recommended Arts Exit: Saving the Creative Kid
See Film, this issue. Hollywood Theatre.

recommended Best of Enemies
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.

recommended Cop Car
In Cop Car, the title character is found abandoned in a field by two Spielbergian 10-year-old boys, whose exhilaration at the discovery cannot be overstated. They take it for a spin, failing to consider that whoever misplaced it—and that would be a dubious cop named Kretzer (Kevin Bacon in a glorious law-enforcement mustache)—is going to come looking for it. Thus are the elements in place for a surprisingly rich comedy, with an unexpected dash of tension and Coen brothers-style crime fiction. Director Jon Watts introduces a dark, suspenseful tone when we encounter a man (Shea Whigham) who has unfinished business with Kretzer, and what began as an innocuous pre-adolescent comedy morphs into a thriller. The boys are natural and not actor-y, and Bacon and Whigham embrace both the comic and serious parts of their roles. Cop Car isn't just good, it's good in areas you wouldn't expect from a movie with this premise. ERIC D. SNIDER Living Room Theaters.

Damsels in Distress
After a decade-plus hiatus following his acclaimed The Last Days of Disco, director Whit Stillman is back with a bizarre quirkfest about a group of girls trying to civilize a recently integrated boys college. It seems like it might be satire, but I don't know what of, or what planet these characters are supposed to be from. VINCE MANCINI Fifth Avenue Cinema.

recommended The End of the Tour
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.

recommended The Gift
Unlike frothy '80s stalk-porn like Fatal Attraction, The Gift is a slow-seething psychological thriller that takes its characters through unexpected layer peels as their triangle gets ever pricklier. COURTNEY FERGUSON Various Theaters.

Hecklevision
There are many people who say that the finest video game movie ever made is Mortal Kombat, directed by the other Paul Anderson. These people say this without any hint of irony or sarcasm. Now, maybe it says something about the quality of video game movies that even their reigning king can't escape the comedic vortex of pain that is Hecklevision, but love it or hate it, there'll be no shortage of one-liners to send at the screen like Scorpion's spear. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.

Hillbillies in Hollywood
A screening of 16mm shorts and performances capturing country, western, and rockabilly sounds from 1927 to 1964. Hollywood Theatre.

Mad Women
Director Jeff Lipsky's family psychodrama about the ways sexual desire fuels everyday life. Cinema 21.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

recommended Nosferatu the Vampyre
Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, and bloodsucking vampires sounds like the most perfect movie ever made, right? Well, I saw Nosferatu the Vampyre years ago and while I don't remember it all that well, I remember it being a lot more boring that it should've been. Still, don't take my word for it. The world's most reputable tome of cinematic criticism, 1996's Baked Potatoes: A Pot Smoker's Guide to Film and Video, calls it "the worst film to watch stoned ever made. Bar none." The book then lists 10 things you will enjoy more than this movie, including Zima, Howie Mandel, El Topo, and "your grandparents naked with sexual toys and aids." NED LANNAMANN Hollywood Theatre.

Phoenix
It is just barely the end of WWII, and survivors are washing up from the camps, living proof of everything the German people want to pretend never happened. Among these is Nelly (Nina Hoss), a woman who was shot in the face and left for dead. Reconstructive surgery leaves her beautiful but unrecognizable, and she ferrets out the husband whose betrayal led to her arrest—not out of revenge so much as a stumbling, fugue-state of shock, unable to process that the life ripped away from her is irretrievable. His inability to recognize her reflects the mass denial that surrounds them, and the film becomes a tragic allegory for a nation at wits' end, filmed with a Hitchcockian moodiness that transcends the less believable moments in the plot. MARJORIE SKINNER Cinema 21.

Repressed Cinema
A monthly series "showing vintage and contemporary films that are obscure, neglected, and from the fringe." This month: A 16mm print of Andy Milligan's 1978 Legacy of Horror, with special guest Jimmy McDonough in attendance. Hollywood Theatre.

recommended Straight Outta Compton
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

recommended Tangerine
Good movies can sometimes give off a hum—a feeling that the energy and chemistry on screen can't be constrained by the edges of the frame. Tangerine fits this description and then some, creating a kinetic rush with enough spillover juice to light up LA for a year. ANDREW WRIGHT Cinema 21.

recommended They Live
He came in like a tartan-clad whirlwind from Manitoba. When he landed, Portland claimed Rowdy Roddy Piper for our own, and when he passed, we mourned. But Piper's Pit ain't the place for prolonged sadness, and Roddy woulda preferred you put on your finest pair of sunglasses and got your ass to the Mission to watch him kick ass and chew bubblegum all up and down John Carpenter's last bonafide classic, the paranoid left-wing sci-fi satire They Live. BOBBY ROBERTS Mission Theater.

recommended Tom at the Farm
I was told that Xavier Dolan's Tom at the Farm was a-pretty-blond-man-running-through-cornfields-while-looking-upset kind of film and I was like YES ONE PLEASE but then it turned out to be slice-of-life cinema without the typical slow, narcissistic lulls. In Dolan's film, it's never pretty just to be pretty, and the cornfields are sharp as knives. The subject matter and performances are dark but human, seeking not to break the audience but to explain a very real experience. If you've survived physical abuse and manipulation, Tom at the Farm might creep you out—but my reaction was, "Finally, someone got it right." SUZETTE SMITH Living Room Theaters.

Top Down: Rooftop Cinema
The NW Film Center's rooftop screening series, held on top of the Hotel deLuxe's parking garage. Screening Thurs Aug 13 is Rock 'n' Roll High School; screening Thurs Aug 20 is Strangers on a Train. More at nwfilm.org. Hotel deLuxe.

The Tribe
See review this issue. Hollywood Theatre.


recommended MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. Theater locations are accurate Friday, August 14-Thursday, August 20, unless otherwise noted. Movie times are updated daily and are available here.