Some recommendations for the opening week of the Seattle International Film Festival:
“The Fall”: Say what you will about this eye-popping visual extravaganza: it certainly isn’t like anything else. Single-named director Tarsem creates a globe-spanning fantasy, narrated by a hospitalized Hollywood stuntman (Lee Pace) to a little girl who might be the cutest movie kid since Shirley Temple. It’s crazy, but you won’t be bored. 4:30 p.m. today, Uptown; 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Uptown.
“The Edge of Heaven”: From one of the festival’s “emerging masters,” Fatih Akin, comes this very moving account of how a single death affects the lives of a half-dozen characters in Germany and Istanbul. I expect this beautifully made film to remain one of the best in the festival. 6:30 tonight, Egyptian; 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Pacific Place.
“The Wrecking Crew”: Totally irresistible documentary about the loose group of L.A. session musicians who played on most of the great hits of the 1960s. If you’re a fan of this music, your jaw will drop as the hits roll by and you realize these folks played on the soundtrack of the era, inventing the essential guitar fills and drum breaks that make those tunes great. If you ever wondered about the bass line of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” this is your movie. 9:30 tonight, Harvard Exit; 4 p.m. Monday, Harvard Exit.
“The Last Mistress”: French director Catherine Breillat specializes in provocation, especially of the sexual kind, so it takes a minute to adjust to her new powdered-wig costume drama. But it turns out she’s still taking a subversive approach, ably abetted here by the bruised glamour of Asia Argento. 9:30 tonight, Egyptian; 4 p.m. Sunday, Uptown.
“Elite Squad”: The slums of Rio continue to be a passionate subject for filmmakers, and Jose Padilha’s potent crime flick takes a highly ambiguous look at the burden of being a cop in this wide-open milieu. It recently won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. 9:30 tonight, Uptown; 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Uptown.
“The Children of Huang Shi”: A dutiful tale of orphans being saved by an intrepid British journalist (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) during the 1930s, this film has some fine location spectacle and the veteran sure-handedness of director Roger Spottiswoode. Radha Mitchell and Chow-Yun Fat co-star. 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Egyptian; 1:30 p.m. Monday, Uptown.
“Boy A”: A truly strange premise gets an airing in this British offering: a young man is released into the world with a new name, an invented history and some kind of terrible secret in his past. Everything here is just a little forced, but the movie’s central love story is refreshing, and Scots actor Peter Mullan is terrific in a supporting role. 7 p.m. Saturday, Uptown; 11 a.m. Monday, Egyptian.
“My Effortless Brilliance”: The new film from Seattle director Lynn Shelton looks at the delicacies of male friendship, where resentments and reconciliations must be worked out in ways other than direct confrontation. The cast collaborated on the script, which achieves a kind of poetry of awkwardness, and Harvey Danger lead singer Sean Nelson, a gloriously unconventional leading man, has some hilarious moments. 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Egyptian; 4 p.m. Monday, Egyptian.
“Head-On”: A 2004 film by Fatih Akin, well worth an encore. This gritty romance tracks two suicide-attempt survivors as they make a marriage of convenience, only to find things getting complicated. 11 a.m. Sunday, Pacific Place.
“A Tribute to Sir Ben Kingsley”: The Oscar-winning actor sits down for an afternoon of film clips, a movie premiere and talk about his career; he’s an articulate man, so this should be a good one. The film shown is “Elegy,” based on a Philip Roth novel. 2 p.m. Sunday, Egyptian.
“It Never Rains on Sunday”: I haven’t seen this 1947 British suspense film, but the work of its director, Robert Hamer (“Kind Hearts and Coronets,” “The Spider and the Fly”) suggests a must-see. 4 p.m. Sunday, Harvard Exit.
“Sexy Beast”: Ben Kingsley will introduce this rollicking Brit-gangster movie from 2000, in which he plays a villain so supercharged he almost burns a hole in the screen. He got an Oscar nomination, and you will not wonder why. 6 p.m. Sunday, Egyptian.
“Up the Yangtze”: A somber, scenic documentary about the impact of the huge Three Gorges Dam in China, which is uprooting upward of a million people. Director Yung Chang takes a cruise ship up the river, and tells the stories of displaced people trying to catch on as tourism workers. 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Pacific Place; 4 p.m. Monday, Pacific Place.
“An Afternoon with F. Murray Abraham”: Another talk with an Oscar-winning actor, this time the man whose Salieri in “Amadeus” is a masterpiece of envy and wounded ambitions. Abraham is in Seattle for a program with the Seattle Symphony, but his subject today is the art of acting. 2 p.m. Monday, Northwest Film Forum.
“Romeo and Juliet”: A restored print of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Shakespeare tragedy is promised, a movie that brought a generation of teenagers to tears (Nino Rota’s music helped). Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are the stars, marking one of the rare times Shakespeare’s teen lovers were actually played by teenagers. 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, SIFF Cinema.
“Katyn”: An important film to Poland (coming from that country’s most esteemed director, Andrej Wadja) that exposes the truth behind the massacre of thousands of Poles by Soviet order in 1940, a slaughter later covered up during the Cold War. The movie’s a blunt instrument, but it doesn’t skimp on the emotional toll of the event. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Egyptian.
“Ploy”: Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang made a great movie a few years ago in “Last Life in the Universe”; this one’s not at that level, but it has a sleepy, guessing-game appeal. As a married couple collapse in their hotel room, jet-lagged, strange things happen that might or might not be real. 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Pacific Place.
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