Willamette Weekend

[FILM] Not to be confused with the movie in which Samuel L. Jackson got eaten by a motherfucking shark, this Deep  Blue Sea is about a woman devoured by something else entirely: adulterous lust. It’s probably no coincidence that her name is Hester (Rachel Weisz). Trapped in a passionless marriage, she begins an affair with a handsome flyboy (Tom Hiddleston), and the guilt drives her to attempt suicide. Then things really go downhill. Adapting Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, Terence Davies gives the postwar British drama a gauzy, painterly translation. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave. Multiple showtimes. 

[BOOZE] Some 40 local and visiting artisan-spirit producers will be pouring in one spot, while local bartenders turn their products into cocktails at this now-annual event. The best part of TOAST is there’s one flat tasting fee—no annoying drink tickets, and you get to taste everything you can legally handle. World Trade Center Sky Bridge Terrace, 121 SW Salmon St. 3-8 pm Saturday-Sunday, April 28-29. $40-49 for one day, $75 for two days.

[COMICS] This year’s fest features big names like underground legend Pete Bagge and Portland royalty like Nate Powell and Steve Lieber, but Stumptown is really more about discovery than stargazing. This isn’t comic-con, it’s a fest as grown-up as the medium itself is these days. Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. $7. Continues Sunday.

[FILM] After detouring into conventional CGI with last year’s Arthur Christmas, Aardman Studios—home to Wallace and Gromit and 2000’s Chicken Run—returns to the vibrant claymation and madcap humor of founder and director Peter Lord. With The Pirates!, Lord leaves the English countryside for a romp on the high seas, but he maintains his distinctly British sense of silliness. Following a not-so-fearsome pirate captain named the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant, whose droll comedic timing is long underrated) on his quest to win the top prize at the Pirate of the Year Awards, the film fully earns its title’s exclamation point with whiz-bang action sequences to rival Spielberg’s similarly globetrotting Adventures of Tintin, the most fun involving a runaway bathtub, an Easter Island statue and a monkey in disguise. The jokes and visual gags, deployed at the expense of swashbuckling clichés (and Charles Darwin), fly by at an equally breakneck pace, with even more lurking in the background. PG. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Pioneer Place, City Center, Hilltop, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville. Multiple showtimes.

[FILM] Willem Dafoe hunts a rare tiger in the jungles of Tasmania? Sign me the fuck up! Like The Grey, whose trailer insinuated Liam Neeson would spend the movie killing wolves with his bare hands, a one-line synopsis of Daniel Nettheim’s outback thriller suggests a man-versus-wild free-for-all that may or may not end with Dafoe devouring the still-beating heart of his fourlegged foe. It doesn’t quite turn out that way. Instead of depicting a crazed descent into primal madness, The Hunter winds up the story of regained humanity, with Dafoe giving a largely internalized performance, played through his eyes and the deep trenches carved into his skin. And while the climax never escalates into a blood orgy, it nevertheless achieves a stirring, quiet poignancy. Living Room Theaters, 341 SW 10th Ave. Multiple showtimes.