The director Joshua Oppenheimer came to prominence with a pair of epic, surreal documentaries (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence) about brutal anti-Communist repression by Indonesia’s Sukarno regime in the 1960s, which resulted in the deaths, by most counts, of well over a million people. For his belated follow-up, a decade after The Look of Silence, he’s chosen a happier topic: the end of the world.

The End stars the dream couple of Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton as the heads of a family living in a salt mine bunker following some mostly unspecified global cataclysm. Their son (George MacKay) has been raised underground but hasn’t lacked for the finer things: this clearly wealthy clan has brought with them their art collection (or at least part of it), a butler (Tim McInnerny), a doctor (Lennie James), and mom’s best friend (Bronagh Gallagher). (In what’s becoming a trend—see Nightbitch—these clearly allegorical characters aren’t given proper names.)

This uneasy stasis is interrupted by the arrival of the first stranger (Moses Ingram) to stumble into their cavernous refuge in a long time. The grown-ups are suspicious, but allow her to integrate into their microcommunity, where MacKay’s wide-eyed fascination with her grows into something more. It gradually emerges that there are aspects of the surface world’s fate that have been kept from him, including his own father’s potential culpability in the events that led to humanity’s destruction. He’s even identified at one point as an energy industry executive who was around for some nastiness in Indonesia before things all went to hell.

Oh, yeah, it’s also a musical. Throughout the film’s two-and-a-half-hour running time, characters break into song while delivering dialogue. While commendable as a bold gambit by Oppenheimer that adds to the disorientation and artifice of the setup, this is overall a bad idea for two reasons. One is that none of the cast are especially gifted vocalists. The other is that, like most musicals, it ends extending the running time to the point of diminishing returns—at a certain point, you’re ready for The End to end. The lyrics and what little accompanying movements there are don’t add very much to either the emotion of the moments or the narrative. So I guess that’s three reasons.

Oppenheimer’s documentaries pulled off a similar trick to much more gutting effect. In The Act of Killing, he convinced Indonesian perpetrators of crimes against humanity to re-enact the violence they committed, ostensibly as part of surreal showbiz-style spectacles. The result was a horrifying juxtaposition in which ordinary, real individuals reveal their lack of shame, even pride, in things they did that offend all moral sense. In The End, the dramatic environment is already so abstracted that the addition of the musical element makes it less affecting rather than more so.

Don’t get me wrong: any time you put Shannon and Swinton on screen together, especially in something as unique and risky as this, there will be moments of genius. They are too spaced out in this indulgent narrative, however, to have much impact. (Opens Friday; Living Room Theaters, Salem Cinema, Bridgeport Village, Vancouver Mall)

Oh, Canada: Paul Schrader continues his third-act career arc with another portrait of a man plagued by conflict and regret. While not as potent as First Reformed or The Card Counter, his latest feels more self-referential than either, due mostly to the fact that the protagonist is an aging filmmaker, here a documentarian named Leonard Fife (Richard Gere). In the throes of his final illness, Fife has summoned a former student (Michael Imperioli) to interview him on camera. As he discusses his life, the film flashes back to the events that made Fife a moral and artistic hero. The younger Fife (Jacob Elordi) traveled to Canada from the U.S. as a draft resister during the Vietnam War, where he became an acclaimed Errol Morris-style figure. (Fife discusses his innovative camera design, which is basically Morris’s Interrotron.) But, like so many who’ve dedicated their outward lives to the proposition that film is truth 24 times a second (see also Cate Blanchett in Disclaimer), Fife has secrets that he’s withheld for decades, but is now ready to unburden himself of in a possibly vain attempt at redemption. Uma Thurman makes a welcome appearance as Fife’s wife, and Elordi is one of the few present-day actors who’s handsome enough to pass for a young Richard Gere. But this is Schrader’s and Gere’s show: two stalwarts of a fading era reflecting on their legacies. You could see this as a Calvinist take on All That Jazz. (Opens Friday; Salem Cinema)

STREAMING PICKS

Dahomey: In 2019, a group of artifacts that had been taken from the African kingdom of Dahomey by its French colonizers in the 19th century were repatriated to the nation of Benin. French director Mati Diop, whose father was the brother of Senegalese auteur Djibril Diop Mambéty, makes her feature documentary debut with this imaginative, quietly fierce film. Portions of Dahomey literally give voice to the statues and thrones being transported, as they recall their journey and captivity. In other sections, university students debate the process and politics behind the return of the works, including the dispiriting fact that only 26 of the thousands of items in French custody are being returned to their homes. A potent reminder that the legacy of European colonialism continues to ripple through the 21st century and will surely continue to do so for some time to come. (Streaming on MUBI)

Endless Summer Syndrome: They seem like the perfect modern French family. Father Antoine (Mathéo Capelli) is a successful novelist. Mother Delphine (Sophie Colon) is a human rights activist. Their two adopted teenaged children, Aslan (Gem Deger) and Adia (Frédérika Milano) seem happy and well-adjusted, although there’s a tinge of sadness at Aslan’s impending departure for New York to study entomology. Gathering at their stunning country house the weekend before he leaves, they’re the picture of bourgeois contentment. Of course, that can’t last. Delphine receives an anonymous phone call telling her that Antoine, drunk at a recent work function, mentioned an inappropriate relationship with one of his kids. Doubtful at first, Delphine quickly grows suspicious, seeing moments of intimacy between Antoine and Adia that now seem more sinister, and searching the children’s rooms for evidence. The sense of foreboding is enhanced by the occasional flash-forwards to family members being interviewed by a detective. What Delphine ultimately discovers isn’t, on its face, too surprising. But director Kaveh Daneshmand, making his first feature, guides his small cast to convincing and powerful performances, none more so than Colon’s, which moves from serene, materially comfortable self-assurance to, ultimately, the complete disintegration of her soul. (Available to rent digitally via Vimeo on Demand; coming to DVD and Blu-ray February 11.)

BLU-RAY PICK

The Last Video Store: I’m a sucker for video store nostalgia, so this Canadian low-budget tribute to VHS schlock had me from the title. In the making for nearly a decade, and based on a 2014 short film by directors Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford, it’s set in (and filmed in) an actual Edmonton video store and stars that store’s proprietor, Kevin Martin, as a version of himself. Kevin’s store is a relic, renting VHS tapes to a customer base of one. When that one customer dies, his daughter Nyla (Yaayaa Adams) returns the three tapes she found in his apartment, plus one other that has a peculiar, wrinkled appearance. Yes, it’s the Videonomicon, a cursed tape that, when placed in a player, conjures the creatures and characters from other movies into reality. Kevin and Nyla face off against a badly rendered CGI dinosaur, a hockey mask-wearing killer, and a loose-cannon cop with a dark side—each a staple of a particular subgenre of straight-to video cinema. Crafted with MacGyver-esque brio, this loving ode to a pre-digital, pre-algorithmic past also tosses out kudos to other members of the Canadian cult-horror community, which I learned from the avuncular, undemanding, but affectionate commentary track from a pair of writers for bloodydisgusting.com. (Available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.)

ALSO OPENING

Kraven the Hunter: Aaron Taylor-Johnson and his 26 abs star as the Spider-Man villain who, from the looks of the trailer, excels at scowling, leaping, and using a Russian accent. Russell Crowe, Arian DuBose, and Alessandro Nivola (as fellow Sinister Six member The Rhino) co-star in a film that originally scheduled for release in September 2023. (Opens Friday in wide release)

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim: An anime take on Middle Earth, this saga set nearly 200 years before The Hobbit centers on the horsed warriors of Rohan and the man who would go on to inspire the name of Helm’s Deep. Not to be confused with Amazon’s LOTR series, and in fact it seems to have been made at least partially to ensure that Warner Brothers continued to hold the rights to the trilogy. So a perfect blend of capitalism and art, most likely. (Opens Friday in wide release)

ALSO THIS WEEK

Meowsterpiece: Feline fanatics, take note! A diverse and frequently bizarre array of cat-centric cinema takes over the Cinemagic theater in the runup to Christmas. Although the lack of either version of Cat People is disappointing, the curation makes up for it and more by including such rarities as the 1961 Hammer horror flick The Shadow of the Cat, the schlocky (George Kennedy alert!) 1988 slasher about a killer kitty Uninvited, and the surreal Czech New Wave fable The Cassandra Cat. The whole thing culminates with a screening of the always-popular Cat Video Fest, with 50% of proceeds going to the Oregon Humane Society. (Cinemagic, Friday through Monday 12/23)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: David Lynch’s 1992 prequel peels back time to show what really happened in the weeks leading up to the death of Laura Palmer. In the process, it expanded the show’s mythology and provided star Sheryl Lee a chance to finally flesh out the iconic character she first played as a corpse. Lee will be in attendance for these three screenings, participating in a post-film Q&A and selling autographs for ticketholders. (Saturday through Monday, Clinton Street Theater)

Outliers and Outlaws: Following up on its sold-out screening at last month’s Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival, director Courtney Hermann’s invaluable history of the lesbian community that emerged in Eugene, Oregon starting in the 1960s returns for a limited run. Made as part of the University of Oregon’s Eugene Lesbian History Project, it’s a life-affirming look at women who made space for themselves at a time when doing so was practically a revolutionary act. (Sunday through Wednesday, Cinema 21)

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl: Everyone’s favorite cheese-loving inventor and his resourceful dog return for another wacky feature, in which a mischievous high-tech garden gnome causes trouble for the pair. Director Merlin Crossingham in attendance for a post-film Q&A. (Sunday, Tomorrow Theater)

Christmas Freak: Portland filmmaker Sean Brown’s 2021 ode to the maniacally festive centers on a man who treats every day as if were the 25th of December, to the degree that most of his friends think he’s extremely disturbed. (We all know one, right?) (Thursday, Tomorrow Theater)

Nocturnes: This contemplative documentary goes on an immersive sensory journey as it follows an ecologist and a local indigenous guide as they observe the activities of nocturnal moths in a forest in the Eastern Himalayas. (Sunday, Tomorrow Theater)

FRIDAY

• Die Hard [1988] (Tomorrow Theater, preceded by Die Hard trivia contest)
• Female Trouble [1974] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Gremlins [1984] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• Holiday Affair [1949] (Salem Cinema, also Saturday)
• Lethal Weapon [1987] (Salem Cinema, also Saturday)
• Misery [1990] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• Nosferatu the Vampyre [1979] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Tokyo Godfathers [2003] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)

SATURDAY

• Carol [2015] (Tomorrow Theater, preceded by caroling)
• Elf [2003] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Fetus [2018] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Home Alone [1990] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Nosferatu [1922] (Hollywood Theatre, with live pipe organ accompaniment)

SUNDAY

• Eyes Wide Shut [1999] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Fleischer Holiday Cartoons (Hollywood Theatre)
• RRR [2022] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Unsinkable Molly Brown [1960] (Salem Cinema)

MONDAY

• The Grand Budapest Hotel [2014] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Trancers 3: Deth Lives! [1992] (Cinemagic)

TUESDAY

• A Christmas Story [1983] (Salem Cinema)
• Raising Arizona [1987] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Silent Night, Deadly Night [1984] (Hollywood Theater, in 35mm)

WEDNESDAY

• “Christmas in Space” (Hollywood Theatre)
• Russian Fairy Tale Animation (Clinton St. Theater, presented by Church of Film)

THURSDAY

• Invasion U.S.A. [1985] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2 (Clinton St. Theater)