Screen Listings

Cheri

Colette’s Belle Epoque novels Chéri and The Last of Chéri are packed with observations on French society, but the only lesson from Stephen Frears’ cinematic adaptation is that Michelle Pfeiffer makes a lousy sex teacher. She plays Léa, a Parisian courtesan who grants a favor to dearly despised colleague Charlotte (Kathy Bates) by agreeing to apprentice Charlotte’s frivolous son, nicknamed Chéri (Rupert Friend), in the ways of amour. Léa has two tasks: Make the boy a generous lover, and don’t fall in love. She fails at both. Considering they share a bed for six years, you’d think he’d have learned by his wedding night to Edmee (Felicity Jones) not to just jam it up in there—but no, that would undermine the subtext of the movie, which is that sex is only a beautiful act when it’s sex with Michelle Pfeiffer. The central problem is that it’s impossible to comprehend why Léa’s so smitten with this kid. He’s pretty—Friend looks like Robert Pattinson crossed with a baby Keith Richards—but he’s a bitch. To the bitter end, he calls Léa by childhood endearments that make him sound like a child crying for his wet nurse. This is not as erotic as the filmmakers would like it to be. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.

Departures

Proudly conventional schlock, much lacerated after winning—through no fault of its own—the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film over Waltz with Bashir and The Class. Yôjirô Takita’s feature is broader and more affecting than its reputation allows; with its comedic double-takes and cathartic dead-body disposal, it’s the Japanese counterpart to Sunshine Cleaning. When easily flummoxed cellist Masahiro Motoki loses his orchestra gig (gasp!), the new job he finds in his hometown classifieds turns out to be preparing corpses for cremation (whaa?), an ignominious profession he ultimately finds noble (hmmm…). This maturation unfolds extremely slowly for a film with no discernible artistic ambitions, though some of the pauses are for peaceful scenes of domestic record-spinning and string-playing (with the evocative compositions courtesy of Miyazaki vet Joe Hisaishi). It’s hardly objectionable, especially with old mortician Tsutomu Yamazaki proving himself the Martin Sheen of Japan, all wise eyebrows and knowing smile. I almost want to see the softcore pornos Takita made before he got all awards-worthy. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. No showtimes.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

That nut-hoarding squirrel and his pals discover that Sarah Palin was right: Dinosaurs haven't died out! WW did not attend the press screening; look for a later review on wweek.com. PG. No showtimes.

Laila's Birthday

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] A look at the chaotic, violent and vibrantly cultured stew that is modern Palestine, seen through a day in the life of a proud judge (Mohammed Bakri) forced by economic hardships to drive a taxi through the city of Ramallah. He wants only to get home in time to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, but all of Palestine—or rather, all of its portentously accentuated incongruities—seems to stand in his way. The After Hours-like story structure (the day is interminable and each fare Bakri takes on winds him up worse than the last) ultimately leads to a spontaneous, half-crazy diatribe screamed over a loudspeaker in public. It’s the kind of conceit that conveniently allows for a summation of all the movie’s disparate messages in one fell swoop. Such an escape is necessary because each scene in this film is like a check mark on a list of Things That Israel Has Fucked Up in Palestine, made worse by director Rashid Masharawi’s inability to draw poetic connections between them. Only the glimpses of Ramallah itself, doggedly functioning, make it occasionally fascinating, and those could be chalked up to the necessity of location shooting in an imprisoned country too poor for studios. ALEX PETERSON. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 7 and 8:30 pm Friday and Sunday, July 3 and 5.

Moon

Sure, the movie directed by David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones is a moonage daydream. But it’s better described as an unusually satisfying sci-fi picture. There’s not much I can safely reveal about the movie without ruining it; in fact, if you haven’t seen the trailer, you should head straight to the theater before you accidentally encounter any twists. It’s hardly even fair to call the upheavals “twists”—Jones’ direction is so economical, and the story so direct, that the surprises aren’t M. Night Shyamalan abracadabra but the launching site for speculation on how it might feel to experience such things. Mostly it would feel mighty lonely. What I can say is that Sam Rockwell is a mine operator shaving helium-3 off the lunar surface for an energy company that cares deeply about the environment but so little about Sam that they’ve left him for three years with only the voice of Kevin Spacey for company. Exhausted and a little unhinged, Rockwell’s character starts as a fine channel for the actor’s sleepy aimlessness, until he develops facets that allow for a quiet tour de force. Rarely has a performer made so much hay out of talking to himself. The movie flits in and out in 97 minutes, and what sticks afterward—and rattles around, aching, for days—isn’t the ideas (which are no great shakes, really) but the emotional gravity Moon gives them. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Public Enemies

Michael Mann’s vigorous John Dillinger picture Public Enemies contains an ecstatic visual flourish for nearly each of its 140 minutes—prison walls as stark as a Kafka castle, black Fords galloping through the night with deadly riders clinging to the sideboards, and everything speckled with a dusting of Tommy gun fire—but it’s only really interested in Johnny Depp’s singular Dillinger. “We rob banks,” Bonnie and Clyde crowed during their 1967 escapades. In Public Enemies, there is no “we.” John Dillinger stands—and sits and runs and escapes and dies—alone. He robs banks. Everyone else is just trying to catch up. Depp is an actor whose best talent—a twitch around the mouth that says he’s two steps ahead of everyone else—has often been wasted on roles that ask him to be merely bizarre, but here he is allowed his quickness. In the film’s peak sequences, including a breathtakingly choreographed jailbreak, Mann builds suspense simply by cutting to his star’s face, so we can wonder (along with everyone else) what he’s plotting next. Public Enemies moves at an electric-wire tempo, and its gleaming Midwest winterscapes single-handedly justify Mann’s belief in high-definition video. It’s all nearly enough to make you forget that the movie isn’t about anything, except perhaps the pleasure of losing yourself in the pictures. R. AARON MESH. No showtimes.

Reservoir Dogs

[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Thursday, July 3-9. No showtimes.

Team America: World Police

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Bed, Bath and Beyond! Fuck yeah! Matt Stone and Trey Parker's  underappreciated work of prescience (doesn't the Michael Bay evisceration seem timely now?) returns to the big screen for America's birthday. Cinema 21. 11 pm Friday, July 3. No showtimes.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D

[REVIVAL] For the past four months, if you’ve been the type of moviegoer who can’t get enough of strange monsters popping off of a movie screen into your face, you’ve been in pretty good hands. My Bloody Valentine 3-D drove a pickax between your eyes, Coraline 3-D threw evil witches at you, Monsters vs. Aliens 3-D flung a grab bag of classic Hollywood creatures, plus Up 3-D had that weird rainbow ostrich thing. And, if all this hasn’t been quite enough (and I suspect that for real 3-D fiends it has not), then the Hollywood Theatre has just the solution: Check out 1954's The Creature from the Black Lagoon in….front of your paper glasses, and see exactly where all of these recent movies got their inspiration. ALEX PETERSON. Hollywood Theatre.

The Shining

[REVIVAL] Twin girls hacked to pieces. Torrents of blood spilling from an elevator. Shelley Duvall (shudder). Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is full of creepy imagery. But it’s the film’s family dynamic that’s the stuff of real nightmares, and what makes The Shining among the most frightening films of all time—the feeling that those you love and trust are the real bogeymen. Isolated in a secluded hotel, author and recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson, one of the screen’s scariest monsters, subbing erratic eyebrows for claws and fangs) slowly descends into madness, with a literal ax to grind with his wife (Duvall) and psychic son (Danny Lloyd) as his inner demons get friendly with the real ones roaming the hotel. The simmering evil—prodded along by Kubrick’s patient buildup, then-revolutionary sound mix and Stedicam work, and a brooding score—imparts a blood-boiling sense of dread throughout. Just in time for Halloween, The Shining hits Living Room Theaters in glorious HD, while Timberline Lodge—the source of the film’s freaktastic exterior shots, but sans the hedge maze—is replicating the film’s climactic 1920s “fish and goose soiree” on All Hallow’s, complete with in-room screenings. Tell ’em Delbert Grady sent you…and stay away from Room 237. R. AP KRYZA. Living Room Theaters. Timberline Lodge party on Friday, Oct. 31. No showtimes.

The Soloist

Reporter Robert Downey Jr. tries to aid mentally ill musican Jamie Foxx. Perhaps together they can catch the Zodiac Killer. PG-13. No showtimes.

The Unemployed Workers Progressive Summer Film Fest

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] The PSU Progressive Student Union offers two free films a week to the un- and underemployed, with a networking event after each movie. The final offerings are Dreamlife of Angels and Frozen River. Smith Center, Room 229, 1825 SW Broadway, Portland State. Dreamlife of Angels screens at 6 pm Monday, Aug. 10. Frozen River screens at 6 pm Tuesday, Aug. 11.

Tulpan

That’s the name of a young girl being sought for marriage by Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov), a Kazakh sailor who has returned to the steppe countryside where his sister Samal (Samal Esljamova) lives with her husband, Ondas (Ondas Besikbasov), a sheep herdsman. Asa loves the steppe, in part because its vast, flat expanse is open and freeing; he also loves that Tulpan lives there, is very beautiful, and might be his wife. But for all the land’s openness, Tulpan is the one thing in it which remains hidden from him. Her parents don’t like the match, so Asa may only glimpse Tulpan through closed curtains and shut doors. Simplicity is not simply found, in other words, and the elusiveness of Tulpan is the reason this lyrical movie is given her name. ALEX PETERSON. Living Room Theaters.

Whatever Works

Or doesn’t, as the case may be. Whatever you may think of Woody Allen’s resurgence, the idea of Larry David standing in as the director’s doppelgänger—in an updated Allen script of Annie Hall vintage, no less—has significant appeal. But the Curb Your Enthusiasm star is all aggression, all the time; he lacks the vulnerable worrywart qualities that once made the Woody character winsome. It’s no help that the movie returns to the affable Epicureanism that now passes for Allen’s philosophy, salts it with choice insults for the closed-minded and, for the umpteenth time since Deconstructing Harry, skirts any painful introspection. David is Boris Yellnikoff, a self-proclaimed genius physicist and self-evident misanthrope, who finds a baby on his doorstep. Fortunately, the baby (Evan Rachel Wood) is old enough to have sex with. Allen’s outlook continues to present itself as a shrugging existentialism—in favor of “any way you filch a little happiness”—but it feels closed to new discoveries. At the end of Manhattan, Mariel Hemingway delivered the glimmer-of-hope promise that “not everyone gets corrupted.” Whatever Works is the product of a sensibility so defensive, so stuck in its ways, that it has to corrupt everybody. Is it harder to have faith in people when you don’t want to look at yourself? PG-13. AARON MESH. No showtimes.