Some like it hot, or just out on the edge. Here comes a handful of boundary-pushing flicks. Enter at your own risk.
The timely topics of abortion and suicide get searing attention onscreen. Plus: A demented take on Shakespeare and a King Crab fable.
Two beautifully performed films – one with child actors, one about old age – defy the ordinary in welcome ways. Plus, streaming picks.
A fresh and poignant Iranian road trip, a David Lynch mind trip, an affair in Estonia, witchery on Clinton Street, decadent Berlin and mind games in a rural house.
Tilda Swinton teams fascinatingly with an inventive Thai director; big-budget bloody battles Viking style; Nic Cage playing (sort of) himself in an action-comedy spy caper.
This week at the movies: From the busy bedrooms of Paris to a pasture near London, with a pop star and a startling prison tale between.
Alternate universes, an IRS office, hot dog fingers, and tons of fun. Plus: Israel, Palestine and “Ahed’s Knee”; French “Gagarine.”
The Project resurfaces with vivid works by Berlin video artist Anouk de Clercq. Plus what’s new on home and big screens.
Mobsters and Mark Rylance with scissors in the entertaining “Outfit,” “X” marks the slashers, plus new & revival releases around town.
Two foreign-film winners: Archaeology and understanding on a Russian train; moral complexity in the Palestinian West Bank.
A fascinating and empathetic sci-fi family drama explores the ever-thinning line between artificial and “real” intelligence, and what being human is.
ABC has dropped several categories from its live Oscars telecast. In the process it’s dismissing some of the year’s best work.
Marc Mohan reviews Dennis Hopper’s punk masterpiece “Blue” and Kentucker Audley’s surreal futuristic “Mansion.”
A smart, engaging, crowd-pleasing winner from Norway; a probing of race in America with righteous resolve and firm facts.
The Film Center honors a “Portlandia” progenitor and other trailblazers; the Cascade Festival of African Films begins, Tim Roth quietly shines.
Also this week: An extra-noirish “Nightmare Alley” and a host of good revivals strut their stuff.
Oscar best-foreign-film candidates from Japan’s Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar highlight Portland’s movie week.
In search of an avatar dragon and a very real snow leopard. Plus: Martin Luther King Jr. tributes, Coen Brothers & more.
A two-time Oscar winner for best foreign film looks at the ambiguities of heroism; a “demented Horatio Alger” keeps on trying.
Spielberg, Del Toro, and the perils & possibilities of remakes. Plus questions of mortality in a sci-fi flick that sends in the clones.
While the big prestige pictures don’t live up to their billing, a satiric Romanian sex farce slides in to save the day.
Jane Campion’s corrosive revelations on the Montana range and Paul Verhoeven’s tale of convent carryings-on dig deeper than their surfaces.
Lush, lively, and luxuriant, Ridley Scott’s high-fashion tale walks a tightrope between campy nighttime soap and insightful true-crime drama with nary a wobble.
Most of the films made before 1950 are lost. A tenacious group is working to rediscover them, and bring them back to public view.
Marc Mohan at the movies: Branagh recalls his childhood during the Troubles; a political bio puts things in and leaves things out; some short streaming gems.
Marc Mohan at the movies: From audacious revivals to the Houses of Windsor and Marvel.
Wes Anderson’s “Dispatch” is about as Wes Anderson as a movie can be. And Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the Victorian polymath Wain, an artist who paints psychedelic cats.
Ridley Scott directs a Rashomon-like 14th century tale; marriage neo-Bergman style; a soccer team’s rescue.
It’s their baby (but is it human?); a feel-good film about a transgender child; Daniel Craig’s final go-round.
If this is (almost) October, it must be horror and Halloween and Lovecraft time. Plus, a Breathless bit of history.
A charming “Los Lobos” at the Latin fest; an Argentine apocalypse; CineMagic scares; Schrader’s new deal.
In a trio of noteworthy new movies, the eyes (and the people behind them) have it.
An appreciation of two great actors, plus a catfishing Juliette Binoche, a Hong Kong thriller, and more.
A feast of films by a legendary director of “indelibly weird classics”; return of a Portland women’s film fest.
A remake of a 1992 horror flick strikes a vein of fear and blood in the long history of American racial violence.
“From the get-go, the portrayal of this family feels as authentic as any glimpse into deaf culture I’ve seen on screen.”
A lavish portrait of a “hot mess” heroine; a look beyond the tabloids at Billy Tipton; a sexy, updated “Snow White.”
Adam Driver in a busy musical, a searing documentary about news in the sky, a tale of philosophical gravy.
Making a compelling movie about “folks who don’t normally get the Hollywood, or even the ‘Portlandia,’ treatment.”
Director Amy Dotson is refreshing and reshaping the art museum’s movie program, from Tik-Tok to rooftops.
Nicolas Cage amid the truffles; Anthony Bourdain for real; Isabelle Huppert in a darkly comic tale.
As the movie world opens up, a couple of made-for-big-screen features wind up on home screens instead.
The revival of a landmark 1969 Harlem music festival is a brilliant cultural and artistic feat; theaters reopen doors.
Movie music’s in the air with a trio of new releases, from celebrated to fascinating but little-known.
Oh, the horror (and more): As movie houses begin to reopen, a mini-flood of fresh new films arrives.
At the movies: A tale of liberation in Saudi Arabia; sizzling on the Riviera; extreme BASE jumping.
Suzanne Lindon’s “Spring Blossom” is a surprise in many ways; Disney’s “Cruella” rings in the summer season.
Even with some in-house audience, the Kiggins is keeping a robust streaming-cinema system going.
What did and didn’t work at the Oscars. Open-and-shut case at the theaters. Non-winners worth watching.
Ready or not, movie theaters are starting to open again in time for the Oscars and summer blockbusters.
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