Newberg’s 99w Drive-In is making sure your big-screen thirst gets quenched this summer! 99w Drive-In Going outside is still a pretty dicey proposition in a lot of ways, as evidenced by (looks at COVID-19 stats still going northwards like a haywire game of Cliff Hangers on The Price is Right). But there are ways to […]
Movies & TV
Posted inMovies & TV
Love, Victor Breaks No New Ground—But Doesn’t Need To
Hulu Being the dutiful critic that I am, I spent an evening recently with Love, Simon, the thoroughly delightful 2018 film about the titular young man coming out of both his shell and the closet during a momentous year in high school. While it had a host of narrative issues, it was as cute and […]
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This Pride Month, Watch the Films of Gus Van Sant
This article is part of the Mercury’s 2020 all-digital Queer Week coverage. My Own Private Idaho criterion Gus Van Sant remains Portland’s best known cinematic son. While he doesn’t live in our fair city anymore, it was during his time here that he made some of his most celebrated work (Good Will Hunting, My Own […]
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HBO’s I May Destroy You is a Fearless Portrayal of the Aftereffects of Sexual Assault
Michaela Coel HBO If all you know of Michaela Coel is her work in Chewing Gum, the brilliant sitcom she created for BBC Two—and was subsequently streamed on Netflix—you will be ill-prepared for this British talent’s stunning second act, I May Destroy You. In Chewing Gum, Coel was a manic presence, playing a twentysomething, hormone-crazed […]
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WATCH THIS: Portland Protesters and Police in Dialogue
From Arthur Bradford’s documentary on the June 1 protest in Portland. Arthur Bradford You may know Arthur Bradford as the Mercury‘s Blazer correspondent, but he’s also an accomplished Portland filmmaker who directed the acclaimed How’s Your News? series, and has been nominated for an Emmy for his film 6 Days to Air: The Making of […]
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The End Might Be Near for Clinton Street Theater
Clinton St. Theater Instagram The Clinton Street Theater, the moviehouse and performance space that has occupied a corner of SE Clinton for over a century, could be facing permanent closure. In a newsletter sent out to email subscribers today, Clinton Street co-owner Lani Jo Leigh admitted that the longer the coronavirus pandemic carries on, the […]
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The Confinement Online Film Fest Returns This Saturday—Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Miss It
A Covid-19 Love Story: Marc & Mary from the CoFF film fest. Make no mistake: This pandemic and subsequent quarantine have messed us up more than we’d like to admit. One of humankind’s greatest attributes is our ability to adapt—but there’s something definitely lost when we change without stopping to think about how and the […]
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The Best Things to Do While Staying Home and Staying Safe: Memorial Day!
Uncut GemsIt’s beyond bizarre to know for a fact this exhausting, nerve-jangling drama is going to be the most watched thing on Netflix for the next couple of weeks, considering it’s a low-budget arthouse flick directed by the Safdie Brothers, who specialize in choppy, frenetic, aggressively off-putting narratives about amoralistic assholes spiraling down into a […]
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The Best Things to Do While Staying Home and Staying Safe: Sun May 24
The CBS Sunday Night Movie: TitanicThe latest in CBS’ revival of the old-school Sunday Night Movie is one of the biggest movies of all time, about a grimy sketch artist who sneaks onto a boat and romances a rebellious debutante, only for true love to be interrupted by one of the most famous naval tragedies […]
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The Best Things to Do While Staying Home and Staying Safe: Sat May 23
Hump!We at HUMP! were crushed to cancel our originally planned Spring re-screening, with the coronavirus crisis forcing us all inside. But after receiving enthusiastic support and permission from the filmmakers to show their films online, we knew that the show must go on! Even if we can’t watch together in movie theaters, we can still […]
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TONIGHT! It’s the Debut of CoFF—the Confinement Online Film Festival!
Don’t miss the CoFF film fest—premiering this Friday! If you’re looking for some great laughs and creativity, don’t miss the Confinement Online Film Fest (CoFF) debuting TONIGHT, Friday May 22! Since we’re all stuck inside anyway, we asked local amateur filmmakers, artists, and creative people to send us short homemade movies that demonstrate how we […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
The Best Things To Do While Staying Home and Staying Safe: Fri May 22
Confinement Film FestivalSince we’re all stuck inside anyway, we asked local amateur filmmakers, artists, and creative people to send us short homemade movies that demonstrate how we are living, surviving (and occasionally thriving) under quarantine and social distancing orders… and oh boy! DID YOU DELIVER! We received a poop-ton of fantastic, funny, poignant, and mind-bending […]