It seems like you can’t throw a rock around here these days without hitting a new music documentary. Just this week, the two-hit wonder English classic rock outfit The Zombies and the eccentric R&B singer/songwriter Swamp Dogg get their respective moments in the cinematic sun. This shouldn’t be a surprise—after all, a wise man once sang “Music scene is crazy, bands start up each and every day; I saw another one just the other day.” Sorry, I saw Pavements and now I can’t get “Cut Your Hair” out of my head. It feels like 1994 all over again.

Pavements is director Alex Ross Perry’s attempt to pay tribute to Pavement, the snarky, literate band that came along in the wake of grunge and proceeded to skewer the self-important angst behind it (and a lot more) with seminal albums that included Slanted and Enchanted, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and Wowee Zowee. But how best to honor a group whose entire identity is centered on the rejection of idolatry, the dismissal of pretense, and being generally too cool for school? The plurality of the title is a hint.

After an initial disclaimer that “The stories you hear, you know they never add up,” Pavements launches full speed into a disorienting collage of projects ostensibly timed to coincide with Pavement’s 2022 reunion tour (they broke up in 1999 and had one previous reunion in 2010). There’s a jukebox musical called Slanted! Enchanted! in rehearsal, a museum exhibit being curated in New York, and a big-budget Bohemian Rhapsody-style biopic being filmed. Toss all that in a bowl, stir it up with a bunch of archival footage and interviews, and put a match to it, and you’ll get something close to this determinedly ironic, never boring portrait.

Take that purported Hollywood movie, Range Life, which stars Joe Keery (Stranger Things) as frontman Stephen Malkmus and features Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker in supporting roles. It’s not real, although apparently quite a bit of it was shot. Keery and the other actors playing band members are deadpan hilarious as they discuss their “process” and how thrilled they are to be bringing the story of the “most important and influential band ever” to the screen. There’s even a Persona homage, I shit you not. The museum show and the stage musical apparently did exist in some form at some point, but that’s not really the point. In the same way Malkmus didn’t shy away from dissing Smashing Pumpkins or Soul Temple Pilots back in the ’90s, he’s more than willing to take a dig at the Broadway sellouts of Green Day and Alanis Morissette, while at least toying with the idea of cashing in as well.

You’ve got to keep your wits about you, but if you do there is genuine information to be gleaned in Pavements, starting with the band’s early iterations in Stockton, California, where Malkmus (now a Chicagoan after a long stint in Portland, where portions of Pavements were shot) and guitarist Scott Kannberg grew up. That bland suburban background surely played a role in congealing the veneer of slacker surrealism that has encased them ever since. Pavement combined the unschooled ethos of punk with the why-bother, End-of-History vibe that swept through Caucasian American culture following the end (a temporary one, it turned out) of the Cold War. When Beavis and Butt-Head granted Pavement the honor of their commentary, for instance, the main critique is that the band is “lazy” and needs to “try harder.”

The reigning and, most likely, eternal champion of producing brilliant, literate pop music while hiding behind a shifting series of unfixable personae is, of course, Bob Dylan, and Perry’s film owes a certain debt to Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There (and maybe Joaquin Phoenix’s I’m Still Here). Although the movie’s spine is comprised of the hoariest music doc cliché, the reunion tour, there’s little to no soul-baring or introspection. You don’t end up knowing Malkmus or any other band members any better than you did going in.

But at the same time Pavements isn’t just a postmodern lark that’s content to yank our chains. Despite its reticence to admit as much, it is a tribute, and an effective one, to a band that embodied the ideals of alternative rock as sincerely as any, and that, whether it wanted to or not, spoke for one segment of the generation that got stuck with the modifier “X.” There’s snark, and even condescension, but it stems from a certain integrity and even humility. It’s just rock and roll, after all, so there’s no need to get all precious about it. (Cinema 21; opens ta Regal Fox Tower June 5)

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: Okay, let’s get this out of the way first. The previous entry in the M:I franchise was titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (a boon for any film reviewers trying to hit a word count). This one is subtitled Final Reckoning, which gives the impression that one may have missed a reckoning or two in the interim. Fear not, though: the reportedly conclusory appearance of Tom Cruise as superspy Ethan Hunt picks up shortly after the events of its predecessor. Hunt is in possession of the magic key that’s needed to unlock the vault in a sunken Russian submarine and retrieve the source code for the omnipotent AI called The Entity that’s on the verge of wiping out humanity. He’s on the run from his own government as well as his archnemesis, each of whom wants the key so they can control The Entity. Only Hunt realizes that no single person should wield such power and so intends to destroy this frustratingly immaterial foe. There, you’re all set.

Hunt’s hacker besties Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) are along for the ride, as are British rogue extraordinaire Grace (Haley Atwell) and redeemed French assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), both introduced in M:I – DR1. Atwell, it must be said, comes off the worst, given the thankless role of replacing Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa, who had been the only female lead to match Cruise’s mettle in the series, and who was killed off the last time around (big mistake!). Hunt’s messianic masculinity is relentlessly hammered home, and Grace, who showed promise in her first appearance, is reduced to a hanger-on here. I guess that’s fair: as the culmination of nearly thirty years and eight features spent turning Ethan Hunt from the nearly-forgotten lead of a cheesy 1960s TV series into a 21st-century action icon, this is Cruise’s chance to lay it on thick, which he does.

Dead Reckoning concluded with one of the great action set pieces in film history, and there’s nothing in Final Reckoning that comes close. In fact, the movie’s first half feels bloated, with even more time and attention paid to puffing up our hero’s infallibility and delivering leaden exposition than usual. The sequences between the inevitable fights, chases, and stunt spectaculars often have the tedious, repetitive, and thuddingly literal feel of a (bad) video game cutscene. And other than some frayed, residual spark between Cruise and his longtime partners, there isn’t any chemistry between actors to speak of. Which means that a lot is riding on the latest iterations of the justly jaw-dropping daredeviltry the series and its star have become famous for. Here, there’s an expertly staged set piece in that sunken submarine as it becomes dislodged from its resting place and rolls down an aquatic slope, and a culminating biplane pursuit that serves as a nice hat-tip to some of the original stuntpeople, the wing walkers who thrilled crowds while barnstorming in the 1920s. Why the villain chooses to make his escape in a biplane, of all things, is, of course, never explained, but to look for rational connections like that is a fool’s errand.

Another quibble is that McQuarrie cast a pair of incredibly charismatic actors, both coincidentally known for work on AppleTV+ series, in roles that could have been played by almost anyone. Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) plays a dour aircraft carrier commander, and Tramell Tillman (Severance) plays a slightly less dour submarine commander. It’s nice that both have been able to capitalize on their newfound prominence and cash some M:I checks, but it’s disappointing that the film has no idea how to use them. Humor and personality are in short supply in general, but that’s to be expected when the fate of all humanity is at stake, I guess. Still, 169 minutes is a long time to be subjected to this much uninterrupted earnestness.

The series has never been one to get overly wrapped up in its own mythology, but there are plenty of callbacks here, some in the form of relentless flashback montages reminding us of all the supercool stuff Ethan Hunt has done over the years. There’s also the amusing return of a character from Brian DePalma’s 1996 Mission: Impossible (which was released, you should know, on May 22, 1996) and the groan-inducing revelation of a connection between another minor character to someone else from that film.

Tom Cruise will be 63 in July, but he still looks fighting fit here and wants us to know it. If a female superspy was forced to shed clothing this often to escape some predicament or another, it would be—well, it would be par for the course in Hollywood, but you get the point. He continues to create enough value for audiences and investors that we rarely ponder the fact that he probably knows where Shelly Miscavige is, but whatever dark sorcery has kept him from visibly aging must have its limits. As he inevitably (?) segues out of action hero status, it’s going to be interesting to see his return to some of the character roles that have been among his most fascinating work. Will he ever face a final reckoning of his own? (Wide release)

A Normal Family: This Korean drama has some themes in common with the recent Netflix limited series Adolescence. It centers on two brothers, bulldog lawyer Jae-wan (Sul Kyung-gu) and noble doctor Jae-gyu (Jang Dong-gun). After a highly publicized road rage incident, Jae-wan defends the driver charged with murder, while Jae-gyu treats the young daughter of the victim who was also injured in the crash. Jae-wan has a new, young wife and an infant child, but his older daughter from his first marriage often tutors her cousin, Jae-gyu’s sullen son. As family tensions are already on the rise regarding whether to put their mother in an assisted living facility, another violent occurrence, this one much closer to home, shatters their moral complacency. Sleekly directed and capably performed, this melodrama from veteran director Hur Jin-ho is a reminder that, all the world round, parents just don’t understand. (Living Room Theaters)

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted: I’d never heard of Swamp Dogg before, but then again, I’m not the most musically educated person. Now I’m a fan. Mr. Dogg, as the New York Times would call him, was born Jerry Williams, Jr., in 1942, which makes him even older than Tom Cruise. After an early career in mainstream R&B, he released a series of albums as Swamp Dogg starting in 1970 that have become cult favorites. But this documentary isn’t really about that, although it does provide a nice primer on this unique artist’s career. Rather, it catches up with him in the present, living in the San Fernando Valley with fellow eccentrics Guitar Shorty, a contemporary, and the younger, flamboyant Moogstar. Directors Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson approach their subject with respect—this could have been an exploitative project in less appreciative hands—and capture the endearing interactions between these three creatively fecund misfits. Admirers such as Mike Judge and Johnny Knoxville stop by to pay tribute to a man who’s truly an American original. (Wednesday 5/28, Hollywood Theatre)

On demand

The Cinema Within: There are a lot of different types of film nerds, and this riveting (to me) documentary should appeal to the more scientifically minded varieties. It’s an exploration, basically, of film editing (specifically continuity editing) and why, given its radical divergence from normal human perception, it works. It might seem ludicrous today, when 99% of humans are inured to it, but the notion that a visual image would instantly change to another image was unknown for the entirety of human evolution until the dawn of the 20th century. Very quickly, however, following the invention of cinema, a method of narrative cinema that employed cuts, albeit bound by certain rules, took hold. The science behind those rules is probed in interviews with luminaries such as Walter Murch (always the go-to guy for insight into this stuff) and scholar David Bordwell, but comments from psychologists and neuroscientists researching blink rates and eye movements are even more revelatory. The highlight of director Chad Friedrichs’ film is its depiction and discussion of a series of experiments performed by Turkish researcher Sermin Ildirar. She identified a population of isolated rural villagers who’d never seen movies or television and showed them examples of various editing techniques to see how they viewed the reality of what was being depicted. The results are unexpected and insightful, and the film is a thought-provoking exploration, although I wished it had addressed the impact of non-invisible editing strategies such as the jump cuts of Godard and the Nouvelle Vague, as well as the ways non-narrative filmmaking employs different editorial strategies. (Available on DVD and on demand via Amazon Prime and Kanopy.)

Also this week

The Day the Music Stopped: This feature-length documentary follows the efforts of independent music venues, including the iconic Exit/In, in Nashville as they attempt to fend off the predations of Live Nation during troubled economic times. Of interest to Portlanders as our city faces a similar situation. (Sunday 5/25, Tomorrow Theater)

Spectrum Reverse Spectrum: 70mm Films of Margaret Honda: Cinema Project presents this rare opportunity to encounter the cameraless work of Honda, made by exposing 70mm film to specific wavelengths of colored light, resulting in abstract explorations of color and texture. Followed by a conversation between Honda and Portland artist Roland Dahwen. (Monday 5/26, Hollywood Theatre)

Four Rivers Six Ranges: This new, English-language Tibetan film tells the story of Andrug Gonpo Tashi (aka Jindak), a leader of the guerilla forces that attempted, with CIA support, to resist the Chinese domination of their country from 1956 to 1974. (Kiggins Theatre, Monday 5/26)

The Eternal Song: Indigenous voices from around the globe speak about themes of ancestral wisdom, the scars of colonization and capitalism, and the resilience and optimism that allows them to preserve hope. (Cinema 21, Wednesday 5/28)

Also opening

Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary: The British band behind the iconic hits “She’s Not There” and “Time of the Season” gets the musical biodoc treatment, covering their rise to fame in the 1960s, the solo careers of the members, and the group’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Kiggins Theatre)

Lilo & Stitch: Live-action remake of the animated Disney film about a lonely Hawaiian girl who befriends a runaway alien, helping to mend her fractured family. (Wide release)

The Last Rodeo: From faith-based Angel Studios comes the story of an aging rodeo rider who comes out of retirement to enter a bull-riding competition and mend his fractured family. Directed by Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes). (Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center)

Repertory

This week, cult anti-auteur Tommy Wiseau makes one of his periodic visits to Portland to screen his magnum opus The Room and his more recent Big Shark; Cinemagic trots out a quartet of international horror films, highlighted by the unnerving South Korean shocker The Wailing; and the Hollywood Theatre’s “Hitchcock on Film” series continues with 35mm screenings of three iconic movies from the Master of Suspense.

Friday 5/23

• The Graduate [1967] (Academy Theater, through 5/29)
• Pather Panchali [1955] (5th Avenue Cinema, through 5/25)
• The Room [2003] (Cinema 21, director Tommy Wiseau in attendance)
• Secret Mall Apartment [2025] (Tomorrow Theater)
• A Silent Voice [2016] (Academy Theater, through 5/29)
• So I Married an Axe Murderer [1994] (Kiggins, through 5/25 and 5/27)
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [1964] (Academy Theater, through 5/29)
• The Wailing [2016] (Cinemagic, also 5/25, 5/26)

Saturday 5/24

• Big Shark [2023] (Cinema 21, director Tommy Wiseau in attendance)
• Dial M for Murder [1954] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also 5/25)
• Howl’s Moving Castle [2004] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Marty [1955] (Cinema 21)
• Princess Mononoke [1997] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Psycho [1960] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also 5/25)
• Rear Window [1954] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also 5/25)
• Ring [1988] (Cinemagic, also 5/25, 5/27, 5/28)
• Stop Making Sense [1984] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Suspiria [1977] (Cinemagic, also 5/26, 5/29)
• Terrified [2017] (Cinemagic, also 5/27, 5/28)

Sunday 5/25

• Coffee and Cigarettes [2003] (Tomorrow Theater)

Tuesday 5/27

• Portland EcoFilm Festival 2025 award winners (Cinema 21)
• ‘Round Midnight [1986] (Clinton Street Theater)
• To Live and Die in L.A. [1985] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)

Wednesday 5/28

• Dazed and Confused [1994] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice [1978] (Clinton Street Theater)

Thursday 5/29

• Magic Farm [2025] (Tomorrow Theater)
• The Palestine Exception [2024] (Clinton Street Theater)
• RRR [2023] (Hollywood Theatre)