Screen Listings

A Quest for the Sublime: The Films of Werner Herzog

It’s Klaus Kinski Week at the NW Film Center—an event something like Shark Week, if sharks were blonde and prone to going batshit crazy on set. Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Cobra Verde both feature Herzog’s famed “best fiend” going batshit crazy in the jungle—to various levels of effect, though Aguirre includes the salutary sight of Kinski at odds with a monkey—and Woyzeck showcases the actor going batshit crazy as a cuckolded barber. Think Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd, only German and not entirely acting. AARON MESH. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. Woyzeck screens at 7 pm Thursday, May 8 and 9 pm Saturday, May 10. Cobra Verde screens at 7 pm Friday, May 9. Aguirre screens at 7 pm Saturday, May 10. Echoes from a Somber Empire screens at 7 pm Sunday, May 11.

August the First

Director Lanre Olabisi's lens focuses on Tunde's (Ian Alsup) high-school graduation backyard barbecue party in New Jersey, with his whole family there to celebrate. An invite was even extended to Tunde's father, Dipo (D. Rubin Green), who, having been away from the states and his three now-grown children for the past decade, shows up fresh from Lagos, Nigeria, to celebrate with his son. His arrival is greeted tensely by everyone but Tunde, whose sincere attempt to reconnect the family unit through childhood food and games results in an amalgam of mixed emotions. Uncomfortable scenes of inter-sibling bickering ensue. As vulnerable, long-harbored sentiments surface and as the fete unfolds, Dipo is there, carrying with him sub rosa motives to go with his platters of fried plaintains and gari dumplings. August the First does a good enough job hitting fam-dynamic cross-cultural soft spots, but I would've liked to see a bit more acting finesse and plot on the grill. SARA MOSKOVITZ.

Harold and Maude

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Those obsessed with the detailed, melancholic worlds of Wes Anderson would do well to witness what director Hal Ashby accomplishes with a 79-year-old free spirit, a bug-eyed suicidal teen, a flaming Jaguar hearse and an LP full of Cat Stevens tunes. The (grand)mother of all odd-couple stories, this 1971 sleeper hit revolves around the budding romance between rich, disconnected would-be corpse Harold (Bud Cort) and a worldly, whimsical rebel named Maude (Ruth Gordon). The pair's anti-establishment antics (liberating trees from sidewalks, crashing funerals and lifting cars) still often elicit claps and hoots from theatergoers. But perhaps the real reason Harold and Maude has aged so well is that its delightfully oddball theme of intergenerational ugly-bumping is secondary to its sheer generosity of spirit and belief that you can change yourself by touching others—in all sorts of ways. KELLY CLARKE. Cinema 21. 7 pm Wednesday-Thursday, May 14-15. No showtimes.

Japanese Sexploitation Double Feature

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] A twin bill of 35-mm Asian erotica, with suitably preposterous plots: Slave Widow focuses on a woman sold into the sex trade, while The Bite spotlights a gigolo who seduces virgins while his clients—a gaggle of imperious dowagers—watch in evident approval. The Bite (the one of these movies that was screened for critics) is mostly demure and restrained, with many black-and-white shots of nipples and direction by Hiroshi Mukai that suggests he wanted to be the Truffaut of jerk-off pictures. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday, May 9 and Sunday, May 11.

Knowing All of You Like I Do

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The fate of Music Millennium’s Northwest 23rd Avenue location was well documented in these pages, but there’s something terribly poignant about seeing what happened after it closed. First-time filmmaker Ivy C. Lin documents the gutting of the store with spare images—a Primal Scream poster torn down with a claw hammer, a hand-painted sign reading “Please leave all bags at counter” in a spot where there is no longer any counter—that hint at the “friendly ghosts” fleeing the neighborhood. There’s a lovely a cappella performance by WW cartoonist John Callahan of “Purple Winos in the Rain,” a song that fights for room above the sounds of destruction. Northwest Examiner editor Mike Ryerson also stops by, offering a depressing analysis of urban change along with a charming guided tour of the CD labels stuck to the corner trash can. (Somehow that tiny monument to Music Millennium seems especially fragile.) The film has been expanded from a short that ran at this year's NW Film Center Reel Music festival to a full 90 minutes. AARON MESH.

Lawrence of Arabia

[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] Never seen David Lean’s desert epic on the big screen? Never watched it in what Anthony Lane rightly described as “its natural habitat—the only place, you might say, where its proud and leonine presence has any meaning”? Here’s your chance. After this week, we stop feeling sorry for you and start holding you in contempt. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, May 9-15.

Paprika

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Even within the strange world of Japanese anime, Paprika deserves special mention for just how ingenious—and weird—it is. The latest contribution from Satoshi Kon (Tokyo Godfathers) concerns a dream-sharing headset called the DC Mini, which looks like an iPod gone very, very sinister, and is mostly a pretext for a movie about dreams within movies within dreams. The standard anime elements are here—cute girls kicking ass, teleportation and a bulging substance that threatens to destroy the world in the final reel—but what distinguishes Paprika is its exploration of the Japanese obsession with kitsch. That preoccupation manifests here as a hulking, pulsing parade of geisha dolls, plush frogs, Shinto gates and porcelain kittens, a procession that consumes everything in its path. It's all rather disturbing, yet it's hard to resist joining the mad party. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. 9 pm Wednesday-Thursday, May 14-15.

Redbelt

The best part about watching most David Mamet films is the anticipation of knowing that someone is going to get screwed over. In his latest film, set within the world of mixed-martial-arts fighters and aging action-film stars, the person we know is going to be on the receiving end of a Mamet cornholing is Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A highly principled fight instructor who does not believe in competition fighting, Mike, as is the case with most Mamet character/victims, is in a dire financial situation. When he saves the life of washed-up action star Chet Frank (Tim Allen), Mike is brought into a world of film that appears to be the answer to his fiscal woes. But this is a movie by the man who brought us classics like House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, where our hero is a poor sap who finds himself on the losing end of an elaborate con, and must then extricate himself from the unpleasantness. Ejiofor gives a great performance, and while this is not Mamet’s best film, it is still very good, and it should please his true fans. R. DAVID WALKER. Fox Tower.

Shotgun Stories

A substantial part of Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories involves its characters—the brothers Son, Boy and Kid—having King of the Hill moments: just sitting on the porch, in their Chevy conversion van, or down by the river of their slow-as-molasses rural Arkansas hometown, drinking beers, saying jack squat and contemplating their own respective existential crises. So when they become wrapped up in a devastating, life-or-death family feud, it’s both surprising and strangely captivating. The film (produced by David Gordon Green) hits some heavy dramatic chords but still keeps a healthy sense of humor throughout, striking some great, almost Bottle Rocket-like comic moments. Shotgun Stories is not perfect, but it’s an inspired and impressive debut from a filmmaker we’re sure to hear more from in the coming years. PG-13. LANCE KRAMER. Hollywood Theatre.

Son of Rambow

Put aside for a moment the overfamiliarity of the concept, which stretches from kids playing soldiers in Vietnam in Rushmore to the more obvious recent examples of characters and people making their own versions of cinema classics. Actually, don't bother—even if you go in braced for a cutesy English interloper coming late to the party, as I did, Rambow (the title is a kid's misspelling) should handily win you over. An innocent moppet, compulsively creative but sheltered by his religion from having ever seen a movie, Will (Bill Milner) accidentally sees First Blood and goes berserk with the need to make a violent movie (no, this isn't the story of how Paul Schrader came to write Taxi Driver). Luckily, the school bully is already hard at work doing just that, and the friendless hooligan allows Will to play the lead and infuse the project with his Howard Finster-like imaginings. It's the kind of catchy idea that usually runs out of steam by the third act, but Rambow stays remarkably consistent throughout, mostly thanks to wrinkles involving a ridiculously cool French exchange student and the school's infatuation with him. The film hums along with a sure comic touch, and the rare feel-good moments are earned by a genuinely affecting performance by the perfectly cast Milner. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower.

Speed Racer

See review. AARON MESH.

Speed Racer

The Wachowski brothers have twisted the Speed Racer plot into the most intricate, mystifying puzzle imaginable, but they have mainly concentrated on excreting a big shiny candy drop. It doesn’t taste very good, and in fact I can’t imagine any person over the age of 12 wanting the digital sugar rush to last more than about five minutes (in fact, it goes on for another 124), but it deserves a certain honor for being the summer movie most unapologetically dedicated to its surfaces. So, what does Speed Racer look like? It looks like a 1970s diner retrofitted as a 1950s diner by a cokehead who was not alive at any time in the 1950s. It looks like the latest upgrade of Second Life, except instead of avatars it is filled with real people, and one of them is John Goodman in an orange T-shirt. It looks like the inside of the world’s most polished pinball machine. It looks like several dozen Matchbox cars were released into the wormhole at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It looks like missing footage from Willy Wonka’s highly traumatizing ferryboat ride. It looks like an early Microsoft screen saver, complete with the two-dimensional fish and flamingos. It looks like a child’s kaleidoscope filled with Goldschläger. It looks like Arthur Fonzarelli’s acid flashback. But once the shock of the movie’s high-tech sheen wears off, little in it is very impressive. AARON MESH.

The Cackle Factor—Kranked 7

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Mountain-bike footage, somehow linked to the theme of insanity, presumably giving it weight, heft and totally mind-blowing shit it would otherwise lack. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Saturday, May 10.

The Duchess of Langeais

Honoré de Balzac may have been known for his keen observation of Parisian society’s ills, but in an adaptation of his novel by Jacques Rivette (Céline and Julie Go Boating), the lady in the tower just comes across as a playa. The Duchess of Langeais (Jeanne Balibar) has an absent husband and a sadistic interest in keeping Napoleonic war hero Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu) in her life but out of her bed. What begins as a battle of the sexes turns into an overwrought argument about propriety, and the occasional kidnapping and fleeing to the nunnery isn’t enough to keep things compelling. Balibar plays a complicated ice queen, but Depardieu (who is apparently adhering to France’s one-Depardieu-per-film proviso) has only two speeds: brooding and seething. Still, the duo makes the best of two hours of reversals and plain old bad timing. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Hollywood Theatre.

The Virgin Suicides

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Sofia Coppola’s debut now seems like a buffet of mostly unrealized potential: The director has never quite recaptured her knack for late-afternoon melancholy, Kirsten Dunst has never seemed mysterious again, and Josh Hartnett turned out to be just as vapid as his character. But at least, for one brief moment, they came together to craft the greatest teen make-out scene of the ‘90s. AARON MESH. Broadway. 7 pm Monday, May 12. $5.

Then She Found Me

April Epner (Helen Hunt) suffers from lousy timing: She’s trying her darnedest to have a baby, but she only discovers she’s conceived after her schlub of a husband (Matthew Broderick) leaves her. As a first-time director, Hunt has similarly misjudged her moment. After an entire year of oops-I’m-pregnant comedies, people cracking jokes in front of the ultrasound is starting to wear thin. Then She Found Me offers a twist in the form of Bette Midler as April’s narcissist birth mother (who arrives gracelessly on the scene to become the “She” in the title), but Hunt would have been well served to experiment a touch with the casting. Colin Firth is the best thing in the film as April’s selfless, emotionally confused new man, but how much more interesting would the movie be if he played the infantile cad and let Broderick be the charmer for once? R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.

Trailermania 8

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Another collection of vintage coming attractions, including The Green Slime and Soylent Green. (Spoiler warning: It’s people.) Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Monday-Tuesday, May 12-13.

What Happens in Vegas

As curdled and tiresome as the well-worn phrase of the title. Two virtual strangers (Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher) get drunk-hitched in Vegas and wake up ready for a divorce, except this time there’s a jackpot of $3 million and an insultingly implausible six-month court order for them to stay together to complicate matters. Will they fall in love despite themselves? Does this sound a little routine? Don’t worry, it’s actually like getting punched in the head repeatedly by the E! network while two of its more extroverted children dance around behind it, frantically making faces at you. Children who are nowhere near as cute as they think they are, and faces that definitely aren’t funny. Sometimes what happens in Hollywood should just stay in Hollywood. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS.