On the heels of such muscly, intense hits as Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Sinners, we finally get a little bit of counterprogramming this week in the form of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, which simply from the title is unlikely to feature much in the way of bloodshed, weaponry, or brooding men (unless they’re named Darcy, of course). With the deluge of Austen-centric cinema over the last couple of decades, one could be forgiven for assuming that director Laura Piani’s first feature is just another interchangeable riff on the pithy novels that have been repeatedly adapted, with varying degrees of success, since the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility inaugurated the current wave of fascination with Austen’s life and work.

The film, however, uses Austen as more of an entry point into a broader, comfortingly clever story about a 21st-century woman who, while she may not face many of the social barriers that Austen’s heroines had to contend with, still finds herself confronted by familiar emotional dilemmas. Agathe (Camille Rutherford, a prolific French performer who had a supporting role in Anatomy of a Fall) works at the famed Parisian English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Company and aspires to an authorial career. Her co-worker and platonic best pal Félix (Pablo Pauly) urges her on, and their rapport is strong enough to qualify as foreshadowing.

When Agathe is, to her shock, accepted into a writer’s residency in England hosted at the house where Austen wrote (a real thing!), she reluctantly, anxiously Chunnels over there. One of her hosts, it turns out, is the moody, Darcy-esque Oliver (Charlie Anson), who’s the great-great-grandnephew of Austen herself, but wants you to know he much prefers modern literature and finds all this fawning over his ancestor quite unbecoming. If you’ve read Pride and Prejudice, or seen even one of its adaptations, you can probably sketch the outline of the remainder of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, but, as with many rewarding romcoms, the pleasure comes not from the inevitable dodges and feints toward resolution, but from the sparks between compelling, relatable characters.

Agathe’s journey from introverted bookworm to active participant in her own life is also a familiar one, but Piani’s clever scripting and Rutherford’s extremely endearing portrayal of this awkward, regurgitation-prone, immensely likeable woman add up to an early summer treat. (Cinema 21, Bridgeport Village, Regal Cascade, Movies on TV, Salem Cinema)

Sister Midnight: Until recently, the vast majority of Indian films that reached American shores were either Bollywood extravaganzas such as RRR or neorealist arthouse films in the tradition of Satyajit Ray such as Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay. However, the Indian film industry encompasses a huge range of regional and generic diversity, and last year’s should-have-been-Oscar-nominated All We Imagine as Light was a great example of that. Another is this unpredictable, darkly hilarious story about a woman, Uma (Radhika Apte), who finds herself in a quasi-arranged marriage to the hapless Gopal (Ashok Pathak) and sentenced to a meager life in a downtrodden Mumbai neighborhood. Right off the bat, Uma’s having none of it, profanely cursing out her husband for leaving her with no food money when he goes off to work and comes home drunk. She may not come to the situation with even a scrap of domestic skill or interest, but he’s just as feckless and, to boot, has seemingly no interest in consummating their union. (Note to self: arranged marriages are kind of a bad idea.) She acquires a mentor of sorts in her happy (or at least resigned) neighbor, who’s played by Chhaya Kadam from All We Imagine As Light, and gets a night-shift janitorial job to pass the time and earn a few extra ducats. But the monotony eventually reaches a crisis point, at which time Sister Midnight veers into somewhat gruesome, mildly jaw-dropping genre territory that shouldn’t be spoiled. It also allows director Karan Kandhari, making his first professional feature, to cleverly employ stop-motion animation. The soundtrack is just as gleefully anarchic, with selections ranging from Cambodian soul to Buddy Holly to The Band. With its deadpan rebellious energy and a star-making turn from Apte, this is a new and refreshing voice that carves its own cinematic path. (Living Room Theaters)

Tornado: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, although I highly doubt it. In 18th century England, a touring band of entertainers includes Japanese father-daughter puppeteers (Takehiro Hira of Shōgun and model/songwriter Kōki as the titular Tornado), who stage impressive (and bloody) samurai duels for crowds as they traverse the barren countryside. Things get dodgy when a band of grubby outlaws led by Sugar (Tim Roth) and his sidekick Little Sugar (Jack Lowden, who played Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction) cross their path. (Another gang member is played by Rory McCann, aka Sandor “The Hound” Clegane, and it’s good to see he’s doing well.) A couple of sacks of gold go missing, and the bad guys are soon on the trail of Tornado, who turns out to have picked up more than a few swordplay skills from her poppa. This is director John Maclean’s first film since his lauded 2015 debut, Slow West, which starred Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee in another offbeat Western-ish tale and is well worth seeking out. Tornado isn’t up to that level, and part of that stems from the unexplained incongruity of its genre mashup. Remember the second season of HBO’s Westworld, when the borders between the various parks were perforated and the residents of Shogunworld confronted those of Westworld? It kind of feels like that a bit too often. (Regal Fox Tower, Bridgeport Village, and other locations)

Killer of Sheep: Just a couple of weeks after director Charles Burnett’s lost film The Annihilation of Fish had a Portland screening, his massively influential debut film comes to town in a newly restored 4K edition. It’s an immersive, almost documentary-style portrait of Black life in Watts in the early 1970s. Henry G. Sanders has the title role of Stan, who works in a slaughterhouse and tries not to bring the rage and despair that job fills him with home to his wife (Kaycee More) and two children. Burnett takes an episodic approach, and it’ll be frustrating if you’re expecting a narrative arc or a buildup of tension, but, especially in a theatrical setting, the experience of peering into the lives of these heretofore unseen (at least in cinema) characters is rhythmic and, at times, poetic. This was Burnett’s thesis film at UCLA, and it spawned the movement of Black filmmakers that came to be known as the L.A. Rebellion, which included directors such as Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust) and Zeinabu Irene Davis (the recently restored Compensation). Like Fish, Sheep had a long and winding path: filmed starting in 1972, it wasn’t completed until 1977, and even then, its release was held up due to soundtrack rights issues. Eventually, those were resolved (partially thanks to a donation from Steven Soderbergh) and Milestone Films released it commercially in 2007. Its importance was recognized even before then, though: Killer of Sheep was named to the National Film Registry in 1990. This new 4K edition, prepared in part for a new Criterion Collection physical release, surely looks and sounds as good as the film ever has, although the uneven dialogue recording still reflects the circumstances of its production (I was glad the version I screened had subtitles). It’s not a stretch to say that Burnett is the American Vittorio De Sica, and like De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, his work is a monumental testament to film’s power to capture the experiences of ordinary people. (Hollywood Theatre, Friday 5/30)

Also this week

Short Films by Thom Hilton: Portland queer filmmaker Thom Hilton has been making offbeat, darkly funny films for several years, including 2024’s Matinee Baby, which was filmed largely at the Clinton Street Theater, where Hilton also serves as co-host of the weekly screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s apropos, then, that the Clinton host this showing of his work, which also includes the faux documentary Synonymous With, the actual documentary One Drift and We All Go Home, about commercial fishing in Alaska, and my personal favorite, You Look Pretty Up Here, a two-hander in which a recently broken-up couple find themselves stuck in an A-frame cabin on the slopes of Mt. Hood. The event will also serve as a fundraiser for Hilton’s planned upcoming feature. (Clinton Street Theater, Sunday 6/1)

Hillsboro Film Festival: Following up on its inaugural event last year, the Hillsboro Film Festival, presented by Bag & Baggage Productions, once again will screen a variety of shorts and features. The latter include Australian filmmaking legend (and local resident) Brian Trenchard-Smith’s bizarro 1978 Stunt Rock as well as a sneak preview of PSU film professor Dustin Morrow’s new film Panic Sets In, followed by a Q&A. Many of the events and screenings are free, and specific times and dates can be found at the festival website. (Friday 5/31 through Sunday 6/1, The Vault Theater & Event Space)

Streaming

Pee-wee as Himself: HBO or Max or whatever has kind of created a mini-genre with its multi-part documentaries on revered comedy figures, some of which have been revelatory (the Garry Shandling one) and others of which have been padded hagiographies (the Steve Martin one). None comes close, however, to being as simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking as director Matt Wolf’s portrait of Paul Reubens, the creator and embodiment of perhaps the most subversive children’s TV host ever, Pee-wee Herman. Reubens shot to fame as the goofy, garrulous avatar of juvenile id, only to be brought low by a tabloid scandal following his arrest for indecent exposure. If that’s all you know about him, it’s a damn shame, and Pee-wee as Himself intimately, and in Reubens’ own words, peels back the layers on a man whose genius and tragedy resulted in part from being forced to remain publicly closeted. (Reubens is among the interviewees in the 2024 documentary The World According to Allee Willis, which profiled another creative genius faced with this dilemma.) Wolf, as has been chronicled, pursued this dream project for years before Reubens agreed to sit for dozens of hours of interviews. What he (and the general public) didn’t know, and Reubens did, is that the star had been diagnosed with cancer, and he died just prior to the last scheduled interviews for the film. Whether or not Reubens intended these to be his final words on his fascinating life and outsized impact isn’t clear, but the resulting work is a worthy tribute to a figure who was too often dismissed or disregarded in his life. (Streaming on HBO/Max)

Also opening

Bring Her Back: The fraternal directing team behind the horror breakout Talk to Me returns with their sophomore effort about a pair of teens who get placed with the foster mother from hell, played by Sally Hawkins in what sounds like a real turnabout from her usual roles. (Wide release).

Detective Kien: The Headless Horror: This tale about a 19th-century detective investigating a decapitated corpse discovered in a rural village has been billed as the #1 horror thriller of all time in Vietnamese cinema. (Eastport Plaza)

Karate Kid: Legends: The first film in the series to be set after the events of the Netflix series Cobra Kai brings Ralph Macchio (the O.G. Karate Kid) and Jackie Chan (who took over for Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi in the 2010 remake) in an apparent effort to tie everything together, thereby cementing the idea of the Karate Kid Cinematic Universe. Sure, why not? (Wide release)

Repertory

Friday 5/30

• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [1975] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Lady Snowblood [1973] (Cinema 21, also 5/31)
• Samurai Cop [1991] (Clinton St. Theater)

Saturday 5/31

• All About Eve [1950] (Cinema 21)
• Burst City [1982] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Moonstruck [1987] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Psychotronic After School Special (Clinton St. Theater)
• The Wicker Man [1973] (Clinton St. Theater)

Sunday 6/1

• Hundreds of Beavers [2023] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also 6/2)
• The People’s Joker [2024] (Clinton St. Theater)
• The Seven Year Itch [1955] (Hollywood Theatre)

Monday 6/2

• Eureka [2023] (Cinema 21)
• White Fire [1984] (Hollywood Theatre)

Tuesday 6/3

• My Own Private Idaho [1991] (Clinton St. Theater)

Wednesday 6/4

• The Damned House of Hajn (aka Uncle Cyril) [1989] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Super Xuxa vs. Satan [1988] (Hollywood Theatre)

Thursday 6/5

• The Goonies [1985] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• It’s All Gonna Break [2024] (Clinton St. Theater)