Ever since she became the youngest person ever to garner two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, Jennifer Lawrence has seemingly been on the lookout for roles that could liberate her from the restrictions the industry placed on a woman seen by some as the world’s most decorated ingenue. Sometimes that meant subverting action franchise tropes by playing Katniss Everdeen in the presciently dystopian Hunger Games franchise. Other times, it meant working with auteurs such as David O. Russell in idiosyncratic award-caliber films such as American Hustle and Joy. But maintaining global megastar status seemed to tumble on Lawrence’s list of priorities around the time she appeared in Darren Aronofsky’s criminally underseen 2017 Mother!, entering what one might call her DGAF era. The stunning and confounding apogee of that admirably ballsy arc, at least to this point, is Lawrence’s gloriously unhinged performance in director Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love.

The film opens as Grace (Lawrence) and her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson, playing a committed rhythm guitar to Lawrence’s lead) arrive at their new home, a rural farmhouse that Jackson has inherited from his uncle, singing along with the classic John Prine and Iris DeMent duet “In Spite of Ourselves.” Those initial shots, containing frames within frames, set the tone for a wrenchingly subjective story that transcends the easy descriptors of “postpartum depression” or “female rage” or “bipolar disorder” by virtue of both its incandescent lead performance and its director’s willingness to eschew easy moralistic tropes in favor of an unsparing look at Grace’s descent into hell. Early on, we learn that Grace is a writer and this home will provide her with a place to work, but that never happens. Disappointingly, but surely intentionally, we never learn anything about either Grace’s earlier writing career or Jackson’s occupation, except that it takes him on long road trips.

The passionate but mercurial relationship between Grace and Jackson becomes increasingly strained after the birth of their child. With Jackson frequently absent, Grace becomes increasingly unhinged and obsessed with a motorcycle rider who zips by their homestead on occasion and is eventually revealed to be played by LaKeith Stanfield. Ramsay shifts back and forth in time, allowing us to meet national treasures Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte as Jackson’s parents and obtain glimpses of the alienation and discomfort with her husband and his family even before the arrival of her child. After that so-called blessed event, Lawrence whipsaws between sexual frenzy, animalistic prowling, and existential boredom in her most feral performance since Mother! And when Jackson brings home a dog so annoying that it’ll have you reconsidering your feelings about Kristi Noem, its relentless barking merges with the baby’s wails to create a soundscape that’s hard to tolerate for two hours much less days on end.

Ramsay, working from a novel by the Argentine author Ariana Harwicz (which Lawrence says she was given a copy of by Martin Scorsese with the intention of casting her in the lead), specializes in poetic but clinical portraits of people disconnected from their surroundings, if not from reality itself. The young protagonist of her feature debut, 1999’s Ratcatcher, observes the slums of 1970s Glasgow with a disconnected eye. Samantha Morton’s title character in 2002’s Morvern Callar reacts to her boyfriend’s suicide by dispassionately claiming the novel manuscript he left behind as her own and embarking on a trip to Spain with a friend. In 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, Tilda Swinton plays the mother of an incorrigible child who becomes a mass murderer. And Joaquin Phoenix’s Travis-Bickle-esque mercenary in 2017’s You Were Never Really Here bloodily and dispassionately goes after a child sex-trafficking ring. This is her first feature since then, after many false starts and aborted projects, and it fits the pattern to a tee. Die, My Love looks great (cinematographer Seamus McGarvey also shot We Need to Talk About Kevin, and whoever on the production design team chose the wallpaper deserves a raise) and strives to depict the world as Grace perceives it—disrupted, askew, too hot, too bright. If even Lawrence’s bravest and rawest work to date and this subjective approach still can’t quite get the viewer fully inside Grace’s head, maybe that’s just an inherent limitation to how far cinema can go. (The novel is written in first person.) And maybe that’s for the best—even getting this close is a searing experience. (multiple locations)

Another onetime ingenue trying to overcome the fact that her appearance often generates more clicks than her talent is Sydney Sweeney, the confounding star who has shown herself capable of powerful work on HBO’s Euphoria and The White Lotus as well as in features such as Reality and the underrated nunsploitation effort Immaculate. With luck, she won’t have to stoop to T&A fare like Anyone But You or superhero dreck like Madame Web, and she admirably tries to stretch her range by starring in Christy, a biopic of the woman widely seen as legitimizing the sport of female boxing in the 1990s. Sometimes, though, good intentions aren’t enough.

Christy Salters emerged from small-town West Virginia (her father was literally a coal miner) and rose to prominence under the tutelage of her manager Jim Martin (Ben Foster, in a chameleonlike and impressively slimy performance), who she married at the age of 22 (he was 47 at the time). Despite the concerns of her parents (Merritt Wever and Ethan Embry), she continues to fight—and win, eventually signing with Don King, sparring in nationally televised bouts, and appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Predictably and sadly, Christy Martin’s life behind the scenes became one of physical and emotional abuse and total control by her husband, culminating in a shocking act of violence.

Director David Michôd remains best-known for his 2010 debut feature Animal Kingdom and for co-creating the excellent 2019 miniseries adaptation of Catch-22, but he also co-wrote Nash Edgerton’s 2007 short Spider, which I will always link to, given the chance. His films often center on dark, gritty characters and situations, but he doesn’t quite have a handle on how to wrestle Martin’s story into a propulsive narrative. Christy is overlong at 135 minutes, and most of its story beats are telegraphed. Sweeney restrains her famous physical assets, goes brunette, and adopts a West Virginia accent that I’m in no place to judge but which never feels really natural. She’s also playing a gay woman forced into a marriage of convenience whose eventual liberation includes accepting her sexual identity, which grates a bit even though I’m not an absolutist about authentic representation in queer roles. Not to be a cynic, but Christy feels like the result of a calculation by Sweeney or her reps that she needed her own version of Monster or Boys Don’t Cry or The Hours. Each of those films garnered an Oscar for the women who hid their looks beneath a bushel and established them as Serious Actors. Sweeney will need a different vehicle for that jump, but this is at least a step in the right direction.

I willingly concede that I am not up on the lore of the Predator franchise, which has proved as indestructible as the extraterrestrial master hunters it features. Nearly forty years after facing off against Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers in Central America, Predator: Badlands takes us to the homeworld of the Yautja, as they call themselves, for (I think) the first time. There, a young Yautja called Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) struggles to prove himself to his demanding father, and when poppa decides to cull the weak from the herd, Dek barely escapes on a spaceship to the planet Genna, where he plans to kill a monstrous, theoretically unkillable beast called the Kalisk. He comes across Thia (Elle Fanning), a legless synthezoid who becomes his travelling companion and our exposition machine. It’s all pretty straightforward Joseph Campbell hero’s journey stuff, until it turns out that the Big Bad isn’t necessarily the Kalisk. It is, of course, humans, namely the ones who run the Weyland-Yutani corporation, the only conglomerate evil enough to plague two different sci-fi film series. (The fact that the Alien films and the Predator films are set in the same cinematic universe has been common knowledge since 2004’s Alien vs. Predator—try to keep up!)

No human characters actually appear on-screen in Predator: Badlands, which is probably why the movie gets a PG-13 rating despite loads of severed limbs, gory entrails, and general mayhem. (Whether this indicates speciesism against both sentient robots and intelligent non-human bipeds is a discussion for another day.) As Dek and Thia traverse an alive landscape where everything is trying to kill them—picture a blend of Endor and Dagobah, with a strong Australian flavor—the film finds its groove and turns out to be more fun than it has any right to be. A lot of credit for this goes to Dan Trachtenberg, whose third venture into Predator-land this is. Schuster-Koloamatangi gives a convincing physical performance, and the digital motion-capture used to generate Dek’s face effectively conveys a range of emotions, something few if any Yautja have ever been shown to have. Purists expecting another brutal, humorless testament to martial prowess may be disappointed. This Predator actually laughs and, to paraphrase a famous Roy Thomas line from Marvel Comics’ Silver Age, you may end up believing that “even a Predator can cry!”

An ode to the Northwest and the white people who worked to connect it to the rest of America even into the 20th century, Train Dreams stars Joel Edgerton (whose brother Nash, as noted above, directed Spider) as Robert Grainier, who settles with his wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and their young daughter in 1917 Idaho in a remote, hand-built cabin. Between idyllic spells with his family at their almost fetishized homestead, Robert leaves for long stretches to work laying railroad to Spokane, and on one such site he witnesses a group of racist workers toss a Chinese laborer (Alfred Hsing) off a bridge, a sight that haunts him for years thereafter. Later, he hooks up with a crew building a bridge over a deep gorge in northwest Washington, only to return to a tragedy that nearly breaks him.

The filmmakers behind 2023’s Sing Sing, Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley, who clearly have an affinity for stories of redemption, adapted the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, who was no stranger to stories of male isolation told in plainspoken, unsentimental tones. Edgerton, well-cast, stoically shoulders the load of being in nearly every scene of Train Dreams, making the moments where he drops his emotional guard all the more potent. William H. Macy makes a delightful, brief appearance as a slightly crazed dynamite expert, and Kerry Condon lends a grace note as a character who only appears in the movie’s third act. This is a film that could, and probably will get lost in the shuffle: it’s a simple story about a simple man that will soon vanish into the endless Netflix catalog, but it has enough visual and emotional beauty to make one grateful for a brief opportunity to see it on the big screen. (Living Room Theaters; opens Nov. 14 at the Hollywood Theatre; streaming on Netflix Nov. 21.)

Following a recent screening at Cinema 21 and a visit from its unique subject, The Man Who Saves the World opens for a weeklong run. Director Gabe Polsky finds himself drawn in, almost against his will, to the life and story of Rev. Patrick McCollum. McCollum, a peace activist and close friend of the late Dr. Jane Goodall, believes that he is the figure foretold in an ancient prophecy who will unite the various indigenous communities of Amazonia and help bring about a new age of ecological awareness. Whether he is or isn’t, he’s an indefatigable raconteur and a dedicated optimist who persists in his efforts despite personal trauma, poor health, and very little money. He combines the mundane with the mystical in a way that makes him endearing to Polsky, who follows him on his globe-trotting adventures, and to the audience. Maybe, even if a prophecy isn’t literally true, somebody who believes strongly enough in it can fulfill it anyway.  (Regal Fox Tower)

A passel of quirky Ohioans line up to have their heirlooms and objects d’art appraised by the experts on a visiting Antiques Roadshow-style TV show in Lost & Found in Cleveland, an amiable if strained indie comedy that assembles a talented cast and pays affectionate tribute to a city that’s usually a punchline. Taking place over the 24 hours prior to the big event, the film follows various residents as they prepare their potential treasures. A well-meaning father is embarrassed by his grandmother’s collection of racist “Mammy” cookie jars; the town’s designated rich bitch hauls her prized statuary in; a postal carrier (Dennis Haysbert) who has everyone’s address memorized boxes up part of his vase collection; and an enthusiastic kid (Benjamin Steinhauser) with a real thing for Ohio’s own President William McKinley has a surprise of his own. First-time writing-directing duo Keith Gerchak and Marisa Guterman managed to attract some big names in supporting roles, including June Squibb and Stacy Keach as an old married couple, Jon Lovitz as the mayor of Cleveland, Jeff Hiller of Somebody Somewhere as one of the show’s appraisers, and Loretta Devine as another. Martin Sheen even pops up near the end. Gerchak and Guterman are going for a Waiting for Guffman vibe, it seems, but they don’t have the misanthropic streak of Christopher Guest to give the comedy some bite, and the various story strands don’t interact with each other enough. The movie’s best joke is its least obvious one: the show is hosted by Tom Hanks, played by Mark L. Walberg. Nice one. (Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village)

Also this week

Tiger and Remaining Native: This double feature of documentaries with Native American subjects includes the short film Tiger, about the acclaimed artist Dana Tiger, and the feature-length Remaining Native, a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old runner and his college dreams. Followed by a panel discussion and Q&A. (Friday 11/7, Clinton)

Dance Freak: “A dangerous experiment goes awry resulting in a Dance Freak running wild. The much-anticipated film from the team of Robby Rackleff and Alan Resnick (This House Has People in It) stars Stavros Halkias and Megan Koester along with Connor O’Malley and Sarah Sherman.” (Saturday 11/8, Clinton)

Hancock Park: “Ruby, an aged-out actress, is on the brink of homelessness and goes to stay with her baby sister and her husband in Hancock Park.” Writer-director-star Christina Beck’s film has its world premiere, with Beck in attendance. (Sunday 11/9, Hollywood)

Classroom 4: This documentary looks at a course on the history of crime and punishment in the U.S.  whose students include both undergrads from Lewis & Clark College and incarcerated residents of the Columbia River Correctional Institution. Followed by a Q&A with Dr. Reiko Hillyer, who teaches the course, and author Lois Leveen. (Sunday 11/9, Clinton)

Out There: A National Parks Story: “A young filmmaker sets out on a 10,000-mile exploration of the national parks with his childhood best friend during the centennial year of the formation of the National Park Service, recording stories of its workers and visitors.” (Tuesday 11/11, Cinema 21)

The Story of the Fox: This 1930 stop-motion animated feature from Russian filmmaker Ladislas Starevich, best-known for his early silent shorts starring dead insects, adapts Goethe’s fable about a kingdom ruled by a Lion but plagued by a mischievous fox. (Wednesday 11/12, Clinton, presented by Church of Film)

We Shall Not Be Moved: An aging lawyer unearths new evidence that may reveal who was responsible for the death of her brother decades ago during the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. Presented by the Portland Latin American Film Festival. Actress Luisa Huertas will be in attendance for a post-film Q&A. (Wednesday 11/12, Hollywood)

Nathan-ism: “For 70 years, Nathan Hilu has been unable to stop drawing. His 90-year-old mind is flooded with memories from the days when the U.S. military assigned him to guard top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, keeping them from committing suicide before their verdict was announced. Born to a Syrian Jewish family that immigrated to the States, Hilu remembers with vivid clarity the encounters that changed his life: his conversations with Albert Speer, the long kiss between Göring and his wife, the words he said to each of the accused before leading them to the gallows.” (Living Room; Thursday 11/13, also Sunday 11/16)

The Librarians: “Librarians unite to combat book banning, defending intellectual freedom on democracy’s frontlines amid unprecedented censorship in Texas, Florida, and beyond.” (Friday 11/7, Tomorrow)

Also opening

The Girlfriend: “A young woman explores love, compatibility and self-discovery during college, experiencing relationship complexities and personal growth.” (Cedar Hills)

Grand Prix of Europe: “Edda, a young mouse with big dreams, seizes her chance to race in the Grand Prix disguised as her hero, Ed. She rises to the challenge of outwitting her rival’s sabotage and proving that even the smallest racer can make the biggest impact.” (Pioneer Place, Oak Grove)

Karen Kingsbury’s The Christmas Ring: “A military widow falls in love while searching for her lost family heirloom.” (multiple locations)

Long Shadows: “In the twilight of the Wild West, one man’s mission to avenge his parents’ death turns hopeful when he discovers true love and the promise of a new life.” (Bridgeport Village)

Nuremberg: “A WWII psychiatrist evaluates Nazi leaders before the Nuremberg trials, growing increasingly obsessed with understanding evil as he forms a disturbing bond with Hermann Göring.” (multiple locations)

Sarah’s Oil: “The remarkable true story of eleven-year-old Sarah Rector, an African American girl born in Oklahoma Indian Territory in the early 1900s, who believes there is oil beneath the barren land she’s allotted and whose faith is proven right.” (multiple locations)

Unexpected Christmas: “A family’s perfect Christmas reunion is upended when old rivalries, secrets, and romantic mix-ups come to a head.” (Vancouver Plaza, Vancouver Mall, Movies on TV)

Repertory

Friday 11/7

• Annie [1982] (Kiggins)
• Black Mother [2018] (5th Avenue; through 11/9)
• Chinatown [1974] (Academy, through 11/13)
• Mallrats [1995] (Hollywood)
• Moonrise Kingdom [2012] (Academy, through 11/13)
• Purple Rain [1984] (Academy, through 11/13)
• The Terminator [1984] (Cinema 21, also 11/8)

Saturday 11/8

• Brazil: The Director’s Cut [1985] (Hollywood)
• The Burning Moon [1992] (Hollywood)
• Chicken Run [2000] (Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Cedar Hills; also 11/9, 11/12)
• Lady Vengeance [2005] (Cinemagic, also 11/12)
• Oldboy [2003] (Cinemagic; also 11/9, 11/11)
• Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird [2024] (Tomorrow)
• Symoathy for Mr. Vengeance [2002] (Cinemagic; also 11/10)
• Terror of Mechagodzilla [1975] (Tomorrow)
• The Thin Man [1934] (Cinema 21)

Sunday 11/9

• Spaceballs [1987] (Tomorrow)
• Uncle Buck [1989] (Tomorrow)
• Xanadu [1979] (Salem)

Monday 11/10

• A Better Tomorrow [1986] (Hollywood)
• Sweet Smell of Success [1957] (Kiggins)

Tuesday 11/11

• Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow [1978] (Hollywood, on 35mm)

Thursday 11/13

• Dragon Inn [1967] (Cinemagic)
• Ex-Lady [1933] (Hollywood, on 35mm)