Now Playing
The Mandalorian and Grogu and Ted and Alice
Pick of the Week:
Aoom (1970). Directed by Gonzalo Suárez. Starring Gonzalo Lex Barker, Teresa Gimpera, Julián Ugarte.
Playing on May 13th at the Clinton from Church of Film. “Aging actor Ristol goes into hiding among the rocky cliffs of Asturias to undertake a metaphysical experiment: transferring his consciousness into inanimate objects. For instance, a doll! His partner Ana has become worried and searches for him. And she’s right to be worried, as Ristol may well have succeeded without fulling understanding the consequences of his experiment! Aoom is a mind and gender bending psychedelic treasure by Gonzalo Suarez, one of the key figures of the rebel Barcelona School of filmmakers. Never truly released in Spain, it quickly disappeared, but now it can be seen again!” I mean, do you need a better reason to go see this?
Check out Church of Film for non Clinton Street Theater films.
Also Playing:
Orpheus (1950). Directed by Jean Cocteau. Starring Jean Marais, François Périer, María Casares.
Playing at the Clinton on May 12th as part of their surrealist programming—this is a foundational art house film that doesn’t play around here that much (look, The Thing ain’t going to play itself). It’s part of Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy, and a modern (well in 1950) take on the Orpheus myth. They all have really neat effects work in them.
This Week:
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly plays at Cinemagic on May 10th and 13th to complete the Dollars Trilogy where Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef search for gold during the Civil War and have sex with each other.
At 5th Ave: The Juniper Tree plays this weekend. The beloved Icelandic film starring Björk that’s a riff on the Brother’s Grimm story of the same name. It’s stark and bleak!
At the Academy:
Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut opens for a run. In this extended version of Apocalypse Now Cesar Catilina discovers Megalons in the jungles of Vietnam and sets out to build the city of the future.
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust opens for a run. This is the anime about a half human/half vampire vampire hunter who is served a cease and desist letter by Blade the vampire hunter, who premiered a little over ten years before this and is half human/half vampire. Some motherfuckers always try to ice skate up hill.
The fun 90s comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous opens for a run.
Boathouse Cinema: “Wed, May 13 – Praise Kink: South Sound Experimental Film Festival Honorable Mentions in Short Film and Experimental Cinema 2026.”
At Cinema 21:
Day and Nights in the Forrest, the Satyajit Ray restoration, ends its run this weekend.
The Bad and the Beautiful plays May 9th. The Vincente Minnelli Lana Turner vehicle about a terrible film producer. Oh Lana Turner we love you get up.
WTO/99 plays on the 13th and 14th—the famous documentary about the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle.
At Cinemagic:
Uncle Buck opens for a short run. John Candy is an unemployed shiftless guy who who smokes a lot, has a gambling addiction, and started a movie newsletter about films playing in the greater Chicagoland area and does nothing but complain because those aren’t the movies he would play. I’ve never seen Uncle Buck but that sounds like a great idea for a movie. Roger Ebert called it unusually bitter.
Only God Forbids opens for a short run. Another tough guy Refn movie about Americans running a Thai boxing establishment. Wackiness and violence ensue until Uncle Buck shows up to save the day.
Drive opens for a short run ending the Uncle Buck cinemagic universe with a film about a stunt driver and a famous heel-turn Albert Brooks performance.
At the Clinton:
Enemy plays on May 9th—a 2013 Denis Villeneuve film based on a novel by José Saramago. It’s a thriller about a guy who has a double, or maybe he doesn’t? I don’t know.
Bloody Birthday plays on May 11th. “Three children born on the same day, in the same hospital, during a solar eclipse go on a murder spree to celebrate the week of their 10th birthday.” Isn’t that a standard 10th birthday?
Film School: Bonnie and Clyde plays on May 26th!
From Below: On May 13th Gloria Mundi plays. “One of the most shocking and transgressive films of the 1970s, this incendiary political parable centers on Galai (the fearless Olga Karlatos), an actress starring as an Arab terrorist in a film about the Algerian War. In preparation for her role and under the influence of her militant director, Galai begins to inflict torture upon herself—blurring the boundaries between performance and reality as director Nico Papatakis provocatively interrogates questions of art, authenticity, and left-wing political hypocrisy.”
At the Hollywood:
Modern Romance plays on May 8th with Jon Wurster introducing the film and doing a Q&A. It has been a long time since I’ve seen this one—from what I remember it’s about being a mess and being in love? Stanley Kubrick called Brooks after he saw it and said, “How did you make this movie? I've always wanted to make a movie about jealousy.”
Here’s looking at you, Uncle Buck. Casablanca returns for a run.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory plays this weekend. Uncle Buck is drinking the chocolate river again.
Mother’s Day plays on Mother’s Day with Charles Kaufman in attendance. This is a very nasty horror-comedy movie that has too much rape in it for me. I want to issue a challenge: Hollywood Theater play a movie without rape in it for a month. The clock starts now.
Miles Ahead plays on May 13th. Jazz famously has no borders, or boundaries. Wait. Doctors Without Borders. Jazz Without Boundaries. Anyway, this is Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis passion project. Uncle Buck will be in the back smoking Jazz cigarettes with a Miles Davis impersonator.
3 Faces plays on May 14th. Jafar Panahi’s film about an actress looking for a young girl trying to escape her conservative family.
The Portland EcoFilm Festival winners play May 14th—To the West, In Zapata and Like Friend, Like Deer. Uncle Buck did not watch this but loves winners.
Dame Darcy Experimental Shorts and Animation plays on May 14th. A neat program: “Alternative artist, cartoonist & filmmaker Dame Darcy in attendance! An evening of rollicking Victorian goth-girl surreal shorts & animation, which originally aired on the '90s NY public access freakshow "Turn of the Century". Featuring a live pre-show music set by Stabulous, featuring Dame Darcy and The Enchantress!”
Hausu plays again on May 14th. It’s, of course, the oddball Japanese haunted house movie that plays all the time. Uncle Buck doesn’t think it needs to play year round because you can’t appreciate something if it doesn’t go away.
At Joy: Weird Wednesday—is it back? Probably. I don’t know. Keep checking.
At the Kiggins:
The fun musical Annie Get Your Gun opens for a run.
NW Doc: has started a new screening series. Check out their Instagram for updates.
OMSI:
Their annual Sci-fi festival is back. For this week:
Movies that play fairly often: Total Recall, 12 Monkeys, Back to the Future, Edge of Tomorrow, Blade Runner (Final Cut), Blade Runner (Uncle Buck Cut), Blade Runner 2049, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Fifth Element
Movies that do not play fairly often: None.
What I would play this week:
eXistenZ—an underrated, and gross, Cronenberg movie from 1999 about being trapped in a video game and body modification. I love that his idea of a game counsel is a weird bug that you need to connect to your spine via a body port. Is it a perfect movie? No, but it’s better than it has any right to be. You can stream it for free on Plex. It often gets left out of best of the 90s or 1999 festivals but it shouldn’t.
The Beast, the 2023 French arthouse sci-fi film from Bertrand Bonello about AI controlling the world and past lives. Such a great and surprising film. Streaming and rentable in the usual places. Starring Léa Seydoux! I’m pretty sure this was a Staff Pick at some point.
Outer Space Micro Cinema: Woman at War is on May 12th. “In this time of rapid climate collapse, protests and actions that remain on the symbolic level are sort of just shouts into the void. We should have long-ago learned that politicians and companies are not going to save us (nor were they ever) which means that it’s up to people to take actions that materially change the conditions of our oppression and stop the destruction of our lives and world. Enter Halla, the middle-aged, unmarried protagonist of Woman at War who dreams of adopting a child from a war zone in Ukraine. She recognizes the urgency of our futures at stake and engages in struggle to destroy that which is destroying life and the earth.”
Spectrum Between: May 19th at the Clinton Flaming Creatures on 16mm! “Spectrum Between presents Jack Smith’s notorious 1963 film Flaming Creatures on 16mm. Now recognized as an aesthetic and historical landmark in the traditions of American avant-garde film and radical queer art practice, Smith’s film was greeted largely with revulsion by critics and intellectuals when it first screened in New York City. It was championed by a small but influential crowd of underground artists, and quickly became a major censorship battleground. Attempted screenings lead to police raids, free speech protests, and eventually the arrests and convictions of Jonas Mekas, Ken and Flo Jacobs, and Jerry Tartaglia on obscenity grounds.
A significant influence on Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes On Camp,” she wrote: “The only thing to be regretted about the close-ups of limp penises and bouncing breasts, the shots of masturbation and oral sexuality, in Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures is that it makes it hard simply to talk about this remarkable and beautiful film, one has to defend it.””
Word Virus Books: I don’t see any films now, but that often changes.
At the Tomorrow Theater (the Hub for Cultural Snackers)—please bug them if you haven’t. Keep bugging them if you have.
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.
The tip jar is open if you would like to support this thing. Uncle Buck would. All proceeds go to my fund to purchase more fiber.