Screen Listings

(500) Days of Summer

I enjoyed parts of this Zooey Deschanel/Joseph Gordon-Levitt romance very much—in fact, I found the majority of it to be light, observant and cheering. I was a little put off by the opening disclaimer, which gave the usual warning that none of the characters should be mistaken for any real people, living or dead. “Especially you, Jenny Beckman,” it added. “Bitch.” This seems to indicate a few unresolved issues on the parts of the writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, and director Marc Webb. But the movie quickly sets about confronting those issues. It is, in fact, a movie about being the other guy: the one who doesn’t get the girl at the end of the picture, the one who realizes that he was a footnote in her life and feels rather crummy about it. But I couldn’t decide if (500) Days of Summer felt so familiar because I’d lived it, or because I’d seen it before. The jumbled chronology is a fresh approach, with Webb bouncing through the 500 days of a doomed relationship as if rifling through a Rolodex or—a more appropriate metaphor for this couple—hitting “shuffle” on an iPod. The narrator admonishes at the movie’s beginning, “This is not a love story,” and that’s true—love stories require two people. And Deschanel is a recognizable person only in relation to Gordon-Levitt. There are no real girls in (500) Days of Summer. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Academy Theater, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Mission Theater and Pub, Tigard Joy Theatre, Valley Theater.

(Untitled)

A very restricted, peculiar piece of filmmaking, (Untitled) is a satire of avant-garde art that will only interest people familiar with avant-garde art but is made by people who have come to despise avant-garde art. Bushy-browed Adam Goldberg (he dreamed of sex with President Lincoln in Dazed & Confused, then made a living playing Shalom-ing sidekicks) is an atonal composer whose compositions are scored for ripping newspaper and wailing voice: They sound like a journalism convention. He falls into an affair with a rubber-clad gallery owner (Marley Shelton); she sells the pedestrian paintings of his brother (Eion Bailey) to hang in hotel lobbies. Vinnie Jones shows up as the most loathsome character, a hands-off taxidermist who drapes stuffed cows with pearls. You must be cackling by now, yes? Writer-director Jonathan Parker’s slow-roasting of posturing does hit a few strong notes—as when Goldberg recalls how his earliest musical inspiration was the death of “Philip, the family dog”—but it mostly feels like a toothless retread of Art School Confidential, minus the blackhearted daring. The biggest problem, however, is the artwork itself: Just because a movie doesn’t ask you to take its caterwauling musical performances seriously doesn’t mean you don’t still have to sit through them. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

9

Humanity has once again managed to wipe itself off the planet—oh darn!—leaving cultural preservation to tiny robots. This time they are animator Shane Acker’s mechanic ragdolls, who awaken after some Great Cleansing to find themselves the last nine sentient critters on the planet. The titular figurine (voiced by Elijah Wood) is a burlap sack with his number written on his back, like an offensive lineman in mourning. Acker is a careful student of the Brothers Quay, which goes a long way toward explaining why 9 looks like the first Tool music video for children. My guess is that most tykes will be petrified; the heroes begin by battling a feline android that recalls An American Tale’s Mouse of Minsk, and the metallic villains only get creepier from there. The computer animation is extremely proficient, and some of the ideas nearly match it—twin scholastic monks uncover a newsreel history suggesting George Orwell spilling his dystopian tea on H.G. Wells—but the picture rushes along in a godawful hurry, sequentially offing the tiny characters as if they were victims in a slasher movie. You’d think the extinction of the human race would be enough death for one cartoon, but no. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, etc. Edgefield Powerstation Theater, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

A Serious Man

A physics professor living in a tract neighborhood as treeless and sun-scorched as the Holy Land, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is suffering the inverse afflictions of Job—while the patriarch lost his family, Larry’s relations won’t go away. His wife (Sari Lennick) wants a divorce so she can marry the astonishingly supercilious Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), but she won’t leave the house. His brother (Richard Kind) has taken up the couch and the bathroom, forever draining a sebaceous cyst. There are harassing calls from the Columbia Record Company, a student is sinisterly trying to extort his way out of a failing grade, and Larry’s tenure request is met with the ominous assurance that “you should not be worried.” Oh, Larry is worried. He senses a bottomless abyss beneath his life. This is the Coen brothers’ third-straight film—after No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading—to repeat the same gag, with increasing mirth and finality: Don’t look down, because there isn’t anything there. A Serious Man ends about 10 minutes before you expect it to, with brutal, beautiful abruptness—no one does endings like the Coens, because they understand that every story ends the same way. Never before have they so explicitly addressed their ambivalent feelings toward Judaism (aside from The Big Lebowski’s “Moses to Sandy Koufax” speech, maybe), but they’ve been wrestling with God a long time, and they know his moves. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

All About Steve

All About Steve begins like The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock playing a woman in need of a man. This time, instead of being too “bossy,” she’s too “wacky.” Her character, Mary Horowitz, seems to have Asperger’s and wears bright red boots. She lives with her parents and writes the crossword puzzle for the local newspaper. After an abortive blind date with news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper), Mary stalks him across the country. Exasperating everyone with her trivia, Mary is also given to metaphor: “I tried to fill my empty spaces with words, and puzzles, and Steve.” Is this the screenwriter’s confession of method? The film is full of puzzles. Steve and his colleagues, including self-obsessed reporter Hartman (Thomas Haden Church), drive around covering wacky, pseudo-Biblical news, including the debate over a three-legged baby. Charlyne Yi appears for five seconds, like an autistic talisman. Mary escapes a CG tornado and a plague of locusts. A school of deaf children falls down a mine. Then Mary falls down the mine. Steve and Hartman’s boss (Keith David) exclaims, “That’s the way to get your heads out of your assholes!” Eventually, Mary learns to be herself. Unfortunately, I don’t know who I am anymore. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Amelia

Well, golly, isn’t this a disastrous old tin whistle of a magic lantern show? Dusty as a hangar exhibit, Mira Nair’s biopic of Amelia Earhart gets lost in the first five minutes, and never threatens to return. Every line of dialogue has the creak of exposition, and usually competent actors (Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor) enunciate as if they’re trying to recall how humans speak. Initially this registers as an intentional throwback to early Hollywood sound productions, but it quickly begins to feel like general uncoordination. Still, if you’re in the mood for an old-fashioned night-flying picture…well, Jimmy Stewart in The Spirit of St. Louis is pretty good. If you’re in the mood for an Old Fashioned, don’t you dare: Amelia has an odd subtext about the ruinous influence of plonk. (Co-pilot Fred Noonan does not come off well in this regard.) As Earhart, Hilary Swank gamely embodies toothy Kansan pluck—even waving hello to a flock of sheep—but Amy Adams played this role with far more sex, energy and humor in the Night at the Museum sequel. There’s not much either actress could have done with this script by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan: It never gives the heroine any motivation, or even a childhood, choosing instead to indulge an obsession with the young Gore Vidal. (In case you’re wondering if the kid is Gore Vidal, his name is conspicuously mentioned every time he shows up.) In the last 15 minutes, which are the best because there’s a fleeting signal that something might happen, Earhart keeps checking her watch, an action I could identify with. The movie has no thrill, no mystery, no propulsion. Thud. PG. AARON MESH. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16.

Antichrist

[TWO NIGHTS LEFT] Antichrist is the most bloodless movie ever to contain a clitorodectomy self-performed with a pair of scissors. It may be unfair to call it junk cinema, though director Lars von Trier’s latest taunt does contain many shots of its lead couple’s junk, mostly in the process of being smashed with fireplace logs. But it’s clinical and abstracted, as if its characters were numbed not only by grief but also with horse tranquilizers. Don’t let the marketing fool you—the movie is not a piece of woodland camp, even if it features a lot of hoo-ha about nut trees, millstones drilled through the femur, and a talking fox. No, this is Serious Cinema, using adroit techniques to address Serious Ideas. The problem is that these ideas are a load of balls. We might ask whether it’s worth getting outraged by a movie where the weightiest assertion is “bitches be crazy”—or whether the other possible moral, “people be crazy,” is any more profound. Antichrist is packed with all kinds of Biblical imagery (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg engage in carnal knowledge beneath a tree in a garden called Eden, for gosh sakes), all suggesting that the director is absorbed in some Medieval Catholic self-flagellation. So we all must be punished: For 104 minutes, Lars von Trier surgically removes our capacity for pleasure. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Wednesday-Thursday, Nov. 4-5. Hollywood Theatre.

Astro Boy

A robot child saves the world, just like in Osamu Tezuka's comic. PG. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

Capitalism: A Love Story

“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” Michael Moore proclaims, in a flourish of rhetoric that sounds like a combination of Chairman Mao and David Frum. “You have to eliminate it.” Had you never seen a Michael Moore film, you might assume this edict would be followed by a strategy for revolution, or at least a suggestion for what economic system we might want to use as an evil-reducing substitute. But you have seen his movies, and you know what the pronouncement will be followed by: the end credits. In the fury of the working class, the viewer senses a breeze of possibility: Could Moore at last be demonstrating the guts of a real communist agitator, and suggesting that America might learn something by cracking open Karl Marx? Nah. Instead, Capitalism: A Love Story finds Moore following in the footsteps of populist preachers since the silver-tongued simpleton William Jennings Bryan, using the phrase “Wall Street” as an all-encompassing boogeyman. But populism is a dangerous game. Another name for the people is the mob. This is something Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly know perfectly well. Does Moore know it? Does he know, when he tells the crowds that their down-home values trump any social structure, what he sounds like? He sounds like a Republican. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hollywood Theatre, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampires Assistant

When the inevitable Simpsons on Ice tour takes to the road, John C. Reilly will be a shoo-in for the role of Sideshow Bob. He’s well rehearsed after this performance as Crepsley, a waistcoated, carrot-haired carnival barker with a supercilious mince and a touch of vampirism. It’s sort of sad to see Reilly come to such a pass, the logical next step in a progression away from idiosyncratic projects toward tentpole weekends. Even his dialogue seems to comment on the devolution: “It’s deeply depressing,” he says of life as a bloodsucker. The movie is filled with these awful moments of recognition. Is that Patrick Fugit, the wonderful kid from Almost Famous, painted green as Evra the Snake Boy? Is that The Wire’s Frankie Faison as a fire-eater named Rhamus Twobellies? Poor Patrick! Poor Frankie! How this Paul Weitz eyesore is related to Twilight I don’t know and don’t really care to find out, although Weitz’s brother Chris is directing New Moon, so maybe opportunism is in their blood. Cirque has its own dueling teen vampires, though its origin story owes more to Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man, what with the best friends turned against each other after an arachnid bite and the subsequent bestowal of superpowers. (This at least leads to an immortal line: “I became a vampire to save you, Steve!”) It’s lurid and silly and boring, and around halfway through I was reminded of the circus scenes from The Elephant Man, and became a little obsessed with the idea of sneaking into the movie and freeing the actors. John C. Reilly is not an animal! He is a man! PG-13. AARON MESH. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I have only one complaint with the cinematic adaptation of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, that endearing children’s book about a town where the weather is made of food. Still, it’s a significant complaint: I don’t like the food. Ron Barrett’s original pen-and-ink illustrations were intricate and moody, filled with awe and mystery as well as peanut-butter-and-jelly blizzards. The edibles that fall from the sky in Sony’s CGI cartoon look like Fisher Price play food, all bright plastic artificiality. It’s quite a comedown. But just about everything else in Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s movie exceeds any reasonable expectation. The delights begin with the filmmakers' reimagining of the town of Chewandswallow as a sardine-fishing village decimated by the decline of canned-fish popularity; by the time the mayor (voice by Bruce Campbell; hair from Jaws) decides to revitalize the burg with sardine tourism, it becomes obvious why the inventor hero (Bill Hader) is named Flint. A fable about the dangers of overconsumption, Meatballs is one of the few current cartoons with some social bite, and the admittedly hackneyed subplot about Flint’s need to please his father (James Caan, drawn as a walking unibrow) is as affecting as any relationship requiring the line “Dad, I’m surrounded by man-eating chickens right now!” can hope to be. So I won’t complain about the weather. PG. AARON MESH. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Movies On TV Stadium 16.

Coal Country

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] The Sierra Club hosts a documentary on Appalachian coal mining. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Monday, Nov. 9.

Coco Before Chanel

Audrey Tautou plays the fashionista in a biopic. WW did not attend the screening; look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Fox Tower. City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hollywood Theatre, Lake Twin Cinema.

Cold Souls

Sophie Barthes has directed the most perceptive movie ever made about the side effects of anti-depression and anti-anxiety medication, though you can scan the reviews out of New York and L.A. without encountering a single reference to pharmaceuticals—probably because saying it’s a movie about Paul Giamatti paying to have his soul extracted and placed in cold storage makes it sound like a much better deal. Certainly it sounds like a deal to Giamatti. Having secured his title as prince of schlubs with American Splendor and Sideways, in Cold Souls the droopy actor plays himself as even more spiritually deflated than his roles suggested. This being a slyly drab fantasy, it is only a matter of time until Giamatti reads a New Yorker article about soul extraction, looks up the business in the Yellow Pages, and makes the journey out to Roosevelt Island, though the office might as well be located next door to the memory-erasing shop in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Here a compassionate metaphysician (David Strathairn) explains that the soul is a gland, as easily removed as the appendix. A parable about how the progress of neuroscience has far outpaced our ability to understand its consequences, Cold Souls is one of the few works of fiction I’ve seen that is willing to broach the topic, even obliquely. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.

Cort & Fatboy's Midnight Movie: Raising Arizona

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] KUFO was a rocky place, where their seed could find no purchase. But Portland's favorite fired radio DJs return with a Coen classic. R.

Couples Retreat

A hymn to settling for whatever’s around: a spouse you don’t like, a shot you don’t bother to frame, a joke you’ve told before. Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau star in a DOA movie about marriage therapy for the improbably well-heeled (if you’re going to get counseling, why not do it in Bora Bora bungalows that run $1,780 a night?) and immensely self-involved—fat schlubs Vaughn and Favreau must summon the internal fortitude to remain faithful to Malin Ackerman and Kristin Davis. Those poor boys. However do they cope? They’ve roped in buddy Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from A Christmas Story) to direct, and I wanted to shoot my eye out. The guy shot on location in French Polynesia and managed to make it look like a soundstage. The comedic scaffold is the same one trotted out by Adam Sandler's Anger Management: Use a grueling regimen of stupid exercises to substitute for writing any actual characters. One by one, each of four rotten marriages is saved for no reason other than the movie’s fear of troubling a complacent audience. Here’s Vaughn exhorting Favreau to save his union: “You’re not going to have anybody to go to Applebee’s with you.” Could there be a stronger case for divorce? PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

District 9

The aliens in District 9 ran out of gas on the wrong side of the universe. Marooned in Johannesburg, South Africa, on cruel and xenophobic planet Earth, the so-called “prawns”—a human slur that happens to be pretty accurate—actually have quite a bit in common with the earthlings who’ve shunted them into the filthy slum-city that gives the film its name: technologically advanced enough to skip through the cosmos, but sadly hapless and discombobulated once they lose the map. It is an unfortunate frailty that District 9 itself shares, and that first-time director Neill Blomkamp can’t quite overcome. The first act, 20 brilliant minutes of faux-documentary dread, is a mini-masterpiece of harrowing and darkly funny filmmaking. The simulation of documentary style, familiar and comforting to our news-soaked eyes, becomes a delivery system for outlandish visions and uncanny panic. It’s like watching an old home movie only to find your beloved grandmother has been replaced on tape by a giant tarantula. But it slowly skids into a visual spectacle of hectic ambivalence not unlike every other gutless extravaganza you will see this summer. Oh, there are guts, I guess, but they are flung at the screen to distract you from Blomkamp’s loss of nerve. I have faith that Neill Blomkamp will one day make a film that’s a marvel from beginning to end. The question is whether he can muster the necessary faith in us. R. CHRIS STAMM. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Extract

Mike Judge makes small movies of no distinguishable style, yet all his work is instantly identifiable by its subject matter: He presses down on the banality of Middle America like he’s picking at a cold sore. His first live-action feature, Office Space, focused on excruciating boredom; his second, Idiocracy, concentrated on absolute stupidity. With Extract, he blends his ingredients equally. It’s set in a flavor-compound factory that slightly resembles the warehouse in The Office, but is manned by such oblivious cud-chewers that it’s a wonder their employer (Jason Bateman) doesn’t fit them in full-body casts as a precaution. Extract’s best scenes are in a shabby sports pub, where a bearded Ben Affleck is the barback. He and Bateman are both experts at verbal backspin; Affleck is especially underrated at this skill. Listen for his reply to Bateman’s quip that hot women need jobs just like anybody—“But do they really?” he asks, and the quizzical way he holds that last word, as if it contained all the mysteries of the universe, brings the house down. So the movie is funny, yes, but I can’t avoid thinking that a director who feels such contempt for common people, while providing no alternative ways to live, is an awfully small person. R. AARON MESH. No showtimes.

Filmusik: Gamera vs. Guiron

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, LIVE SOUNDTRACK] To accompany the rocket-powered turtles and “brain-eating space babes” in this 1969 Japanese monster flick, the musicians of Classical Revolution will perform Galen Huckins’ original score live, augmented by live sound effects and dialogue (in English). Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Wednesday and Friday, Nov. 4 and 6.

Fuel

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G-Force

What would happen if Jerry Bruckheimer obtained Disney’s permission to produce his own remake of Toy Story? I don’t know who asked this question. Maybe Jerry Bruckheimer. The answer is G-Force, a Bruckheimer-Disney coproduction about talking guinea pigs saving the world, in 3-D! As family entertainment, it’s a joke, albeit a joke told with sly self-awareness. Team America already told this joke, without PG-rated pandering to the kiddies, but I’ll give G-Force its due: The movie knows it’s pet food, and runs with it. Zach Galifianakis grimly advises the animated rodents on their mission, like a bearded M briefing James Bond. Will Arnett shows up as the skeptical FBI brass, and the two comedians deadpan their way through the next blockbuster cliché. Bill Nighy plays the power-mad villain, and allows the camera to follow an animated housefly into his left nostril. In brotherly deference to Michael Bay, there are household appliances which transform into killer robots. The chase scenes from Toy Story are restaged, to hilarious effect, with G-men crashing black SUVs amid patriotic fireworks. It’s all sharply directed and photographed in Bruckheimer’s trademark blues and oranges, with a sprinkling of his trademark racial stereotypes. You like irony? G-Force asks children to sympathize with guinea pigs, rewards teenagers with references to the Pussycat Dolls and Paris Hilton, then takes its name from the thousands of merchandising dollars extracted in kind. Bravo, Jerry, encore! PG. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Even though the latest Hasbro tie-in wasn’t screened for critics, I was still going to check it out over the weekend. But then I read what director Stephen Sommers told Variety. “I don't think the mainstream critics are relevant—they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. Transformers 2 got the worst reviews in the past decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?” Well, Stephen, when you put it like that: No. Fuck you. You can take your shit-ass plastic toys and go drool in the moron section. You’re a fraud and a cheat, and you only want to share your sandbox with the kids you know won’t say anything you don’t like hearing. You think anybody who doesn’t like watching the Eiffel Tower fall down is out of touch? You think we’ll all be out of jobs soon? At least we didn’t make a movie that sounds like a gay porn. PG-13. AARON MESH. Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Good Hair

Chris Rock’s new documentary about African-American tonsure is haunted by the spirits of both Michael Moore and Michael Jackson. St. Michael of the Pseudo-Documentary inspires Rock’s genial comic approach, while St. Michael of the Ethnic Assimilation hovers over the movie’s subject of black hair straightening. Like recent filmic exposés of fashion or food, Good Hair conveys the dizzying dimensions of a culturewide addiction. The hi-def video imagery is rather too clinical on the big screen: Rock stirs a 7,000-pound vat of hair relaxer, caustic white sodium hydroxide dubbed by its users “the creamy crack.” Of course, Rock interviews a cavalcade of black celebrities, who cannot imagine how their $1,000 extensions are affordable to “the other half” of black America. That lack of imagination, from the very role models who spur demand, limits the film’s insight into why this particular vanity industry commands $9 billion a year. When rapper Ice-T and Rev. Al Sharpton, both sporting slicked-back locks, insist on their manly right to touch a lady’s extensions, one senses the complacency of the rich and famous. Is the Reverend really, as he puts it, “combing his exploitation every morning”? Why doesn’t he stop? Rock plays nice and doesn’t ask such questions. Like its trendy namesake, Good Hair sacrifices volume for sheen. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

As the experience of the contemporary summer blockbuster increasingly approximates downing six Slurpees and spending 90 minutes on a Tilt-A-Whirl, it’s a relief to encounter a director willing to take his time. In the latest installation of the teen wizard franchise that has become his vocation, David Yates takes rather a lot of time: 150 minutes, all told, most of it devoted to chronicling who’s snogging whom at Hogwarts. Yates is much more invested in the berobed trio’s boarding-school drama than he is in J.K. Rowling’s sprawling saga. That’s fine by me. As Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson have matured, their characters have grown to be more compelling than the impressive digital witchery that inevitably whirls about them. One may become numb to monsters and explosions, but young love? Never. This year, the trio is concerned with the sinister plots of Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), who is on a mission to compromise Hogwarts’ intense security (the campus is surrounded by a colossal bug zapper) and kill Dumbledore, and—more importantly—the depravity of Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave), who is on a mission to compromise the group’s rapport and bang Ron Weasley. Neither succeeds quite the way they would like. Crying ensues. PG. BEN WATERHOUSE. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Humble Pie

A would-be actor gets lessons from William Baldwin. If only he had gone to Daniel! Look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.

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. Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema.

In the Loop

The principal clue that Armando Iannucci’s pond-hopping statecraft satire In the Loop is a British production—beyond even the filming of Capitol Hill in the drab tones of The Office, or the preoccupation with dental work—is the superhuman effort the bureaucrats devote to personal insults. It is heartening to discover that the movie’s BBC forebear, The Thick of It, had to contract a Lancaster-based “swearing consultant” to give the lines that earthy verisimilitude. The movie’s put-down champion is Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), who is based on Tony Blair’s communications director Alastair Campbell, but here seems a cross between Rahm Emmanuel and Groundskeeper Willie. The character would enjoy this comparison, since the monikers he bestows to nearby toadies include “Ron Weasley,” “Eraserhead baby,” “fucking Nazi Julie Andrews” and—my favorite—“gay Voldemort.” In its unrelievedly acrid humor, In the Loop recalls Dr. Strangelove, updated for the days of the Downing Street memo. Malcolm accompanies dim development minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) from London to Washington, where they find more of the same shameless jobbery. Is it a brave satire? It’s a little late for that. But it is an immensely masochistic one. It takes a shabby pleasure in humiliation, confessing that the nastiest bastards in U.K. politics are mere “meat puppets” for American interests. R. AARON MESH. No showtimes.

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino’s opus may feature a Brad Pitt-marshaled squadron of merciless Jewish commandos, but the punishment they visit upon the Third Reich is only a small part of the movie’s five chapters—it serves as a punctuation to intricate dances of dialogue, some stretching as long as 40 minutes and conducted in four languages. The movie ranks among Tarantino’s greatest achievements, but it is not a shiny summer bauble. It is more like a housecat hunting for 152 minutes, depositing a bloody, broken bird at your feet and expecting you to love the gift as much as he does. And make no mistake: Love—the unabashed, full-throated, spelling-challenged adoration of cinema—is what’s at stake here. Inglourious Basterds is surely the first World War II film in which a heroic officer is a former film critic. It is a war movie about other war movies, and a war movie in which the deciding weapon is the movies themselves. It is a fantasy of scorched-earth revenge for the Holocaust, exacted in a Parisian projection booth, through the artistic medium shepherded into existence by the Jews. Until the final hellstorm, enjoy the best of Continental acting provided by Christoph Waltz, who joins the pantheon of feline villains. The experience is like savoring a box of imported French chocolates, only the last one is filled with the wrath of God. This is real moviemaking: polarizing, courageous, dangerous. If it is guilty of bloodlust, at least it has something left in its veins besides novelty and hype. It reminds us of cinema's potential to fulfill impossible wishes. R. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Tigard Joy Theatre, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Late Night Double Feature Picture Show

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The gay-bar twin-bill movie screenings continue with The Breakfast Club followed by The Way of the Gun. Boxxes Video Bar, 330 SW 11th St. 8:30 pm Monday, Nov. 9.

Law Abiding Citizen

An hour into Law Abiding Citizen, action man of the hour Gerard Butler (300) says his revenge plan will “get biblical.” Talk about understatement. Between burying people alive and castration by box cutter, Butler’s pissed-off dad mixes Old Testament carnage with the wackadoo morality of a cultist pouring poisoned Kool-Aid. The film works more like Saw for people who hate horror films but love human suffering. Butler’s troubled genius, Clyde, is a seemingly upstanding American who goes all Man on Fire when a pair of thugs rapes and murders his wife and young daughter. From prison, Butler exacts gruesome revenge on Philadelphia’s corrupt justice system—deal-cutting D.A. Jamie Foxx, the judge, their assistants, parking attendants—through a series of Jigsaw-style traps (Clyde’s the government-trained Rube Goldberg of inventive assassination, employing everything from robots to explosive cell phones). Foxx, continuing a smirking post-Oscar decline of Cuba Gooding proportions, spends the film figuring out how a man behind bars can wreak such havoc as the film races from murder to murder with the urgency of a Final Destination film with a sense of importance. R. AP KRYZA. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

malls r us

[ONE WEEK ONLY] Learning after the fact how a seducer thought up the sultry façade that made you lose your bearings and cash can be painful. Or you may be so in love with the image that you just don’t give a damn that you were played. The seducer in the documentary malls r us is the shopping mall. And the film by Helene Klodawsky leaves viewers well armed at the end of 78 minutes to decide whether to let the Xanadus of consumption seduce them this holiday season. The documentary bounces around a tad, but manages at all times to inform, entertain and make viewers think—offering both footage of mall zombies from Dawn of the Dead and camerawork that captures the religious imagery of water and light that is part of some modern malls’ undeniably innovative architecture. There’s also the history of malls in North America and the current trends of both abandoned suburban malls left to molder and ever-escalating mega-malls metastasizing into previously unimaginable parts of the globe with increasingly tortured leaps of logic. (The first environmentally-sensitive mall is complete with a pitchman cheerfully describing its raison d’etre as “global warming, whatever.”) HENRY STERN. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Wednesday, Nov. 6-11. Clinton Street Theater.

Michael Jacksons This Is It

If nothing else, This Is It—the de facto documentary cobbled together in the wake of Jackson’s death on June 25—helps flesh out the image of Michael Jackson as an all-around creative force. It’s not the rehearsal footage showing us the giant spectacle he had planned for his 50 scheduled shows at London’s O2 Arena that does it, either. Yes, it would’ve been huge. And eye-popping. And, at points, garish and overblown. In other words, it’s what we would have expected from him. But it’s the small moments, captured between the run-throughs and videotaped vignettes, that reveal a side of Jackson not often seen—that of the gentle taskmaster. Kenny Ortega is listed as the director of the This Is It tour and film, but it’s clear within the opening minutes, when Jackson stops “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” to instruct his backing band to make it funkier, who's actually in charge. But the problem is these are, by design, half-performances. Sometimes, the film comes close to capturing how electric it could have been live, such as when, during “Billie Jean,” the music drops out and Jackson launches into a classic solo routine—complete with crotch-grabbing—to the genuine giddiness of his backup dancers. It’s all a great tease, but it can only be a tease. PG. MATTHEW SINGER. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

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. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre.

New York, I Love You

An omnibus Big Apple tribute inspired by Paris, Je T'Aime includes the directing debut of Natalie Portman. Not screened for Portland critics. R. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Old School Kung Fu Masters

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Having unearthed a trove of chop-sockey reels from underneath a British Columbia theater, Grindhouse Film Festival director Dan Halsted shows 'em off: This week it's 1978's 7 Grandmasters, which features "the best monkey-style kung fu fight ever put on film." Hollywood Theatre. 9:45 pm Tuesday, Nov. 10.

Papers

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary profiles undocumented immigrant teenagers. Center for Intercultural Organizing, 700 N Killingsworth. 6:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 8. No showtimes.

Paranormal Activity

In the spirit of found-footage horror (see: The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, REC), an increasingly popular mode whose weaknesses and strengths are exemplified by Paranormal Activity, I am forgoing a more traditional review. Instead, I present to you the notes I made while screening the film. “White people.” “Boring white people.” “Will they ever shut up?” “Do they ever go to work?” “Jesus Christ, where are the fucking ghosts?” “I was promised ghosts.” “They're sleeping. This isn't scary.” “More talking.” “Ghosts goddammit, I want ghosts!” “These actors are really good at pretending to be people I'd never want to be stuck in an elevator with.” “Finally, a fucking ghost.” “Oh shit, that was kinda scary.” “A demon, not a ghost.” “More inane blather.” “Idea: horror film about a demon who torments deaf-mutes.” “Pretty scared now, actually.” “Making this note because I'm too scared to look at the screen.” “Sorta relieved that so much of this movie is just talking, as I did not bring an extra pair of underwear.” “This is too much.” “Mommy.” “Will anyone notice if I throw up?” “I don't like this.” “Chris, you'll get through this.” “Wait, that was it?” “Happy I did not piss my pants.” “Kinda bummed I did not piss my pants.” R. CHRIS STAMM. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, CineMagic Theatre, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cinetopia, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sherwood Stadium 10.

Paris

[ONE WEEK ONLY] The “we are all connected” movie visits the City of Light, though it’s less the French Babel than the French Love, Actually. Being Parisian, the road to romance is paved less with stuttering comedy and public singing than with loveless affairs, existential crises and staring out windows. But it’s still a fundamentally squishy thing, a star-studded cavalcade of frogs—Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Luchini, Mélanie Laurent and François Cluzet all amble past each other. The effect is pleasant, creating the impression that Paris is a hard-living urban melting pot that happens to be peppered by all the actors you’ve seen in other movies set in Paris. Albert Dupontel is best as a divorced fishmonger, while Binoche seems more sensual the more harried she becomes, and Luchini—a Rohmer vet—boogaloos to “Land of 1,000 Dances.” But director Cédric Klapisch seems determined to spoil the fun with blasts of poor taste: A nightmare sequence is shot inside a gaudy CG architect’s rendering, while a major character’s fatal motorbike crash is filmed with a quick-cut, flying-body montage right out of a ‘70s Mondo picture. We are all connected—with the pavement. R. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Oct. 16-22. Living Room Theaters.

Ponyo

The magic of Hayao Miyazaki is a very old magic; overgrown, dilapidated, left out to sit in the rain. The magic in the Spirited Away director’s latest animated feature, Ponyo, is so old it’s prehistoric: In the second half of the movie, the oceans flood into coastal mountains, so that Devonian-era Diplocercides fish schools cruise down the highways, and giant jellyfish nest in the trees. But Ponyo’s ancient sorcery is exceptionally suited to the very young. For the first time since early Miyazaki works like My Neighbor Totoro, it is possible to bring your preschoolers to the theater without fear of frightening them. A good deal of transformation is experienced by Ponyo, a tide-pool creature who is described as a “goldfish” but looks more like a soaked Beanie Baby. She lives with her father, a sea wizard who stole Mr. Magorium’s wardrobe and now must reside in a submarine, where he breeds plankton. (It’s a living.) For reasons that are perfectly logical onscreen but feel very silly to recount here, Ponyo evolves into a frog with chicken legs, then into a little girl in a red dress. The kids might like that stuff, but I’d venture that adults will remember the older mysteries: the reflection of car lights off rain-slicked streets, the distant glimmer of ships in the night and the rocking of the surf, like a lullaby. G. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre.

Pray for Hell

[FIVE NIGHTS ONLY] Portland director Todd E. Freeman premieres a thriller about two men seeking vengeance for their slaughtered families. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Sunday-Thursday, Nov. 1-5. No showtimes.

Ridin' & Rhymin'

[ONE SHOW ONLY] The Siren Nation Festival presents local duo Dawn Smallman and Greg Snider's inspiring, bittersweet portrait of Georgie Sicking, a woman who's spent the majority of her life in the saddle as a cowhand: corralling cattle, rustling wild Mustangs and writing "cowboy poetry" out on the Wyoming, Texas and Nevada plains since she quit school at 17. "I know what it is to ride a horse, I know what it is to get bucked off, and I know what it is to rock a baby," she affirms as the camera zooms in on her now octogenarian face, a road map of deep wrinkles that crack open with a bright smile or wince (she just broke her collarbone after she took a tumble off yet another horse). Sweeping shots of the gorgeous Western countryside are interspersed with her frank poems—some silly, others heartbreaking and biting in their criticism of women's supposed place in this world. Her own story is a Louis L'Amour novel: Her mom left her for the rodeo, her father was dragged to death by a horse, her ranch was lost after the government stole the land to save the endangered Kiwi fish, and a new home was demolished by a freak flood. She once used a pocketknife to kill a horse that had broken its legs after tumbling into a ravine. And that wasn't nearly as tough as convincing ranchers that she should be paid the same as her male counterparts. KELLY CLARKE. Hollywood Theatre. 2:40 pm Saturday, Nov. 7.

Saw VI

There are six of them now? Jesus Christ. Oh, they're still not being screened for critics. R. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Division Street Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas.

Selfless

[ONE WEEK ONLY, DIRECTORS ATTENDING] The incurably protean Pander brothers, Jacob and Arnold, have published reams of graphic novels for Dark Horse Comics, painted velvet murals of giant breasts for Thatch Tiki Bar and established a presence in the local electronic music scene. So why shouldn’t they try making a movie? Selfless, their first full-length foray into narrative filmmaking, is a psychological chiller that carries the imprint of comics in at least one sense: It is wholly engrossing without making a lick of sense. The story, which both brothers wrote, concerns a Pearl District architect (Joshua Rengert) whose life is systematically destroyed by a swarthy fiend (Matt Gallini) he pisses off in a Seattle-Tacoma International Airport terminal. The draftsman’s troubles eventually incorporate identify theft, twin stewardesses and human trafficking—he never quite comprehends what’s happening to him, which is just as well, because otherwise he’d be catatonic with disbelief. No matter: Selfless compensates for its implausibility with Jacob Pander’s chic, Lynchian direction—Portland’s skyline is validated as a nightmare cityscape of gleaming postmodernism—and sheer balls: By the time one character hikes on the shoulder of I-5 from Portland to Seattle for a samurai-sword duel, the movie is kung-fu Pander. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. 7 pm Friday-Thursday, Nov. 6-12, plus 2:30 pm screenings Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 7-8. Jacob and Arnold Pander will attend the premiere on Friday, Nov. 6.

Shorts

Odd, isn’t it, how two years ago we were arguing whether Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez had submitted the better half of Grindhouse? Now both directors are releasing their follow-up projects on the same Friday: Tarantino has composed his most daring work yet, and Rodriguez has gone back to making ugly, clamorous children’s movies. Like the Spy Kids pictures, Shorts isn’t complete trash—for some reason, I was fairly taken by the repeated freeze-frame of a crocodile suspended in the sky, menacing a baby—but it’s comprehensively inglorious: hectic, computerized candy for schoolkids. William H. Macy, Leslie Mann and James Spader each contribute their bodies, if little else, to the assignment of running in circles (in Macy’s case, pursued by a giant puddle of snot). There are a lot of kids, too—abusive little shits, unmemorable except for Jolie Vanier as a clone of Christina Ricci’s version of Wednesday Addams. The film’s sole purpose is to train up a new generation of gross-out aficionados. The only plot is a paranormal multicolored stone that grants any and all wishes. It really works: I wished that the movie would end and, after just 89 minutes, it did. PG. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Kennedy School Theater, Milwaukie Cinema, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Siren Nation Film Festival

[ONE DAY ONLY] Portland's ladyfest presents a quartet of documentaries created by female directors about fearless women, plus a screening of Storm Large's epic vagina video Eight Miles Wide. Kimberlee Bassford's Ahead of the Majority (noon) illuminates the career of politician and Title IX author Patsy Mink, while Ferron: Girl on a Road (1:10 pm) tracks the life of Canadian "folk-hero" and songwriter Ferron. Left Lane (3:50 pm) takes viewers on a road trip with ebullient, hyper-feminist folk/slam/punk poet Alix Olson, who a conservative women's group once dubbed one of the 10 most dangerous women in America thanks to her infectious, warriorlike attitude toward decimating injustice. The film's more of a video diary than a documentary, filled with pit stops and diatribes on the way to festivals with "womyn" in the title. Most illuminating are scenes that involve Olson's family, including her fiery college-professor mom and her grandma—who is delighted that Alix is a lesbian and goes to female ejaculation workshops. The highlight of the program is Ridin' & Rhymin' (2:40 pm); see WW’s separate listing. KELLY CLARKE. Hollywood Theatre. Noon-5:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 7. No showtimes.

The Baker

A hitman lies low in a Welsh bakery. It's a comedy with the chap who plays Dumbledore. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.

The Box

Richard Kelly's remake of a Twilight Zone episode (involving a box, naturally, and Frank Langella without half of his face) wasn't screened by WW press deadlines. Look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

The Damned United

You don’t need to like sports at all to enjoy the hell out of this soccer picture. It stars Michael Sheen as Brian Clough, an upstart coach obsessed with the British club Leeds United. You could say that he figures the only way he can beat Leeds is by joining them. He lasts 44 days. If this performance is any indication, it’s a wonder Clough lasted as long as he did. A cocksure bantam of a man, Clough makes brash telly appearances where he rubs his eye and flicks his tongue over his teeth in gestures of contempt. He derides his new players as cheats. In flashbacks to the days of his first coaching gig at Derby County, we see him delicately arranging oranges and ashtrays in the visiting locker room, trying to curry favor with the celebrities of Leeds. He is hopelessly arrogant, narcissistic and resentful. I really, really loved him. The Damned United is written by Peter Morgan; he and Sheen previously collaborated on The Queen and Frost/Nixon, where Sheen played Tony Blair and David Frost, respectively. Believe it or not, this film is better than either of those forebears. The Damned United isn’t ultimately interested in championships; it’s about the joys of loyalty. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

The Final Destination

The Grim Reaper works his booby traps again, this time at a NASCAR race, and in 3-D. Not screened for critics. R. Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema.

The Fourth Kind

Close encounters with aliens, though with more abductions and probably less mashed-potato sculpture. Not screened by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

The Hangover

Director Todd Phillips’ bro-down film is set in the bro mecca of Las Vegas, a city Phillips (Old School) basically jizzes over in the establishing shots of the opening credits. The plot, too, sounds disturbingly like quintessential bro cinema: Four dudes get wasted at a bachelor party and stumble drunkenly through the repercussions. Only something funny happens on the way to a routine Hollywood man-comedy: Phillips gives a comedic genius his first big break and rediscovers the lost art of screwball. The bros’ night in Vegas is a predictably drunken (and unintentionally roofied) blur. But less predictably, we are shown none of the night’s original hijinks, only the hijinks’ aftermath—which involves a mercifully disappeared groom, an abandoned baby and Mike Tyson’s tiger. In this amnesic construction, The Hangover breaks its mold. As good as Ed Helms is as the most frantic groomsman, it’s Zach Galifianakis who makes this film required summer viewing. The bearded underground comic’s character is essentially his own intense and awkward stand-up persona with a few extra-special needs thrown in for good measure. Dressed in attire that’s supposed to be outlandish but looks like your average Portland show-goer, he’s given the freedom to describe himself as a “one-man wolf pack,” and to lash out with fury when his man-purse is crushed (“Hey—there’s Skittles in there!”). Despite the character’s eccentricities, he’s actually treated with some degree of respect from his new friends. He has to be: He’s incredible. R. CASEY JARMAN. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Seattle director David Russo’s feature debut opens with a virtuoso montage of a wine bottle whisked through a rapid-fire series of seascapes, while always maintaining its position in the center of the screen. It arrives at the feet of Dory (Marshall Allman), a janitor at a market-research company, who opens it to discover a message of hope: “Fuck You.” The movie continues in this vein, perfectly keeping its balance even though you suspect Russo is having a go at the audience. The plot is certainly outlandish: Dory and his fellow nocturnal cleaners become addicted to prototype self-heating chocolate-chip cookies, until the men develop stomach pains and give birth to translucent blue fish out of the orifice they’ve got available. Yeah, dudes poop blue fish. The last time I remember seeing the male-birth conceit, it was on a very bad episode of The Cosby Show—yet here I found myself sort of buying it, because Russo has confident storytelling chops and the actors (especially the gutter charismatic Vince Vieluf) commit wholeheartedly to the office-space absurdity, which echoes Being John Malkovich. Little Dizzle is the rare avant-garde comedy that not only transcends its crackpot subject matter, but elevates it. I found myself, well, moved, which is probably as far as blue-fish pooping can go. AARON MESH. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Wednesday, April 29. No showtimes.

The Informant!

Steven Soderbergh hasn’t settled for making the funniest and flat-out best movie of his career, or for capsizing the corporate-scandal drama into a pool of farce. He’s also managed to do something more subtle and radical: He’s sabotaged all the clichés of voice-over narration in film. The device is often a crutch, used to reveal what a central character is thinking. The question of what agribusiness whistle-blower Mark Whitacre (a mustachioed Matt Damon) is thinking is the central dilemma of The Informant!—it contains the clues to what this apparent naïf is really up to—and yet the more insistent his voice-over is, the less that internal monologue tells us. Much of the supple comedy in The Informant! comes from Soderbergh contrasting his hero’s romantic vision of himself—Damon’s fine performance has echoes of Christopher Walken in Catch Me If You Can—against the banality of his espionage. The rest of the humor—and it is a bottomless well—comes from the alarmed reactions of Whitacre’s FBI handlers (especially Joel McHale of The Soup) and his lawyers (especially Tony Hale, Arrested Development’s Buster) as they learn, along with us, that Mark hasn’t “been telling you guys the whole truth,” as he blithely puts it. There’s also an amazing hairpiece joke. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Living Room Theaters, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

The Kabul to Kandahar Antiwar Progressive Fall Film Fest

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The PSU Progressive Student Union continues its free screenings with Zinat, which documents an Iranian doctor trying to keep her rural clinic open. Laughing Horse Books, 12 NE 10th Ave. 7 pm Monday, Nov. 2.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The Clinton Street Theater expands its weekly midnight screenings for Halloween, offering three extra chances to sing along with Dr. Frank-N-Furter. R. Clinton Street Theater. 8 pm and midnight Friday-Saturday, Oct. 31-Nov. 1. No showtimes.

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 Stepfather

Mom's new man is a psychotic killer. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Movies On TV Stadium 16.

The Time Travelers Wife

The more I think about it, the creepier the premise of The Time Traveler’s Wife seems. In Audrey Niffenegger’s novel and the movie it has spawned, a man is genetically saddled with an involuntary tendency to pop through time and space without his clothes; more often than not, he drops in on a field where a little girl holds her tea parties. Reader, she marries him. You could call it destiny. You could also call it grooming. Or you could take the view of the movie, and call it a chance for a girl to start planning her dream wedding as early as possible, with a husband conveniently provided. The movie comes across as a handsomely illustrated picture book, with Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams as the lead drawings. They both have pretty faces, and are occupied with hefty queries. What is the nature of free will? If you could know the hour of your death but couldn’t change it, would you want to know? Is it really cheating if you go back in time to fuck a younger, hotter version of your spouse? (This is actually discussed.) The only matter it resolves, however, is that a carefully mounted, conventional weepie is the worst possible medium for addressing metaphysical paradoxes. I had already learned that lesson, with much grief, from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. PG-13. AARON MESH. Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Up

Some inspiration has made Pixar’s last three pictures—Ratatouille, WALL-E and now Up—increasingly outlandish and…well, sad. Cartoons may possess an ingrained tendency for cuteness, but not since Disney drew Dumbo has a studio so skillfully exploited the medium’s capacity for pathos. I spent much of WALL-E on the cusp of tears, and started bawling within the first five minutes of Up, pausing only to take notes. In my defense, the prologue of Up is uncommonly poignant. A little boy with huge hornrims sits agog at a 1930s movie-palace newsreel of South American adventure, then meets a little girl who is equally delighted by tales of discovery. In a montage set to Michael Giacchino’s elegiac piano score, the two kids grow up, marry, grow old. They never quite make it to the jungle of their nickelodeon dreams. She slips away in a hospital bed, and Carl—the boy’s name is Carl—has become the forlorn old coot Mr. Fredricksen, his voice growled by Ed Asner, his house besieged by progress he doesn’t understand. When he dodges an impending nursing-home confinement by packing his house with rainbow-hued helium balloons, he’s making an escape, but also retreating into a floating shrine to his late wife. Whatever brainstorming session came up with Up allowed Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson to grapple not only with old age, but with the kind of maturity rarely broached by cartoons. PG. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Kiggins Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Where the Wild Things Are

It’s standard practice to praise family movies by saying they’ll be enjoyed by parents and children alike, but in the case of the Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s picture book, I suspect that some parents will sink blissfully into a reverie watching the characters throw clods of dirt, while their offspring tug on sleeves to ask when they can go outside and throw clods of dirt. Where the Wild Things Are is like watching a game of Calvinball scripted by Robert Altman—no rules, lots of running in circles and everybody grumbling at once—but at least it looks great. All the truest moments arrive before little Max (a subtly emotive young Portlander named Max Records) sails away from home in a tantrum and projects his feelings onto wonderfully tangible animal puppets, detailed by Jim Henson's people down to the soil clinging to woolly legs and the mucus under nostrils. But the oddly glum cavorting looks like those Olympic opening ceremonies where dancers wander beneath indigenous obelisks, only set to hipster Kidz Bop tapes. The monsters whiz by in an alarming jumble of infantile hurt feelings expressed in a large vocabulary; they don’t sound like children, or even a child’s understanding of their elders, so much as adults who don’t want to be adults. That’s exactly who it was made by, and for. PG. AARON MESH. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Moreland Theatre, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Whip It

The first 15 minutes of films about the first years of womanhood are such a difficult time. The opening act of Whip It gives little reason to hope it will be anything more than a retread of Juno, which was itself a copy of Ghost World. But as soon as alternateen Ellen Page hops a senior-citizen bingo bus for a ride to roller-derby tryouts—and shares a sympathetic exchange with a fellow bluehair—the movie reveals a capacity for openheartedness and understanding far beyond its predecessors’. Debut director Drew Barrymore’s movie has editing problems, but it’s filled with delights, even beyond the mischief of tiny Page skating “like a weevil” while tatted ladies try to board-check her. Barrymore’s direction grows surer as Whip It goes along. (An underwater make-out session, set to Jens Lekman, is cut so the partners magically never need surface; love seems to have given them gills instead of wings.) With the exception of an obligatory Jimmy Fallon, the cast is superb, with Kristen Wiig, Alia Shawkat and Daniel Stern giving the performances of their careers. But the movie belongs to Marcia Gay Harden, whose interpretation of a controlling stage parent is so understanding it might cause people to forgive their own mothers. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hollywood Theatre.

Zombieland

The bad news: Only six people on earth will survive the undead apocalypse. The good news: One of those people is Jesse Eisenberg. On the strength of this gob of dystopian cotton candy and the similarly themed (though zombie-free) Adventureland, Eisenberg has nervously scuffed past Michael Cera as cinema’s premier timid comedian. He’s taken the tired archetype of a screenwriter’s virginal alter ego and corroded it with a daub of pre-emptive arrogance and hostility—especially appropriate for his new nerd, who rightly suspects the girls he likes want to eat him alive. He’s paired with Superbad smartie Emma Stone, who wouldn’t sleep with Eisenberg if he were the last guy on the planet. (He’s one of two, and the other is Woody Harrelson, which helps his odds considerably.) His know-it-all narration gives Zombieland a lot of its kick: It’s far from the first zombie comedy, but it revives the joke by picturing Armageddon as a teenager’s romantic-fantasy joyride. Director Ruben Fleischer, a music-video vet, has been studying the florid slo-mo of David Fincher and Zack Snyder for the purpose of sending it up; his insertion of three-dimensional text instructions sets a saucy tone. Zombieland finds time for an extended celebrity cameo that I should not discuss except to say that it is the best celebrity it could possibly be. R. AARON MESH. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

 

Look, ma—no drums. Ari Gold’s against-all-odds air-drumming microcomedy begins exactly where Napoleon Dynamite left off: with its storklike hero, Power, dancing spastically in front of aghast neighbors. Gold, who writes and directs along with playing the invisible snares as Power, so closely resembles Jon Heder that the comparison seems to have been intentionally courted—though when riding his friend’s tiny bicycle while wearing an assortment of headbands, he looks as much like Pee Wee Herman, or a very special lost Wilson brother. “I know it’s too late for me to learn to play drums,” says Power. “But I can still rock.” So can the movie, unexpectedly. It’s as sparkly and obnoxious as you’d expect, but it avoids Jared Hess’ trademark sneering, choosing instead complete identification with its protagonist. (Gold’s direction is best when he gets caught up in the music; montages set to “Kyrie Eleison” and “I Can Feel It Coming in the Air Tonight” are actually stirring.) It also has a social conscience, of a sort: Power’s dad (Michael McKean) is a union striker at a New Mexican copper mine, and Power eventually becomes a Local hero. What I’m telling you is that I find myself sort of affectionate toward this movie, even though I know it’s sloppy and bad. I can only imagine how much I’d like it if there were actual instruments. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cinema 21.

 

[REVIVAL] To infinity...and into your eyeball. Buzz and Woody get three dimensions, twice. G. Lloyd Center, etc.