Now Playing
I Heard That You Like Movies.
Pick of the Week:
No Other Land (2024). Directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor.
Playing at the Clinton on Nov. 29th. “For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight. No Other Land is an unflinching account of a community’s mass expulsion and acts as a creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice.
Screening presented by and benefiting Quaker Palestine Israel Network.”
This movie won an Oscar earlier this year and is something we cannot afford to look away from. Some of the filmmakers have since been killed. As one of the filmmakers said in an awards speech:
“It’s our first movie since many years. My community, my family has been filming our community being erased by this brutal occupation. I am here celebrating the award, but also very hard for me to celebrate when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza. Masafer Yatta, my community, is being also razed by Israeli bulldozers. I ask one thing: for Germany, as I am in Berlin here, to respect the U.N. calls and stop sending weapons to Israel.”
Also Playing:
Motion By Marie Menken: 8 films in 16mm.
Playing at the Hollywood on Dec. 4th, Experimental Exposure returns to save us from the holiday doldrums. Eight films are being screened!
“Guided by her perspective as a painter, Menken approached filmmaking initially as a new way to think about painting and the forms it could take. Her films are lively, intuitive, messy, and oftentimes mischievous–she embodied wholeheartedly the loving “amateur”. This program presents films which prioritize the process over the product and hold the beautiful elusiveness of chance as their north stars.
This Week:
At the Fifth Ave: Trust directed by Hal Hartley is playing this weekend. I have to confess that I haven’t liked any of Hal Hartley’s movies that I’ve seen, but the first one I watched was Henry Fool and between James Urbaniak throwing up and, uh, everything else in that movie I don’t know. I haven’t seen this one though! It’s a dark “romantic comedy” about weirdos on Long Island and has Edie Falco in it so it can’t be all that bad. A professor from PSU will be giving an intro to this.
At the 99W Drive In: two more Twilight movies sparkle into town this weekend.
At the Academy:
I’m going to make you an offer that you can’t confuse, The Godfather opens up for a run. Now, this isn’t as good as Megalopolis, but it’ll do. Look, The Godfather is great and you should all see it in a theater. Part II will be playing next week and you should go see that.
The Maltese Falcon opens for a run. You know, I have a statue of a bird and no one is bothering me about it.
Disgusting swamp monster Shrek darkens our lives with pop culture references and animation that looks like it came out of a toilet this week.
At Cinema 21:
Jurassic Park plays this weekend. Never heard of this! Looking forward to seeing what it’s all about.
Remember the Night plays on Nov. 29th. A great Preston Sturges written screwball comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray as two shoplifters.
Fungi Film Fest returns on Dec. 4th for all your fungi needs.
At Cinemagic:
It’s been a minute since the Ghibli films have played. This week you can enjoy Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Pom Poko, and Kiki’s Delivery Service subbed and dubbed.
At the Clinton:
Earth’s Greatest Enemy returns on Nov. 30th. It’s a climate change documentary about how the military is one of the largest polluters. The director is a former 9-11 truther and has a, uh, colorful background so just putting that out there again.
WTO/99 plays on Nov. 30th. “A new immersive archival documentary which reanimates the clash between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and the more than 40,000 people who took to the streets of Seattle to protest the WTO’s impact on human rights, labor, and the environment.”
Assault on Precinct 13 plays on Dec. 1. A John Carpenter movie about violent street gangs and cops.
Halloween plays on Dec. 2nd. Is it gauche to play this after October? Is this like wearing white pants after labor day? I’ll have to ask Emily Post.
The Millennial Bee plays on Dec. 3rd from Church of Film. We return to the Czechoslovakian New Wave world of Juraj Jakubisko in a magical realism epic that “epic follows three generations and thirty years in a Slovakian village, and the spirit of the irrepressible beehive that represents them.”
Blessings Movie Night returns with an improvised score to Angel Dust on Dec. 4th. “Across several Mondays, a different young woman is murdered in the subway, leading psychiatrist Setsuko Suma to help detectives investigate Dr. Rei Aku’s deprogramming of former sect members.”
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: Now, a bunch of screenings are sold out so I won’t be saying anything about those but Annie Hall is one of them. I long for the day when film programmers won’t be beholden to Baby Boomer nostalgia and constantly play this movie or other Woody Allen movies. He’s a gross creep and I don’t think his movies have aged well. He’s the king of the “dumb guys who appear smart” artists. He was the Boomer’s Lous C.K. who is also a creep and a tedious bore. I know this is Diane Keaton’s most iconic role but I would just play First Wive’s Club to honor her and call it a day. At least that movie is fun to watch.
Blood Rage plays on Nov. 28th.
RRR returns on Nov. 29th.
Stop Making Sense plays on Nov. 29th.
The Don of Tiki plays on Nov. 30th.
Angel Terminators 2 plays on Dec. 2nd.
Dial Code Santa Claus plays on Dec. 3rd.
The edited version of Kill Bill in 70mm starts. This is the long fabled “whole bloody affair” version.
At the Kiggins:
You’re fucked, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles opens for a run. One of the few great Thanksgiving movies.
One more thing, The Princess Bride opens for a run.
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!
I take everything back. I am curating a Woody Allen film festival but only with movies he acted in. Get ready for Antz, The Front, and, uh, Fading Gigolo. They’re calling this the festival that made everyone consider TV as a better art form.
The Devil’s Honey (1986). Directed by Lucio Fulci. Starring Blanca Marsillach, Brett Halsey, Stefano Madia.
Let me be perfectly clear: this is not a good movie and no one should watch it. One might ask why am I writing about it. I’m writing about it because Portland programmers love Fulci and in the 30 plus years I’ve been writing this newsletter I haven’t seen The Devil’s Honey play. Why write about this instead of a good movie? Why write about a movie with dubious sexual politics when you just ranted about Woody Allen? I can’t answer those questions, my friends. We all contain multitudes. It is a uniquely terrible film. It’s well-directed and trying to wrangle a script that is all over the place and confused about who the lead is but first, permit me for a flight of fancy, a theater of the mind’s eye, if you will. Here is the vibe of this film:
A stranger appears out of an alleyway. You weren’t near an alley. You had been standing in your friend’s driveway full of holiday cheer and goodwill. You were happy about the future. The stranger approaches you, grinning. He’s wearing a trench coat and you can’t tell if he’s giggling or vibrating from the thrill he will get from stabbing you in the gut. You think to yourself that at least you will be dying after a meal full of friends and family. It has been a good life.
“I heard that you like movies,” he says, “heh, heh, heh. Well I got a movie for you.”
He opens his trench coat and it’s full of Blu-rays of the Devil’s Honey.
Fulci is famous for his gory horror movies. This is considered his last major work. It’s an erotic thriller that is, kind of, about a saxophone player. In the opening scene the saxophone player pleasures his girlfriend by placing the end of the saxophone, the wide brimmed part, on her crouch and blowing. She appears to be enjoying it.
I heard that you like movies, heh heh heh.
Other than being sleazier than porn, the problem with this movie is that it follows the saxophone player, until he dies, and then the narrative is picked up by the doctor who couldn’t save him, and then the sax player’s girlfriend.
The doctor is an impotent middle-aged man and his wife is mad at him for being impotent. The girlfriend takes revenge on the doctor and thus an erotic game of wits plays out. Also a dog dies. One second the dog is there, alive and well, and the next they are burying it. Maybe the dog watched some some of the dailies.
You feel dumber and dirtier after watching this movie. You need a shower and you want to pick up a Norton Anthology (doesn’t matter what but something by Jane Austen or some other classic written by a woman is preferred) and donate to Planned Parenthood to make up for what you just saw. You promise to mend your ways. Maybe that’s why you watched it to begin with—to touch the darkness so that you can return to the light.
Streaming and rentable from a guy in an alleyway, but he’s going to breathe heavily on you and insist that you watch it together.
The tip jar is open if you are so inclined. In honor of Black Friday I am raising all of my prices. WatchThisPDX will now cost $200.