Unlike some months, the repertory movie screenings of November lack a natural theme. But our indie cinemas have still formed a united front, choosing films that ask their audiences to hang tight with a little more focus and faith than usual. Surreal and nonlinear selections like The Double Life of Véronique, The Color of Pomegranates, and Memoria—your patient film lover’s favorite films—serve up complex narratives and slow, artful styles. All of it is worth your time, and the Big Dark is upon us anyway… Let’s turn inward, shall we?

Wolfwalkers

For fans of John Sayles’ The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), Isao Takahata’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), selkies.

Wolfwalkers’ premise is lovely and magical; the daughter of a wolf hunter in 17th-century Ireland meets a mysterious tribe of shapeshifting wolf-folk. But the film’s singular animation style, watercolored, layered, and dreamlike, is its strongest hook, situating Wolfwalkers (2020) far apart from the CGI-heavy ilk and flattened, samey output proliferating in American kids’ animation.

Co-directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart of the Ireland-based studio Cartoon Saloon employed a mix of hand-drawn elements and digital tools to animate Wolfwalkers, pairing blocky city renderings of Kilkenny–inspired by medieval woodcuts—with organic, gestural depictions of the forest outside its stone walls. The result is both uniquely beautiful and a little Ghibliesque.

The film comes third in the studio’s trilogy of animated folktale retellings. The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014) precede it. Wolfwalkers’ story takes a blended approach, pulling inspiration from both Celtic mythos (the werewolves of Ossory) and history (Oliver Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland) to inform the screenplay. Combined with its visuals, Wolfwalkers’ environmentalist understory (“Nature isn’t something for us to decide whether we want to protect or not,” Moore told the Hollywood Reporter) feels near-spiritual in comparison to A Minecraft Movie or whatever. Take your niblings. (Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, Nov 8-9, $10-$12, more info, PG)

The Double Life of Véronique

For fans of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2008), Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961), romanticizing your life.

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s sexiest and most puppet-laden film follows the French music teacher Véronique, who is also kind of the Polish choir soprano Weronika, as she/she experiences intuitive perception and a nameless feeling—that of missing someone who never existed. If the open-ended nature of Véronique/Weronika’s identity has annoyed you already, I recommend avoiding The Double Life of Véronique (1991), a film in which said double-woman witnesses her duplicate form board a tour bus, receives a package containing a shoelace, and falls in love with a marionette maker. It embodies all the frustration of a half-remembered dream.

But if you give this film the chance to do its thing, you’ll notice its vulnerable, hypnotic quality, developed through surreal yellow-green lighting and softening lens filters. Double Life is also a clear precursor to the magical realist movies you probably loved as a younger person, like Amélie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall, Nov 14-16, $0-$7, more info, R)

Risk/Reward Festival and Plus Plus Fest: Memoria with ñ (enye) performance by Ilvs Strauss

For fans of Tsai Ming-liang, Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1965).

Thai director and Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul might be our best current supplier of slow cinema, rewarding the extremely patient with lush, liminal spaces and open-ended questions. In Memoria, Tilda Swinton’s Jessica is a Scottish expat whose unexplained symptoms kick in after experiencing weird sonic phenomena in the Colombian jungle. What grounds the film’s hazy, creeping mystery is its even-keeled realism; this quality, called “realistic-mystic” by the Guardian, is central to Weerasethakul’s oeuvre.

On November 20, the film will screen at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater—opening with a 20-minute audiovisual performance by Seattle artist Ilvs Strauss. Another interesting note: Weerasethakul has cast Swinton in his forthcoming film Jengira’s Magnificent Dream, filming in Sri Lanka next year. (PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division, Thurs Nov 20, $25, more info, PG)

Plus Plus Fest: The Color of Pomegranates with Smell-O-Vision

For fans of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966), Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain (1973), woven carpets.

The Color of Pomegranates (1969) might be the closest thing to cinema-as-poetry that exists, but it also raises an important question for its potential viewer. Can you handle watching a film absent of dialogue, linear plot, or even much camera movement? If so, congratulations, and consider seeing Soviet director Sergei Parajanov’s abstract, color-soaked foray into the textures and sounds of 18th-century Armenian poet-bard Sayat-Nova’s life. The Color of Pomegranates is heady, esoteric, and totally worth your time, if you’re willing to let 79 minutes of ornate textiles and technicolor tableaux vivants wash over you. Much like poetry, whatever you take away from this film is the right interpretation. 

Plus, this “smell-o-vision” screening might help you focus a little. Boutique fragrance purveyors Fumerie Parfumerie will spritz special scents designed to correspond to selected scenes. (Don’t show up unless you’re into smelling stuff.) The multisensory screening comes courtesy of PAM CUT’s hybrid media Plus Plus Festival, planned across 10 days (November 13-23) in tandem with the opening of the Portland Art Museum’s transformed campus. (PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division, Sun Nov 23, $15, more info, not rated)

Also worth it:

Church of Film screenings

On November 19, Church of Film screens The Feather Fairy, Juraj Jakubisko's '85 adaptation of a Grimm fairy tale. (Jakubisko leaned into his role as “the Slovakian Fellini," even casting Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina in the film.) Then, on November 26, the icy Rococo-goes-’80s film The Snow Queen (1986) adapts the eponymous Hans Christan Andersen tale. (Clinton Street Theater, Nov 19 and 26, more info)

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Richard Einhorn's score floats across this restoration of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s tormented, expressionist 1928 film. The Passion also boasts some interesting lore—the only remaining print of this original cut was found in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital in the ’80s. (Academy Theater, Nov 21, more info)

Les Blank celebration

Heralding late documentarian Les Blank's would-be 90th birthday, Hollywood Theatre offers two films exemplifying his cinéma vérité style: Chulas Fronteras (1976), documenting Norteño musicians on the Texas-Mexican border, and The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists (1994), requisite viewing for obsessive artists everywhere. (Hollywood Theatre, Nov 23, more info)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 with the Turkeynecks

All you really need to know about the TCM sequel is that Leatherface is horny now, and his new sidekick’s catchphrase is: “Lick my plate, you dog dick.” But the curious can read my longer spiel on Tobe Hooper’s black comedy in The Stranger. (Hollywood Theatre, Nov 26, more info)

Drugstore Cowboy in 35mm

Gus Van Sant’s 1989 film channels Old Portland with black humor and a William S. Burroughs cameo. A Q&A with the Portland Critics Association, celebrated local author-screenwriter Jon Raymond, and a surprise cast member follow the screening. (Hollywood Theatre, Nov 30, more info)