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PORTLAND PICK:
Filmed partly in Portland and the Columbia Gorge, Mahalia Cohen’s The Last Hot Lick (2017) is a beautifully rugged and true road movie. The late Jaime Leopold (of the band Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks) plays a lonely, roaming folk musician who seeks salvation in his creative partnership with a talented stranger (played by Short Stories singer Jennifer Smieja). Free on Tubi.
INDIE PICK:
Based on a novel by Nikolai Leskov, William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (2016) sews its meditation on misogyny and white privilege into a tapestry of sinister thrills. Florence Pugh stars as a woman in 1860s England who is both victim and tyrant—the actress gives a performance with the same fearsome air of authority that she would later bring to Little Women. Amazon Prime/MovieSphere, Free on Roku.
HOLLYWOOD PICK:
Insomnia (2002) is one of Christopher Nolan’s least idiosyncratic films—and also one of his best. Remaking a 1997 Norwegian thriller, Nolan crafts a queasily engrossing noir about a bedraggled detective (Al Pacino) pursuing a child murderer (Robin Williams) in Alaska. “I have great respect for your profession,” Williams tells his pursuer with a smirk. His performance, like the film itself, sends chills straight to the soul. HBO Max.
INTERNATIONAL PICK:
Indomitable French star Adèle Haenel has said she’s quitting the film industry, calling it racist and patriarchal. All the more reason to watch her purportedly final film, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), a 1770s-set romance between two women that conjures more chemistry with a single glance than most movies manufacture with two hours of romance. Hulu.