★ MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. Theater locations are accurate Friday-Thursday, unless otherwise noted. Movie times are updated daily and are available here.
ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955)
When people say something is “like a Douglas Sirk movie,” they usually mean it’s like this. Because everything that has come to define Sirk’s career is here in the domestic melodrama of all domestic melodramas. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
★ AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Marvel’s attempt to put an exploding bow on 10 years of corporate synergy is a lurching, ungainly colossus of a blockbuster, with far too many characters and storylines stretching across a series of planets that resemble ’70s prog-rock album covers. The thing is, though, while you’re watching it? None of these elements feel like debits. Sometimes, excess hits the spot. ANDREW WRIGHT Various Theaters.
BELLE DE JOUR
I fell in love with Catherine Deneuve in the mid-’90s, when I caught a restored print of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at Cinema 21. To call Jacques Demy’s 1964 mini-opera a transformative experience would not be hyperbole. The movie, and the girl at its center, seemed to exist out of time: magical, romantic, alluring. Not long after, I caught Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) on cable, and though altogether different than Cherbourg, the deal was sealed. Demy’s film is a musical melodrama about young love; Buñuel’s is a strange, chilly tale of a bored housewife turning to prostitution for thrills. Though worlds apart, they are hallmarks of Deneuve’s career and defining dichotomy: Her best movies are either light love stories or disturbing psychological dramas. JAMIE S. RICH Cinema 21.
THE CAGE FIGHTER
Jeff Unay’s documentary follows the trials and tribulations of MMA fighter Joe Carman. Director in attendance. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
COLUMBIA RIVERKEEPERS: PETE SEEGER TRIBUTE
On Pete Seeger’s birthday, Columbia Riverkeeper—a local organization that does great work to protect the countless ecosystems and communities that rely on the 1,243-mile-long Columbia River—presents info about their recent efforts and a half-hour sing-along to commemorate Seeger’s environmental activism. ERIK HENRIKSEN Clinton Street Theater.
★ THE ENDLESS
The Endless feels like one graceful, continuous spiral, with optical illusions and death-defying phenomena adding to the uncertain buzz in the air. Most of its terror stems from one question: Is something always watching us and manipulating our world? CIARA DOLAN Hollywood Theatre.
★ FILMED BY BIKE
The country’s best bicycle film festival returns to the Hollywood Theatre. Hollywood Theatre.
I FEEL PRETTY
I Feel Pretty is about a woman (Amy Schumer) who suffers from a lack of confidence due to, you know, existing. After hitting her head in a spin class, she starts to believe she’s beautiful, which leads first to a positive attitude and then to successes in love and her career in selling makeup. (UGH.) It’s supposed to be funny, because everyone can plainly see that Schumer is disgustingly average! LOL, right?! A silly lady over 30 who weighs more than 120 pounds thinks she’s pretty! HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA! I laughed until I cried, because I am also over 30 and weigh more than 120 pounds, and my body could serve as a punchline, too. ELINOR JONES Various Theaters.
JANE CAMPION DOUBLE FEATURE
PSU’s student-run cinema presents two of the Australian filmmaker’s earliest successes, including her 1989 debut, Sweetie, and its follow-up, An Angel at My Table. Fifth Avenue Cinema.
★ KUNG FU THEATER: MASKED AVENGERS
See what the Hollywood Theatre did there? They’ve got some Avengers, but not the Avengers! This month’s installment in Dan Halsted’s ongoing celebration of all things whoop-ass is a rare 35mm print of 1981’s Masked Avengers, which has absolutely dick to do with a purple nutsack and his gaudy oven mitt terrorizing your favorite costumed superpeople and their amazing facial hair. No, Masked Avengers is a dark, bloody tale about a mercenary kung fu master and his team of martial artists seeking out a gang of killers pillaging the countryside, and murdering them all in very violent ways. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.
★ LEAN ON PETE
Andrew Haigh’s fantastic film explores the sadness and danger of an upbringing that affords altogether too much freedom. Shot in Portland and the southeastern Oregon town of Burns, and adapted from the excellent 2010 novel by local writer/musician Willy Vlautin. NED LANNAMANN Living Room Theaters.
★ THX 1138
It’s understandable that George Lucas’ first film, THX 1138, would be misunderstood. The unique combination of space opera, pulp, and nostalgia that infuses his filmography makes the starkness of THX almost as hard to work with as it was when released in 1971—but for very different reasons. Then, it was widely considered yet another weird-for-weirdness sake bit of dystopic commentary you’d expect from a pretentious art schooler. Now, it’s seen as this dark, deadly serious (read: boring) prognostication of a future we currently occupy. Both reads are correct in their own ways, but what often gets missed in the re-evaluation is the fact THX 1138 is primarily a bone-dry dark comedy, a satire of the very commercial aspects that would come to define Lucas as he transitioned from filmmaker to CEO. BOBBY ROBERTS Academy Theater.
TULLY
I LOVE Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, but their latest venture, Tully, made me never want to have children in the same way that Blue Valentine made me never want to get married. Yikes! Like she did in the very underrated Young Adult, Charlize Theron turns in a typically solid performance, here as an exhausted mother aided by a helpful night nanny (Halt and Catch Fire and Blade Runner 2049’s Mackenzie Davis, who can do no wrong) because her husband is a hapless sitcom spouse. While Tully has moments of levity—and while I’m always glad to see any movie dig into the complicated and not-always-adorable reality of parenting and childhood—it’s a bummer to see Theron pushed into an exhausted, maternity-induced fugue state. I mean, it’s real, but too much of anything gets banal after a while, misery included. MEGAN BURBANK Various Theaters.