ALL I SEE IS YOU
“What is this movie about?” That’s what I jotted down at the halfway point (awfully late for the question to still be necessary) of All I See Is You, a psychological drama from director Marc Forster that spins its wheels stylishly but doesn’t go anywhere. Blake Lively stars as Gina, a blind American woman living in Bangkok with her much older, mildly Australian husband James (Jason Clarke), with whom she’s trying to have a baby. Surgical restoration of Gina’s sight (she’d lost it in a car wreck) changes the dynamics of her and James’ relationship, creating a strain. The story meanders through subplots that reinforce the basic idea of James no longer feeling necessary while obscuring what’s going on in Gina’s head, culminating in an abrupt climax and a “Wait, what?” ending. What is this movie about? Never mind, I don’t care anymore. ERIC D. SNIDER
★ B-MOVIE BINGO: BREATHING FIRE
Your monthly opportunity to literally check off a bingo card full of B-movie clichés! This month features the answer to the question “You remember that kid who played Short Round in Temple of Doom right? Whatever happened to that kid?” Well, he played Charlie Moore in 1991’s Breathing Fire, a movie about a bunch of rich kids whose father gets them caught up in some gangland warfare bullshit, leading to a situation where Data from The Goonies has to face off against Chong Li from Bloodsport. Which is… not where you probably expected Short Round to wind up, but the ‘90s were pretty goddamned weird almost all of the time. BOBBY ROBERTS
A BAD MOMS CHRISTMAS
See review, this issue.
★ BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
“This is a dude who, 700 years ago, totally ravaged China—and who, we were told, two hours ago, totally ravaged Oshman’s Sporting Goods.”
BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL
The 100th(!) film from Takashi Miike, Blade of the Immortal is a live-action adaptation of Hirokai Samura’s manga, in which an immortal samurai (Takuya Kimura) meets a young girl (Hana Sugisaki) who’s “hell-bent on avenging the gruesome deaths of her parents.” BLOOD ENSUES. ERIK HENRIKSEN
BREAKING THE SILENCE
The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs presents this documentary profiling the lives of five LGBTQ service members. A Q&A follows the screening.
BREATHE
Beginning with a fateful trip to Kenya, Breathe follows Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield), a British tea broker whose idyllic earmarked future suffers a seemingly permanent hiatus when he’s rendered immobile by polio in 1958. After his wife Diana (Claire Foy) devises a way to treat him at home, the pair and their loyal circle of friends try and figure out how to make the most of his remaining time. Inventing a rad mobile respirator chair is one of the first things on the list. Making his directorial debut, Andy Serkis (yes, the Gollum guy) proves to have a healthy appreciation for his performers, bringing out the best in Garfield, who makes the most of his necessarily oversized facial expressions, and Foy, who captures both the fierce dedication and occasionally unlovely exasperation of caring for an invalid. (This is probably not a film for steadfast anti-vaxxers.) ANDREW WRIGHT
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE
The Oregon Innocence Project presents a documentary—co-directed by Ken Burns—based on Sarah Burns’ book about the five teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989. The same five teenagers our dipshit sex offending slumlord of a president advocated be put to death in a series of newspaper advertisements costing him $85,000. A panel discussion follows the screening.
★ THE FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL
A lovingly assembled collection of hilarious VHS oddities from curators and hosts Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett. Goofy exercise videos, kitschy instructional videos, clips from bizarre public-access shows, and more. NED LANNAMANN
★ FRESH FILM NORTHWEST
A showcase of shorts made by filmmakers in grades K-12. This will probably be totally great.
GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN
As one might expect of a movie that starts out with Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) and his wife Daphne (Margot Robbie) receiving news of their son’s death, Goodbye Christopher Robin launches gorgeous visuals and deafening English sadness like the finest sentimentality canon in the Royal Navy. SUZETTE SMITH
JANE
Based on recovered footage of iconic primatologist Jane Goodall during her groundbreaking chimpanzee research in 1960s Tanzania, Jane unfolds in a traditional National Geographic documentary format: beautiful nature footage paired with reserved British voiceover (provided by Goodall herself). Anyone with a passing interest in Goodall’s writings about the social relationships of chimpanzees will be delighted by the dramatic film clips of chimps stealing bananas from her camp set to an energetic score by Philip Glass. Mixed-in moments of Goodall’s perfectly-lit beauty seem out of place with her professional reflections until the film reveals this recovered footage was shot by Hugo van Lawick, a gifted wildlife photographer and, in time, Goodall’s first husband. The authentic relatability to both these loves stories—van Lawick falling for Goodall and Goodall discovering her life’s work—pushes Jane beyond the confines of a nature film into the territory of being a pretty ideal date movie. SUZETTE SMITH
THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER
Yorgos Lanthimos’ morality play uses the myth of Iphigenia—who was sacrificed by her father to appease the gods—as a springboard, but it’s the mythology of cinema that Lanthimos is intent on exploding as he uses sterile, slow, almost Kubrickian imagery to interrogate the story. The surreal hilarity of Lanthimos’ last film, The Lobster, is totally absent here; Sacred Deer is, in the moment, an unpleasant experience. But as the director is careful to announce early on, this is not a film about what you see—it’s about what you realize hours, maybe days, after you’ve left the theater. Lanthimos gets under your skin and stays there. NED LANNAMANN
LBJ
Rob Reiner directs Woody Harrelson in this biopic about the life of the 36th president of the United States. Not screened for critics.
★ LOGAN LUCKY
“I just don’t think movies matter as much anymore, culturally,” infamously unpredictable filmmaker Steven Soderbergh told the Guardian in 2013—one of the many legit reasons he gave when he announced he was quitting movies forever. So naturally, four years later, the infamously unpredictable Soderbergh has a new comedy—Logan Lucky, a movie that aims to undermine Hollywood’s traditional distribution model, a movie whose screenwriter may or may not exist, and, most importantly, a movie that’s a goddamn delight. ERIK HENRIKSEN
LOVING VINCENT
We’ve already had a few fine cinematic attempts to tell the story of the brilliant yet tortured Vincent Van Gogh—Loving Vincent, the latest from animators Hugh Welchman and Dorota Kobiela, is the first of these biopics to get it right. That’s because the entire film is comprised of actual paintings: The international production employed over 100 artists to paint each frame of the film on canvas, copying the thick brushstrokes and brash colors of Van Gogh’s most celebrated works. The resulting movie is stunning—a dream-like vision that flutters and vibrates with energy. ROBERT HAM
★ THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Anyone who has seen this paranoid classic (released about a year before JFK’s assassination, talk about timing), knows it’s supposed to be Frank Sinatra’s movie, being as he’s the Chairman of the Board and all that puffed-up Rat Pack bullshit—but you’d be kind of an idiot to argue Angela Lansbury doesn’t steal the whole thing with every icily malignant moment she’s onscreen. You wanna fuck a ‘90s kid’s whole head up? Take ‘em to this screening, and as they’re slowly growing nauseous from the pure malice radiating out of Dame Lansbury, lean over and whisper “That’s the singing teapot from Beauty and the Beast.” BOBBY ROBERTS
A NEW LEAF
The 1971 directorial debut of comedy legend Elaine May, A New Leaf tells the story of a socially awkward (and filthy rich) botanist (played by May) pursued by a giant manbaby (Walter Matthau) who is looking for the perfect mark to marry for their money. It says something about the strength of May’s voice and vision that the film is as funny as it is even after the studio took it out of her hands and cut it all up in an effort to “fix” what wasn’t broken. But then again, even longtime collaborator Mike Nichols would tell you that the real talent behind their twosome was almost all hers. BOBBY ROBERTS
★ THE NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ FESTIVAL
See Film, this issue. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
PORTLAND FILM FESTIVAL
The sixth annual Portland Film Festival occupies an awkward intersection of indie and corporate: Sponsored by Comcast, the fest markets itself as a “festival by filmmakers, for filmmakers” and offers workshops, panels, and networking events—but it also isn’t above trying to convince volunteers to hand out programs in exchange for “a free Regal ticket to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” In the past, the festival’s booking has been questionable, lavishing attention on vanity projects and valuing quantity over quality. This year’s screenings take place at the Laurelhurst Theater (across the street, the usually low-key Cardinal Club will serve as the “Comcast Filmmaker & VIP Lounge”) and features 152 features, docs, and shorts (notably, 89 are directed by women). As in past years, the films themselves are all over the map, ranging from the intriguing (a block of shorts made by kids from the Boys & Girls Club of Portland, with the young filmmakers in attendance), to the eye-rolling (in #TAKEMEANYWHERE, “Shia LaBeouf embarks on his latest performance art project by roadtripping across the United States”), to the… well, however you’d describe a screening of 1987’s forgotten Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn vehicle Overboard, with screenwriter Leslie Dixon in attendance. More at portlandfilmfestival.com. ERIK HENRIKSEN
★ PRINCESS MONONOKE
The word “genius” gets batted around with regard to filmmakers with a numbing, reductive frequency. But if Hayao Miyazaki doesn’t qualify for that title, who does? Since making his directorial debut with 1979’s The Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki has blazed his own distinct trail, blending atomic-clock action timing with an awe-inspiring, hand-rendered sense of the infinite. Mononoke isn’t just one more example of that balance, it’s maybe the best. ANDREW WRIGHT
★ PURPLE RAIN
As a movie, Purple Rain isn’t much, honestly—basically a series of melodramatic (and often misogynistic) vignettes about a pouty brat (Prince) acting like a sour piece of shit to everyone in a five-mile radius (The Revolution, Apollonia) as a coping mechanism for having an abusive father (Clarence Williams III). But as a document of Prince’s talents as a musician and a live performer, (and to a lesser extent, Morris Day’s charisma and The Time’s chops), Purple Rain is like an atomic bomb powered by funk-rock fusion, whose radioactive fallout changed pop culture forever. SQUAWK! Hallelujah. BOBBY ROBERTS
SONIC CINEMA: MAMA AFRICA—MIRIAM MAKEBA
The Hollywood’s music series screens a doc about Miriam Makeba, one of the first African musicians to attain international fame and fortune, and to use that fame to fight for equality and justice. Featuring appearances from Harry Belafonte, Stokely Carmichael, Paul Simon, Hugh Masekela, and more.
SUBURBICON
Suburbicon wants to be a lot of things. It wants to be a darkly comic domestic crime caper à la Fargo—not too surprising, as it comes from an unused Coen brothers script that director George Clooney and collaborator Grant Heslov have stripped for parts. It also wants to be a slightly histrionic Hitchcockian thriller with Oresteian overtones, as well as a skewering of 1950s white-bread suburban America. Most significantly, it wants to be an urgent social commentary about race relations in America, and it’s this last Jenga piece that brings the whole thing crashing down. NED LANNAMANN
★ SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS
In Preston Sturges’ hilariously heartwarming take on class and poverty, the dreamy, diminutive Veronica Lake is at her peak, years before she got screwed over by her studio and spiraled down into alcoholism. Lake epitomized the glamorous Hollywood leading lady, and the film itself is also a gem: Joel McCrea fakes being a tramp in order to learn what it’s like to be poor, so he can make his masterpiece Depression-era film, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. Laughs ensue, comeuppances are delivered, and everyone learns something about life and love. The End. Beautiful. Preston Sturges Jr. in attendance. SCOTT MOORE
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE
It’s to the filmmakers’ credit that Thank You for Your Service, written and directed by American Sniper screenwriter Jason Hall, almost systematically deglamorizes modern warfare. Miles Teller, Beulah Koale, and Joe Cole play a close-knit trio of Army infantrymen returning home from an especially traumatic tour in Iraq circa 2007. Deeply scarred by their combat experiences, they struggle to reintegrate into the relationships and responsibilities of civilian life. The film shifts between a number of subplots and perspective, some of which are more effectively rendered than others—but when the film lands, it lands like a fucking sledgehammer. BEN COLEMAN
THOR: RAGNAROK
See review, this issue.
★ TRAGEDY GIRLS
Tragedy Girls is being marketed as Clueless meets Scream, which is pretty accurate—it’s a slasher parody, but this time, the teenage girls are the hunters instead of the hunted. Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and McKayla (Alexandra Shipp) are the high school BFFs behind a true crime vlog that follows a string of murders in their small Midwestern town. But after Sadie and McKayla capture the serial killer, they embark on their own killing spree—with their bloodlust intensifying with each like and follow. CIARA DOLAN
WONDERSTRUCK
See review, this issue.
★ MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. Theater locations are accurate Friday, Nov 3-Thursday, Nov 9, unless otherwise noted. Movie times are updated daily and are available here.