friday 5/16, 4pm Pacific Place; Tuesday 5/20, 6pm, Uptown.
By the Stream. The extremely productive Hong Sang-soo comes through with a slim but beguiling film—but then most of his are slim and beguiling. The story, such as it is, has to do with a professor who hires her mostly-retired uncle to teach a theater class for a week. Meantime, he gets a groove going with her colleague, albeit offscreen. In the background of this charming situation, something looms—a couple of instances of cancel culture, apparently—although the movie never spells it out. Which makes the past slightly haunting, somehow. If you're already familiar with this director's work, you'll be happy about this one; if you aren't, it's not a bad entry point. Tuesday 5/20, 8pm, Uptown; Wednesday 5/21, 12:30pm, Uptown.
Jean Cocteau. A pleasant introduction to the work and life of one of France's most beloved artists, with some especially well-chosen excerpts from Cocteau's movie work (including Beauty and the Beast and The Blood of a Poet). Cocteau did so many things that his various artistic endeavors can't be treated in any kind of real depth here; I kept wishing this documentary might've concentrated on his films, which could use some serious re-appreciation these days. Still, you will come out of the movie liking its subject. Monday 5/19, 7pm, Pacific Place; Tuesday 5/20, 3pm, Uptown.
Riefenstahl. On the other hand, you won't necessarily come out of this movie liking its subject. We speak of Leni Riefenstahl, one of the most maddening and fascinating figures of her era. Although she lived to be 101 years old (truly a triumph of the will), Riefenstahl's era was mostly contained to the 1930s and 40s, when she morphed from being a poetical performer-filmmaker into Hitler's favorite movie director. She's been the subject of one previous flabbergasting documentary (the 1993 Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl), but here director Andres Veiel has access to new stuff from Frau Leni's archives, and even some explosive outtakes from that previous doc. She remains a test case for one's ability to hold conflicting ideas in the mind, because she was both a visionary artist and a malignant narcissist. Tuesday 5/20, 9pm, SIFF Downtown; Thursday 12:30pm, Uptown.
40 Acres. Timing seems to be good for this post-apocalyptic action picture, thanks to the success of Sinners, another film that mixes an allegory of racism with genre-picture craziness. (This time it's cannibals.) Alas, director R.T. Thorne flashes more visual pizzazz than storytelling sense, despite the promising set-up: A blended family protects their compound, even as their teenage son develops an intense curiosity about what might wait in the outside world. Thankfully, Danielle Deadwyler, as the matriarch of the group, is around to twist the fierceness knob to a solid 11. Her gaze could melt a shotgun-totin' intruder at 50 feet, and the movie has a lot of shotgun-totin' intruders. (The title, by the way, is an unearned touch of provocation; the thing's even set in Canada.) Friday 5/16, 9pm, SIFF Downtown; Wednesday 5/21, 3pm, SIFF Downtown.
Cloud. The veteran Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is scrambling up tones here, and the result is convincing. The central character (Masaki Suda) makes his living by the online re-selling of stuff he's bought in bulk, a shady practice that finally irritates the wrong people. You can say that the final bullet-strewn section of the movie departs from the earlier going, yet this is a movie that keeps re-inventing itself, in appealingly unpredictable ways. Monday 5/19, 8:30pm, Uptown; Sunday 5/25, 4:30pm, Uptown.
The Glass Web. 3-D presentation of a 1953 noir, at the Cinerama. (Well, all right, the SIFF Downtown, but we all know what we mean.) How could this be resistible? Sunday 5/18, 4:15pm, SIFF Downtown.
The Gloria of Your Imagination. Filmmaker Jennifer Reeves takes the footage from a 1963 documentary project—in which a woman agreed to be filmed in sessions with therapists from three different psychiatric approaches—and mashes it up with a hodgepodge of imagery from the era. I'm not sure what to make of it, but the fascination of the original project (and the straightforwardness of the subject herself, Gloria) remains thought-provoking. Monday 5/19, 6pm, SIFF Film Center; Tuesday 5/20, 3:30pm, SIFF Film Center.
Souleyman's Story. An immigrant from Guinea (Abou Sangaré) navigates the French bureaucratic obstacle course as he attempts to bluff his way through an asylum process. Director Boris Lojkine's film is just as compelling as it sounds, even if slightly shadowed by the sense that we've seen this kind of harrowing saga on screen before. Thursday 5/22, 8:45pm, SIFF Downtown; Saturday 5/24, 12pm, SIFF Downtown.
Suburban Fury. A welcome return from director Robinson Devor (who made the Seattle-shot Police Beat), with a nonfiction portrait of Sara Jane Moore, a singularly eccentric figure who tried to assassinate Gerald Ford in 1975. Devor's method is discursive and sometimes dreamy, so that the subject comes to be much larger than the woman herself. Wednesday 5/21, 6pm, SIFF Downtown; Friday, 5/23, 3:30pm, Uptown.
May 9, 2025
