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Movies & TV
Posted inFood and Drink

 Pipe Dreams and Pizza Crusts Will Dive into the Wacky World of Organ Grinder Pizza

An upcoming documentary explores the Portland pizzeria that may have once been the largest in the world.
Avatar photo by Katherine Chew Hamilton

Amid the strip malls and used car lots along SE 82nd, one big building, now home to Super King Buffet, looks out of place: glass walls stretching tens of feet tall, ceilings sharply sloping in different directions. Turns out these glass add-ons, designed by none other than Pioneer Square architect Willard K. Martin, were once […]

Posted inMovies & TV

The Christophers Is Another Small Masterwork by Steven Soderbergh

He says his next two movies will be made with AI, so enjoy it while it lasts.
Avatar photo by Dom Sinacola

Steven Soderbergh has directed 11 features since 2017—which was the year blue collar caper Logan Lucky sprung the director from a self-imposed retirement.  This bountiful run includes shot-in-secret-on-an-iPhone thriller Unsane (2018), thoughtful exotic dancer threequel Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023), bone-shaking ghost story Presence (2024), bone-dry spy story Black Bag (2025), and now The Christophers, […]

Posted inMovies & TV

A Useful Ghost Is About So Much More Than Sex With a Vacuum Cleaner

THIS is how you smuggle anti-authoritarian queer romance into a heterosexual horror rom-com.
Avatar photo by HR Smith

At the beginning of A Useful Ghost, the debut film from Thai screenwriter-turned-director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, a man has a problem. And that problem is dust. He buys a vacuum cleaner, but the appliance has some issues. At night, the man wakes up to the sound of it coughing dust back up all over the apartment […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Barbara Forever Puts the Body-ody-ody in Body of Work

A new documentary about experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer is a rare glimpse of a cinematic lesbian good time.
Avatar photo by HR Smith

To Barbara Hammer superfans, Barbara Forever may seem lacking. Where are the jump cuts, the weird overlays, the extended shots of a woman masturbating, superimposed over rock formations?  Brydie O’Connor’s documentary about the experimental filmmaker’s life is more aimed at someone with an extremely finite attention span for experimental film, even the queer kind. Composed […]

Posted inSecond Run Portland

Second Run Portland: Iranian Docufiction, Soviet Sci-Fi, and Catherine O’Hara’s Impact

This month’s rep screening schedule is stacked.
Avatar photo by Lindsay Costello

Hello, reader. I am once again requesting you go to the movies, and here’s why: This month, we’ve got Soviet sci-fi, eerie animation, and some of the 20th century’s directorial greats represented (Robert Altman, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami, and the list goes onnnn). Also, have you read Suzette Smith’s picks for the upcoming Portland Panorama […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Portland Panorama Is Worth the Watch

In its second year the film festival has plenty to brag about.
Avatar photo by Suzette Smith

Portland Panorama’s schedule of movies, showcases, and virtual reality immersions feels like falling down a wiki rabbit hole. You came to see who’s playing live at the screening of music videos from the Pacific Northwest at Mississippi Studios, and now you’re getting excited about a bunch of shorts by Black animators at Cinema 21.  There’s […]

Posted inMovies & TV

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Is a Divine Act of Asset Management

A review born of both immense respect and ennui-ridden derision.
Avatar photo by Dom Sinacola

In 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie, audiences followed two Brooklyn plumber-brothers through a big green pipe to another dimension where anthropomorphic toadstool citizenry lived under the benevolent rule of a once-orphaned woman named Peach (voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy). Now in 2026, with the general conceit of the Mushroom Kingdom established, the sequel, The Super […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Second Run Portland: Films for Literary Types

This month, a bevy of options beyond Wuthering Heights.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Film adaptations of novels tend to get a bad rap, and with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights landing last month, suddenly everyone holds a strong stance for or against them. Take a breath, dear reader. Perhaps within the tranquil confines of your local cinema…? Because this month, indie screens zero in on film-literature crossovers that hit, actually. […]

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