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Pick of the Week:
The Story of the Fox (1930). Directed by Ladislas Starevich, Irène Starevich. Starring Claude Dauphin, Romain Bouquet, Laine.
Playing at the Clinton on Nov. 12th from Church of Film. This is some amazing looking stop-motion animation that took ten years to make, and you all respect craft, right? “Based on the fable by Goethe, in which the animal kingdom, ruled by King Lion and his lascivious Queen, struggles to contain the mischievous Renard the Fox, whose malicious pranks are taking their toll.” The Mascot will also be screened.
Also Playing:
The Thin Man (1934). Directed by W. S. Van Dyke. Starring William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Sullivan.
Nick and Nora are wealthy, witty, drink like fishes and solve mysteries. It’s the lives we all want. Our pal Ebert said that Powell “is to dialogue as Fred Astaire is to dance. His delivery is so droll and insinuating, so knowing and innocent at the same time, that it hardly matters what he’s saying. He would have made a good Batman.” It also spawned the number of sequels that typically only horror movies get. Hmm. Nick and Nora go to Crystal Lake? IdeaCopyrightWatchThisPDX2025. Oh, playing at Cinema 21 on Nov. 8th.
This Week:
At the Fifth Ave: Black Mother plays this weekend. It’s a beautiful poetic tribute to Jamaica. “Black Mother unfolds with the cadence of verse, dense and incantatory, guiding the viewer through Jamaica’s history and present. With a rhythm that is both chaotic and precise, director Khalik Allah sets images against voices that only sometimes align, so what we hear and what we see remain in deliberate flux. Street portraits, home movies, fragments of landscape, a pregnancy divided into trimesters; all fragments that carry memory, religion, pride, and grief.”
At the 99W Drive In: Back to the Future and those awful kids from The Breakfast Club play. I would have expelled them.
At the Academy:
They are playing Chinatown this week. It is a bit unfair of me to single out the Academy out for playing this movie when Cinema 21 and The Hollywood have played it this year but I am tired of the terrible world we live in. I think it’s gross to play this and make money off of it no matter how good it is. If you must watch it please pirate it. If you want to watch a neo-noir pick one directed by someone who has not been convicted of a terrible crime. One of my favorite’s is Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky. If you really want to watch a movie about systemic corruption in California you can just watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit? As far as I know Robert Zemeckis is guilty of no crimes, although he did direct The Polar Express.
Purple Rain opens for a run.
Moonrise Kingdom opens for a run.
At Cinema 21:
The Terminator plays this weekend. At least James Cameron’s AI murder machines were cool.
Out There: A National Parks Story plays on Nov. 11th. “A young filmmaker sets out on a 10,000-mile exploration of the U.S. national parks with his childhood friend.”
At Cinemagic:
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist plays on Nov. 7th if you missed it last week.
The Deer Hunter plays on Nov. 9th if you missed it last week.
Park Chan-wook’s excellent Vengeance Trilogy plays this week with:
Lady Vengeance, Oldboy, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. I hear there is a new one in the works called I Now Pronounce You Vengeance: The Wedding of Lady Vengeance and Mr. Vengeance.
At the Clinton:
Tiger and Remaining Native play on Nov. 7th. “TIGER directed by Loren Waters, highlights an Indigenous award-winning, internationally acclaimed artist and elder, Dana Tiger, her family, and the resurgence of the iconic Tiger t-shirt company. REMAINING NATIVE, directed by Paige Bethmann, is a coming-of-age documentary told from the perspective of Ku Stevens, a 17-year-old Native American runner, struggling to navigate his dream of becoming a collegiate athlete as the memory of his great-grandfather’s escape from an Indian boarding school begins to connect past, present, and future.”
Dance Freak plays on Nov. 8th. “A dangerous experiment goes awry resulting in a Dance Freak running wild.” Both Connor O’Malley and Sarah Sherman are in this so I will bet you the price of a movie ticket that it’s a real gut-busting good time.
Classroom 4 plays on Nov. 9th. “Classroom 4 follows a course taught inside a prison, involving students from a nearby college and incarcerated students, about the history of crime and punishment in the US.”
Another film screening/fundraising for the Snowday’s Foundation plays on Nov. 11th.
Revolutions Per Movie and Kevin McDonald are still coming on Dec. 12th! Get your tickets before I buy all of them and try to resell them outside the theater.
At the Hollywood:
Snootchie bootchies, movie pals. It’s Mallrats playing on Nov. 7th. Yes, it’s Kevin Smith’s second movie, and not a very good one, but it has Stan Lee wandering around a mall so we can all feel young again and that anything is possible. I couldn’t see the sailboat either, Willam.
Wolfwalkers plays this weekend. This is a neat looking Irish family film. I try not to cover family films because I hate families but this one seemed like a good one.
Brazil plays on Nov. 8th. This is a great movie about living in an absurdist, totalitarian culture. The director, unfortunately, is a whiny old man who complains about woke culture. Thanks Terry!
The Burning Moon plays on Nov. 8th and is a low-budget horror movie.
Gurren Lagann The Movie plays on Nov 9th. These are two movies, actually, and edited versions of an anime. Hmm. You know, I think I would do well as a mech pilot. I really do.
Hancock Park plays on Nov. 9th. “Ruby Lewis, an aged-out actress on the verge of homelessness, goes to stay with her baby sister and out-of-work stuntman husband in Hancock Park.”
A Better Tomorrow plays on Nov. 10th. It’s a John Woo crime drama restored for the big screen. It’s going to be fun and over the top.
Kung fu Theater returns on Nov. 11th with Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow. Jackie Chan, a guy who looks like Jesus, and a GREAT soundtrack. This is an especially fun one.
The Portland Latin American Film Festival continues with We Shall Not be Moved on Nov. 12th. “Socorro, an elderly lawyer, receives a clue that might lead to justice for her brother’s death during the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.”
Ex-Lady plays on Nov. 13th. A Pre-Code Bette Davis movie about a mouthy society woman who doesn’t believe in marriage and sleeps around? These Pre-Code movies are great and they don’t play enough!
At the Joyland: the site is not updated as of this writing, Nov. 5, 1955 but hopefully it will be by the time this sends, Nov. 5, 2099.
At the Kiggins:
Is heavily investing in Back to the Future futures this week by playing Back to the Future, Back to the Future Two, and Back to the Future Three.
What’s that smell? Success! The Sweet Smell of Success plays on Nov. 10th, which is great and you should see that unless you haven’t showered from watching all those Back to the Future movies and you stink of nostalgia.
At the Liberty: Chicken Run opens for a run. This is a fun kids movie, and some great animation, but can we just edit Mel Gibson out of this? I’m available to play the man chicken. They call me the man of several voices.
At Omsi:
All my life I’ve always wanted to see Goodfellas at OMSI, it’s Goodfellas this week.
Raging Bull also plays, which is one of Marty’s best.
Get Out plays later this month as part of their dinner and a movie package with food inspired from the film. Have they seen Get Out? Like, this is an odd movie to do this with?
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.
I did. I’ll let you know if they write back. It’s been three weeks and I don’t expect them to. Thank you to anyone who has emailed them. I ask that you keep doing it.
I still haven’t heard from them so please keep emailing. We’ve got to demand better.
Woke scold WatchThisPDX strikes again!
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025). Directed by Mary Bronstein. Starring Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky.
This is a new A24 release and it is only playing at Regal now in Portland (it was at Cinemark last week). Say what you will about A24 but they will distribute the shit out of your movie. When I bought my popcorn (and a cherry Dr. Pepper, brag much!?) the guy at the counter asked me what I was seeing and we both said it was odd that this movie was playing at a chain theater. I guess between all of your Frankensteins, Roman Polanski movies, and making sure every theater is playing Halloween on Halloween there wasn’t much space for movies about women falling apart.
Mary Bronstein has directed one other movie, Yeast—which I wrote about here. Here she has made another wonderful and unpleasant movie that can only be described as a walking panic attack of female rage. Rose Byrne’s husband is off to sea (he’s a captain of a cruise ship) leaving her along to deal with a huge hole in her apartment, living in a motel room, getting her daughter off of her feeding tube, and her therapist is Conan O’Brien (who is also doing amazing work). This movie is full of wonderful performances, is very hard to watch, and there is an amazing cut from something terrible happening to a gerbil to Byrne eating lasagna. It has been billed as a sort of lady version of Uncut Gems and that’s a good jumping off point but not really what it’s about. This is a movie about getting into the head of someone who wasn’t cut out for the life they have and no one is listening to her when she tells them this.
There’s a wonderful current of surrealism that ties everything together from the camera avoiding certain faces, dreams leaking into real life, rodents and lasagna—creating a sense of reality breaking down reflecting what’s going on in Rose Byrne’s head.
It’s still playing at the Fox Tower Regal. My official review is that this is a five bags of popcorn movie and one brick of cocaine as a bonus.
The tip jar is open if you are so inclined. Reporting for woke scold duty gang.
Woke is so back, we are so back.