Tom Tangney’s top 10 picks for SIFF 2017
May 18, 2017, 6:24 AM | Updated: 8:45 am
Every year, KIRO Radio’s movie critic Tom Tangney attends the Seattle International Film Festival. He’s a busy guy, which means he has to choose wisely. You can bet Tom will check out one of these SIFF films (May 19 – June 12).
1) Anjelica Huston Tribute
The Festival is honoring the distinguished actress Anjelica Huston with a screening of her latest film, “Trouble,” and an on-stage interview that will examine her lengthy career. It might have been hard to grow up in the shadow of her legendary father John Huston (and her Oscar-winning grandfather Walter before that), but Anjelica Huston has put her own individual stamp on Hollywood and show business. An Academy-Award winner for “Prizzi’s Honor” and the star of other great films like “The Grifters,” “The Dead,” “The Witches,” and “The Addams Family,” Huston has also carved out a strong career for herself in TV too, most recently in “Smash” and “Transparent.” The author of two autobiographies, Huston is smart, cultured, and fashion-conscious, having also been a top international model.
Runs: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 7 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
More from SIFF
2) Wallflower
A fictional film based on the horrific 2006 late-night massacre at a Capitol Hill house that was home to many in the rave community. Local filmmaker Jagger Gravning says the narrative arc of the killer is not the arc of the film – that it’s more a film about the pursuit of joy and happiness. Count me curious.
Runs: Tuesday, June 6, 2017, 7 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
Thursday, June 8, 2017, 3:30 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
More from SIFF
3) Manifesto
Avant-garde German director Julian Rosefeldt gives Cate Blanchett the role of a lifetime, or rather the roles of a lifetime. The great Australian actress plays 13 wildly different characters, each spouting a distinctive artistic or political manifesto. The words may be the words of famous people but the characters delivering them are anything but – a homeless man, a 5th-grade teacher, a news anchor … Here’s hoping it’s as brilliant as it sounds.
Runs: Monday, May 22, 2017, 9 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Friday, May 26, 2017, 7:30 p.m.
SIFF Film Center
More from SIFF
4) Landline
Actress and comedian Jenny Slate had a break-out role in Gillian Robespierre’s “Obvious Child” a couple of years ago and now she’s reunited with Robespierre in “Landline,” a serio-comic film about strained family dynamics. Slate plays one of two sisters who suspect their father of cheating on their mother, a suspicion that is compromised by the sisters’ own lives. John Turturro and Edie Falco play the parents.
Runs: Saturday, June 3, 2017, 5:30 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
More from SIFF
5) The Young Karl Marx
Fresh off his Oscar-nominated documentary about James Baldwin, “I Am Not Your Negro,” director Raoul Peck plunges into the 19th century with a reportedly lush period drama about a 26-year-old Karl Marx and his budding friendship with Friedrich Engels. The birth of Communism on the Big Screen anyone?
Runs: Sunday, June 11, 2017, 6 p.m.
Cinerama Theatre
More from SIFF
6) The Net
Talk about topical. On the heels of the election of a new leader in South Korea, and in the midst of the serious saber-rattling of Kim Jong Un, comes a South Korean film about just such tensions. A North Korean fisherman is caught in South Korean waters and suspected of being a spy. A rough interrogation ensues.
Runs: Monday, May 29, 2017, 11 a.m.
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
Tuesday, June 6, 2017, 7 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Sunday, June 11, 2017, 3 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
More from SIFF
7) The Trip to Spain
Michael Winterbottom’s original “The Trip,” starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, was the funniest film I’d seen in years. The premise couldn’t have been any simpler – two guys on a road trip through northern England, supposedly reviewing high-end restaurants, but really just shooting the breeze, hilariously. The follow-up, “The Trip to Italy,” wasn’t quite as funny but the two stars’ improvisational skills were so strong that it was still fun just hanging out with them. I have my fingers crossed that this third go-round will hold its own.
Runs: Saturday, May 20, 2017, 7 p.m.
AMC Pacific Place
Sunday, May 21, 2017, 11 a.m.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
More from SIFF
8) I, Daniel Blake
The big winner at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, this Ken Loach film tells the story of a carpenter with a bad heart who fights the British welfare bureaucracy.
Runs: Friday, June 2, 2017, 7 p.m.
AMC Pacific Place
Monday, June 5, 2017, 4:30 p.m.
AMC Pacific Place
More from SIFF
9) My Journey through French Cinema
Veteran director Bertrand Tavernier does for French film what Martin Scorsese has done in his documentaries about American and Italian movies. Over the course of 3 hours and 10 minutes, Tavernier reviews the high points of French filmmaking and revives some of its unjustly forgotten efforts. How can any movie lover resist this?
Runs: Saturday, June 3, 2017, 3 p.m.
SIFF Film Center
Friday, June 9, 2017, 7 p.m.
SIFF Film Center
More from SIFF
10) Those Redheads from Seattle in 3-D
This is a perfect example of why we need film festivals: to showcase films that we otherwise would never even know existed. “Those Redheads” is a 1953 Technicolor Gold Rush musical about burlesque performers from Seattle. Sounds bloody awful if you ask me, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world!
Runs: Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 6:30 p.m.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
More from SIFF
Tom Tangney’s top 10 picks for 2016
Tom Tangney’s top 10 picks for 2015