Now Playing
The Most Spectacular Ending Anyone Could Have
Pick of the Week:
Blast of Silence (1961). Directed by Allen Baron. Starring Allen Baron, Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker.
This plays at the Hollywood on Dec. 7th and 8th. A hitman working in Cleveland returns to his hometown of New York City, AKA The Wormy Apple, to kill a mobster around Christmas time. Is this a Christmas movie? Not really, it’s a movie that takes place around Christmas but it is an excellent film noir. It’s got a second person voice over and was a previous staff pick I wrote about here. This movie is great and you should go see it.
Also Playing:
Carol (2015). Directed by Todd Haynes. Starring Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson.
Carol plays at the Hollywood on Dec. 9th. I think Carol and Gremlins are the only Christmas movies I look forward to each year. Here Cate Blanchett wears fabulous outfits and seduces a lonely shop girl played by Rooney Mara. What more do you want? A sequel starring the lady gremlin from Gremlins Two?! Hmm….Carol Too Hot to Handle?
This Week:
At 5th Avenue Cinema: First Cow plays this weekend. Look, anytime this movie, or any Kelly Reichardt plays I have to feature it. It’s in the WatchThisPDX charter. I also think this is a really good one! It’s about friendship, immigration, and the evils of capitalism.
At Cinemagic: A Very Cinemagic Christmas plays this week so it’s most of your Christmas comfort movies like: Die Hard, Tokyo Godfathers, Home Alone, Gremlins, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Tokyo Godfathers and Gremlins (love those little guys) are the highlights for me.
At the Clinton:
Repo: The Genetic Opera plays on Dec. 6th with the Rocky Horror Lavender Show folks. If you are a fan you should go to this!
The Psychotropic Christmas Special plays on Dec. 7th. Christmas themed 16mm oddities!
Black Orpheus comes to the Clinton on Dec. 7th. It’s the arthouse perennial that’s a retelling of the Orpheus myth. It’s been cited as a favorite from everyone from Obama to Bong Joon-ho and WatchthisPDX. It’s also been criticized in it’s stereotypical depiction of Brazil so it helps to watch with a bit of context. It is spectacular.
Do you like to laugh? I don’t but if you do The Portland Comedy Film Festival plays on Dec. 8th.
Miller’s Crossing plays on Dec. 10th. One of the more understated Coen Brother movies and one of their best. A quiet and moody crime drama.
The Cat’s Mill plays on Dec. 11th from Church of Film. This is an awesome looking Latvian animated film about a cat who makes a deal with the devil to pay for his daughters’ marriages. Don’t expect anything good to happen to the cat. There will be shorts before the screening! Go see this!
Project A-Ko plays on Dec. 12th with a live score from Yawa!
At the Hollywood this week:
Gone Girl plays on Dec. 6th. It’s the David Fincher movie about a woman who goes missing.
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found plays this weekend. It’s Raoul Peck’s new documentary about: “South African photographer Ernest Cole who was the first to expose the horrors of apartheid with the publication of his 1967 photo book House of Bondage." Raoul Peck is a big name in the documentary world and a new film from him is a treat. Go watch I Am Not Your Negro (about James Baldwin) if you have never seen it.
The Holiday plays on Dec. 7th. It’s a late period Nancy Meyers movie, so make of that what you will. It’s about house swapping and maybe having sex with Jack Black? I can’t remember.
Curse of the Weredeer plays on Dec. 7th. This is a Troma movie so if that excites you you have already bought a ticket! I guess Toxie will be there to sign autographs?!
First of the North Star plays on Dec. 8th. It’s about a guy who punches people in a post-apocalyptic environment so take notes because this is what 2026 could very well look like.
It’s an EXTREMELY RARE PRINT ALERT as Eastern Condors plays on Dec. 10th. This movie sounds dope as hell—a Kung-fu dirty dozen?! Now, it is an EXTREMELY RARE PRINT ALERT so there will be some paperwork, NDAs and probably some blood tests to take before you are allowed in. I’m not sure what the EXTREMELY RARE PRINT ALERT protocols are—they can only be opened two days before the screening. I think the president might be there? They have to be for the EXTREMELY RARE PRINT ALERT. Uh oh. I broke the rule of three for jokes. Perhaps the earth is swallowing me whole right now for my hubris.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation plays on Dec. 12th. One of a thousand chances to catch this this week! I don’t know man. This is a movie you watch on basic cable when you’re a little hungover and it’s 2004.
At the Kiggins Theater this week:
The Muppet Christmas Carol opens for a short run. Now, I’m not going to say anything disparaging about the muppets but I think they are a bunch of perverts. That being said, here is a childhood favorite of yours!
Sugarland Express plays on Dec. 8th. This is Spielberg’s (who?!) theatrical debut that my personal friend and spirit guide Pauline Kael said, “In terms of the pleasure that technical assurance gives an audience, this is one of the most phenomenal début films in the history of movies.” It’s got lots of car chases and Goldie Hawn!
The Third Man plays on Dec. 9th. You know this—it’s the noir classic starring personal friend Orson Welles. It’s a beautiful looking murder mystery that you need to see in a theater if you never have.
At the Laurelhurst:
Praise be! Rep programming returns to the Laurelhurst with In Bruges this weekend—an excellent and very funny comedy about hitmen running around a medieval town in Belgium.
At the Liberty:
It’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation on Dec. 6th. Place your bets on how many times this movie shows up in the listing next week!
Real Life (1979). Directed by Albert Brooks. Starring Charles Grodin, Frances Lee McCain, J. A. Preston.
I love love love this movie. It had been somewhat hard to find until recently when Criterion restored it. If you are a millennial, first get up and do some stretches because you need it. Do your sun salutes, forward folds, downward dogs, etc. Second, you grew up with Albert Brooks around. Not only was he on The Simpsons all the time, but everyone who made those shows you liked watched his movies. He occupied a similar space as Steve Martin only Steve was about having a nice silly time together while Albert played arrogant con artists who got their comeuppance.
Albert Brooks plays Albert Brooks here who is making a documentary about a family ala PBS’s An American Family—one of the first American reality TV shows that followed a family around to see what would happen when they when they stop acting polite and start acting real.
Albert Brooks, the character, is a comedian of some notoriety who is trying to cash in on this trend with his own documentary. He assures you that the entire thing is real and unscripted. He spend the entire film meddling and making everything worse. The scientists he’s hired to monitor the experiment have great disdain for him, the family is miserable, and when it all finally comes crashing down Albert sets the house on fire.
There is nothing funnier to me than watching an arrogant person say nothing could go wrong and then watching everything go wrong.
Charles Grodin, as always, remains the perfect straight man. And he kills a horse in this!
*cough*
Streaming and rentable in the usual places and FOR FREE on Pluto TV.
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