I’m not terribly excited about this weekend’s movie offerings, but here are a few suggestions for the weekend:

• The Grand Illusion is screening Sunflower, a film which looks at thirty years in the lives of one post-Cultural Revolution family in Beijing and the challenge of maintaining their family relationships with their society is changing all around them faster than they can follow.
• The first time I saw Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, I didn’t think it was nearly as funny as everyone watching it thought it was. Maybe that’s because they were all teenagers or adults and I was all of maybe six or seven years old. The first time I saw it as a young adult was the first time I realized just how clueless my younger self had been. Blazing Saddles is brilliant and even though I’ve seen it several times now, I always find something new to appreciate in it. It’s playing this weekend at midnight at the Egyptian.
• As I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned in the past here, I’m not a big fan of most contemporary horror films but every now and again I end up being convinced to check one out. Every now and then I actually like it. The last one I liked was Pan’s Labyrinth, from Spain. Now I’m all eager to see another Spanish horror film, The Orphanage, which is at the Varsity this week.
• Over at Northwest Film Forum they’re hosting the world theatrical release of All My Love, an experimental film by Seattle filmmaker Brian Short that was the winner of the Best Feature award at the 2007 Local Sightings festival.