You might notice that the repertory films screening this month center characters making questionable decisions. Michael Mann’s nocturnal criminals brood beneath neon while Werner Herzog hoists a steamboat over a hill; Gus Van Sant’s elegy to a grittier Portland sees the city through the eyes of characters with addictions, and Jacque Demy’s French fairy tale is kinda sweet if you ignore the creepy family dynamics. Luckily for us, some of the most satisfying storytelling comes in the form of “glad it isn’t me.” So… skip the multiplex, eh? It’s easier than ever.
Month of Mann
For fans of Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler (2014), Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981), parking garages as liminal spaces.
There’s never a better opportunity to bro out than with a Michael Mann film. He’s been responsible for some of the best cinematic forays into sleek, atmospheric neo-noir—Collateral (2004), Heat (1995), Manhunter (1986)—each neon-lit and meticulous, full of impeccable suits and criminals staring into the middle distance. If you, too, are a sucker for chilly, methodical crime dramas, it’s worth returning to the source. Hollywood Theatre has you covered all month, starting with screenings of Manhunter (featuring Brian Cox’s icy Hannibal Lecter) and The Jericho Mile (1979), a rarely screened sports thriller.
The obvious pick is Mann’s 1995 masterpiece Heat (if you can take the heat of a three-hour film, that is), but don’t overlook Miami Vice (2006), screening on August 19, either. It’s a somewhat hilarious place to start if you’re new to Mann, but also one of his purest expressions—gloriously mid-aughts, full of nightclubs and palm trees and some of the richest digital cinematography ever captured. Plus: a Jay-Z and Linkin Park needle drop. See you on the freeways of Biscayne Bay. (Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, select dates/times through Aug 27, more info)
Donkey Skin
For fans of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (1946), Angela Carter, camp excess.
It’s not easy—perhaps even inadvisable—to take a story about a guy who wants to marry his daughter and interpret it through whimsical color and lighthearted song. Yet Jacques Demy attempts it in Donkey Skin (1970), and it’s fine, actually! Fairy tales are supposed to be a little unhinged, and Demy demonstrates an innate understanding of this by skirting the French New Wave’s stylish black-and-white ambiguity in favor of pink chiffon, painted blue horses, and a pervert king who commands his realm from a giant cat throne. There’s a lot happening here. That’s why it’s fun.
Donkey Skin illustrates what makes Demy (and star Catherine Deneuve) so memorable—satirical and kitschy, Deneuve dons a donkey head, while Delphine Seyrig plays the world’s most fashionable fairy godmother. Beneath the camp excess is an interesting look at the uncomfortable machinations of some fairy tales, where women can wear all the cotton-candy gowns and grotesque meat capes they want, but still must be saved by capturing men’s interest. (Academy Theater, 7818 SE Stark, select dates/times through Aug 13, $7-$9.50, more info, not rated)
Burden of Dreams
For fans of friends with bad ideas, existential nihilism, human absurdity.
Werner Herzog—who coined the phrase “the poet must not avert his eyes” when discussing the Kardashians and openly talks shit about chickens—possesses a level of insight into extremity and the human condition that makes him one of our most obsessive modern philosophers. And there’s no better example of Herzog’s obsessiveness than his behavior on his own film sets. 1982’s Fitzcarraldo, in particular, became the stuff of cinematic legend with grueling filming conditions along the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon, accusations of exploitation against the Indigenous communities of the region, and real danger when Herzog attempted to haul a 320-ton steamboat over a mountain.
It’s totally understandable that Herzog’s friend, the cinéma vérité director Les Blank, would be like, hey, let me document that. The result is Burden of Dreams (1982), his documentary following the sweaty, bizarre madness of Fitzcarraldo’s production. Yet Burden of Dreams doesn’t feel like a making-of film. Blank captures Herzog as a peculiar character who wrestles with nature, the volatile actor Klaus Kinski, and his own stubbornness all at once. There’s a thin line between artistic vision and insanity, Blank seems to say—or, in Herzog’s words, “If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.” (5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall, Aug 14-16, $7, free for PSU students, faculty, and alumni, more info, not rated)
Also worth it:
Hanabi Film Festival
In its fourth year, Clinton Street Theater’s Hanabi Film Fest says it’s getting weird at night, though their idea of late-night seems to be 9 pm. The two-week spree of Japanese cinema boasts an eye-opening assortment of restored cult classics—for instance, the 1983 Palme D’Or winner The Ballad of Narayama—then trots out more obscure offerings, like Studio 4°C’s All You Need Is Kill, an Aeon Flux-esque anime based on the same light novel as Edge of Tomorrow. Taking its name from summer fireworks festivals, the primary pop at Hanabi is the programming: Nearly every film is dynamite, but the opening weekend screening of Poca Pon represents the movie’s North American premiere and everything wraps with a six-episode screening of ’90s cyberpunk series Iria: Zeiram the Animation. It’s anime, it’s cult, it’s acclaimed—Hanabi’s poppin’ off. (Clinton Street Theater, Aug 17-29, more info) SUZETTE SMITH
Drugstore Cowboy
Gus Van Sant’s 1989 film channels old Portland with Dilaudid-fueled black humor and a William S. Burroughs cameo. Drugstore Cowboy tracks the tedious melancholy of constantly seeking a high with your friends, and unfolds across a backdrop of the city in its grubbier, more anonymous state. Nob Hill, Old Town, and the old Seaton Pharmacy at Southeast 60th and Belmont all served as shooting locations; the result feels familiar and a little lost. (Tomorrow Theater, Sat Aug 22, more info)
Robinson’s Garden
As city pop gloss and financial prosperity took hold of ’80s-era Tokyo, Masashi Yamamoto’s Robinson’s Garden (1987) instead drew from underground No Wave aesthetics to tell an anticapitalist story. The film centers a drug dealer who discovers an abandoned building lush with vegetation, but Robinson’s Garden isn’t interested in conventional narrative. Its slippery, drifting style is in line with its punk ethos; loose vignettes follow a shifting cast of characters with no particular destination in mind. Tom DiCillo’s 16mm cinematography deepens the ethereal, alienated quality—he later lent his lens to Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise. (5th Avenue Cinema, Aug 28-30, more info)
