One thing about most film festivals, whether they’re large or small or whether they focus on revivals or entirely new programming is that inevitably some of the films are excellent and some of them are, well, less so.

Sometimes, though, you get lucky and a film festival will contain nothing but excellence.  Such is the case for SIFF Cinema’s United Artists Series.

Way back in 1919, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffiths banded together to form United Artists, a film studio designed to present the movie-going audience with films in which artistic merit would be at least as important as any of the other factors that went into making a movie.  Then, even as now, movie studio heads were generally more concerned with making a buck than making art; the founding of UA was meant to counter that attitude by presenting the idea that profit could be made by making films that really mattered.

Over the years, UA managed to make an awful lot of movies that mattered.  From April 30th’s screening of The Thomas Crown Affair through March 21’s screening of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, SIFF is presenting a fine selection of those films.   As it happens, over the years I have seen every single of the films in this series.  I have my favorites, of course, but there’s not a bowser in the bunch.  There’s timeless comedy:  the sometimes goofy, sometimes provocative humor of Some Like It Hot remains as relevant today as it ever was.  There’s stinging social commentary in the form of Midnight Cowboy and In the Heat of the Night.  There’s action, adventure, suspense, horror, romance–just about anything you’d want from a film is represented in this series.

You don’t have to take my word for it, though–SIFF and Metroblogging Seattle are giving you a chance to win tickets to see some of the great films in this series.  We’re giving away a pair of tickets to three different films: 

• Marty, on May 6, stars Ernest Borgnine in a stunning, Oscar-winning performance as a socially awkward man who finds the courage to break out of his rut and pursue a real, meaningful love
• Some Like It Hot, on May 11, is deservedly one of the best-known film comedies of all time, starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe
• Last Tango in Paris is an intense drama about a widower (Marlon Brando) who has a passionate affair with young woman (Maria Schneider) who is about to be married.

To see a great film, go see any of the movies in this series; to win free tickets, please send your first and last name and the name of the film you’d like to see to seattle.metblogs@gmail.com by the end of the day on April 30.