Craig Waterman’s just a regular guy. He’s a huge fan of Marvel movies. He’s got a steady corporate job working for an app developer. He spends most evenings in his comfy recliner. And he has a lovely, tolerant wife, Tami (Kate Mara) and a relatively normal teenaged son, Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). Well, he’d be a regular guy if not for one significant fact: he’s played by Tim Robinson, the bizarre comic presence who’s become iconic (to a certain set, at least) thanks to his outrageous, surreal antics on the sketch series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.

Robinson has made his hay by imbuing awkward social encounters with randomly erupting intensity, his visage veering from Soupy-Salesian rubbery mugging to Sam-Kinisonian bulge-eyed rage in a heartbeat. Bringing this schtick to the big screen in Friendship, Robinson and writer-director Andrew DeYoung (an I Think You Should Leave veteran) give Robinson something that most of his TV characters never have time for: a pal. Walking a misdelivered piece of mail over to his new neighbor’s house, Craig meets Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a mustachioed, handsome, chill TV weatherman with whom he forms a quick bond. Craig doesn’t seem to have any real friends outside work (or even within it), so he’s especially thrilled to be invited into Austin’s circle of bros, who embody an almost comically enlightened brand of masculinity.

Of course, it turns out to be too good to be true. After comitting some inevitable faux pas, the least of which involves walking through a glass sliding door, Craig is told flat out by Austin that he chooses not to continue the friendship. This, after introducing Craig to the hidden aqueducts beneath their town, showing him the ancient artifacts he collects, and introducing him to mushroom foraging, feels like a betrayal and sends our flawed protagonist into a spiral of desperation. From there, Friendship swerves into a pattern of episodic freakouts that betray its creators’ TV origins, but still remain funny as hell. The most outrageous and hilarious of these centers on a cell-phone store employee who offers Craig a lick from his hallucinogenic toad, resulting in a subversive trip that has to be seen to be believed.

The film is built on the scaffolding of Robinson’s persona, but another obvious influence is the 2009 comedy I Love You, Man, in which Rudd was the besotted buddy of cool dude Jason Segel (and in which he famously demonstrated his ability to “slappa da bass”). And the confident local TV news personality Austin Carmichael can’t help but recall Brian Fantana from the Anchorman films. This feels at least semi-intentional, however, as DeYoung frames everything in Friendship through a Craig Waterman filter, one where a brown puffy coat is the height of functional fashion, every perceived slight is taken as a personal attack, and even Tami’s cancer recovery journey is primarily a challenge for Craig.

Does Friendship have “something to say” about the well-chronicled epidemic of male loneliness and isolation in 21st-century America? Yes and no. The anxiety and emotional constipation that Craig embodies in his outsized way will be familiar to many, as will the seeming lack of social road rules for IRL interactions in our increasingly atomized, polarized society. But I don’t think DeYoung or Robinson are out to enlighten or educate. They just wanted to make a dark, cringey, wacky piece of comedy that induces LOLs in a theater packed with like-minded weirdos. And that, at least, they’ve done. (Wide release)

The Annihilation of Fish: After premiering at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival, Charles Burnett’s offbeat, heartfelt romance starring James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave was unceremoniously shelved, only now seeing the light of day thanks to the efforts of Milestone Films, the intrepid distributor founded in 1990 and run by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller ever since. (The pair recently announced they are gifting the company to film scholar and programmer Maya Cade.) It’s a minor revelation, featuring moving performances from both veteran stars as aging misfits who find in each other the comfort that has for so long eluded them. Fish (Jones) is a widowed Jamaican-American, recently been released from a mental institution, who experiences occasional delusions in which he wrestles invisible demons. Poinsettia (Redgrave) is a fluttery white woman whose quirk is that she is in love with the ghost of composer Giacomo Puccini. They each take up residence in a boarding house run by the meticulous but nonjudgemental Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder, in a fantastic supporting performance). And after some initial misunderstandings, Fish and Poinsettia gradually spend more and more time together, despite the racial difference that is referenced but not hammered at. Burnett, a masterful, persistent icon of Black independent cinema, has benefited from Milestone’s attention in the past: his first feature, 1977’s Killer of Sheep, has also been restored by them and will be screening in Portland later this month, while his second, My Brother’s Wedding, similarly remained in limbo after its botched release in 1983 until Milestone picked it up in 2007. While Burnett’s films sometimes show the stitching inherent in their limited budgets, they brim with a generous humanity that’s on full display in The Annihilation of Fish. It’s also a fantastic-looking film, with cinematographers John Ndiaga Demps and Rick Robinson giving the tale a burnished, vivid palette that suits its vaguely mystical vibe. (Monday 5/19, Hollywood Theatre)

Streaming

Deaf President Now!: Gallaudet University has operated since 1864 as the only university that specifically caters to deaf and hearing-impaired students. In 1988, the school needed a new president, and the board of trustees had three candidates to choose from. Two of them, unlike any previous president in Gallaudet’s nearly 125-year history, were deaf and apparently fully qualified for the job. The board, however, selected Elisabeth Zinser, a hearing person who was not even fluent in American Sign Language. This led to a week of furious protests by student activists, who shut the institution down and demaned change. That turmoil is captured in this vivid, righteously angry documentary that features interviews with four of the leading participants and the man who (spoiler alert!) was eventually chosen as Zinser’s replacement, as well as a wealth of archival material. Co-directors Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, He Named Me Malala) and Nyle DiMarco (a Gallaudet graduate) provide a powerful look at a pre-ADA world where deaf individuals were often condescended to, and the resurgence of a deaf rights movement that has insisted on full participation in society. It’s also an excellent portrait of people from divergent backgrounds and with divergent approaches to protest coming together to enact real and lasting social change. In case that’s something that might be useful or even inspiring. (AppleTV+)

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Also this week

Filmed by Bike: Portland’s pedal-powered festival of cycle-centric cinema returns for a 22nd year, with an array of shorts and the feature Lael Rides Around the World, which chronicles ultra-endurance rider Lael Wilcox’s quest to bike 18,000 miles in 124 days to break a world record while circumnavigating the globe. (Friday 5/16 through Sunday 5/18, Hollywood Theatre)

Meanwhile: “A docu-poem in six verses about artists breathing through chaos.” (Saturday 5/17, Tomorrow Theater)

The Siege of Ape Canyon: World premiere of a new documentary about one of the more infamous incidents in cryptid lore, an encounter between a group of gold miners in a cabin and a band of Sasquatches that purportedly took place in 1924. (Thursday 5/22, Kiggins Theatre)

Also opening

Final Destination: Bloodlines: “Plagued by a recurring violent nightmare, a college student returns home to find the one person who can break the cycle and save her family from the horrific fate that inevitably awaits them.” (Opening wide.)

Hurry Up Tomorrow: “An insomniac musician (The Weeknd) encounters a mysterious stranger, leading to a journey that challenges everything he knows about himself.”

The President’s Wife: “Long the woman-behind-the-man, Bernadette Chirac (Catherine Deneuve) arrives at the presidential Elysée Palace in 1995 frustrated and all but cast off by her newly elected husband, Jacques. Having always worked in his shadow to help his ascent to the presidency, Madame Chirac now fully expects to finally get the place in the political elite she believes she deserves.” (Living Room Theaters)

Repertory

This week, the Clinton Street Theater’s Roger Corman series continues with a quartet of cheesy sci-fi flicks he produced in the early 1980s and a pair of early low-budget efforts that jump-started his career as well as Jack Nichalson’s. Church of Film’s “Prague Spring” programming also rolls on with offbeat Czech titles at various locations. And the Hollywood Theatre’s “Hitchcock on Film” series kicks off with a 70mm screening of Vertigo before continuing next weekend. Also of note, Jim McKay’s underseen ’90s indie classic Girls Town, featuring an early, great Lili Taylor performance, hits the Tomorrow Theater for one night in a restored edition.

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Friday 5/16

• Fallen Angels [1995] (Cinema 21, also 5/17)
• Forbidden World [1982] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Galaxy of Terror [1981] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch [2001] (Academy Theater, through 5/22)
• Josie and the Pussycats [2001] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Mark of the Devil [1972] (Academy Theater, through 5/22)
• Metropolis [2002] (Academy Theater, through 5/22)
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story [2016] (Kiggins Theatre)
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [1992] (5th Avenue Cinemas, through 5/18)
• Universal Soldier [1992] (Cinemagic)

Saturday 5/17

• Battle Beyond the Stars [1980] (Clinton St. Theater)
• From Dusk till Dawn [1996] (Cinemagic, also 5/19 & 5/22)
• A Goofy Movie [1995] (Hollywood Theatre, also 5/18)
• Humanoids from the Deep [1980] (Clinton St. Theater)
• In a Lonely Place [1950] (Cinema 21)
• A Room with a View [1984] (Salem Cinema)

Sunday 5/18

• Attack of the Crab Monsters [1957] (Clinton St. Theater)
• The ‘Burbs [1989] (Cinemagic, also 5/20)
• Before Sunset [2004] (Salem Cinema)
• Girls Town [1996] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Inherent Vice [2014] (Cinemagic, also 5/19 & 5/22)
• Little Shop of Horrors [1960] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Pride and Prejudice [2005] (Tomorrow Theater)

Monday 5/19

• Capote [2005] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• Case for a Rookie Hangman [1970] (Church of Film at Dream House)

Tuesday 5/20

• 16mm Oddball Comedy Night (Hollywood Theatre, on 16mm)
• All That Heaven Allows [1955] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• But I’m a Cheerleader [1999] (Salem Cinema)
• The Velvet Vampire [1971] (Clinton St. Theater)

Wednesday 5/21

• 28 Days Later [2003] (Cinema 21)
• The Little Mermaid [1976] (Church of Film at Clinton St. Theater)

Thursday 5/22

• Vertigo [1957] (Hollywood Theatre, on 70mm)