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TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
Men
*** Let’s talk about the dress. It’s pale pink, it’s long sleeved, and it’s worn by Jessie Buckley, the star of Alex Garland’s dreamy and blood-chilling thriller Men. An archetypal symbol of femininity, the dress is the first of many clues that Buckley is playing not just a woman, but all women—just as her co-star, Rory Kinnear, is playing all men. Haunted by the death of her husband (Paapa Essiedu), Harper (Buckley) flees to an English country estate to recuperate. Almost the moment she arrives, she’s tormented by seemingly everyone in the area with a Y chromosome, including a little boy who calls her a “stupid bitch,” a silent stalker who appears in her garden naked, and a priest who hides his predatory nature behind courtly manners and long locks. All of these men are played by Kinnear, but it doesn’t seem strange to Harper that they have the same face. Why would it? The idea of a woman being persecuted by males who represent a single malevolent force feels sickeningly real. It could be argued that Men’s points about gender are obvious—and that its attitude toward topics like race and mental health is offensively glib—but like Garland’s previous films, Ex Machina and Annihilation, it digs impressively deep under your skin and into your psyche. Harper may be afraid, but she isn’t powerless. And as she goes from fleeing to fighting, the film solidifies its power over you. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. AMC Vancouver Mall, Bridgeport, Cascade, Cinema 21, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Progress Ridge, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
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Downton Abbey: A New Era
*** The secret touch in series-to-cinema transitions is finding a compelling reason to get the band back together—and Downton Abbey: A New Era has some fun with it. Compelled by “financial issues,” Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery), née Crawley, agrees to allow a film to shoot at the titular estate, which elicits everything from enthusiasm to outright disdain from her elders. Simultaneously, another group of characters embark on a trip to the South of France to inspect a villa bequeathed to the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), leading to the unraveling of the mystery as to why. Balancing so many beloved characters can’t have been easy, but screenwriter and series creator Julian Fellowes weaves them all together delicately enough and handles moments of gravitas with grace. A New Era may be a tale of rushed romances and obscenely affluent people falling ass-backwards into even more wealth, but those potential pitfalls are diluted by whimsical storytelling leading to a satisfying ending. The Crawleys live in a fantasy world with its own rules—and Fellowes clearly demonstrates that he understands his audience and the depth of their passion for his characters and the universe they inhabit. PG. RAY GILL JR. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
Lux Æterna
** Far too many movies feel like commercials, but it’s exceedingly rare to find a film birthed as an ad that wrestles loose into artistic oblivion. God knows what Saint Laurent thought it was getting when commissioning a film from internationally renowned bad-vibes maestro Gaspar Noé (Enter The Void, Irreversible). Maybe a short film in which Charlotte Gainsbourg poses in sunglasses and an evening gown? Granted, she does, but it’s while pretending to be burned alive. Displayed in split-screen (like Noé's other new film this month, Vortex) and punctuated by unrelenting strobe lights, Lux Æterna is 51 minutes of largely improvised vitriol on a set helmed by Béatrice Dalle, a French actor who plays herself as a director. Relative to the grotesque immersion of Noé's prior works, Lux Æterna is slight, but the experience of watching it is still jarring enough to deliver and dilute its exploration of how self-possessed women are objectified and undermined to the point of transcendent madness. Here, Noé is so confrontationally unromantic that he nearly works back around to passion for how a demented movie experience can change everyone involved. Well…you wanna buy a jacket now? NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Clinton, May 21.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
** Last year, the Marvel Cinematic Universe birthed the spry battles of Shang-Chi, the cosmic splendor of Eternals, and the sweet melodrama of Spider-Man: No Way Home. It was a hell of a hot streak—and it was too hot to last. All MCU movies are a collection of computerized showdowns and sequel-baiting cameos, but the best films in the series both fulfill and transcend the formula. Despite being directed by the brilliant Sam Raimi (the original Spider-Man trilogy), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness does the opposite—it’s basically a feature-length commercial for the WandaVision streaming series and countless other properties. The story features Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) defending the universe-hopping America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) from demonic forces, but their apocalyptic adventures are depressingly irrelevant. Gomez has spunk aplenty, but Cumberbatch coasts through the multiverse with apathy, as if killing time until his next Power of the Dog-caliber role. He looks especially wan next to Elizabeth Olsen, who shreds the screen as Scarlet Witch, a reality-warping warrior whose power is only matched by her motherly ferocity. Why wasn’t the entire movie about her? Stephen Strange’s name may be in the title, but a goatee-adorned action figure is no match for a living, breathing, raging woman. The sorcerer never stood a chance. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Eastport, Cinemagic, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Roseway, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One.