Skip to main content
New Movies:
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
In the follow-up to 2012's forgettable Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise reprises his role as the goofily named government ass kicker, teaming up with the underrated Colbie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother) to beat the piss out of some villains. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Keeping Up With the Joneses
B Keeping Up With The Joneses doesn't exactly try to conceal its identity. For better or worse, the poster is the movie—impossibly suave secret agents Jon Hamm & Gal Godot move next door to suburban schlubs Zach Galifianakis & Isla Fisher—infinitely derivative, clumsily constructed and, with entire sequences played as extended Apple and Mercedes ads, brazenly commercial. But, in the weirdest way, it's also kinda sweet. Most every other 21st-century popcorn flick hawking the lighter side of domesticated espionage would either relish the physical disparity between mismatched caricatures (Central Intelligence, Spy) or crank up the stylized senselessness (Knight & Day, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Spy Kids) for a showy satire of audience wish fulfillment. The Joneses, blessedly, draws down the scope and extends each scene for lovingly etched performances to flesh out the creeping unease of marital doldrums and workplace anomie. Nonetheless, this film seems most like a few episodes of the not-quite-prestige sitcoms once helmed by director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), and its effectiveness feels inextricably linked to the goodwill already accumulated by the leads' former small-screen stardom. However appreciable their investment, Galifianakis & Hamm are clearly intending just to flip this property and move on, but they've built a damnably pleasant bubble nonetheless. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Vancouver.
Ouija: Origin of Evil
You may shake your head incredulously at the idea that a universally panned horror movie based on a goddamned board game got itself a prequel, until you learned that the first Ouija movie made over $100 million on a $5 million budget. Not screened for critics. R. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Vancouver.
Seed: The Untold Story
Portland filmmakers Taggart Siegel and Jon Betz (Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?, The Real Dirt on Farmer John) kick off the EcoFilm Festival with their new documentary about the history of seeds and the impact of modern agribusiness on the global seed market. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 20.
Film Events:
Klamath Independent Film Festival Best of Program
The restive, forested area to our distant south has movies, too. Showcasing films made by Klamath Basin-area filmmakers, this year's KIFF highlights program includes Ross Williams' masochist love story Self Inflicted and Mig Windows' 2015 grand jury prize winner Not a Bench. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Sunday, Oct. 20. Filmmakers will be in attendance.
New Scandinavian Cinema
Hold on to your…lutefisk? This week, NW Film Center hosts a collection of new films straight from the most unsettlingly tidy part of the world, most of which you can't catch on another Portland screen. This series kicks off with Óskar Jónasson's In Front of Others, about a shy copywriter whose attempts to woo a young woman by imitating friends and celebrities, shockingly, wear thin. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. Oct. 21-29. See the program here.
Old Movies:
Child's Play (1988)
There was a simpler time in horror movies when all you had to do was possess an inanimate object with a demon or the soul of a serial killer. Tom Holland directs Chucky in the one that started it all. Academy Theater. Oct. 19-20.
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), The Raven (1951), The Pit and the Pendulum (1964)
Never ones to keep things simple, Church of Film presents three arthouse takes on the work of Edgar Allan Poe: French impressionist pioneer Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher, Kurt Steinwendner's The Raven and Alexandre Astruc's The Pit and the Pendulum. North Star Ballroom. 8 pm Wednesday, Oct. 19.
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Cinema 21 is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Gillo Pontecorvo's controversial masterpiece (it was banned in France for five years), a documentary-esque account of the Algerian war for independence. Cinema 21. Oct. 21-26.
Silent Running (1972)
Special-effects maestro Douglas Trumbull's (2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner) Silent Running sees an ecologist and his robots fight to save his space greenhouse from destruction after the end of all botanical life on Earth. Presented as part of the Portland EcoFilm Festival. Hollywood Theatre. 9:15 pm Friday, Oct. 21.
They Live (1988), Beeswax (2009)
This election isn't enough of a nightmare as it is. So why not follow "Rowdy" Roddy Piper as a drifter who finds sunglasses that let him see a ruling class of aliens in John Carpenter's most political film? Played as a part of a double feature with Andrew Bujalski's midperiod indie drama Beeswax, because you won't be Bujalskied out after Computer Chess. 5th Avenue Cinema. Oct. 21-23.
ALSO PLAYING:
5th Avenue Cinema: Arresting Power: Resisting Police Violence in Portland, Oregon (2012), 7 pm Saturday, Oct. 22. Academy Theater: The Howling (1981), Oct. 21-27. Hollywood Theatre: Earthquake (1974, in "Sensurround"), 7:30 pm Wednesday, Oct. 19; Maniac (1980), 7:30 pm Tuesday, Oct. 25. Laurelhurst Theater: Carnival of Souls (1962), Oct. 19-20. Mission Theater: Carrie (1976), Oct. 21-24. Little Shop of Horrors (1986) Oct. 21-25.
Willamette Week