We know you’re just as excited about SIFF as we are, but you don’t have to wait to see a good film.

• Central Cinema is showing the heartwarming Akeela and the Bee.  Take a bunch of friends, enjoy the movie and then see if you can resist the urge to challenge each other to an impromptu spelling bee afterwards.  Also at Central Cinema on Sunday, May 18, at 2:00 pm is a special screening of Trial by Fire, a film about the struggle for freedom in East Timor presented by the Seattle-East Timor Relief Association
• The Grand Illusion presents Daughters of Wisdom, a rare look at a world few Westerners even know exists, let alone ever see that examines the lives and work of the nearly 300 nuns living in the hand-built Kala Rongo Monastery high up in the Himalayas.  Director Bari Pearlman will be in attendance Friday and Saturday. 
• Also at the Grand Illusion:  The Savage Streets, a locally made comedy about a couple of defective detectives. 
• Modern audiences might be surprised that Midnight Cowboy, the only X-rated film to win an Oscar, even earned an X-rating in the first place; its frank portrayal of a troubled street hustler and the ill and impoverished man who befriends him is hardly explicit at all by today’s ratings standards.  The emotional impact of this bittersweet tale of two losers finding strength and love in their daily struggles and their growing friendship remains just as moving today as it was in its initial release.  At SIFF Cinema Friday, May 16.
• Also at SIFF Cinema:  Robert DeNiro’s legendary portrayal of boxer Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s powerful film Raging Bull, Saturday, May 17, and the first James Bond film, Dr. No on Sunday, May 18.
• “He who controls the spice controls the universe!”  Dune, the film version of the Frank Herbert novel, directed by David Lynch and released to international disdain in 1984 is this weekend’s Midnight at the Egyptian movie.   Lynch himself has spent the intervening years staying as far away from the film as possible but its managed to develop a cult following and reviews far more positive than the nearly universal drubbing it got on its first run.  Mess or masterpiece, you decide.
• NWFF screens Mister Lonely, the story of a Michael Jackson impersonator who is led by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator to a castle that plays host to an impersonator community. 
• Also at NWFF:  Alice Neel, a portait of the painter whose exquisite portraiture work brought her acclaim after years of living a marginalized existence and whose difficult choices resonate through her family lines even now; and, for one afternoon show only on May 17, Le Grand Voyage, the story of a young French man who drives his aging father, with whom he has nothing in common, to Mecca, only to lose him in the crowd just as they are starting to come together at last.