35 Shots of Rum
This intimate 2008 drama from acclaimed writer/director Claire Denis tells the story of a family of apartment dwellers in Paris and their liver-unfriendly retirement custom of drinking a lot of rum. Fifth Avenue Cinema.
Action, Anarchy, and Audacity: A Seijun Suzuki Retrospective
See Film, this issue. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.
April and the Extraordinary World
Batman v Superman represents one kind of comic book movie. April and the Extraordinary World represents a very different kind—a very French kind, from the mind of graphic novelist Jacques Tardi, telling the story of a teenage girl on a steampunk adventure to find her parents, who went missing along with the world's top scientists. There are colors in this comic book movie! And multiple emotions! And kitties! Fox Tower 10.
Born to Be Blue
See review, this issue On Demand, Living Room Theaters.
The Boss
See review, this issue. Various Theaters.
The Cabin in the Woods
Not since Scream has picking on the stupidity and silliness of horror films been so legitimately funny and scary. And that's not even taking into consideration the big twist at the end with the special guest star, a twist so batshit that even though this movie is four years past any rational spoiler expiration date, we won't speak about it further (well, that and nobody wants to hear the fucking whining that's sure to hit our inbox if we did). BOBBY ROBERTS Academy Theater.
Demolition
See review, this issue. Various Theaters.
Everybody Wants Some!!
See review, this issue. Various Theaters.
Fashion in Film
Eden Dawn and former Mercury fashion maven Marjorie Skinner present a special screening of 1994's Reality Bites. It is highly recommended you pay as much attention to the fashions as you can and block out everything else, because holy shit every single one of the main characters is an insufferable fucking turd. People talk about millennials being entitled, but they don't have anything on Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke's greasy asses in Ben Stiller's directorial debut. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.
Friday Film Club
The NW Film Center's series, featuring films chosen to coincide with exhibits at the Portland Art Museum. This time: French director Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, a 1966 film about a girl and her donkey, and the existential longing that connects the two. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.
From This Day Forward
Director Sharon Shattuck's documentary tells the story of her father coming out as a transgender person, and how her parents' marriage survived the resultant stresses placed upon it. Hollywood Theatre.
Hardcore Henry
They shot it with a GoPro. They shot it in first person. They're telling the story of an almost dead man turned into an amnesiac cybernetic super-soldier who wants to save his wife. You may be thinking, "So it's a really blatant RoboCop riff, but it's also a video game, but I also can't play it?" We'd love to answer that, but they didn't screen it for critics, so you'll just have to find out for yourself whether this is the best YouTube Let's Play ever made. Various Theaters.
Hecklevision
This is a Hecklevision first: a movie less than a year out of theaters gets dragged back onto the screen for textual abuse. San Andreas stars Dwayne Johnson as a perpetually surprised helicopter pilot as California gets hit by not one but two humongous earthquakes, and a tsunami, and, most devastatingly of all, Paul Giamatti in "cut the fucking check" mode. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.
Kung Fu Theater
This month's installment in Dan Halsted's ongoing celebration of all things whoop-ass is the only known 35mm print of the bona fide, inarguable, unfuckwithable kung fu masterpiece, 1978's Five Deadly Venoms, one of the most influential martial arts films ever made. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.
Midnight Special
The latest from Jeff Nichols continues the director's winning streak. While on its surface an affectionate throwback to the kid-friendly sci-fi adventures of yesteryear, its underlying themes of families under pressure make it very much of a piece with the filmmaker's other work. Told with a bare minimum of backstory, Nichols' script follows two armed men (Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton) on the run with an eight-year-old boy (Jaeden Lieberher), pursued by both a scarily determined religious cult and a baffled cadre of government agents. While a geeky NSA agent (Adam Driver) attempts to plot the trio's next move, an increasing number of mysterious events hint that the boy, well, just ain't quite right. There's the way his eyes tend to glow in the middle of the night, for one thing. ANDREW WRIGHT Cinema 21.
Mr. Right
Anyone who's seen Mr. Right—and you should, it's pretty damned charming—will tell you that this film is miserably misnamed. I love Sam Rockwell as the titular Mr. Right, but Anna Kendrick is the most no-duh Ms. Right, like, ever. Heartbroken, she drunkenly meets the charismatic Rockwell, who happens to be a hitman. They hit it off [shrugs]. Cue patter-filled romance meets '90s killers-on-the-run flick. It's a light, frothy picture that beams with Kendrick and Rockwell's chemistry. Bonus: RZA and Tim Roth! COURTNEY FERGUSON On Demand, Living Room Theaters.
Notfilm
Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film & Television Archive directs this documentary about the making of Samuel Beckett's only film credit, an avant-garde short made in collaboration with Buster Keaton called FILM. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.
Queer Horror
The bimonthly series, hosted by Carla Rossi, returns with High Tension, one of the most controversial horror films ever made, not just for the level of violence, but for attempting a twist so audacious it makes M. Night Shyamalan look like Ken Burns. Hollywood Theatre.
(Re)Discoveries: New Restorations, New Prints
A series of newly restored films. This week's selection: 1991's A Brighter Summer Day. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.
Taxi Driver
Fun fact! Taxi Driver was originally titled Bickle's Pickle. Hollywood Theatre.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hey, here's an idea: Watch this again instead of reading Go Set a Watchman! Or reread the book? Or neither! Your call. Just so long as you don't read Go Set a Watchman, you'll be fine. Hollywood Theatre.
Trainspotting
People say this film glamorized heroin use. It features an animatronic dead baby crawling upside down on a ceiling after Obi-Wan Kenobi dives headfirst into a toilet to retrieve an opium suppository that fell out of his butthole. Super-fuckin'-glamorous, yeah? Just because Iggy Pop is on the soundtrack and Robert Carlyle is homicidally hilarious doesn't make it a two-hour commercial for smack. It is a great movie, though. There's that. BOBBY ROBERTS Laurelhurst Theater.
MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. Theater locations are accurate Friday, April 8-Thursday, April 14, unless otherwise noted. Movie times are updated daily and are available here.
