Skip to main content
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
Dog
*** Dog follows the basic road-trip structure that audiences have known since The Odyssey, but when you like who you’re riding with, that’s irrelevant. The film stars an infectiously charming Channing Tatum as Jackson Briggs, a former Army Ranger, and a beautiful Belgian Malinois dog named Lulu (played by three different dogs) who accompanies Briggs down the Pacific coast to the funeral of a fellow soldier. Along the way, they encounter a colorful collage of characters and misadventures that strengthen their bond. In contrast to some cringeworthy scenes featuring on-the-nose political commentary, the matter-of-fact way the film handles the effects of trauma is extremely powerful—there’s no pandering as you watch both man and dog deal with their pain in the quiet way that so many are forced to. As the co-director of Dog, Tatum proves that no one knows how to use him as well as he does—and makes the film a treat for anyone who’s ever had a pet with a lot of “personality” and a fun ride for anyone else who wants to come along. PG-13. RAY GILL JR. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
ALSO PLAYING
Drive My Car
**** After you see Drive My Car, you will never look at snow, suspension bridges or stages the same way again. When you see the world through the searching eyes of director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, there is no such thing as mere scenery. There is only the living fabric of the places and objects that envelop Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Misaki (Tôko Miura), whose compassion and complexity are a world unto themselves. Most of the film is set in Hiroshima, where Yûsuke is directing a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Misaki is assigned to be his driver, but their relationship transcends the divide between the front seat and the back. During drives, conversations and surreal yet strangely believable adventures, their reserve gradually erodes as they reveal their losses and their inner lives to each other, building to a cathartic climax that leaves you at once shattered and soaring. The film, based on a novella by Haruki Murakami, isn’t afraid to face the agony of grief and loneliness, but Hamaguchi’s obvious love for his characters suffuses the entire journey with life-giving warmth. A tender, hopeful coda set during the pandemic could have been cringe-worthy, but like every moment of the movie, it’s worth believing in because Hamaguchi’s sincerity is beyond question. “We must keep on living,” Yûsuke tells Misaki. With those words, he speaks not only to her but to us. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cinema 21, Hollywood.
Kimi
*** The latest from director Steven Soderbergh, Hollywood’s most prolific shape-shifter, opens with a swipe at relevance. Locked in her Seattle apartment with crippling pandemic anxiety, tech worker Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz) discovers a Kimi recording (think Siri or Alexa) of a possible violent crime. By reporting it, she’s thrust into a spiral of tech malfeasance: shady IPOs, hackers and surveillance. But once the movie’s thriller elements accelerate, David Koepp’s script resorts to tired tropes, borrowing shamelessly from Rear Window, Blow Out, The Firm and even Koepp’s own Panic Room screenplay. No points for originality, but Soderbergh’s eternal wit and curiosity elevate the material. He portrays Kimi (voiced by Betsy Brantley) as both latent and central—a paradoxically powerful MacGuffin—while visually and thematically capturing Angela’s domestic existence. She’s curated a stylish, spacious, gentrified apartment (complete with untouched vinyl, guitars and gathering areas), but for all her elegant taste, the animating force in her world is Kimi, a pink gadget identical to millions of others. Clear-eyed tech observations suit Soderbergh, who’s traded Ocean’s romps and Oscars for intelligent, inexpensive streaming efforts (No Sudden Move, Let Them All Talk) that drop without fanfare every eight months or so. If Kimi’s best moments keenly probe the behavior of the housebound, it’s no wonder. In 2022, that’s where Soderbergh finds us all. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. HBO Max.
Marry Me
*** In the most rousing scene in the 2002 romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan, Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez) tells her mother, “I’m going to take that chance without any fear. Without your voice in my head telling me that I can’t.” Given the genre, you might guess that she was talking about marriage, but you would be wrong. She was talking about her dream of being a manager at a hotel, but Lopez spoke those words with the level of passion that many actors reserve for romantic love, proving that she possessed the power to make a rom-com more than a frictionless fantasy. At least some of that spirit lives on in Marry Me, which stars Lopez as a pop goddess who falls for a guileless math teacher (Owen Wilson). It’s a slick, shiny film—the emotional roughness of Maid is a distant memory—but Lopez’s performance invests it with more passion and pathos than it deserves, and Wilson is perfectly cast as a guy who’s frightened by the intensity of his desire to bask in her glow. Best of all, Lopez sings several original songs, including the swoon-worthy “After Love.” She and Wilson have chemistry, but her singing is a chemical reaction in and of itself. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Peacock, Pioneer Place, Studio One.
Death on the Nile
** Movies based on Agatha Christie’s novels always disappoint. However elegantly constructed her puzzles, the quiet pleasures of identifying the murderer from a trifling detail rarely survive cinematic adaptations for the same reason that crosswords aren’t turned into feature films. To that end, director and star Kenneth Branagh somewhat miraculously wrung global commercial success from the ponderous, antiseptic tedium of Murder on the Orient Express (2017) through little more than relentless mustache-twirling and a rogue Belgian accent so lovingly showcased that it practically deserved separate billing. He’s back in the lead role and the director’s chair with Death on the Nile, which crams an enviable, ill-used cast of suspects (Russell Brand, Gal Godot, Annette Bening, Arnie Hammer, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders) into another archaic emblem of colonial travel. For reasons unclear, Branagh’s semi-depraved epicurean twinkle has curdled toward an oversated misanthropy—even his joy upon spotting dear chum/eventual murder suspect Bouc (Tom Bateman, also reprising his Orient Express role) seems like a practiced affect. Should he return for a third whodunit—Slaughter Aboard the Burmese Dirigible or some such—this dark new Poirot (Noirot?) ought to be interested in why. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, St. Johns, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
The Worst Person in the World
** In the most memorable scene in The Worst Person in the World, Julie (Renate Reinsve) farts in front of Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). It’s not an accident—the two are engaged in an erotic game fueled by embarrassment—or a mere bodily function. The scene is a cornerstone of Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s quest to create a romantic comedy that scorches the fairy-tale sheen off the genre, much as he cut against horror-movie sadism with the satisfyingly soulful Thelma (2017). The Worst Person in the World follows Julie, who works in a bookstore in Oslo, as she wavers between two suitors—Eivind, a perky barista, and Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), a pompous cartoonist. Like her go-nowhere career, her love life is perpetually in limbo, which is both Trier’s point and his problem. He has made a film about aimlessness that is also an aimless film, complete with an unwieldy screenplay divided into chapters—what will it take for filmmakers to abandon that cumbersome gimmick?—and a twist that suggests he secretly wants the entire film to be about Aksel, whose cringeworthy sexism is ultimately overshadowed by a tragic revelation. Trier works mightily to make us understand Aksel’s all too human contradictions, an act of empathy that allows the character to hijack the film. Neither Julie nor Aksel is the worst person in the world, but only one of them has Trier’s full attention. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cinema 21, Clackamas, Laurelhurst, Living Room.