Hanukkah can be a lonely holiday in Portland, especially when it gets cold and dark and you don’t see candles lighting many windows. We’re far, far away from the traditional bastions of cultural Judaism, and perhaps more importantly, their wide selection of delis. In Portland, I’ve mainly experienced Jewish tradition at the dinner tables of […]
Ben Coleman
Hello! I am a freelancer for the paper. I cover movies mostly, but sometimes video games, comic books, and whatever else comes up.
Posted inMovies & TV
Venom Movie Review: Like Catwoman, If Catwoman Was Full of Toxic Masculinity
Venom is the Catwoman of toxic masculinity. It’s bad. It’s REALLY bad. And on top of being bad (REALLY bad), it also proudly presents a whole bunch of outdated, fucked-up gender politics. Venom is bad in a way I didn’t think it was still possible for superhero movies to be. It’s pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe bad. […]
Posted inFeature
How to Drink Like a Portland Person
Welcome to Portland. Now let’s get you fixed up with a drink! There are a TON of bars in this town, from the top of the Big Pink to the secret speakeasy submarine at the bottom of the Willamette (which doesn’t currently exist, but might by the time this article goes to press). The sheer […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
TBA: Unexploded Ordinances (UXO) Selects a Council of Elders to Discuss Modern Anxieties
Photo by Theo Cote, Courtesy of PICA Experimental theater is a high risk, high reward activity. Sometimes TBA means sitting through three hours of trust fund kids farting in cottage cheese to limited effect. But sometimes a spoken word performance— delivered with muffled pathos through a gilded diving helmet—brings you to tears because those specific, […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Searching Is One of the Most Engrossing Films I’ve Seen This Year
The problem with high-concept movies is that it can be difficult to lose yourself in them. Both filmmakers and audiences have generally agreed on a visual shorthand in film—a common language of cuts, camera angles and exposition that, when applied correctly, can become invisible, letting the movie take over. It’s like how your brain filters […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Searching Messes with Tech and Conventions
Unconventional Filmmaking in Service of a Conventional Story
Unconventional filmmaking in service of a conventional story.
Posted inMovies & TV
The Meg Review: Shark Weak
A Dumb Movie That Isn’t Dumb Enough
A dumb movie that isn’t dumb enough.
Posted inMovies & TV
Risk and Reward in Mission Impossible: Fallout
Christopher McQuarrie’s Latest Is Pure Action Cinema
Christopher McQuarrie’s latest is pure action cinema.
Posted inMovies & TV
Skyscraper Review: The Rock Is Our New Arnold! All Hail the Rock!
SKYSCRAPER Be careful, The Rock! You are beloved by the world entire. There’s a scene in 2003’s The Rundown in which Dwayne Johnson, finally in a big movie playing a character who’s name didn’t begin with “The Scorpion” or end with “King,” gets a passing nod from a cameo-ing Arnold Schwarzenegger. At the time, many […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Hotel Artemis Review: A Film Fully Stocked with Oddballs
Case in Point: Jeff Goldblum Plays “The Wolf King of Malibu”
Case in point: Jeff Goldblum plays “The Wolf King of Malibu.”
Posted inMovies & TV
Measure of a Man: A YA Movie About an Actual YA
Measure of a Man is a throwback to an era when YA novels were about going to a beach town in the 1970s, drinking rum for the first time, and maybe touching a boob. Now YA novels are about overthrowing dystopian regimes (and maybe touching a boob). An adaptation of One Fat Summer, sportswriter Robert […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Measure of a Man Review: A YA Story About an Actual YA
He Doesn’t Overthrow a Single Dystopian Regime!
He doesn’t overthrow a single dystopian regime!