There are a lot of things about The Life of Chuck that shouldn’t be revealed in a review, but one potentially cautionary note shouldn’t qualify as a spoiler: There’s less Tom Hiddleston in this movie than one might expect given his prominence in the marketing imagery. But unless you’re a monomaniacal Hiddleston fetishist (I know you’re out there), that shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Director Mike Flanagan’s third big-screen Stephen King adaptation is a departure for both author and filmmaker, a metaphysical drama that barely feints toward genre conventions.

Flanagan has (maybe too?) faithfully realized what, on the page, might seem an unfilmable sixty-something page story told in three acts, beginning with the third, which depicts the end of the world. It centers on Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a middle-school English teacher just trying to maintain his routines as reports roll in about California falling into the sea and a volcano erupting in Germany. Soon enough, the Internet goes down and a giant sinkhole opens outside of town. One guy, though, seems to be doing well, and that’s Chuck Krantz (Hiddleston), whose face starts appearing in billboard ads and TV spots that congratulate him on his retirement. As these encomia proliferate to an absurd degree, and an apocalypse not unlike that in Arthur C. Clarke’s story The Nine Billion Names of God approaches, Marty seeks out his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) in an effort at comfort or closure or something before The End arrives.

From there, The Life of Chuck focuses more on the actual life of Chuck. Chuck’s a complicated guy. He’s a buttoned-down accountant who stops to show off his moves when he comes across a drumming busker, in the story’s middle act. He’s also an orphan, raised by his grandparents Sarah (Mia Sara[!]) and Albie (Mark Hamill[!!]) from a young age, who acquires his love of dance from her and his acuity with numbers from him. Sara, immortalized as Sloan Peterson in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, hasn’t been in a movie in over a decade, and Hamill delivers a warm, complicated performance that feels like the sort of thing that could get a guy his first Oscar nomination. Other cast members in small roles include horror veterans Matthew Lillard (Scream), David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil) and Heather Langenkamp (Nightmare on Elm Street). Scott Wampler, the film journalist and podcaster who passed away in 2024, appears in a cameo, and the film is dedicated to him. As the younger versions of Chuck, both Jacob Tremblay (the kid from Room) and Benjamin Pajak impress, with Pajak particularly adept at embodying a self-conscious pre-teen awkwardness that gradually evolves into a physical confidence that most sixth-graders can only dream about.

As the opening sequence suggests, this is a film about mortality and, more specifically, how we react to the awareness of our own finite, contingent existences. In other words, it’s a little bit less visceral than Cujo. And, in fact, that relative bloodlessness is the movie’s one major flaw. Nick Offerman has a fantastic voice, but his wryly empathetic narration, often quoting King’s authorial voice verbatim, creates a certain remove from the human drama. Having read King’s story recently, I was struck by just how much dialogue and incident were replicated to the word. On the one hand, why mess with success, but on the other, there are opportunities in cinema to visually depict things only described in a text, some of which might have ramped up the film’s intensity at times, even if they might have increased the special effects budget.

Senator Jodi Ernst of Iowa recently garnered headlines when, in response to a constituent’s complaint that proposed cuts to Medicare were going to kill people, she flippantly observed, “We are all going to die.” She’s right, of course, and it’s a fact that rarely gets discussed in polite company, even if it was a stunningly stupid and cruel thing to say in the moment. How to acquire meaning during an ultimately transient conscious lifetime has been the project of philosophy, and its existential brands in particular, for a long time. The Story of Chuck is, in the dictionary sense, an existential film. And it also has Tom Hiddleston dancing. (Wide release)

Materialists: Writer-director Celine Song burst into prominence a couple of years ago with the stunning, Oscar-nominated Past Lives, which told the story of a decades-long relationship that was equally relatable and mythic in the ways only a great romance can be. For her follow-up, Song has taken a more comedic, formulaic tack in an effort to breathe new life into an often hackneyed genre. It’s hard to escape the clutches of shopworn cliches once you’ve hit the dance floor with them, though, and Materialists isn’t as revolutionary as, perhaps, it was envisioned to be. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) works as a professional matchmaker in New York City, which is apparently a job that a person can have. As such, she’s the prototypical example of a woman who’s an expert in kindling sparks between strangers—or at least thinks she is—but is resolutely single herself. (The echoes of Emma aren’t the only Austenesque touches in this tale of matrimony-obsessed aristocrats.)

Her profession has imbued in Lucy an algorithmic attitude toward love: she’s like a slightly more human version of a dating app as she checks off boxes and mercilessly calculates the odds of amour (or at least compatibility) between her customers, incorporating their oddly specific (how is height still such a crucial statistic?) parameters. Her cynical approach is challenged when she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), brother of the groom, at the wedding of two of her clients. She’s only there because it’s a breeding ground for new business, but he persists in wooing her, and before long she’s besotted by this rich, handsome, sensitive, tall “unicorn.” On the other hand, she also bumps into her old boyfriend at the same reception. John (Chris Evans) is a 38-year-old aspiring actor working as a cater-waiter who still lives with the sort of roommates who leave used condoms on the kitchen floor. So, not a unicorn. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

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As this triangle inexorably resolves itself, Song has fun both poking at and indulging romcom tropes, but can’t quite bring herself to cut as sharply as these generally wealthy, self-involved characters deserve. For one thing, you know you’re in Hollywoodland (the A24 logo in the opening credits notwithstanding) when the second-choice schlub is played by Captain America himself. There’s a subplot involving one of Lucy’s clients (Zoë Winters, aka Kerry from Succession) being assaulted by her prospective match, and one wished there had been a way to incorporate more of this hesitancy around the entire concept of marriage brokering without dulling the film’s comedic zing. One of the biggest laughs comes early on when a bride has cold feet and exclaims in panic, “My family doesn’t need a cow! I’m choosing this!”

Still, if we can have “elevated” horror films, we can have “elevated” romcoms, and The Materialists definitely rises above the generally banal standards of its peers. It’s a little disappointing, however, that it does so mostly thanks to the charms of its performers rather than the craft of its auteur. Nobody’s playing against type here, but Johnson’s trademark inscrutability meshes well with Pascal’s nontoxic masculinity, and the makeup and lighting folks do yeoman’s work making Evans look passably ordinary. Even if the movie doesn’t have the same wistful magic as Past Lives, it’s enough to maintain faith that Song is a smart, empathetic filmmaker who respects her characters and her audience alike. (Wide release)

The Unholy Trinity: If you’re looking for a Western that’s like the ones they used to make, here you go. However, you may have made that wish with an overly fond opinion of Westerns they used to make, since the vast majority were cookie-cutter efforts that trotted out the same tired tropes and tossed in a few middling action scenes to keep viewers awake. That’s essentially what director Richard Gray has replicated here. His previous film, 2022’s Murder at Yellowstone City, starred Isaiah Mustafa as a former slave alongside Gabriel Byrne. This one features Samuel L. Jackson and Pierce Brosnan, but the protagonist is one Henry Broadway, played limply by Brandon Lessard. After he witnesses his father’s hanging for a crime he didn’t commit, Henry seeks vengeance on the man who framed him, the sheriff of Trinity, Montana. When he gets to Trinity, Henry learns from the current sheriff (Brosnan) that his predecessor is already dead and buried, but when an enigmatic stranger (Jackson) travelling with an indigenous woman (Q’orianka Kilcher, also seen in The Life of Chuck) informs him that there’s a buried chest of gold to be found, the hunt is on. The two old pros do their best in paycheck jobs, but the lack of a compelling lead and a reliance on textbook plotting sink this one quickly. (Wide release)

Portland Horror Film Festival: Celebrating its tenth anniversary, this reliably curated collection of terrors and traumas continues through the weekend at both the Hollywood Theatre (Friday) and the Clinton Street Theater (Saturday & Sunday). Among the tempting titles are the politically relevant House of Ashes, about a woman under house arrest for having a miscarriage, and the Turkish revenge thriller Saýara. There are also dozens of short films, both in dedicated blocks and preceding each of the features, one of them being Portland director Karina Ripper’s Chispa (it’s in Block 6 on Sunday evening, FYI). Many of those features are regional premieres, and some, including the intriguing if literally-titled Tokyo Strange Tale, are having their first American screening. There’s also the world premiere of Jack Perez’s documentary The Sinister Cinema Story, which profiles the pioneering, Medford-based distributor that brought horror, sci-fi, and B-movies to video stores nationwide in the 1990s. Both weekend days are marathons, presenting the opportunity to delight in dread from noon until nighttime. (Friday 6/13, Hollywood Theatre; Saturday & Sunday 6/14 & 6/15, Clinton Street Theater)

Also opening

How to Train Your Dragon: The fad of updating beloved animated films into CGI-laden, ostensibly live-action remakes spreads beyond the Disney empire with this rehash of the 2010 charmer about a Viking lad named Hiccup who goes against his cultural upbringing to befriend a baby dragon he dubs Toothless and in the process puts an end to anti-dragon hysteria. Now, for some reason, we get the same story with real humans and digital dragons. I’m sure it’ll be a huge hit. (Wide release)

Project X: Not to be confused with the 1983 Matthew Broderick movie about training simians for the space program, this is in fact an Egyptian action thriller about an archaeologist, framed for his wife’s murder, on a National Treasure-type quest that leads him to the Great Pyramid, Vatican City, and a sunken submarine. (Regal Fox Tower)

Also this week

Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos: Rex Miller’s documentary profiles Flanagan, the New York hardcore movement icon who survived a brutal childhood to go on to co-found the seminal punk band the Cro-Mags. This is the film’s West Coast theatrical premiere. (Hollywood Theatre, Wednesday 6/18)

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We & the Water: The Portland EcoFilm Festival presents seven short films emphasizing humanity’s relationship with good old H₂O. The locations range from Australia to Peru to El Salvador to Portland’s own Ross Island in the Willamette River. Followed by a community conversation on related topics. (Hollywood Theatre, Thursday 6/19)

Repertory

Friday 6/13

• Desert Hearts [1999] (Clinton Street Theater)
• Friday the 13th [1980] (Regal Fox Tower, Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center)
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch [2001] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Hello Dolly [1970] (Kiggins Theatre)
• Lost in Translation [2003] (Cinema 21, also 6/14)
• Tangerine [2015] (Cinemagic)

Saturday 6/14

• The Long, Long Trailer [1954] (Cinema 21)
• New Wave [2024] (Tomorrow Theater)
• The Rock [1996] (Cinemagic, through 6/17)
• The Sandlot [1993] (Kiggins Theatre; Hollywood Theatre, also 6/15)
• Terror Toons [2002] & Personal Demons [2018] (Hollywood Theatre, directors Joe Castro and Brinke Stevens in attendance)

Sunday 6/15

• Black Jack: The Movie [1993] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Mamma Mia! [2008] (Tomorrow Theater)

Monday 6/16

• D.E.B.S. [2004] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Pink Narcissus [1971] (Clinton Street Theater)
• The Rubber Gun [1973] (Hollywood Theatre)

Tuesday 6/17

• The Nyback Show: It Came from Within (Hollywood Theatre)
• We Are Guardians [2023] (Cinema 21)

Wednesday 6/18

• Paradise Lost [1974] & The Adventures of Sylvia Couski [1974] (Clinton Street Theater)

Thursday 6/19

• Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers [1972] (Clinton Street Theater)