Skip to main content
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
Ambulance
*** Michael Bay’s Ambulance is stupid beyond belief, but it’s also thrilling, terrifying and impressively brutal. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Danny, a career criminal who enlists his adopted brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) to help steal $32 million from a Los Angeles bank in broad daylight. It’s an insultingly improbable setup—even if Will needs money for his wife’s “experimental surgery,” why would he agree to Danny’s delusional scheme in minutes? But once they steal an ambulance to escape the army of police officers on their trail, the movie gets into a volatile groove. By trapping a bleeding cop (Jackson White) and a hardened EMT named Cam (Eiza González) in the ambulance with the brothers, Bay creates countless possibilities for triumphant tension. When Cam has to use a hair clip to perform surgery, your heart skips a beat—and when snipers prepare to fire shots that could kill everyone in the ambulance, it nearly stops. Hyperactive editing and swooping camera movements make too much of the action a frantic blur, but there’s no denying Bay’s control over the exhilarating currents of fear that course through your mind and body as you watch. Based on a 2005 Danish film, Ambulance strikes its share of false notes, but unlike most modern action movies, it understands the difference between bombast and suspense. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
ALSO PLAYING
Everything Everywhere All at Once
*** A hyperkinetic sci-fi/martial arts (kung fusion?) fever dream grounded in Asian American family dynamics, Everything Everywhere All at Once will be absolutely adored by some moviegoers from its very first moments. It’s a film made to be loved—and, given the sheer eye-popping technical wizardry at play throughout, nearly impossible to hate. Michelle Yeoh is typically dazzling as Evelyn Wong, a misanthropic laundromat owner called upon to save the multiverse from her daughter’s worst self (Stephanie Hsu, in a role intended for Awkwafina). Evelyn is an underwritten character, but Yeoh brings a welcome authenticity to the film, even if a performance of such finely shaded nuance isn’t the best fit for the DayGlo sensationalism of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the filmmaking duo known as Daniels (Swiss Army Man). As with Terry Gilliam, Edgar Wright or any other avant-garde sentimentalist pressing restless rhythms and visual inventiveness into the service of a wholly undeserving story, the directors effortlessly pep up the slow parts and paper over the plot holes, but when the pace calms and the fireworks die down for an emotional climax, the film moves glacially. Inevitable? Perhaps, but it’s still disappointing that Everything Everywhere All at Once is less than the sum of its dazzling parts. R. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cinema 21, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
*** When it was announced that J.K. Rowling was unleashing five films based on a faux-academic textbook that she had assembled for charity, Harry Potter fans instantly knew two things about the coming Fantastic Beasts pentalogy: An epic saga wrung from a whimsical taxonomy was a terrible idea, and that mattered not at all. Despite the irrelevance of the concept, the IP-that-lived held enough power to birth a third adventure for cryptozoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), despite the recasting of big bad Johnny Depp, the transphobic rants from Rowling, and the tonal sea change from earlier entries’ Dr. Dolittle-esque period travelogue toward a secret agent yarn about a failed affair between arch-mages. While replacement Grindelwald Mads Mikkelsen lacks Depp’s cartoonish self-regard—which provided a romantic counterweight to the incandescence of Jude Law’s Dumbledore—his Hannibal/Bond villain brand of drolly effete cruelty brings a necessary gravitas to a story that moves through a Disney-fied Weimar Berlin with bounce and verve. It also helps that the screenplay (by Rowling and Steve Kloves) expertly seeds the voluminous exposition with fan-servicing nods, but scarcely requires prior knowledge of the titular future headmaster. Yes, this is still the Potterverse, but to the film’s eternal blessing, it needn’t always be. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Evergreen Parkway, Eastport, Fox Tower, Pioneer Place, Lloyd Center, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard.
Mothering Sunday
*** Given its subversive, character-driven nudity, you can’t accuse Mothering Sunday of coattailing Downton Abbey. Consciously shedding its stately wardrobe, Eva Husson’s film ruminates on a formative moment for Jane (Odessa Young), a housekeeper who eventually becomes a fiction writer. Trapped inside the dead-end framing device of Jane penning her opus, most of Mothering Sunday’s runtime unfolds on Mother’s Day in 1924. Jane spends the holiday cultivating a life-changing affair with a wealthy young man (Josh O’Connor) at a neighboring estate, while her employers (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman) attend a dour, luxurious luncheon. While not much for drama, Jane’s sense memory of that fateful day is often engrossing—there’s a disembodied windshield reflection, a naked belch, and discussions of bodily fluids you’d never expect in a movie in which Firth murmurs about the fine weather they’re having. Several metaphors and backstories from Graham Swift’s novel slip through the screenplay’s limited grasp, but Young’s performance grows more compelling by the minute. This Mother’s Day season, watch an orphaned, underestimated young woman stroll observantly through all the traditions of family, class, war and patriarchy that would seek to station her outside her own story. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, Fox Tower, Movies on TV, Progress Ridge.
Great Freedom
** The Austrian drama Great Freedom is a saga of mind-boggling historical misfortune. Directed by Sebastian Meise, the film follows Hans Hoffmann (Franz Rogowski), a gay man liberated from a Nazi concentration camp only to be repeatedly locked away in a postwar German prison because of his sexuality. Like many thoughtful incarceration dramas, the film is about institutionalization creeping into the human bloodstream. During decades behind bars, Hans engages with the world primarily through self-sacrifice, aching repetition, and a few crucial relationships, most importantly with his longtime cellmate, Viktor (Georg Friedrich). For better and worse, Great Freedom relies completely on Rogowski, the burgeoning international arthouse star best known for Christian Petzold’s Transit and Undine. His entrancing, unknowable quality affords depth to almost any character, while his heavy eyelids (and perfect mustache) invite the viewer to search for what emotion hides within. But Great Freedom coasts on our presumed fascination with watching Rogowski smoke cigarettes or sit still. Its three timelines all approach Hans at a distance, and its portrayal of his relationships as primarily transactional or illicit sits lopsidedly atop a protagonist whose soul seems to contain more than we’re seeing. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinema 21.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
** For the past decade, film studios have chased the culture-shattering impact of The Avengers with mixed results. Yet Sonic the Hedgehog 2 understands what made Marvel’s 2012 superhero mashup a success: not apologizing for making a children’s movie starring a cast of shiny action figures that repeatedly get smacked together. Sonic’s latest adventure is unlikely to change the lives of anyone above the age of 12, but if Sega Sammy silliness is your jam, you’re in for a wild ride. Directed by Jeff Fowler, the sequel is dominated by a sense of exploration, earnestness and, above all, fun. The action is fast-paced and creative, some of the gags are genuinely funny, and the cast is game—in particular, Idris Elba has a ball voicing the ever-stoic Knuckles the Echidna, making the character both an unflappable warrior and an overgrown child trying to convince everyone of his seriousness. Outside of Jim Carrey’s gleefully maniacal Dr. Robotnik, however, the film struggles to find a purpose for its human supporting cast, to the point you begin to wonder why they even bother. Ultimately, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is at best a mostly harmless romp that keeps you entertained, or at least distracted. PG. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Academy, Cedar Hills, City Center, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Joy Cinema, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Roseway, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland, Wunderland Milwaukie.
Morbius
* Jared Leto has been exquisitely vulnerable (Requiem for a Dream), exquisitely sinister (Blade Runner 2049) and exquisitely ridiculous (House of Gucci). Yet in Morbius, he’s something he’s never been before: disastrously dull. It may sound improbable that the man who bragged about sending used condoms to his Suicide Squad castmates could be boring, but as scientist-turned-vampire Dr. Michael Morbius, he’s more zombie than bloodsucker. Originally a second-tier Spider-Man adversary, Morbius has been drafted for Sony’s second attempt at a supervillain franchise, following Tom Hardy’s Venom series. Those movies are trash, but at least Hardy attacks them with gonzo fervor—he dived into a tank of lobsters to earn his paycheck. Leto, on the other hand, just gazes glumly from under the shadow of a dark hoodie, meekly surrendering the spotlight to Matt Smith (Doctor Who), who co-stars as a nastily charismatic fellow vampire named Milo. Smith understands that vampirism should be suave and sensual—in one scene, he dances seductively while donning a suit, doing an apparent homage to Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3 (that’s a compliment, by the way!). In a Jared Leto movie, Smith is the only one giving a Jared Leto-style performance. He’s goofy and hammy and weird, but at least he’s memorable. That’s more than you can say about the other actors in Morbius, including its newly languorous leading man. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Milwaukie.