Screen Listings

Celebrating the Earth: The Films of Franco Piavoli

[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] This series kicks off with Blue Planet, one of those quasi-mystical contemplative observations of daily life, like Baraka or the more well-known Koyaanisqatsi, that were once a minor fashion. Like the latter, it lingers from nature to the industry of man in a (nearly) wordless reverie, but without the driving Phillip Glass score and poundingly vast and glossy widescreen sweep. Rather, Piavoli's film is like those 16mm shorts they used to show on Sesame Street of an activity or scene while anonymous children babbled somewhat disinterestedly on the soundtrack about what you were seeing ("Tadpoles...The tadpoles are swimming...They live in the water..."). It's also less literally global (despite the title), focusing mainly on a small Italian village, and less concerned with delineating the patterns and rhythms that govern life than simply settling into them itself. The film's associations lead from insects to lovers in a field ("The couple...they are...uh...") to whatever else, wandering about like a curious animal from the forest to the town and then back again, gazing briefly and dispassionately at the people it finds. It's sometimes dull, and never spectacular, but it has its moments, and you can almost get lost in the drift of it. ANDY DAVIS. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Saturday, July 18-19. 6 pm Sunday, July 20.

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan continues deconstructing the Batman franchise from superhero camp to a cry of universal despair, with souped-up cars. As the sequel to Batman Begins marches from cruel bereavement to spirit-crushing martyrdom, it plays like a funeral dirge for the late Heath Ledger, who died—maybe you heard—shortly after completing his role as the Joker. The movie operates in the pall of this demise, and its polished gloom carries the scent of an undergraduate term paper on the futility of human existence. This is the summer action movie that stopped taking its antidepressants. In fact, the only element in Nolan’s film with any life—and the sole reason why it’s worth seeing immediately—is Ledger’s work. He’s caked in grimy clown greasepaint with echoes of John Wayne Gacy, and trying out a sneering singsong that sounds a little like that of a demented Bugs Bunny. To watch him menace Gotham City with an arsenal of knives—and a No. 2 pencil—is to witness a gifted actor dedicate all his energies to gracefully waltzing through trash. Meanwhile the movie positively wriggles in masochistic delight at the prospect of heroic anguish. The Dark Knight lives up to its title, yeah—in the world of comic-book movies, it’s a Suicide Girl at a sorority house, showing off its freaky tattoos. Audiences who stuff its coffers will leave knowing they’ve seen a special performance, but also feeling that they’ve endured something suffocating. PG-13. AARON MESH. Movies On TV Stadium 16.

King Kong

[REVIVAL] The greatest ape of 1933 menaces the Empire State Building once more, with simian feeling. Living Room Theaters.

The Legend of God's Gun

[DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Mike Bruce’s grungy gunslinger homage opens with an introduction from Dandy Warhols drummer Brent DeBoer, who smokes a cigarette in a candlelit recording booth and intones: “What separates this film from its predecessors is that it was made entirely by authentic rock-’n’-roll musicians who have spent many years touring the world and living the hard life of the modern-day cowboy.” Is he kidding around? Your guess is as good as mine: The movie that follows, a handmade psychedelic trip with acting and soundtrack by Kirpatrick Thomas of Spindrift, flirts constantly with outright spoof—from the moment the narrator helpfully explains that we will not be seeing any horses in this western because they’ve all been shot dead, God’s Gun feels as close to Monty Python as it does to Sergio Leone. Lest this sound like too much fun, let me warn you that the movie is nearly as ponderous as it is parodic—it’s from the Quentin Tarantino school of tongue-in-cheek grindhouse geekdom, which smothers guilty pleasures in self-consciousness. It should give you some idea of exactly how meta the project is to note that this is the first spaghetti western I’ve seen in which a character actually eats spaghetti. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Director Mike Bruce and Dandy Warhol Brent DeBoer will attend the world premiere on Friday, July 18.

Love and Honor

Yoji Yamada has directed dozens of films, most of them installments in his 48-part (!?) Toro-san series, but he is best known in the U.S. for The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade, the first two films in a “samurai trilogy” now completed by Love and Honor. Pop star Takuya Kimura stars as Shinnojo Mimura, a warrior reluctantly wasting his skills as one of his lord’s food tasters (read: poison filters). When he is blinded by some bad sashimi, he loses his station and sense, and his wife might be the next to go, blind samurais being pretty much useless to everyone. Like Mamet’s Redbelt, Love and Honor uses the fighter’s milieu to frame what is essentially a manly melodrama. Swords will cross when there is something worth crossing them for, but the build-up to battle is pure samurai-Sirk: A buttinsky aunt wheedles and meddles while a wealthy man spins his web around Shinnojo’s wife, a nobly suffering woman straight out of Mizoguchi. Like a well-made chair (or later Scorsese), it is pleasing in its predictability and comforting in its familiarity, but it’s not like I’m going to take it out to dinner or anything (sorry Marty). CHRIS STAMM. Clinton Street Theater.

Mamma Mia!

So here it is, folks, straight from Broadway: the story of blushing bride Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who invites her three potential papas to her big fat Greek wedding, announcing her intentions through the timeless melody of ABBA. In other words, Mamma Mia! is just like your nuptials, except the disco jockey has started work a full day early. Let me be perfectly clear: This thing is a terrible idea and its theatrical acceptance signals the death of civilization as we know it. But just when I was choking on the bubblegum, Sophie pipes down and makes room for single mom Donna, who’s supposedly outraged at the arrival of her three former flames, though we know better—they’re played by Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth! As the repressed hausfrau, Meryl Streep pads in like she owns the place—she does—and belts out a lament about “a rich man’s world,” but it’s Meryl’s world, and we’re just living in it. The actress’s ruddy nose and watery eyes are a great comfort, suggesting a normal allergic reaction to the songs of ABBA, as digitally tacky as the Mediterranean sun glaring in the background. Streep and fellow baby boomers Julie Walters and Christine Baranski vamp their way through the repertoire like the Sex and the City gang gone to flaxseed. It’s trash cinema at its finest, fueled by trash music at its catchiest, plus enough estrogen to put Pierce Brosnan out of breath, though I suspect he’s just having trouble with the long notes. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. No showtimes.

Maximum Car-nage Double Feature

[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] Clinton Street Theater operator Seth Sonstein is an unapologetic fan of Emilio Estevez. How big a fan is he? For the week of his birthday, Sonstein is showing a double bill of Maximum Overdrive and Repo Man. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Saturday, July 11-12, and Monday-Thursday, July 14-17.

Murder Dot Com

A woman investigates her sister's death at the hands of online sex maniacs. (Do you want to cyber? Do you want to DIE?) Not screened for critics, online or elsewhere. Hollywood Theatre.

Never Forever

Vera Farmiga (The Departed) plays Sophie, a woman who decides to get impregnated by a Korean immigrant, though this imperils her marriage. Hey, you get hitched to Sophie, you gotta live with Sophie's choices. See Saundra Sorenson's review on wweek.com. R. Hollywood Theatre.

Of Angels and Apocalypse: The Cinema of Derek Jarman

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Brit moviemaker Derek Jarman didn’t really make films as much as he made performance art he put on film. Such was the case with his masterful interpretation of the life of 16th century painter Michelangelo Mersi, aka Caravaggio. To see this tableaux film at the NW Film Center now, some 22 years past its premiere, is a true revelation. Even though at times it shucks conventions and is slower than paint drying, its theme is ageless. Stuck in the times they were given, both Counter-Reformation Caravaggio and Thatcher-era Jarman struggled to create powerful art (much of it homoerotic in nature and thumbing its nose at the standards of its time) in the short period they were on this planet. Caravaggio did it by depicting realism, and is credited with the creation of the modern still life. Jarman did it by inserting modern inventions that had yet to be created—calculators, fashion magazines—to upset the viewer’s sense of what is real and what is just artifice. Both men were ahead of their time. Speaking of time, this is also the film that launched Tilda Swinton, perhaps the most timeless actor of her generation. A must. BYRON BECK. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. Caravaggio screens at 8 pm Sunday, July 20. The Angelic Conversation screens at 7 pm Wednesday, July 16.

Space Chimps

If you take the kids to only one space cartoon, make it WALL-E. If that’s sold out, you could do worse than Space Chimps. It’s produced by a few of the folks responsible for Shrek, but unlike that movie, it doesn’t get bogged down in too much sketch-comedy diversion or pop-cultural reference, and there’s nary a booger joke in sight. A primate spoof of The Right Stuff, the story follows a circus chimpanzee drafted into NASA’s last grasp for legitimacy: a monkey-manned test flight to an alien world. Voiced with gentle hipster overconfidence by Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg, the aptly named Ham III has been selected as the mission’s poster child because his grandfather was the original space chimp. The cheap animation and casual tone are not a patch on the sumptuous whimsy of Pixar’s productions, but it’s an amiable adventure, shaded with the snark of a good Far Side comic strip. Ostensibly it’s about the challenges of living up to a familial legacy, though the whole thing could be an elaborate prank on our space agency and the legacy chimp who’s been setting its priorities for the past eight years. G. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. No showtimes.

The Wackness

[ONE WEEK ONLY] “I’m mad depressed, yo,” complains Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) to his therapist. It’s the summer of 1994 in New York City, so affluent Jewish hip-hop heads apparently talk this way. Get laid, replies Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), who then receives payment in the form of a baggie of dank. It’s a Sundance movie, so Upper East Side shrinks apparently have these kinds of arrangements with their weed-slingers. Plausability aside, director Joshua Levine’s movie is a diverting study in career mobility: Peck is eager to escape the Nickelodeon ghetto by playing a troubled dealer/student burdened by his inconvenient virginity, while Kingsley is in the mood to reclaim some headlines by making out with Mary-Kate Olsen in a phone booth. (Between his work as Guru Tugginmypudha in The Love Guru and this, Sir Ben has had quite the summer. Let’s pray the Academy doesn’t forget him.) Placing its gimmicks aside—and that takes quite the thorough sweeping—The Wackness has value for its dive into the roiling waters of Dr. Squires’ freethinking mentorship, and for a caustic turn by Olivia Thirlby (Juno), who plays the doctor’s daughter and the dealer’s love interest, and proves she doesn’t have to be adorable to be captivating. R. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, July 18-24. No showtimes.

Willie Nelson's 4th of July Picnic

Though Nelson's name is in the title, Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic is less a celebration of the Red Headed Stranger than a 90-minute meditation on getting totally wasted. Shot in cinéma vérité style during Willie’s 1974 Independence Day celebration (an annual tradition alive to this day), the concert film stars such notable outlaw country icons as Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker and Leon Russell. It’s B.W. Stevenson, though, who utters the film’s synopsis to an utterly blottoed, half-naked crowd: “Is everybody loaded? Great, ’cause we are too!” Some performances are exemplary of the era’s best (Willie playing a “Funny How Time Slips Away”/”Nightlife” medley, Jerry Jeff Walker’s rousing version of “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother”), some less so (Leon Russell is the worst kind of drunk). But bug-eyed Cajun fiddler Doug Kershaw—in a suit Austin Powers would covet—steals the show with a handful of punk-tempo barn burners. Director Werner Brandt shows a special affinity here for the hard-dancing, harder-drinking crowd—a sea of churning pink flesh, wild hair, wine jugs and shredded denim—sometimes zooming in on topless, tan-lined women perched atop their boyfriends’ shoulders (and being groped mercilessly by mustachioed strangers below). Anyone who has ever paid $9 for Bud Light in a plastic cup at a modern, outdoor corporate music festival will walk away from this film with the distinct impression that the terrorists won long before 9/11. CASEY JARMAN. Laurelhurst.