Pick of the Week:
Audition (1999) Directed by Takashi Miike. Starring Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina.
Playing at the Clinton on Sept. 13th. I am not a horror guy but it’s Friday the 13th and I want to thank Portland theaters for not playing a Friday the 13th movie. Thank you.
This movie marks a turning point for horror films as they transitioned away from slashers and meta-slashers into torture based fare. Miike has directed over a hundred movies and it was either this or Visitor Q I saw first. This movie is unforgettable. It’s about a guy auditioning women for new romantic partners. Things don’t go too well.
Also Playing:
Paris, Texas (1984). Direct by Wim Wenders. Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell.
Opening for a run at Cinema 21 with a new restoration. This has been a top pick before and it’s hard to not pick again. It’s about a man searching for his family and is absolutely beautiful. It’s the ultimate American road trip movie. Our pal Ebert said, “This isn’t a movie about missing persons, but about missing feelings. The images in the film show people framed by the vast, impersonal forms of modern architecture; the cities seem as empty as the desert did in the opening sequence.”
This Week:
Le Samourai plays at the Hollywood on Sept. 14th. This restoration had a brief run at Cinema 21 and now comes to the east side for…a night. Go see this! It’s Melville’s classic crime drama starring Alain Delon about a hitman. European arthouse classics don’t get lengthy runs in town so it will be a while until this plays again.
5th Avenue Cinema: is off until the fall!
At the Academy this week:
Assault on Precinct 13 opens for a run. The John Carpenter classic about criminals and cops teaming up to fight a gang.
Cure opens for a run. It’s a fantastic horror movie about a detective trying to solve murders.
At Cinemagic:
Ninja Scroll plays 15th. It’s about ninjas and demons and a mysterious stranger.
Directorial Debuts continue with:
Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead Do America on the 13th, 15th, and 17th. The unthinkable happens when someone steals the boy’s TV, which sets off an epic quest. Beavis and Butthead were so popular in the 90s that Bruce Willis and Demi Moore were in this! I still think this is really funny but anyone under 35 might not? I don’t know. This scene with Cloris Leachman was uh, repeated a lot in grade school, middle school, high school, my divorce hearings…
The Coen’s Blood Simple plays on the 13th, 14th, and 16th. This is another great one that plays here fairly often. The Coens were fully-formed with their first film. Go see if this if it’s been a while or you’ve never caught it.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight plays on the 14th, 15th, and 17th. I’ve never seen this! I’ve loved most of PTA’s movies and this has a spectacular 90s cast.
Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges plays on the 14th and 16th. I’ve seen a bunch of McDonagh’s plays and most of his movies (I avoided Three Billboards… because it seemed dreadful)—he marries violence and humor in ways only an Irishman could. If you liked this you should watch The Banshees of Inisherin which also stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson and is very good.
At Cinema 21 this week:
Harold and Maude continue their reign of terror this week.
Kubrick’s Paths of Glory plays on Sept. 14th. It’s the classic WW I movie starring Kirk Douglas. Guess what? Kubrick was a good director! He made that moon landing look real.
At the Clinton this week:
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 plays at the Clinton Sept. 13th. The, uh, grind house women in prison classic that one reviewer said, “bombards the viewer with outrageously brutal images, including the aftermath of a rather creative castration; lyrical images such as leaves turning from brown-orange to gray for one death scene and a waterfall turning red for another; and Kabuki-like fantasy sequences that are interspersed between the action." Sounds like a normal day to me.
The Portland 48 Hour Film Project plays Sept. 14th at 3 PM, 7 PM, and Sept. 15th. Movies made in 48 hours! It takes me all week to write this newsletter.
The Nyback Showdown returns on Sept. 17th. What rarities and delights will be shown on 16MM?
Church of Film brings us Iranian animation on Sept. 18th. “Including the work of animation geniuses Noureddin Zarrinkelk and Ali Akbar Sadeghi, with classics like Amir Hamzeh & the Dancing Zebra (1977) and the Flower Storm (1972), and much, much more!” The trailer looks beautiful! I’ll be there.
And, this is none of my business but New Moon plays on Sept. 19th.
At the Hollywood this week:
Roadie plays on Sept. 13th in which Meatloaf is a roadie for Hank Williams Jr. He falls in love with a fellow roadie named Lola Bouillabaisse which is one of the great movie character names.
Saw plays on Sept. 14th. I have avoided the Saw movies my entire life because they seem very unpleasant but I enjoy reading the weird convoluted timeline of these.
POWGirls plays on Sept. 14th. “POWGirls offers workshops in video production, cinematography, audio recording, set lighting, digital editing and media literacy for girls and non-binary youth ages 15-19.” This is their 10th anniversary screening and they are playing a bunch of shorts!
Troop Beverly Hills plays on Sept. 15th. It’s the lazy Sunday afternoon movie classic about Shelley Long working through her divorce and leading a bunch of rag-tag girl scouts (I mean Wilderness Troops) to victory. It’s delightful and a benefit for Stone Soup PDX who “empowers people experiencing barriers to employment to achieve self-reliance through training for careers in the foodservice industry.”
Jiro Dreams of Sushi plays on Sept. 15th. It’s the documentary about an old man forced to make sushi until he dies and has complicated relationships with his sons. Jiro is 98 and just stepped away from making sushi last year.
The Joy Luck Club plays on Sept. 16th. It’s Amy Tan’s classic from the 90s about a multi-generational Chinese-American family. There will be laughter, tears, and Ming-Na Wen from ER!
RRR plays on Sept. 17th. It’s their monthly screening of the classic from India that is a true spectacle.
Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision plays on Sept. 17th. “The critically acclaimed, full-length documentary Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, chronicles the creation of the studio, rising from the rubble of a bankrupt Manhattan nightclub to state-of-the-art recording facility inspired by Hendrix’s desire for a permanent studio.”
The Towering Inferno plays on Sept. 18th. An all star cast of 70s Hollywood actors must escape an inferno in a tower. Why, everyone from Fred Astaire to uh OJ Simpson are in it.
At the Tomorrow Theater:
Barbarella plays on the 13th (TONIGHT!!) with Bingo from Violet Hex. A very fun cheesy Sci-fi movie that was important to people all over the Kinsey Scale. Plus Violet Hex is delightful! Starring Jane Fonda!
The Big Lebowski (Sept. 14th) and Clueless (Sept 14th) are two great 90s movies that play all the time here. You can check out the website if you want to avoid the ballroom dancing lessons or whatever beforehand. I would expect a movie theater with the backing of the Portland Art Museum to have some more adventurous programming. It’s a little embarrassing when every other theater is running rings around them. What’s the point of being a cultural institution and a nonprofit if you’re just going to play these for the 100th time?
Punch-Drunk Love (2002). Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Luis Guzmán.
I have a vague memory of seeing this in theaters. I was young and it was a buzzy film that showed that Adam Sandler had some range. This would have been my second year of college where I was trying to consume as much art, music, and movies as I could. I saw it with a friend who, it turns out, we both had romantic feelings for each other and neither made a move because we both had anxiety issues.
This is a fairy tale about anxiety. A mysterious object is dropped off on Barry’s (played by Sandler) doorstep, in this case a harmonium, that kicks off the story. The harmonium not only brings the events of the film but it brings music and color to his life. Music is the driving factor of the story. The soundtrack picks up when Barry becomes anxious and uncomfortable making everything feel more frantic.
There is a loose plot about using pudding barcodes to buy travel miles—it’s a scheme from Barry who doesn’t really know why he’s doing it but he has comfort in the act. As a kid I was a dedicated coupon clipper. If you clipped enough you could get baseball tickets, theme park ride fees, etc. Much like Barry, I felt like I was getting something over on a corporation who was too stupid to see a loophole because I was smart. Of course, I was the one spending all of my money buying shit. Don’t even get me started on the old M&Ms movies promos.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a guy who owns a mattress store and a phone sex line that he uses to blackmail callers with. Barry calls out of loneliness, just to have someone to talk to who won’t judge him. This is one of Hoffman’s funniest and shortest performances.
The scene where Barry breaks down crying to an extended family member is deeply funny, embarrassing, and relatable. He’s a guy who has no one to reach out to and the one person who he chooses immediately sells him out. There are no confidants here.
Barry has sevens sisters, which add to the fairy tale aspect of the story. Emma Watson is, of course, the knight in shining armor. If there is a flaw to the film it’s that she’s not a real character. We don’t know why she’s so captivated by Barry, or why she’s ready to accept him—it’s a kind of magic spell that lasts until the movie ends.
Punch-Drunk Love is streaming in the usual places.
The tip jar is open, if you are so inclined. Send me pudding.