Screen Listings

Ah, Liberty! The Films of Ben Rivers

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The young British landscape filmmaker—think of a Matt McCormick from across the pond—and his 16 mm films arrive in Portland for the latest installment of the Beyond Borders experimental film series. Cinema Project. 11 NW 13th Avenue, fourth floor. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Thursday, March 25-26.

Amarcord

[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Fellini's childhood memories. Fellini's best film? NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Friday-Sunday, May 29-31. No showtimes.

American Gangster

Ridley Scott, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe unite their powers to make a blunt brick of a movie; neither very stylish nor terribly complex, American Gangster still takes 157 minutes to batter home its muscular tale of men who speak softly and carry big guns. Scott has based his film on the true story of Frank Lucas (Washington), a man who ran dope directly from Thai poppy fields to Harlem’s 116th Street, and Richie Roberts (Crowe), who rose in the New Jersey police ranks before trying to take down the New York City drug trade. It’s a test of wills between two square-jawed, rather dull strongmen. R. AARON MESH.

Defiance

The opening credits of Defiance unspool over a montage of Nazi atrocities—historical footage of Jews rounded up and shot point-blank—so that it comes as a great relief when the second scene begins with Daniel Craig greeting his sleeping brother by throwing a rock at his head. “If I was a German,” he says, “you would be dead.” Thank goodness, this is going to be an Edward Zwick movie after all. Zwick’s fondness for goofily exaggerated machismo was firmly established in Glory and The Last Samurai, and after a cinematic season of unavenged suffering, it’s nice to be in the company of a director who believes that, well, yes, violence does solve some things. Craig plays a silver Jew silverback named Tuvia Bielski, a heroic thug who guns down the police who rounded up his parents for the SS, and then teams up with his brothers Zus (Liev Schreiber) and Asael (Jamie Bell) to create a Belarussian forest hideout. Here, thousands of fellow Jews eventually take refuge and form a makeshift civilization, all while making guerrilla raids on the Nazis. This is a true story, never before dramatized on film, though if it seems familiar that may be due to an uncanny structural and tonal similarity with 1984’s Red Dawn. R. AARON MESH. No showtimes.

Meet the Browns

Tyler Perry would like you meet some good country people—and himself in drag, again. Not screened for critics. PG-13.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell

Charles Taylor ruled Liberia with an iron fist and child soldiers. His rebel challengers sought to unseat him with guerrillas of their own, raping and hacking limbs in the villages. The wives and mothers of Liberia had only prayers and protests. And somehow they emerged the victors. The story of Taylor’s unseating may be the most successful women’s peace movement since Lysistrata—and it employed the same tactics, as its members vowed to withhold sex from their husbands until the civil war ended. Director Gini Reticker’s documentary about how Liberian women changed their nation’s course is an uncomplicated narrative—maybe a touch of complication would have helped it, actually—but it capably unveils its awful and astonishing story. AARON MESH. No showtimes.

The Dhamma Brothers

Director Jenny Phillips' documentary opens with serene shots of inmates dressed in all white and sitting on small pillows, their eyes closed and arms outstretched, hands gingerly placed on their knees in deep halcyon reposes. The image is overwhelming and the silence from a room full of reticent prisoners is deafening. These men live at the Donaldson Correctional Facility, Alabama's highest-security prison, and are serving sentences ranging from six months to triple life for crimes equally wide-ranging. Prison director Dr. Ron Cavanaugh has brought Vipassana, an intense, 10-day long, silent meditative practice based on Buddhist teachings (the Dhamma), to Donaldson after learning that it has had calming effects on inmates in India. Hoping for the same at Donaldson, Cavanaugh flies in two teachers from the Vipassana Mediation Center to turn the jail's gymnasium into a makeshift monastery. The film gazes tough-lovingly at the initial group of prisoners willing to accept the challenge of not speaking in an attempt to connect with their bodies’ basal sensations—and we stare in awe at just how deep the profound effects of intense self-reflection carry over into the rest of the men's lives. SARA MOSKOWITZ. Hollywood Theatre.