Kung Fu Theater: Five Fingers of Death (with the Hollywood Theatre's Dan Halsted and the New Beverly Theater's Quentin Tarantino)
Joni Mitchell once said "don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone," and boy if that doesn't apply to Dan Halsted's monthly tribute to all things whoop-ass, Kung Fu Theater at the Hollywood. The man damn-near singlehandedly rescued the rarest, most important documents of martial arts history, and would screen them at his theater for no other reason than "they need to be seen with an audience." Tonight is a good night to try replicating this vital PDX experience for the home: Click here to donate some funds to the Hollywood Theatre. Gather up some of your friends who share the affinity for flying frenzied fists of fury, and congregate on your chat app of choice (Zoom, Discord, Skype, etc). Cue up Five Fingers of Death on Amazon Prime, part of that platform's remarkably large catalog of classic Kung Fu. And then, when your senses have been satisfactorily assaulted, click here for a post-film Q&A from the Pure Cinema Podcast, starring Dan Halsted and New Beverly Cinema owner (and part-time screenwriter/movie director) Quentin Tarantino, to hear about how they fell in love with the genre, and why they work so hard to keep it alive in their own way.

Live Wire! Radio House Party
The only way this could be even more perfect is if Kid 'n' Play were actually hosting Portland's world-famous live 'n' local public radio variety show. That might still happen, who knows, but in the latest installment of this socially-distanced version of Live Wire, the tried and true (and charming-as-hell) team of Luke Burbank and Elena Passarello welcome special guests including author/blogger Samantha Irby as a guest judge on Live Wire Court, food journalist Francis Lam of The Splendid Table, teaching you how to take your grilled cheese to the next level, and Mandy Moore teaming up with Taylor Goldsmith to sing you a song from her latest LP, Silver Landings.

Honey Boy
Oh, how easily this could’ve gone sideways. There’s nothing more cringingly embarrassing than a privileged white artist depicting their tragic life on film, forcing their audience to wallow alongside them in their self-serving importance. But in Honey Boy—a mostly autobiographical depiction of Transformers star Shia LaBeouf’s scary upbringing as a child actor, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video—there’s so much more. In a dazzling, heartbreaking performance, LaBeouf portrays his real-life father, a recovering addict, Vietnam vet, and frustrated performer who’s in the witheringly humiliating position of being employed by his successful 12-year-old son, Otis (a fantastic Noah Jupe). Running parallel are harrowing scenes featuring an adult Otis (Lucas Hedges), who’s working out some well-earned and very deep shit in rehab while trying to stave off an emotional implosion. Dreamy imagery from director Alma Har’el and cinematographer Natasha Braier brilliantly captures this slow-motion train wreck of a tale that, weirdly enough, supplies a modicum of hope while depicting the toxicity that fathers inflict on their sons—and what results from the poison they inherit. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY

Sex Education
This marvelous Netflix original elevates itself beyond teen raunch (although there's plenty of that) to become a frank exploration of the dramas that ensue when adolescent hormones ricochet off each other. It's smarter, funnier, and more emotionally engaging than you might be expecting, but it is sort of a fantasy, though, in keeping with creator Laurie Nunn's influences, including lot of John Hughes touches (which are pretty alien to the show's modern British setting). It also takes place on a gorgeous, hilly nook by a Welsh river that feels like something out of a fairy tale, or a Rick Steves travelogue, and the music of Ezra Furman (newly available in LP form) provides a lost-in-time sensation to the show, with '50s and '80s-echoing tunes serving as a kind of Greek Chorus. Sex Education makes so many bold choices that you’d think it’d slip up on at least a couple of them, but somehow it doesn’t only hang together, it becomes something greater than the sum of its unusual parts.The show might be set in a stylized world, but every smile and tear it provokes feels utterly authentic. NED LANNAMANN

Tom Misch
I love that every now and again the music world will present a laid-back champion fit to carry the mantle stylishly hoisted by yacht-rock heroes of yore like Michael McDonald or Al Jarreau. One such gangly weirdo who seemed to appear fully formed out of nowhere in the last five years is the UK’s Tom Misch, who began his career as a Dilla-acolyte, sharing beats on Soundcloud before teaching himself how to sing and becoming a young captain on the seas of smooth so notable that De La Soul saw fit to drop a guest spot on his debut album, Geography. Well, he's back for 2020, teaming up with Yussuf Dayes for What Kinda Music and wouldn't you know it? This shit slaps.