Brew Views During the 1988 election in Chile that led to the ouster of Augusto Pinochet, TV advertising played as major a role in the political process as traditional campaigning: For 27 days, each side ha ... More

Brew Views The words “spring break” are repeated so often in Spring Breakers that the phrase takes on a mantralike quality. Still best known for writing Kids and directing Gummo, backwater auteur Harmony K ... More

Brew Views For its second tribute to film noir, Return to Noirville, Cinema 21 celebrates the genre’s apex with eight classics, but it also hops a few decades forward with a trio of neo-noirs. Top among th ... More

Brew Views Pigs figure heavily in Upstream Color. In addition to a scene of a woman cuddling with a piglet, writer-director Shane Carruth’s sophomore feature also includes swine being bagged for an unple ... More

Brew Views In the JJ-fied Star Trek of today, it’s easy to look upon the pitifully low-budgeted original series and giggle. The episode “Spectre of the Gun,” Gene Roddenberry’s 1968 nod to the cowboy W ... More

Brew Views Just how über ’70s is Daryl Duke’s The Silent Partner? Elliot Gould (check) stars as Miles, a milquetoast bank teller and budding lothario (check) who inadvertently provokes the murderous rag ... More

Brew Views “Don’t be creepy, don’t be creepy, don’t be creepy,” the lovesick zombie in Warm Bodies begs himself as he stares, slack-jawed, at the very blond, very alive object of his affection. He� ... More

Brew Views Some things are just better with a beer or six. Take, for example, the sight of a shirtless Patrick Swayze ripping out a dude’s throat. Or a gigantic bug sucking out a man’s brain with what ap ... More

Brew Views In a post-Dark Knight world, it seems laughable that Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman—with its Prince soundtrack, delightfully hammy Jack Nicholson performance and lack of horribly disfiguring facial ... More

Brew Views Like The Shining, The Dead Zone is proof that films are much better off using Stephen King’s ideas as a template rather than treating them as gospel. Make no mistake, 1983’s The Dead Zone is ... More

DVD & TV We believe what we want to believe, especially in the world of the paranormal. Some will argue that something that goes bump in the night is a restless spirit. Others, like your carpenter, insist ... More

DVD & TV What can you divine about a television series from its pilot? Probably about as much as you can learn by looking at footprints in a muddy crime scene and determining the killer wore Timberlands. But ... More

DVD & TV I’ve got a confession to make: I don’t watch nearly as much TV as I should. I say “should” because when someone is being paid to write about television, there’s an expect ... More

DVD & TV An entertainment-industry trade paper recently ran a story with maybe the most depressing lead you could hope to find: “Sure, Michael Phelps has racked up more medals than any other Olympian in ... More

DVD & TV Generation Kill only makes sense if you’ve seen The Wire, but not quite for the reasons you’d expect. The Wire has now joined that short list of television shows whose titles are shorthand ... More

DVD & TV The premise for ABC’s Wipeout is pretty simple: Hearty Americans of slightly above-average looks and strength compete in an escalatingly dumb series of physical competitions designed to make the ... More

DVD & TV John Adams, which stars Paul Giamatti as a very grumpy Founding Father, is the kind of miniseries HBO excels at making, a sweeping historical epic that boasts an all-star cast, solid credentials on th ... More

DVD & TV NBC’s Quarterlife, a sitcom about those crazy kids and their blogs, has been booted from the network after just one episode and relegated to sister network Bravo. The explanation is a pretty sim ... More

DVD & TV I am now too old to get away with regularly watching MTV, which makes The Real World/Road Rules Challenge perfect for me. Let me explain. As did most people my age, I grew up not only watching MTV bu ... More

DVD & TV Watching Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do their shows in the midst of the Writers Guild strike is probably one of the most surreal viewing experiences I’ve ever had. And I don’t mean sur ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories In the first Hangover sequel, writer-director Todd Phillips took the formula of his surprise mega-hit original, covered it in shit and pig’s blood, and came away with a mean, lazy, cash-grabbing ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories People have been trying to figure out twentysomethings at least since Dustin Hoffman unzipped Anne Bancroft’s dress. In 2010, The New York Times Magazine ran a late-to-the-game article about a “ ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories The words “from the makers of Ice Age and Robots” and “starring the voices of Beyoncé, Pitbull and Steven Tyler” don’t exactly inspire confidence in a summer animated release. In fact, ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories JJ Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness has gotten great reviews. Already released in Australia, Mexico and other countries, the movie’s U.S. release was delayed because of a competing opening of T ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories For the seventh year, the Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival—the only one of its kind in the country—returns for a weekend of gender-bending, boundary-breaking and cross-dressing, with a ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories Michael Shannon—whose hot streak of late includes 2011’s best (and most overlooked) performance in Take Shelter—has steadily built a catalog that dips into a huge swath of roles, from heroes ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby begins, appropriately enough, with decoration—a gold-filigreed frame that accordions outward in 3-D before suddenly cutting to a swimmy shot of ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories I never thought I’d say this, but perhaps Salman Rushdie isn’t giving himself enough credit. In adapting his 1981 Booker Prize-winning Midnight’s Children, he works with director Deepa Mehta ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories Heading into The Reluctant Fundamentalist, you can’t help but admire director Mira Nair’s nerve. After suffering a setback like 2009’s Amelia—a dull biopic about Earhart—many filmmakers ... More

Movie Reviews & Stories The modern superhero trilogy has a very specific arc. There’s the origin story, in which an everyman stumbles into great power. In round two, the world turns on said hero as he faces greater t ... More

Screen This is the way the world cinema showcase ends: not with a whimper, but with mutilated clowns and schoolgirls with robotic claws. The Portland International Film Festival doesn’t let its foot off ... More

Screen Gephyrophobia: the fear of crossing bridges. This malady has longed plagued the eastside cinephile during the Portland International Film Festival. But not this year. In its second week, PIFF jumps ... More

Screen My first favorite movie was Follow That Bird. It starred my favorite actors at the time—a 6-foot, yellow-feathered puppet named Big Bird and his cohorts Oscar the Grouch and Mr. Snuffleupagus—p ... More

Screen There’s no mistaking it: Like any good regional importer looking to tap into economic recovery, the 34th annual Portland International Film Festival is diversifying. For the first time, PIFF is exp ... More

Screen Rome’s lost Legio IX Hispana, maybe massacred in Britain around 117 A.D., is suddenly a hot commodity: The Eagle is the second movie in six months about the legion’s shrouded fate, following Neil Marshall’s viscera-spattered Centurion ... More

Screen Africa is not a continent terrifically well known for its cinema: The money isn’t really there, and many of its countries are constantly in violent flux. But that very instability and unfamiliarit ... More

Screen Rage 45 [ONE NIGHT ONLY] With eye-popping cinematography and a searing score, Rage ranks among the most richly produced local films in recent memory, but also among the most disappointing. Early on, ... More

Screen A burst of jazz announces the place as 1950s London, where elderly author J.R. Ackerley begins typing a memoir. From his cozy apartment, ... More

Screen Crispin Glover may be popularly known for playing inarticulate (or completely silent) characters, but he has a lot to say. He returns to Portland this week with his two movies, What Is It? (which star ... More

Screen After months of breathlessly anticipating the chance to watch Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen’s comedy series Portlandia, it is suddenly difficult to find a place where people ... More