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Road To Nowhere
PIFF ends with horrors and prostitutes.
DARWIN
ByWW MOVIE STAFF
Venue Abbreviations:
C21: Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st St. CM: CineMagic, 2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd. LM: Regal Lloyd Mall Cinema, 2320 Lloyd Center Mall LT: Lake Twin Cinema, 106 N State St., Lake Oswego PP: Regal Pioneer Place, 340 SW Morrison St. WH: Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave. WTC: World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 22
Eternity
Criticâs Score: 67
Eternity
It'd be better if: It didn't live up to its title so handily. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. LM, 6 pm Wednesday and 8:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 22 & 25.
Trailer:
Pink Ribbons, Inc.
Criticâs Score: 80
It'd be better if: It presented hard numbers on spending, instead of frustratingly folding them into a brief pie chart. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. C21, 8:30 pm Wednesday, Feb. 22. WH, 3:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 25.
Trailer:
THURSDAY, FEB. 23
Corpo Celeste
Criticâs Score: 85
[ITALY] Ah, the small urban Italian
church. The priest is a middling, disappointed bureaucrat troubled by
politics; his attendant is a lobotomized, sexually sublimated old maid;
and the janitor beats a bag of 10 kittens against a sidewalk and drowns
them in an inlet. Not a place for a 13-year-old girl from Switzerland,
apparently, but thatâs where she is, and itâs all quite confused and
sweetly searching and shot through with disappointment, the way a gentle
European coming-of-age story should really always be.
It'd be better if: The kittens came back for their revenge, backed up by a vengeful, bloody-eyed Jesus. Or not. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. LM, 6:15 pm Thursday, Feb. 23. C21, 6 pm Saturday, Feb. 25.
It'd be better if: The director had a heart of gold. AARON MESH. C21, 8:15 pm Thursday, Feb. 23.
The Day He Arrives
Criticâs Score: 78
It'd be better if: The aw-shucks main character had any charisma whatsoever that could make us believe he might get the girl. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. WH, 8:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 23.
Trailer:
Toll Booth
Criticâs Score: 57
Five Easy Pieces
It'd be better if: I could get a side order of wheat toast. AARON MESH. PP, 8:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 23. LM, 3:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 25.
Trailer:
FRIDAY, FEB. 24
Snowtown
Criticâs Score: 16
Monster
Snowtown
It'd be better if: You never walked in. AARON MESH. LM, 6:30 pm Friday, Feb. 24. WH, 8:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 25.
Trailer:
Extraterrestrial
Criticâs Score: 95
Timecrimes
It'd be better if: I thought maybe Michelle Jenner might notice me, too. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. WH, 8:45 pm Friday and 6 pm Saturday, Feb. 24 & 25.
Trailer:
Grandma, A Thousand Times
Criticâs Score: 81
I Could Be Your Grandmother
It'd be better if: Teta, irritated by the misleading title of her grandson's film, went on a quest to fight 999 other matriarchs. AP KRYZA. WTC, 8:45 pm Friday, Feb. 24.
Trailer:
The Loneliest Planet
Criticâs Score: 84
The Blair Witch Project
Day Night Day Night
It'd be better if: You didn't know that crisis was coming. But then you might not go. AARON MESH. C21, 8:45 pm Friday, Feb. 24.
Kill List
Criticâs Score: 67
[
GREAT BRITAIN] For the first 84 of its 85 minutes, Ben Wheatleyâs
Kill List
is
an effectively unnerving descent into human depravity. It also features
enough comedic bickering between the leads to resemble
The Trip
,
if Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon were hitmen and, instead of touring
Northern Englandâs finest dining establishments, they traveled around
the country bludgeoning people to death with hammers. In other words,
for its first 84 minutes,
Kill List
is
the most intriguing (and most unflinchingly brutal) genre experiment of
this yearâs PIFF. As the violence grows more gratuitous, though, you
get the sense that all itâs building toward is one big, empty shock.
Then it happens, in a final reveal so preposterous it curdles everything
that came before into waste. Ever get the feeling youâve been cheated?
You will.
It'd be better if: Wheatley went with literally any other ending. MATTHEW SINGER. C21, 11:30 pm Friday, Feb. 24.
Trailer:
SATURDAY, FEB. 25
Darwin
Criticâs Score: 86
It'd be better if: Looniness weren't the initial selling point. But that's to say it'd be better if we lived in a different world. AARON MESH. C21, 1 pm Saturday, Feb. 25.
Trailer:
Kiss Me
Criticâs Score: 41
[SWEDEN] Well, the movie certainly isnât
mistitled. In fact, making out is pretty much the foundation of the
filmâs central relationship, between two soon-to-be stepsisters. They
kiss in a tool shed. They kiss in an elementary-school restroom. They
kiss in a dewy meadow populated by grazing deer. Occasionally, they
augment the kissing with sensual lovemaking, sometimes while bathed in
enough gauzy sunshine to light a toilet paper commercial. In between all
the Sapphic tonsil hockey is a stultifyingly standard rom-dram that
only faintly touches on Swedish mores regarding homosexuality, and even
then so tritely it doesnât matter.
It'd be better if: It was
just a two-hour make-out session set in various odd locations: in the
Vatican; inside a double-wide suit of armor; in the hollowed-out corpse
of a dead camel, etc. MATTHEW SINGER. C21, 8:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 25.
Invasion of the Alien Bikini
Criticâs Score: 41
Invasion of the Alien Bikini
It'd be better if: There were actually a sentient bikini sidekick. AP KRYZA. C21, 11:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 25.
Trailer:
GO: The Portland International Film Festival ticket outlet is at the Portland Art Museum Mark Building, 1119 SW Park Ave., 276-4310. nwfilm.org. General Admission $10, Art Museum members, seniors and students $9, children 12 and under $7, Silver Screen Club memberships from $300.
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