Five New Film Events This Week

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week

[ A ] Until Sir Paul kicks the bucket and "Carnival of Light" finally creeps out of the vault, there's nothing new under the sun for Beatles fans. So the best reason to see Ron Howard's new feature documentary on the Fab Four's touring years is to witness the highest-quality versions of some exceptionally rare performances. Howard can't help but overshoot the mark here, extending the story into a bit more of a biography than the subtitle calls for, but that's also what makes this film a worthwhile gateway for the uninitiated. NR. NATHAN CARSON. Cinema 21.

Bridget Jones's Baby

[ C ] That the third installment of the Bridget Jones franchise is wearily formulaic both in storyline and characterization is no surprise. After all, a film seemingly purpose-built for multiplex filler relies on predictability to secure its rank as a crowd pleaser. And that's pretty much all Bridget Jones's Baby is. Like the first film, Baby opens with a drunken and dejected Bridget, single once again, belting it out to the track "All by Myself." While this scene was hard to watch even the first time around, it at least carried an element of depressing humor. The depressing humor is still there, only now, the joke's on those who paid for tickets. R. MICHELLE DEVONA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Oak Grove, Vancouver.

The Hollars

[ C ] John Krasinski (The Office) directs and stars in this cutesy dramedy that misunderstands David O. Russell's dysfunctional family movies as being only about their spirit. The Hollars has a winning cast on its side with Margo Martindale as the family's ailing matriarch, Richard Jenkins as her hapless husband, and some broad comedy players like Charlie Day and Randall Park on board. But like the omnipresent folk pop of its soundtrack, it's just doing a broad-strokes approximation of something more thoughtful, a Little Miss Sunshine without the character detail. The Hollars isn't hard to watch, but it feels about as real as Jim Halpert (plus 20 pounds of muscle and a $200 haircut) depressively chain-smoking. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Hollywood.

OMSI Animation Film Festival

If there's one day of OMSI's Animation Film Festival you shouldn't miss, it's opening night, Sept. 15. Hot on the heels of Kubo and the Two Strings, staffers from Hillsboro's Laika animation studio will screen several of their own animated shorts, with an 18-foot-tall robotic skeleton puppet for good measure. Tickets for the day sold so quickly you can only get in with a full festival pass, but that just gives you the opportunity to see the enigmatic The King and the Mockingbird (1980), a hand-drawn French film that spent over 30 years in development and only recently became available in the English-speaking world. ZACH MIDDLETON. Empirical Theater. Sept. 15-18.

Portland Queer Film Festival

Each year, the Portland Queer Film Festival kicks open new closet doors and supplies us with a fresh buffet of prominent queer voices from around the globe. Now in its 20th year, the PQFF features Other People, the directorial debut of Broad City writer Chris Kelly; Real Boy, a film about a transgender musician finding his voice, internally and via the microphone; and Political Animals, a documentary about four prominent female lawmakers who fought the good fight for nationwide marriage equality. The cherry on top: A lot of these screenings are free, while others are much cheaper than usual. What with Critical Mascara simultaneously riling up the PDX queer community, it looks like September might be the new June. JACK RUSHALL. Cinema 21, pdxqueerfilm.com. Sept. 16-22.

Willamette Week