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A LOVE SONG
**** Historically cast for their hard-bitten gravitas, Wes Studi (The Last of the Mohicans, Hostiles) and Dale Dickey (Winter’s Bone, Leave No Trace) boast well over 200 screen credits between them. But freshman director Max Walker-Silverman is the first filmmaker to find romantic vulnerability in the grooves of Dickey’s and Studi’s unforgettable visages. A Love Song finds Faye (Dickey) idling away at a Southwestern Colorado campground, awaiting a letter from high school friend Lito (Studi). With some Moonrise Kingdom-influenced camerawork, the film is a playful exercise in simplicity, as Faye catches crawdads, cracks Busch Lights, and spins the dial on her lightly magical radio, which always plays the perfect lonesome country tune. When Studi arrives, the movie becomes a sublime two-part harmony—both actors wear their age as armor, delicately juxtaposing late-stage puppy love with their characters’ very real fear of starting over after age 60. More akin to a short story than a novel, the movie is a mere 81 minutes, but in every dusty frame, it features some of 2022′s finest acting. PG. CHANCE-SOLEM-PFEIFER. Fox Tower, Living Room.
EASTER SUNDAY
**** Jo Koy’s standup translates seamlessly to film in Easter Sunday, which captures his signature blend of humor and sentimentality. Written by Ken Cheng and Kate Angelo (and based on Koy’s life), the film centers on an Easter family gathering dominated by Susan Valencia, a matriarch exquisitely embodied by Lydia Gaston. Koy plays a version of himself named Joe, a struggling actor attempting to balance the ever-present demands of career and family. Due to a poverty of time, Joe often finds himself neglecting the most important people in his life, including his son Junior (Brandon Wardell), whom he struggles to connect with, and his mother, whom he struggles to please. Even as the film reaches for bigger and bigger jokes, its relatability makes it work—the essence of the story is Joe’s family and the sacrifices they’re willing to make for one another, along with Koy’s wit. Tapping into the devastating honesty of Valencia elders who emigrated from the Philippines to America, Easter Sunday reflects on the realities of generational assimilation, but it never loses sight of the inherent humor that only family can expose. PG-13. RAY GILL JR. Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, Cinema 99, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Mill Plain, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Stark Street, Vancouver Plaza.
BODIES BODIES BODIES
** Somewhere between crackling Gen Z dialogue and director Halina Reijn’s vivid cinematic vision lies the dead corpse of a fun idea. Bodies Bodies Bodies opens on a close-up of Bee (Maria Bakalova) and Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) making out in a scene that hints at an edgy Harmony Korine vibe that the film coasts on throughout its first act (unsurprisingly, both Reijn’s film and Korine’s Spring Breakers were released by the ultra-hip indie studio A24). Things get edgier still when they and a group of affluent 20-somethings and some random older guy (Lee Pace) gather at a remote mansion where they end up playing a series of twisted parlor games during a hurricane party. Predictably, the lights go out and the movie goes off the rails—especially when Sophie suggests they play Bodies Bodies Bodies, a seemingly innocent detective game. It’s an intriguing premise, but the clever generational dialogue (“you are so toxic”) and comedic twists give way to schlocky satire as more dead bodies turn up and people begin pointing fingers. Reijn’s avant-garde style is striking and the layered characters are full of intrigue, but we never really get to know them—and the lack of clues as to the culprit turns a whodunit into a less interesting game of Guess Who? R. RAY GILL JR. Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard.
CLAYDREAM
** “Interesting characters often have a simple goal…but it’s in great conflict with the world around them,” narrates the late, legendary Portland animator Will Vinton in ClayDream, a documentary about his life. Thematically, it’s a perfectly chosen quote, but it also spotlights the film’s limits. ClayDream frames a pioneering creator primarily as a combatant—against Nike co-founder Phil Knight (to whom he lost his company), against Bob Gardiner (his former collaborator-turned-tormentor), against his own flawed business acumen, and even against the introspection necessary to make this documentary really resonate. Seen here, Vinton’s self-analyses are so matter of fact they’re almost expository (like that his 1985 film The Adventures of Mark Twain represented a “high bar” or that the California Raisins were a “really successful project”). He’s portrayed more as a being in perpetual motion than as someone whose imagination can be unpacked. Granted, that appears accurate, according to the many interviews conducted by director Marq Evans (who also made The Glamour & the Squalor about another Pacific Northwest institution, Seattle DJ Marco Collins), but it leaves frustration behind. The film’s most cogent narrative is of a business’s rise and fall, set to ominous courtroom-drama music. ClayDream is a melancholic Vinton primer that capably chronicles what they made at Will Vinton Studios, just not why. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinema 21.