Now Playing
Many Sinister Soups.
Pick of the Week:
A Dry White Season (1989). Directed by Euzhan Palcy. Starring Donald Sutherland, Janet Suzman, Jürgen Prochnow.
Playing at the Clinton on Feb. 21st. A classic with an all-star cast (Marlon Brando was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role) about apartheid in South Africa in the 70s. Rita Kempley wrote: “A Dry White Season is political cinema so deeply felt it attains a moral grace. A bitter medicine, a painful reminder, it grieves for South Africa as it recounts the atrocities of apartheid. Yes, it is a story already told on a grander scale, but never with such fervor.”
Also Playing:
Black Tea. (2024). Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. Starring Nina Mélo, Chang Han, Wu Ke-xi.
Playing at the Hollywood from The Cascade Festival of African Films on Feb. 20th. “Aya flees her wedding in Ivory Coast and reinvents herself in Guangzhou, China, where she falls in love with Cai, a middle-aged tea shop owner.”
This Week:
Malcom X plays at both the Hollywood and the Academy. It’s in 70mm at the Hollywood. It’s a movie that’s got some great acting but has divided critics. bell hooks wrote: “(the) film does not compel viewers to confront, challenge, and change. It embraces and rewards passive response – inaction. It encourages us to weep, but not to fight.”
At the 5th Ave: La Ciénaga returns this weekend. It “follows two families during one hot Argentinian summer vacation in a run-down, rural country house. This story doesn’t rely on a concrete plot, but rather is a series of events where no scene of the movie is more important than the other.”
At the Academy:
Famous noir In a Lonely Place opens for a run. This is an odd duck as it’s been playing a lot in Portland over the last two years and is an adaptation of a famous feminist noir novel. The book is from the point of view of a killer, and women take him down. The movie doesn’t have the guts that the book had but it’s got a very good Bogart performance and is a good movie.
Out of the Blue opens for a run. A somewhat forgotten 80s drama that showed an “accomplished dissection of fractured redneck family life.” The Hollywood Theater helped lead the charge for a revival of this a few years ago.
The Cascade Festival of African Films continues. Check out the screenings here. It’s one of the biggest foreign film festivals left in Portland!
At Cinemagic:
Solaris plays on Feb. 22nd and 26th. It’s Andrei Tarkovsky’s most famous movie and is considered one of the greatest sci-fi films of the 20th century. As our pal Ebert said, “No director makes greater demands on our patience. Yet his admirers are passionate and they have reason for their feelings: Tarkovsky consciously tried to create art that was great and deep. He held to a romantic view of the individual able to transform reality through his own spiritual and philosophical strength."
At Cinema 21:
Cleo From 5 - 7 plays on Feb. 21st. One of Agnès Varda’s best movies and a great entry point into her work and French New Wave. It’s about a woman waiting to hear back about her biopsy results. It’s anxious and wonderful.
At the Clinton:
Rescued Hearts plays on Feb. 21st. “Presented by On Golden Rescue, this powerful new documentary uncovers the miracles, mystery, and science of healing with horses.”
Martys of Love plays on Feb. 25th from Church of Film. “Three surrealist reveries exploring love and desire, all told in”dream realism” by Jan Němec and Ester Krumbachová. As our characters float through a fluid series of dreamy scenarios, their strange and amorous encounters bring them to the brink of anarchy.” Czech New Wave returns!
Check out Church of Film’s social media. I was at last Wednesday’s screening and there is something on Feb. 23rd at Dreamhouse Bar but I can’t remember what it was because I am unprofessional.
To Catch a Fascist plays on Feb. 26th. “The Oregon Justice Resource Center is bringing Christopher Mathias to Portland for an evening in conversation with local journalist and author Leah Sottile (Blazing Eye Sees All; When the Moon Turns to Blood.) Join us to learn more about how anti-fascists unmask hate at great personal risk and what we can learn at a time of rising authoritarianism about how to confront and confound fascism in our communities and our government. Signed copies of To Catch a Fascist will be on sale at the event courtesy of our partners Broadway Books.”
Film School is a screening series at Jojo PDX (I think they make the best fried chicken sandwich in town, but you will need a very long nap after eating it). They are playing Bringing up Baby on Feb. 23rd, which is a great screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn about some weirdos and a leopard named baby. Hey! This is THIS WEEK.
From Below is a microcinema with neat showings. Follow them on social media and request to get on the mailing list. Or don’t. It’s none of my business what you do. They played Altman’s Brewster McCloud last week, which is a deranged movie and one of Altman’s…oh…Altmanest movies?
At the Hollywood:
Grindhouse Film Festival returns with Bad Lieutenant on Feb. 24th for Abel Ferrara's, uh, naughtiness.
The Sun Ra Arkestra plays the Hollywood this week. Buy tickets before it sells out!
At OMSI:
The yearly Studio Ghibli festival continues! What do we have this week? Kiki’s Delivery Service, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Only Yesterday, Tales from Earthsea, Porco Rosso, Ponyo, Spirited Away, The Boy and the Heron, The Tales of The Princess Kaguya. These are many last screenings and much is sold out as the festival winds down.
Word Virus Books is playing The Flower Thief on Feb. 22nd. It’s an underground Ron Rice film from the late 50s about, and starring, a bunch of Beat Poets. Some foundational underground American filmmaking.
At the Tomorrow Theater (the Hub for Cultural Snackers):
Mubi, who has recently come under fire for taking Sequoia Capital investment money, has been partnering with the Tomorrow Theater and they are doing another screening in October. Sequoia has ties to the Israeli army. Mubi has released a bunch of mealy mouthed statements. Filmmakers are urging Mubi to cut ties. If the Los Angeles Festival of Movies can cut ties with Mubi so can PAM. You can contact the Tomorrow Theater here through this link and let them know that they should’t partner with organizations like this.
Again, if the Tomorrow Theater working with a company that has direct ties to the Israeli military bothers you please let them know.
Please do not let the bastards win. Let them know you care about genocide.
We’re not talking chump change for the Sequoia investment: $100 million.
There was a good article about Mubi in Vulture recently behind their paywall.
If we can get them to divest from Mubi I will never make fun of PAM or the Tomorrow Theater ever again.
The tip jar is open if you are so inclined. We lost Frederick Wiseman, Robert Duvall, and Tom Noonan this week. Go watch your favorite of theirs or at the very least Titicut Follies, geeze…To Kill a Mockingbird?, The Godfather?, and of course Manhunter.