There are a couple of reasons to moderate one’s presumably eager anticipation of Mickey 17, the first film from Bong Joon-ho since his masterful, Best Picture-winning Parasite six years ago. (Has it really been that long?) First, an international auteur has followed up an Oscar triumph with a big-budget Hollywood effort featuring brand-name stars. This is not always a recipe for success. Second, Mickey 17’s release date has been pushed back no fewer than four times after wrapping production in late 2023. Now, nearly a year after it was initially expected to hit theaters, Bong’s surreal sci-fi satire finally arrives, and it’s a relief to report that it’s (generally) a slyly entertaining piece of pop propaganda fueled by a masterful double performance from Robert Pattinson.

The conceit, taken from the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, is this: As a future Earth becomes less and less inhabitable, spaceships full of colonizers are heading off to seek new homes for humanity. Meanwhile, cloning technology has evolved to the point where a person’s mind can be downloaded and reinstalled in a perfect replica of their body that has been constructed from a detailed scan. This has given rise to “Expendables,” folks whose job is to undertake hazardous, even surely fatal, tasks, with the knowledge that upon their demise they’ll be reincarnated just as they were and sent out for some other miserable mission. For reasons the movie humorously explains in flashback, the procedure is highly illegal on Earth, but Expendables come in quite handy during a years-long interstellar journey.

Cut to Mickey Barnes (Pattinson), a not-very-lovable loser who, in order to escape a psychotic loan shark, signs on as an Expendable for a trip to Niflheim, a snow-covered wasteland that the ship’s buffoonish dictator Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) intends to make his domain. Timo (Steven Yeun), Mickey’s fellow but more charismatic deadbeat, smarms his way into a job as a fighter pilot on the same mission. Years into the pilgrimage, Mickey’s been irradiated, infected, and just plain killed sixteen times (Bong apparently wanting to give his protagonist ten more iterations than Ashton), but other than that, things have been okay. He’s got a girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who’s the only person to treat him as something more than a glorified crash test dummy, and he’s come to terms with the fact that everyone and their brother can’t resist asking him what it’s like to die.

The hitch is that, shortly after arriving on Niflheim, Mickey 17 finds himself at the bottom of an icy crevasse, about to be devoured by a disgusting-looking member of the local fauna. Except he’s not, and by the time he makes his way back to headquarters, his death has already been presumed, and Mickey 18 is sleeping happily in his/their bunk. What ensues is partly a madcap, Three’s Company-style comedy in which both Mickeys and the surprisingly okay-with-it-all Nasha try to keep this awkward error from being revealed and corrected (by dumping both Mickeys down the incineration chute), and partly a quirky philosophical exploration of the nature of identity. Mickey 18, it turns out, is much more assertive than Mickey 17—in fact, he’s kind of an asshole.

Mickey 17 is also partly a political satire, with Ruffalo diving headfirst into the blustery, stupid, narcissistic emblem of entitled billionaire-hood he’s playing. (To note Kenneth Marshall’s resemblance to a certain current American President is redundant, but I’ll do it anyway.) Toni Collette matches him as the conniving woman behind the idiot, but the pair of them, goofy as they are, constitute the movie’s weakest link. You can feel Bong become enamored of their hammy double act, with the result that the action ends up featuring their antics as much as the Mickeys’ efforts to resolve their mutual existential dilemma. Of course, this is an $80 million studio picture, so it’s important to have impressively designed alien creatures and expensive production design. But the sheer weirdness of meeting an exact physical duplicate of yourself, down to brain patterns and memories, who thinks of themselves as the “real” you but has a dramatically different personality, gets short shrift as the movie marches toward its frenetic, drawn-out climax.

Viewers who know Bong only from Parasite may be surprised to see the director unapologetically embracing genre. Mickey 17 is much more of a piece with films like Snowpiercer and The Host, both of which blended sci-fi concepts with social and political commentary, delivering the latter with all the subtlety of a runaway train. It’s impressive enough these days when a filmmaker manages to smuggle any sort of intellectual content into a star-studded mainstream entertainment, though, so the effort should be celebrated. (Opens Friday 3/7, wide)

ALSO OPENING

Universal Language: For decades, the answer to the question “Who’s the weirdest filmmaker from Winnipeg, Canada?” was obviously Guy Maddin. Now, however, we have an up-and-coming challenger to that title in the form of Matthew Rankin, the writer and director of this surreal fable set in an imaginary version of that Manitoban metropolis where the language and people are predominantly Iranian. It’s a mashup that shouldn’t really work, but the seeming randomness of the concept belies a deeper rationale. It’s as if Rankin grew infatuated with the child-centric cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and decided to emphasize its, well, universality by basically transposing it whole to the Great White North. But you don’t need to be steeped in intertextual references to appreciate the deadpan humor and charming performances at the center of Universal Language. The story, such as it is, unfolds in triptych. In one strand, a pair of grade-school students finds some money that’s been frozen into the surface of an icy pond and embarks on a quest to retrieve it. Meanwhile, a despondent government worker (played by Rankin) quits his job in Montreal and heads to Winnipeg to visit his mother. And we occasionally pop in on a tour guide who points out the sites of mundane but memorable occurrences such as The Great Parallel Parking Incident of 1958. Oh, and there are lots of turkeys wandering around. I don’t use the word “unique” often, but this beguiling piece of low-key absurdity earns it. (Opens Friday 3/7, Living Room Theaters)

Seven Veils: For a while in the 1990s, Atom Egoyan was one of the most promising independent filmmakers working, but following his acclaimed 1997 Russell Banks adaptation The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan gradually lost some luster. His films became less identifiable by either subject matter or style, and few made much impact either at the box office or in the culture at large. To be fair, cinema hasn’t been Egoyan’s sole artistic concern over the last three decades. The Egyptian-born Canadian has produced numerous operas in that span, including, as relevant here, Richard Strauss’s Salome more than once. Egoyan’s newest film brings his two worlds together by telling the story of Jeannine (Amanda Seyfried, who starred in Egoyan’s most commercially successful movie, 2009’s Chloe), who has been selected to remount a production of Salome that had originally been staged by her recently-deceased mentor and, we come to learn, lover. The film incorporates footage and casts performers from Egoyan’s own 2023 remounting of Salome, and in addition to fiddling with the contemporary relevance of its themes, Seven Veils also provides an interesting peek into the backstage machinations involved in producing an opera. While the company that hired Jeanine is hoping for a precise replication, she plans to incorporate some “small, but meaningful” changes, leading to friction between the urge to preserve the perspective of the dead white male and the need to provide an alternate take on a tale full of sexual misbehavior and female objectification. While enmeshed in these and other conflicts, Jeanine attempts to stay in Zoom touch with her aging mother, her distant husband, and the live-in caregiver who might, she fears, be giving care to them both. Meanwhile, a subplot involves an incident where the singer playing John the Baptist gropes the female makeup artist during the process of her creation of a plaster cast of his (character’s) decapitated head. It’s clear Egoyan has been rolling these thoughts around in his head for a long time, and with Seyfried’s more-than-capable help, he brings them to life here. There are still a few awkwardly staged scenes and the occasional morsel of stilted dialogue, and if you’re not up on your Bible stories from the pen of Oscar Wilde, you’ll probably want to hit Wikipedia beforehand, but this is still the most interesting effort from its director in at least a decade. (Opens Friday 3/7 at Regal Fox Tower)

The Rule of Jenny Pen: If the threat of John Lithgow giving you a look of disappointment during Sunday’s Oscars wasn’t intense enough, check out this demented elder horror from New Zealand director James Ashcroft. A (presumably) respected and capable judge played by Geoffrey Rush suffers a stroke and, the medical system being what it is, he’s sent to a rural rehab center while he works to recover his ability to walk and use his right hand. At first, he’s indignant at the state of his lodgings and his lack of a private room, but soon his attention is diverted to malevolent fellow patient Dave Crealy (Lithgow), who regularly torments Rush’s cowed ex-rugby star roommate (Nathaniel Lees) using a creepy puppet made from the eyeless head of a baby doll as his sadistic alter ego. The staff refuses to take the judge’s complaints seriously, which leads to an escalating, eventually deadly, series of confrontations. There’s more vibe than substance here, but it’s quite fun watching these two talented veterans square off in an effort that provides the same sort of nasty, campy thrills as something like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Opens Friday 3/7 at multiple locations)

Portland EcoFilm Festival: Celebrating its silver jubilee, this venerable series gets more urgent every year, surely much to its organizers’ chagrin. This weekend, the 25th edition kicks off with two nights of programming. On Friday, “Queer Ecology” presents three films from queer filmmakers, including Animal Pride, which looks at the hidden history of homosexuality in the (non-human) animal kingdom. The next night, the festival’s Best Feature Film winner, Ways to Traverse a Territory, screens. It looks at the lives of Tzotzil women in Chiapas through a meditative, lyrical lens. (Friday and Saturday 3/7 & 3/8, Hollywood Theatre)

DisOrient Festival: This Eugene-based Asian American independent film festival is celebrating its 20th year with a weekend jam-packed with features and short films, followed by a two-week window of virtual screenings. Among the highlights are Moloka’i Bound, a drama about a Hawaiian man recently released from prison who tries to reconnect with his son and his community, and documentaries about Cambodian-American basketball player Ashley Chea, Japanese-Canadian photographer and activist Tomio Wakayama, and Japanese-American artist and activist Nobuko Miyamoto. (Friday 3/7 through Sunday 3/9 in person; Monday 3/10 through Thursday 3/23 online; visit website for full schedule.)

Agnès Varda Forever Festival: For Women’s History Month, the tribute to the venerated French icon that started in 2023 returns for another go-round. If, like me, you’re currently reading the new biography of Varda by Carrie Rickey, this makes for a well-timed companion. Among the rarities being screened are Varda’s debut feature, La Pointe Courte, and the 1977 feminist anthem One Sings, the Other Doesn’t. (Thursday 3/6 through Sunday 3/9, Clinton Street Theater)

ON DEMAND

Rats!: This piece of certified weirdness emanates from the skewed, DIY minds of directors Maxwell Nalevansky and Carl Fry and a seat-of-the-pants punk rock aesthetic that captures the unmoored absurdity of post-9/11 life in America, specifically in the fictional town of Pfresno, Texas. (The film was shot in the similarly phonetically challenged burg of Pflugerville, a suburb of Austin.) Our overwhelmed hero is Raphael (Luke Wilcox), a hapless tagger who’s hauled in by an overzealous cop after marring the town’s landmark phone booth with graffiti. From there, Rapheal gets coerced into going undercover to snare his cousin Mateo (Darius Autry), who the authorities suspect of smuggling plutonium to Osama bin Laden. (Rats! is set in 2007.) The cousins, despite their misfit status, play the sagacious bemused stoner roles as they interact with a variety of unhinged, ostensibly normal folk. Nalevansky and Fry throw all sorts of comedy spaghetti at the wall, much of it nonsensical but enough of it chuckle-worthy to make this brief spasm of cinematic anarchy a decent diversion from our more mundane, malevolent anarchy. (Available on demand from major platforms.)

ALSO THIS WEEK

Rainier: A Beer Odyssey: I’ll admit to a certain anxiety when I noticed that this documentary about the viral ad campaigns for Rainier Beer in the 1970s and ’80s had a running time of a full two hours. That seemed like a very deep dive into a breezily entertaining, but relatively minor topic. I’m happy to report, though, that Isaac Olson’s loving tribute to those ads expands into a fascinating shadow history of Seattle in the pre-grunge era. For instance, did you know that one of the prime creative forces behind those goofy “running bottle” ads was also a co-founder of Starbucks? Or that a maniacal Mickey Rooney appeared in several of the spots? For anyone who’s ever hummed to themselves as a motorcycle races by Raaaaaa—nnnnnnniiiieeeerrrrr–bbbbeeeeerrrrr, this is a must-see. (Kiggins Theatre, Friday 3/7 through Sunday 3/9)

Lifers: A Local H Movie: This Illinois two-piece rock band has been fronted by Scott Lucas since its inception thirty-five years ago, and has maintained a low-profile, fan-friendly, unpretentious sort of infamy ever since. Lucas directed this tribute to the band and its fans, including plenty of footage of its high-energy live shows and named after the affectionate term long-time followers use to describe themselves. Lucas will play a short acoustic set prior to the screening and hold a Q&A afterwards. (Clinton St. Theater, Monday 3/10)

Obsessed with Light: For a detailed look at this captivating documentary about the early 20th-century dancer, actress, and entrepreneur, check out Martha Ullman West’s piece here. (Cinema 21, Saturday 3/8)

On Earth As in Heaven: The Alliance Française de Portland presents this Quebecois drama about a young woman who flees her isolated religious community and heads to bustling Montreal in search of her missing sister. (Cinema 21, Tuesday 3/11)

Raging Midlife: In this madcap Oregon-made comedy, a pair of middle-aged pals embark on a quest to reclaim the t-shirt that a famous pro wrestler tossed to them from the squared circle back in the 1980s. (Cinema 21, Thursday 3/13)

ALSO OPENING

The Accidental Getaway Driver: During a routine pickup, an elderly Vietnamese cab driver is taken hostage at gunpoint by three recently escaped Orange County convicts. (Regal Fox Tower)

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse: Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus is a landmark in reckoning with the Holocaust and breakthrough in serious comic art — but his full achievements are more remarkable and eclectic. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC 2024, this documentary provides intimate access to the man and mind who revolutionized the art form of comics. (Kiggins Theatre, Friday 3/7 through Sunday 3/9)

In the Lost Lands: A queen sends the powerful and feared sorceress Gray Alys (Milla Jovovich) to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands in search of a magical power, where the sorceress and her guide, the drifter Boyce (Dave Bautista), must outwit and outfight man and demon. Based on a story by George R.R. Martin. (multiple locations)

Night of the Zoopocalypse: A wolf and mountain lion team up when a meteor unleashes a virus turning zoo animals into zombies. They join forces with other survivors to rescue the zoo and stop the deranged mutant leader from spreading the virus. (Progress Ridge)

Queen of the Ring: In a time when pro wrestling for women was illegal all over the United States, a small-town single mother (Emily Bett Rickards) embraces the danger as she dominates America’s most masculine sport and becomes the first million dollar female athlete in history. (Movies on TV)

The Way, My Way: Based on the best-selling Camino memoir, The Way, My Way, written by Bill Bennett, the film documents one man’s journey along the Camino de Santiago, searching for meaning, not realizing it was right in front of him, one step at a time. (Regal Fox Tower)

REVIVALS

Friday 3/7

• American Psycho [2000] (Academy Theater, through 3/13)
• Bingo [1991] (Cinemagic, on VHS)
• Coffy [1973] (Academy Theater, through 3/13)
• The Matrix [1999] (Cinemagic, also 2/8, 3/10/ 3/11)
• One Sings, the Other Doesn’t [1977] (Academy Theater, through 3/13)
• Parasite [2019] (Cinema 21, also 3/8)
• Synecdoche, New York [2008] (5th Avenue Cinemas, through 3/9, on 35mm)
• Titanic [1994] (Tomorrow Theater)

Saturday 3/8

• Alien [1979] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939] (Cinema 21)
• Picnic at Hanging Rock [1975] (Cinema 21, also 3/9, new 4K restoration)
• Se7en [1995] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• Thelma & Louise [1991] (Tomorrow Theater)
• True Romance [1993] (Cinemagic, also 3/9, 3/10, 3/13)

Sunday 3/9

• Julie & Julia [2009] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Moulin Rouge [2001] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Sunset Blvd. [1950] (Cinemagic, also 3/11, 3/13)
• Toy Story 2 [1999] (Cinemagic)

Monday 3/10

• An Affair in Trinidad [1952] (Kiggins Theatre)
• Strange Brew [1983] (Hollywood Theatre)

Tuesday 3/11

• Secret Rivals 2 [1977] (Kung Fu Theater at Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• Titane [2021] (Clinton St. Theater)

Wednesday 3/12

• Prison on Fire [1987] (Cinemagic)
• Satanik [1968] (Church of Film at Clinton St. Theater)

Thursday 3/13

• Duck Soup [1933] (Hollywood Theatre)
• La Chimera [2023] (Clinton St. Theater)