It’s no secret that Portland is a film town. We’re lucky to have a constellation of independent cinemas and DIY programmers keeping the big screens weird, smart, and surprising. But too often, the most interesting films disappear beneath a steaming pile of streaming services and endless reboots. Second Run Portland is a new film column that digs into the city’s screening calendars to spotlight deeper cuts, one-off gems, and films that didn’t get their due the first time around.
Each month, I’ll round up what movies are worth leaving your laptop for, and tell you why. This time: a queer rewrite of yakuza mythos, a few canon classics, and dreamy, experimental selections without billion-dollar budgets. Don’t forget to turn your phone off when the lights go down.
Church of Film: The Clan’s Heir is a Transwoman
For fans of Takashi Miike, Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses (1969).
Veteran V-cinema actor, sexagenarian boxer, and perennial cool guy in sunglasses Hitoshi Ozawa is also a director. The Clan’s Heir is a Transwoman (2013) plays like a lo-fi passion project, but it’s also a surprising, queer-centered take on the yakuza genre. In the aftermath of a yakuza boss’s death, his clan sets out to locate his successor, leading them to a queer bar—and to Nana, a trans woman who turns out to be the boss’s heir. A weirdly heartwarming question emerges: Will a trans woman be accepted into the hypermasculine world of Japanese organized crime?! The ever-reliable cinema series Church of Film describes Clan’s Heir as a “sensitive tear-jerker.” I believe it. (Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton, Wed July 2, 7 pm, $10, tickets here, not rated)
News From Home
For fans of Agnès Varda, Maya Deren, Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970).
When one hears the name Chantal Akerman, it’s typically in reference to the Belgian director’s film Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a three-and-a-half hour, avant-garde, slow cinema classic that was awarded the number one slot on Sight & Sound's 2022 critics' poll of the greatest films of all time. (That’s a big deal—it surpassed both Vertigo and Citizen Kane for the first time in decades, and was the only film directed by a woman to ever reach a top ten position in the poll.) News From Home (1977) is a lesser-known Akerman entry, but maintains her staunchly experimental spirit. Its emphasis on spatial immersion and texture is best viewed on a big screen.
Akerman’s mother Natalia lands at the heart of much of her oeuvre–from narratives that center maternal figures (Les Rendez-vous d’Anna, Letters Home) to her final work, No Home Movie, a documentary tracking Natalia’s last living months. News From Home is no exception. The film is composed of long takes of ’70s-era New York City, interspersed with voiceovers of Akerman reading letters from her mother in Belgium. The effect is a psychogeographical drift, both inventive and spare. (Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, Mon July 7, 7:30 pm, $12, tickets here, not rated)
Days of Heaven in 35mm
For fans of love triangles, biblical plagues, Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984).
If Andrew Wyeth’s painting "Christina’s World" were put to celluloid, it might become Days of Heaven: sun-soaked, light dappling strangely across wheat fields, evoking all of the loneliness and simmering longing of old, weird Americana. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, Terrence Malick’s 1978 pastoral might be the most beautiful film ever made. Every frame is painterly. Emerging from the twilight of the auteur-driven New Hollywood era, Days of Heaven exemplifies the movement’s fusion of visual poetry and emotional restraint. Malick’s spiritual reverence for natural light shines; cinematographer Néstor Almendros shot most of the film in the golden glows of dawn and dusk, limiting production time to around 20 minutes a day.
You might’ve seen Malick’s Badlands, which predates Days of Heaven by five years and feels like an exercise in developing this film’s mythic central tensions. If so, Days of Heaven is required viewing. Or maybe you’ve never seen a Malick film, in which case this 35mm screening is the perfect opportunity to experience the rapture of his work where it belongs: in a dark theater, as light moves across the prairie. (Hollywood Theatre, Fri July 18, 7:30 pm, $12, tickets here, PG)
Certain Women
For fans of Hong Sang-soo, Aki Kaurismäki, Andrea Arnold’s Cow (2021).
Oregon’s favorite director Kelly Reichardt is best known for her Pacific Northwest-based storytelling (Old Joy, Showing Up, Wendy and Lucy, the list goes on), but as a fellow Portlander-by-way-of-Florida, I feel a special kinship with her slow cinema style—it mirrors the languid, heat-heavy pace of an afternoon in her hometown Miami. Certain Women (2016) is a particularly beloved Reichardt film, shifting away from the PNW into the stillness of small-town Montana. Its landscape feels both boundless and quietly suffocating on screen.
Adapted from three Maile Maloy short stories, the film follows a stacked cast (Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Lily Gladstone in her breakout role) as they navigate the shifts and fissures in their self-image. Certain Women is restrained and subtle, as all Reichardt films are. But therein lies the key to her storytelling: It occupies a space beyond Hollywood bluntness and the solipsism of some indie fare, instead revealing a secret third thing. (Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division, Sat July 19, 7 pm, $15, tickets here, R)
The Thing
For fans of The X-Files, the Annie Dillard essay “An Expedition to the Pole,” the Dyatlov Pass incident.
One of my core movie-watching memories is seeing Drew Barrymore get slashed by Ghostface in Scream when I was six years old. On top of scaring me beyond what I thought possible, the film planted a deeper question I’ve never quite shaken: What if the danger isn’t out there, but already inside? John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) pulses with the same fear, but swaps the suburban home invasion for corporeal terror. The danger’s not just inside the house. It’s inside the body.
At an Antarctic research station, a pack of puffer-coated research scientists shelter a stray sled dog. Unfortunately the little dude isn't what he seems, and Kurt Russell and Keith David wind up battling a shape-shifting alien. Not unlike the far reaches of space, no one can hear you scream at the South Pole, and that level of isolation and claustrophobia is central to The Thing’s tension. Predictably, Ennio Morricone’s score owns, amplifying the dread with a mix of synthy darkness and nerve-plucking orchestral compositions. The Thing is fun to watch during the summer, when a frigid no-man's-land feels especially far away. Bask in its bone-chilling special effects and Cinemagic’s air conditioning at the same time. (Cinemagic, 2021 SE Hawthorne, July 25-26, 9:10 pm, $7-$9, tickets here, R)
Election
For fans of 4.0 GPAs, Michael Patrick Jann’s Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998).
As sharp as a freshly clicked mechanical pencil, Alexander Payne’s Election (1999) follows peppy Omaha high schooler Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) and a social studies teacher (Matthew Broderick) who desperately needs therapy. Witherspoon is “iconic” here, exhibiting pluck and drive and every other vaguely neurotic mannerism that has come to define her on-screen persona. Payne’s signature dark humor is fine-tuned by a backing cast of nonprofessional actors and a surprisingly tender eye for the petty failings of his characters.
That said, there are aspects of this film that don’t pass the 21st-century sniff test. Tracy is groomed by the school’s geography teacher in a subplot played off as a throwaway joke, and in 2020, Payne was accused of sexual misconduct. These developments add a strange aftertaste to the film’s already biting cocktail of male delusion. But if you can stomach the sour notes, Election still stands as an interesting dissection of ambition and the men who find women to be a liiittle too much. (Tomorrow Theater, Thurs July 31, 7 pm, $15, tickets here, R)
For more screenings, check out the film listings at EverOut.
