Movie Diary 6/4/2012

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath, Conrad Vernon). Pretty frigging hilarious. Corporeal mortification along Termite Terrace lines. Nonstop verbal gaggery. All comedy is based in character, which these people get. (full review 6/8)

Grassroots (Steven Gyllenhaal, 2012). A real-life Seattle City Council campaign receives a somewhat unlikely movie version. This film certainly has the real locations – no Vancouver, B.C., fakery here. (showing at SIFF)

People Like Us (Alex Kurzman, 2012). Chris Pine as a shady character who confronts certain truths after his father dies. Michelle Pfeiffer and Elizabeth Banks (man, she has got some kind of agent) also on hand in meaty roles. Whole movie hinges on one character not saying something he should say. (showing at SIFF)

The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller, 1964). Age has not dimmed the weirdness or vividness of Fuller’s tabloid visions.

Camilla Dickinson (Cornelia Duryée Moore, 2012); Ira Finkelstein’s Christmas (Sue Corcoran, 2012); The 5,000 Days Project: Two Brothers (Rick Stevenson, 2012). Again, three more movies in the “NW Connections” competition, for which I am a juror. So mum’s the word. (Showing at SIFF.)

At What a Feeling!, the week is given over to 1980s science-fiction pictures, in deference to the opening of Prometheus. First up: Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce.