Night’s falling early these days—you may as well spend even more time in the dark. This month’s second-run screenings are full of strange company, including alienated teenagers, sleepwalkers, milk truck drivers, and a documentarian with an eye for the dusty corners of American culture. Plus, a Sophie Calle documentary and Mary Ellen Bute’s midcentury abstractions give you some especially arty options.
Welcome to the Dollhouse
For fans of Jared Hess’ Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Freaks and Geeks, Judy Blume.
“Can I sit here?” says Dawn (Heather Matarazzo), eyeing a vacant seat in her school’s cafeteria. It’s the first line in Welcome to the Dollhouse, and it encapsulates the film’s adolescent vulnerability. Todd Solondz’ 1995 black comedy has a vicious streak—trigger warnings for scenes of cruel bullying and a threat of sexual violence—but the film’s brutal, unvarnished point of view also helped launch the director’s career. If you’re a fan of Happiness or Life During Wartime, it’s worth seeing where his misanthropic sensibility began to take shape: in the dingy classrooms of the New Jersey suburbs.
Matarazzo is at her most obviously loveable as a tween outcast forced to live the indignities of adolescence, nursing crushes and trying desperately to be seen. Dawn stares longingly at a high school boy, Steve (Eric Mabius), as he wolfs down fish sticks and Hawaiian Punch, smacking his fingers. Her enormous feelings and clumsy self-consciousness will resonate with damn near anyone who survived their tween years. (Academy Theater, Nov 6-12, showtimes vary, $6.50-$9.50, academytheaterpdx.com, R)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 16 mm
For fans of David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), Frankenstein’s monster.
Jagged angles, painted shadows, wildly distorted perspectives: Robert Weine’s masterwork The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) is German Expressionism at its most nightmarish and gorgeous. Interspersed with block letter intertitles that reveal the story in anxious bursts, the film takes on a dreamy, hypnotic otherworldliness with this 16 mm projection. Its story follows a mysterious fairground doctor and the unfortunate sleepwalker at his command. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a fever dream of early cinema; its creepy, sepia-toned paranoia helped establish the visual language of the horror film genre, influencing directors like David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and Tim Burton.
Screened by Astral Projections as part of Clinton Street Theater’s Weimar Germany: Queer Visions series, the theater promises “the best synchronized score ever discovered,” with unearthly vinyl tones that “transform Caligari into a science fiction experience unlike any other.” (Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton, Fri Nov 6, 7 pm, $10, cstpdx.com, not rated)
Take Care of My Cat
For fans of Celine Song’s Past Lives (2023), Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart (2019), Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001).
Jeong Jae-eun’s 2001 sleeper hit Take Care of My Cat ticks all the boxes for a perfect film: female friendship, delicious Korean cuisine, and a cat as a central character. The film follows a group of five friends whose bonds begin to break after their high school graduation, due to jealousy and unequal opportunities based on class privilege. The film is both an ode to complex female friendships, the awkward transition from childhood to adulthood, and the effects of South Korea’s globalization efforts. (5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall, Nov 20-22, $7, free for PSU students, faculty, and alumni, 5thavecinema.com, not rated) AUDREY VANN
Les Blank Celebration
For fans of D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop (1968), Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), John Wilson’s The History of Concrete (2026).
Documentarian Les Blank possessed a wild gift for capturing American culture with warmth, intimacy, and a freewheeling cinéma vérité style. His films feel totally alive—blunt and improvised, but still insightful, and never careless. They’re full of eccentric characters, jangly song, and crowd movement.
Hollywood Theatre celebrates the director’s impact each year, and their 13th annual event includes a live Q&A session with Blank’s son, Harrod Blank. The program includes screenings of a few films you likely haven’t caught yet: Polish American polka romp In Heaven There is No Beer? (1984), Blank’s unfinished six-minute documentary Motorcycle Moment (1964), and Harrod’s short doc Salvation Mountain: Leonard Knight (2025), based on the life of the California desert artist. (Hollywood Theatre, Sun Nov 29, 6 pm,$12, $10 for students, seniors, and members, hollywoodtheatre.org, not rated)
Also worth it:
No Sex Last Night: Sophie Calle Night x Nationale
Contemporary gallery Nationale presents No Sex Last Night, French writer-artist Sophie Calle’s diaristic camcorder documentary tracking a cross-country road trip and the slow unraveling of her relationship. (Tomorrow Theater, Nov 12, tomorrowtheater.org)
Tampopo
Juzo Itami’s ramen western follows a band of milk truck drivers whose pit stop at a roadside noodle shop turns into a quest for the perfect noodle recipe. Tampopo’s digressive side stories don’t always connect to the main plot, but illustrate the film’s underlying fascination with food. (Tomorrow Theater, Nov 15, tomorrowtheater.org)
Visual Music by Mary Ellen Bute: 10 Films in 16mm
Film animation pioneer Mary Ellen Bute’s midcentury shorts bring sprightly abstraction to the screen, pairing form and color with compositions by Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Shostakovich. (Hollywood Theatre, Nov 19, hollywoodtheatre.org)
Strangers on a Train
Hitchcock’s 1951 film is especially literary—it was adapted by noir writer Raymond Chandler from Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel. A murder-swapping, cat-and-mouse plot also makes Strangers on a Train one of the director’s most morally unsettling works. (Academy Theater, Nov 27-Dec 3, academytheaterpdx.com)
