“I thought everyone could see sound,” says our narrator early in the haunting and delicately passionate love story The History of Sound. He’s got the instantly recognizable pea-gravel voice of Chris Cooper, but the words play over an image of his character, Lionel Worthing, as a child in 1910 Kentucky, where he absorbs folk songs in synesthetic fashion from his fiddle-playing father on the front porch of their plain, sturdy home.  A few years later, Lionel (now played by Paul Mescal) has decamped to Boston on a scholarship, where he and David White (Josh O’Connor) have a meet-cute when Lionel overhears David playing one of those tunes from back home on the piano in a raucous tavern.

David’s a musicologist, even if he might not apply that word, which had only been coined a couple of decades prior. More colloquially, he’s a song collector, making regular treks into rural America to record, on wax cylinders, the traditional airs that European immigrants brought with them and made their own, and which would go on to form one of the major support beams in the American musical edifice. Lionel and David, who immediately and convincingly fall for one another, commence weekly dates that soon turn into assignations, with all the subterfuge required of 1917 New England. Of course, it being 1917, their happy routine is disrupted when the United States enters World War I, classes are suspended, and David enlists. (Lionel’s farewell words are “Write. Send chocolate. Don’t die.”)

That’s just the first act of The History of Sound, which proceeds through the next decade—via Rome, Oxford, and Newport—at a pace and with an air of longing that echoes the plaintive sincerity of the voices David captures and that Lionel possesses in perfection—it’s his a cappella rendition of the ballad “Silver Dagger” (later the very first track on the very first album by Joan Baez) that first draws David’s admiration and affection. David has to hush the entire room before that can happen, and every time the film stops for another clear-voiced performance it’s a reminder that, in a pre-amplified, mostly pre-automobile era, people sang to fill a silent world, not to drown out a noisy one. This is the sixth feature from South African director Oliver Hermanus, whose last effort was Living, the remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru starring Bill Nighy. His attention to period detail and sympathy for the downtrodden recall John Sayles, and his treatment of a gay love story set in a (more) repressive time earns a comparison to Merchant Ivory’s Maurice.

Stunningly, this novelistic, restrained screenplay is the first by Ben Shattuck, a gallery owner and the husband of comic actor Jenny Slate, who adapted his own short story and should be on plenty of short lists as award season ramps up. So should Mescal: his character is a chameleon, moving through various castes and roles by adapting to them while retaining a core of grace and decency, and few actors today can summon heartbreak the way he can. There’s some nice supporting work from Emma Canning as a woman who offers Lionel a chance at a life of privilege, and Hadley Robinson delivers a potent monologue in a small but key role late, but this is effectively a two-hander, at least in the sense that, as with every intense romance, everyone else fades into the background. There’s little chance that The History of Sound will do the same. It’s a treat for the eyes, the ears, and the heart. (Regal Fox Tower, Living Room Theaters, Bridgeport Village)

Also this week

Suddenly it’s film festival season! Several special cinematic events kick off this week in Portland, the most historically momentous being Cinema 21’s Centennial Celebration. The landmark Northwest Portland independent theater has been a mainstay for decades, but the fact that it first opened as far back as 1925 isn’t widely known. To mark the occasion, the theater will host an Opening Night bash on Friday 9/19 that will include a cocktail hour, a raffle, an auction, and some sort of special screening (mysterious!). Then, for the next nine days, an all-star roster of films from the last hundred years will take the field, from Duck Soup to Moonlight, as noted in the trailer above and in the repertory listings below. The festival wraps up on Sunday 9/28 with a screening of Sean Baker’s breakthrough feature Tangerine, followed by a Q&A session between the director and best-selling biographer Shawn Levy, former film critic at The Oregonian. No word on whether they plan to bring back the folded paper calendars you could stick on your fridge door. (Friday 9/19 through Sunday 9/28, Cinema 21) (Not to be outdone, the similarly venerable and very beloved Moreland Theater is commemorating its C-note status by having free screenings all weekend long of popular favorites such as The Goonies, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, and others.)

No spring chicken itself, the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, a three-day celebration of all things cosmic, macabre, and/or tentacled, kicks off its 30th edition, and its 25th at the Hollywood Theatre, on Friday 9/19. As ever, the event looks to be an almost gluttonous serving of movies, panel discussions, readings, guest appearances, and more. Among the first of those, highlights this year include the world premiere of a new film adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story The Oval Portrait and a 20th anniversary screening of the highly regarded 2005 film of Lovecraft’s own The Call of Cthulhu, accompanied by Dean Lemire on the Hollywood’s Wurlitzer pipe organ so as to enhance its silent-film era aesthetic. In general, the shorts programs may be a better bet than the features, although Paul Bunnell’s A Blind Bargain, making its American premiere, ambitiously attempts to reimagine the lost Lon Chaney film of the same name, setting it in the 1970s and casting that old scamp Crispin Glover as a mad scientist. Of particular note among the briefer titles are the darkly funny Dry January, in which a woman’s sobriety resolution leads to demonic crab sculptures; the Kafkaesque (or perhaps Dickian?) There Is No Antimemetics Division, about a bureaucratic operative battling a foe that makes everyone forget who she is; and Undertone, a sort of Lovecraftian take on The Conversation in which a sound recordist working from home starts picking up disturbing readings from beneath his basementless abode. Expertly crafted, expressionist stop-motion animation brings a loosely adapted O.G. Lovecraft tale, Dagon, to life. It’s impossible to see everything this festival has to offer in person, but don’t scream in terror at the unfathomable, eternal insignificance of humanity in the face of universal chaos: the fest has announced that a streaming version will be available in December. (Friday 9/19 through Sunday 9/21, Hollywood Theatre)

Once all the interdimensional slime and the acrid smells from beyond the stars have been cleared out following the Lovecraft fest, the Hollywood Theatre will also host the opening selection of this year’s Portland Latin American Film Festival, which kicks off its 19th edition on Wednesday 9/24 with Autos, Mota and Rock ’n’ Roll. This highly entertaining (“mota” is Spanish slang for marijuana) mockumentary purports to tell the story of what became known as Avándaro, the Mexican equivalent of Woodstock, in 1971. When two friends decide to stage an auto race, they decide that having a few bands play will broaden the event’s appeal. Little do they know that, by the time the event concludes, the race will be cancelled after hundreds of thousands of hippies descend on the site (most ticketless) to catch the music. One early supporter of their efforts is the then-head of marketing for Coca-Cola in Mexico, one Vicente Fox, who went on to become the country’s president. That part’s true, but director José Manuel Cravioto Aguillón plays enjoyably fast and loose with other facts, blending dramatizations with recreations and plenty of original 8mm footage from the fest itself in clever and often seamless ways. Co-star Enrique Arrizon, currently starring in the Apple TV+ series Acapulco, will be in attendance for a post-film Q&A. The festival continues intermittently through November 12th, with future titles including the Argentine family drama Mazel Tov (Oct. 1), the Venezuelan allegory Zafari (Oct. 8), and others. (Wednesday 9/24, Hollywood Theatre)

Sponsor

The Portland Dance Film Festival may “only” be in its ninth iteration, but it’s going strong and taking over PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater for the weekend. Three programs of terpsichorean tidbits from around the globe, twenty-five short films in all, promise to display the diverse ways that cinema and dance can combine into an art form that celebrates human movement and the astonishing array of emotions, events, and issues it can express. And given the Tomorrow Theater’s affinity for audience engagement, I’m sure they won’t mind if you get up and boogie in the aisles. (Tomorrow Theater, Friday 9/19 through Sunday 9/21)

Coincidentally, this week sees a pair of new documentaries that go behind the scenes to capture the dysfunctional realities of superstars allowed to run amok. The relatively anodyne version of this is Megadoc, a chronicle of the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s already iconic vanity project Megalopolis, a truly bizarre, if endearing, “fable” about the future on which he spent $120 million of his own money. British director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, Timecode) was granted apparently unrestricted access to this production and emerged with some fascinating footage of a chaotic but creative process. Initial rehearsals are, as Coppola intended, joyous and playful, with stars Shia LaBeouf and Nathalie Emmanuel riffing, but as things progress, Coppola’s insistence on maintaining an improvisational, figure-it-out-on-set mentality threatens to derail the entire enterprise. (It’s also why so many of the film’s compositions look like hastily sketched storyboards.) This has been a dream project for the filmmaker for decades, and footage of readings from 2001 featuring Robert DeNiro and Uma Thurman, and from 2003 with Ryan Gosling, prompt multiversal musings on what shape it might have taken back then. Today, the stars of Megadoc are LaBeouf and Aubrey Plaza, each of whom approach the work impishly, although Shia’s is a decidedly more challenging vibe. He’s a raw wound, admitting that co-star Jon Voight (a fellow exile from the A-list) got him the job, panicking that he’s going to be fired (even bringing up Harvey Keitel’s dismissal from Apocalypse Now to Coppola’s face!), and generally being a chaos monkey. Plaza, on the other hand, seems to try to ride the turbulence with her trademarked smirk intact, but even she seems appalled during the filming of a scene in which her character’s necklace accidentally breaks, sending PAs scrambling to retrieve and restring its pearls and making Coppola nearly apoplectic. The more veteran talents in the cast—Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Voight, and Giancarlo Esposito—aren’t as open to being captured on set, but do sit for candid one-on-one interviews. I’ve seen Megalopolis twice now, which as a non-Coppola probably puts me in a fairly select group, and Megadoc doesn’t change my opinion that it’s a glorious mess and an illustration of the perils of big-budget independent filmmaking but one that I’m glad was made. It’s a well-earned (likely) swan song for one of the most mercurial, talented, and successful filmmakers of all time, somebody who was never afraid to swing for the fences, even if he only had warning-track power. (Regal Fox Tower, Bridgeport Village)

Much more disturbing and, I dare say, revelatory, is In Whose Name?, an astonishing document of the mental and professional deterioration of Kanye West that has been edited together from hundreds of hours of footage captured by a young, aspiring filmmaker named Nico Ballesteros. At 18, Ballesteros managed to insinuate himself into West’s inner circle and became his quasi-official, iPhone-wielding Boswell. He became such a fixture that he was able to film West’s private meetings with repugnant figures such as Candace Owens, Elon Musk, and, yes, Charlie Kirk during the period when the world’s most successful rapper, having been diagnosed as bipolar, began his embrace of Trumpism. He films a tense exchange between Michael Che and West backstage following the latter’s Saturday Night Live appearance. Ballesteros is also there for several of West’s manic episodes, when he snaps into a furious rage whenever confronted with any limit on his dreams or ambitions. In the back seat of a limo, with then-wife Kim Kardashian on the phone trying to warn him that his unhinged behavior could cost him his career and his family, West snaps back “Never tell me I’m gonna wake up one day and have nothing! Never put that in the universe!” Another time, he screams “I’d rather be dead than medicated!” And he delivers a genuinely vulnerable monologue to a camera while sitting in a parked car wearing a dog costume on Halloween. To be clear, West’s words and actions are intolerable, yet he’s become more pitiable than anything. I never thought I’d feel sympathy for a Kardashian, yet it’s clear that here she’s the voice of reason, embodying the sadly familiar trope of a loved one who does all they can for a mentally ill family member but is relegated to watching helplessly as they descend into madness. It’s unclear how Ballesteros was able to release this footage. Did West, in his disassociation from reality, never get an NDA from him? Or does he just not care anymore? In any case, this is a raw excavation of the perils of fame worthy of inclusion in a time capsule. (Living Room Theaters, Cedar Hills)

Rebel with a Clause: “Grammar guru Ellen Jovin takes her pop-up grammar advice stand on a road trip across all fifty states to show that comma fights can bring us closer together in a divided time.” (Saturday 9/20, Salem Cinema; Jovin and director Brandt Johnson in attendance)

Earth’s Greatest Enemy: World premiere of a new documentary by Abby Martin (Chevron vs. the Amazon) that explores the devastating environmental consequences of the American empire’s military activities. (Saturday 9/20, Clinton St. Theater; director Martin in attendance)

Crazy Love: Avant-garde Japanese pioneer Michio Okabe’s 1968 magnum opus is a freewheeling, surrealistic experience that sweeps through the country’s artistic, psychedelic, queer counterculture in ways that have been compared to Jack Smith and the Kuchar Brothers. (Wednesday 9/23, Clinton St. Theater)

Also opening

731: “Set against the backdrop of the bacterial experiments conducted by the Japanese Imperial Army’s Unit 731 in Northeast China, and reveals the crimes of Unit 731 through the turbulent fate of an ordinary individual.” (Eastport Plaza)

Sponsor

Afterburn: “After a massive solar flare destroys the Earth’s eastern hemisphere, an emboldened treasure hunter for hire (Dave Bautista) adventures to Europe to uncover the coveted Mona Lisa, only to learn the world needs a hero more than it needs a painting.” (Pioneer Place, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, Progress Ridge)

Big Bold Beautiful Journey: “Two strangers (Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie) who meet at a mutual friend’s wedding have the chance to relive important moments from their pasts, illuminating the path that led them to the present and gaining the opportunity to change their futures.” (Wide release)

Him: “A young athlete descends into a world of terror when he’s invited to train with a legendary champion whose charisma curdles into something darker.” (Wide release)

The Senior: “Nearly four decades after being kicked off his team, Mike (Michael Chiklis) returns to his alma mater to take the hit that changed everything. Bruised, doubted, and nearly broken, he fights for one last shot at the ending he still believes is possible.” (Eastport Plaza, Cedar Hills, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, Progress Ridge, Movies on TV)

Xeno: “A teenager makes a terrifying extraterrestrial her friend after it crashes nearby in the desert. The youngster manages to deal with her sad mother and the mother’s violent boyfriend while simultaneously protecting her dangerous new buddy.” (Bridgeport Village, Movies on TV, Cascade)

Repertory

Friday 9/19

• Apollo 13 [1995] (Lloyd Center, Bridgeport Village, Cascade)
• Basic Instinct [1992] (Laurelhurst Theater, through 9/25)
• The Boondock Saints [1999] (Kiggins Theatre)
• The Evil Dead [1981] (Cinemagic, on 35mm, also 9/20 & 9/25)
• Idiocracy [2006] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Son of the White Mare [1981] (Laurelhurst Theater, through 9/25)
• Spaceballs [1987] (Laurelhurst Theater, through 9/25)

Saturday 9/20

• Amelie [2001] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Diner [1982] (Cinema 21)
• Duck Soup [1933] (Cinema 21)
• Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn [1987] (Cinemagic, also 9/21 & 9/22)
• Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness [1993] (Cinemagic, also 9/21 & 9/22)
• Fantasia [1940] (Cinema 21)
• Notorious [1946] (Cinema 21)
• The Royal Tenenbaums [2001] (Cinema 21)

Sunday 9/21

• 8 ½ [1963] (Cinema 21)
• Harold and Maude [1971] (Cinema 21)
• WALL-E [2008] (Tomorrow Theater)

Monday 9/22

• Days of Heaven [1978] (Cinema 21)
• Firestarter [1984] / Doctor Sleep [2019] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [1966] (Hollywood Theatre)

Tuesday 9/23

• Do the Right Thing [1989] (Cinema 21)
• Evil Dead [2013] (Cinemagic, also 9/24)
• Evil Dead Rise [2023] (Cinemagic, also 9/24)
• La ciénaga [2001] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Over the Edge [1979] (Hollywood Theatre)

Wednesday 9/24

• Beau Travail [1999] (Cinema 21)
• Chasing Chimeras [2025] (Cinema 21, director Barbara Bernstein in attendance)
• Firefly double feature [2003] (Hollywood Theatre)

Thursday 9/25

• His Motorbike, Her Island [1986] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Pan’s Labyrinth [2006] (Cinema 21)