Kimberley French The latest from Taika Waititi, the brilliant director of What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Thor: Ragnarok, starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with […]
Erik Henriksen
With honor and distinction, Erik Henriksen served as the executive editor of the Portland Mercury from 2004 to 2020. He can now be found at henriksenactual.com.
Posted inMovies & TV
The Creepy, Dour The Lighthouse Is Also… Funnier Than Expected?
A24 The Lighthouse, the second film from Robert Eggers, the director of the excellent, wildly disconcerting period horror The Witch, is… funnier than expected? Sure, it’s also fucked-up and intense and distressing, but there are significantly more fart jokes than one might expect. Robert Pattinson, with a voice like The Simpsons’ Mayor Quimby, and Willem […]
Posted inMovies & TV
The 36 Best Movies & TV Shows to Watch in Portland: Fri Oct 25-Thurs Nov 7
New films from Taika Waititi, Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Eggers, and more!
Posted inComedy
Ghost Busted: The Mercury Uses Science to Expose Portland’s Real-est and Fakiest Ghosts!
Portland is home to many so-called “haunted” businesses, residences, and public spaces. (See “Portland’s Most Haunted Places [That You Never Knew Were Super Fucking Haunted]!” on pg. 5 for more examples.) But how haunted are they really? The Mercury decided to find out by picking four of Portland’s most famously spooky places and testing their […]
Posted inMovies & TV
The Second Season of Amazon’s Jack Ryan Loses Much of What Made the First Season So Good
Jennifer Clasen What’s the appeal of Jack Ryan, the Tom Clancy character/brand? “Other than a predilection for glaring at submarines,” Ned Lannamann wrote last year, “does Jack Ryan even have a personality?” He doesn’t, really, but what Ryan does have is an uncanny, impressively malleable ability to serve as an avatar to let readers and audiences—who are, […]
Posted inMovies & TV
With Its New Screening Room, Movie Madness Is Now One of the Best Places to Watch a Movie in Portland
Movie Madness In 2017, the Hollywood Theatre ran a successful Kickstarter to take over Movie Madness, Portland’s beloved video store. One of the campaign’s stretch goals? Building a micro-theater inside the video store for movie screenings, private rentals, and educational programming. The Kickstarter fell short of that additional goal, but the Hollywood vowed to build […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Steven Soderbergh’s Panama Papers Movie The Laundromat Is… Fine
Claudette Barius / Netflix Steven Soderbergh’s put himself in a weird position. The insanely prolific, insanely diversified filmmaker—sometimes he’s making one of the Ocean’s movies, sometimes he’s making Magic Mike, sometimes he’s making The Knick, sometimes he’s making Traffic, sometimes he’s producing Bill & Ted 3, sometimes he’s making booze—is so good, at so much, […]
Posted inNews
UPDATE: Portland Activist Killed After SUV Collision Near Cider Riot
Cider Riot Wm. Steven Humphrey Update, Oct. 14, 3 pm: Nearly one hundred people gathered to memorialize Kealiher on Sunday evening in front of the office for the Democratic Party of Oregon—the Northeast Portland building where Kealiher was hit. The crowd—many dressed in all black, or “black bloc”—waved flares and left candles and flowers on […]
Posted inMercury Things to Do Staff
The 28 Best Movies and Shows to Watch in Portland: Oct 11-24
★ means we recommend it. Abbas Kiarostami: A Retrospective A sprawling survey of the Iranian filmmaker’s work. Current screenings include Taste of Cherry; Close-Up; Ten; and Shirin. (Through Mon Oct 28, Northwest Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium) Basket Case Ah, the ’80s. When the coke flowed like wine, the electronics were still wood-paneled, and you could pay a couple bucks […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Memory: The Origins of Alien Is a Stomach-Churning Look at the Making of a Classic
Sundance Institute There are already plenty of deep dives into the making of Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror classic Alien, but Memory: The Origins of Alien is an exceedingly deep one indeed. Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe (who took a similarly focused look at Psycho with 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene), Memory opens by foregrounding the life and pulp […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Celebrate Herzog-tober with the Mercury’s Video Picks at Movie Madness!
On Sunday, October 27, the Hollywood Theatre will screen Burden of Dreams, director Les Blank’s 1982 documentary about Werner Herzog’s insane experiences filming Fitzcarraldo—a task that involved literally pulling a boat over a mountain. Enjoy the rest of Herzog-tober (what? it’s a thing) with some of Herzog’s documentaries—which are also some of the best documentaries […]
Posted inMovies & TV
With Bold New Plan, Regal and Cinemark Theaters Continue Campaign to Make Going to Movies Less and Less Fun
Getty / Antonio_Diaz Via The Hollywood Reporter comes the less-than-welcome news that two of America’s biggest corporate theater chains, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark Theaters—which operates the Century Theatres chain in Portland—are switching up how they’re showing paid advertisements before movies. Ads at those chains, which previously ran before a film’s showtime, will now start at […]