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Official Competition
**** An 80-year-old billionaire decides to ensure his legacy by financing the creation of an epic film about…anything. He hires eccentric filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz), whose idea to adapt a Nobel Prize-winning novel called Rivalry sets the stage for Official Competition, a satirical adventure from Argentine filmmakers Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn. The film revolves around Lola’s collaboration with movie star Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) and revered elder theater actor Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez), who are cast in her film as rival siblings. Félix and Iván engage in a strange series of acting exercises (which include suspending a boulder over the actors’ heads as they rehearse), their egos creating comedic friction as Lola cleverly manipulates them. Cohn and Duprat, who wrote the script with Duprat’s brother Andrés, employ precise symmetry and over-the-shoulder shots in conversations to draw the audience in, while using deliberately vapid visuals to enhance the characters’ isolation. The result? A surreal environment that allows Lola, Félix and Iván to gradually fade away from anything resembling normal society, making Official Competition a fascinating and subtly hilarious film to watch. R. RAY GILL JR. Cinema 21.
Cha Cha Real Smooth
** In 2020, then-23-year-old Cooper Raiff became an indie film presence overnight by writing, directing and starring in Shithouse, a college dramedy about a deeply earnest freshman hooking up, missing Mom and figuring himself out. In his follow-up, Raiff advances a nearly identical character and worldview into post-grad angst—this time with Dakota Johnson and Apple TV+ in his corner. Wayward Andrew (Raiff) finds himself emceeing bar mitzvahs, which leads to meeting Domino (Johnson) and her autistic daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt)—and becoming the former’s love interest and the latter’s babysitter. While there’s sentimentality to spare, the movie’s broad comedy—from bar mitzvah brawls to Andrew roasting his stepdad (Brad Garrett) to tweens being cajoled into dancing with each other—plays well. Yet Cha Cha Real Smooth pauses routinely for Andrew and Domino to discuss their character development (he’s young and dumb; she’s scared to be alone), almost as if the script’s goal were life-coaching. And without Shithouse’s college bubble, it’s transparent that Raiff has orchestrated a farfetched story so stunning women will gaze longingly at him and he can weep over his own dialogue. Cha Cha Real Smooth isn’t necessarily a sophomore slump, but it’s certainly an indicator that Raiff should evolve his onscreen persona and formula before they strain credulity (and amplify his vanity) any further. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinema 21, Apple TV+.
Elvis
** Early in Elvis, Baz Luhrmann’s bejeweled biopic of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) hires Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) to represent him exclusively. When the pact is made, the Ferris wheel they’re sitting on creaks to life and then, via movie magic, seems to transform into a spinning record. That jazzy juxtaposition is Elvis in a nutshell—it’s always in motion, surging through space and time like the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace. In 159 minutes, Luhrmann chronicles Elvis’ evolution from gyrating idol to Vegas sideshow, rarely stopping for a breath along the way. The film’s preference for speed over soul is exhausting and irritating, but it’s not without its pleasures. There are inspired edits—one sequence elegantly cuts back and forth between Elvis striding on stage in his legendary pink suit and experiencing spiritual ecstasy in a revival tent—and brazen performances, particularly Hanks’. Jowly and growly, his Tom Parker is a bloated Merlin to Elvis’ gleaming King Arthur. Despite his title, the real Parker never served in the military, but Hanks uncovers mesmerizingly grotesque truth in his charlatanism. When Elvis vows that his career won’t come between him and his mother, the Colonel smiles nastily at the audience and asks, “Wanna bet?” His crudeness and cruelty bring shape and texture to Luhrmann’s stretched-out film, daring us to wonder who the real king is. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad, Cedar Hills, Cinema 2, City Center, Eastport, Fox Tower, Joy Cinema, Lake Theater, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Tigard.
Spiderhead
** Joseph Kosinski’s Spiderhead imagines a world where prison inmates volunteer as lab rats for experimental mood drugs in exchange for Silicon Valley-style office perks like appetizers, arcades and free run of the building. That may sound farfetched, but we already live in a world where this movie was released four weeks after Top Gun: Maverick (also directed by Kosinski), Chris Hemsworth shines as a villain, and Netflix is willing to turn a speculative George Saunders short story into a glossy, half-decent thriller. Miles Teller stars as Jeff, a prisoner in the oceanside pharma-carceral overseen by Hemsworth’s chiseled, buddy-buddy warden, who prefers that inmates call him Steve. Spiderhead is set mostly in the shadow of a two-way mirror, with Steve observing his subjects and mining Jeff for feedback. Unfortunately, Kosinski too strongly prefers the deluded, borderline satirical vantage of Steve to Jeff’s interrogation of this dystopia. Teller spends most of the movie deflated, while Hemsworth burns every ounce of available charisma to ensure we keep watching his snide, too-familiar science bro. Letting a streaming service swap emotions and data for stimulation and comfort seems like a safe bargain, right? R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Netflix.