Film/TV

The Best Movies & Shows to Stream in Portland This Week: Jan 14-20, 2021

One Night in Miami, Promising Young Woman, and More Top Picks
January 14, 2021
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Regina King's One Night in Miami, streaming on Amazon Prime Video starting Friday, imagines a fateful encounter between Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X at the height of the civil rights movement. (Patti Perret)

Celebrate ITMFA (again) by taking a break from the news for a spell and choosing from the latest round of virtual cinema options from local theaters and national platforms. We've compiled our picks below, from the Darren Aronofsky-produced Some Kind of Heaven Remind List , a doc about four residents of Florida's largest retirement facility, streaming via Cinema 21 and Hollywood Theatre, to Emerald Fennell's revenge thriller Promising Young Woman Remind List , coming to VOD on Friday. Plus, if you haven't heard, the Mercury's amateur stoner short film fest SPLIFF, is accepting submissions through March 5!


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LOCALLY STREAMING: NEW & NOTEWORTHY

Some Kind of Heaven Remind List
Four residents of America's largest retirement facility (Florida's gated, palm tree-lined Villages) strive for happiness and meaning in this Lance Oppenheim doc co-produced by Darren Aronofsky.
Cinema 21 & Hollywood Theatre

Starting Friday

NATIONAL

Cinematters: NY Social Justice Film Festival Past Event List
Films, conversations, and special events that inspire social change when it comes to broad themes of inequality, injustice, and accountability drive this New York-based film festival, which opens with Sam Pollard's MLK/FBI, an "archival tapestry" that follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he is investigated and harassed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Jan 14), which will be followed by a Q&A with Pollard. Other MLK-related programming includes a talk and Q&A on Black-Jewish relations throughout history (Jan 16) and a screening of Sonia Lowman's film Black Boys, followed by a Q&A (Jan 17).
Thursday-Monday

Locked Down Remind List
Your $10 million COVID-set romantic drama turned heist thriller is here, helmed by Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor as an estranged London couple plotting a jewel-related crime in the early spring of 2020, just as the world is going into quarantine. In slightly tangential news, Locked Down director Doug Liman's next project is an action-adventure film shot in outer space on Elon Musk’s SpaceX shuttle. Starring Tom Cruise. Obviously. 
HBO Max

News of the World Remind List
Five years after the end of the Civil War, a veteran captain with a heart of gold (Tom Hanks) takes a traumatized orphan through hostile territory in Northern Texas in order to return her to her only living relatives. 
VOD
Starting Friday

One Night in Miami Remind List
A minimalist film that's vast in its ambition, One Night in Miami is a simply magnificent debut from director Regina King. King, an acclaimed actor, has directed television before, but with One Night in Miami she has tapped into something transfixing as she tells the story of four legends of history who find themselves together in a singular motel room. These legends are civil rights leader Malcolm X, boxer Cassius Clay, football player Jim Brown, and musician Sam Cooke played by Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. respectively. They all come together under the same roof as they discuss their individual and collective futures. The film's one night in question takes place after Cassius, who had yet to become Muhammad Ali, has defeated Sonny Liston. Well-directed boxing scenes are only the appetizer to the main course, which is scene after scene of crackling conversation. At the thirty-minute mark, the film settles in to become a canvas for reflective musings from the four friends. CHASE HUTCHINSON
Amazon Prime Video
Starting Friday

Promising Young Woman Remind List
With directorial reign over the second season of Killing Eve and a starring role as the Duchess of Cornwall in The Crown under her belt, Emerald Fennell's new revenge thriller stars Carey Mulligan as a justice-seeker who traps would-be sexual assailants at clubs and teaches them a lesson about consent. Come for the thrill of watching smarmy men get what's coming for them, stay for the string-quartet rendition of Britney Spears's "Toxic." 
VOD
Starting Friday

Search Party: Season 4 Remind List
In the fourth season of HBO's excellent, absurd dark comedy, Dory (Alia Shawkat) remains missing from her gaggle of Brooklyn friends (a hilariously narcissistic John Early among them), but the audience knows that she's being held captive by an obsessed fan (the one and only Cole Escola). 
HBO Max

Servant: Season 2 Remind List
After losing their newborn child, the mourning rituals of a Philadelphia couple (Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell) enter creepy territory involving a disturbingly lifelike baby doll and a haunting babysitter. M. Night Shyamalan's horror series is back for a second season of chills. Rupert Grint is in it! 
Apple TV+

Tiger Remind List
The second installment of HBO Sports' two-part documentary on golf champion Tiger Woods continues to trace the athlete's rise to fame, including what lots of tabloids called his "fall from grace" after his involvement in an alleged sex scandal.
HBO Max
Starting Sunday

WandaVision Remind List
The first Marvel Cinematic Universe show for Disney+ comes with a healthy dose of surrealism, starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Marvel characters Wanda Maximoff (aka Scarlet Witch) and Vision as a married couple cycling through a string of alternate realities that mirror different eras of sitcom television. If semi-confusing time jumps are your thing, tune right in. 
Disney+
Starting Friday

LOCALLY STREAMING: ONGOING

I Blame Society
"Nobody wants you to make a movie as much as you want to make one yourself," says Gillian Wallace Horvat in her satirical low-budget faux documentary about a filmmaker who takes her nontraditional, female-driven murder plot into her own hands when male producers ignore it. She walks people through how she would commit the perfect murder, and in doing so walks the line between fiction and reality.
Clinton Street Theater & Cinema 21

The Changin' Times of Ike White Past Event List
Released in 1974, Changin' Times was the first commercial album recorded inside an American prison by an inmate, Ike White, who at 19 was sentenced to life for murder and eventually released under the endorsement of Stevie Wonder. This documentary delves into the R&B artist's life and unconventional career.
Hollywood Theatre

Coded Bias Past Event List
When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify certain mugs (those with dark skin and feminine features, specifically), she delves intoan investigation of widespread bias in algorithms.
Northwest Film Center

Collective Past Event List
An unflinching look at the investigative journalists of the Romanian newspaper Gazeta SporturilorCollective is a necessary examination of the corruption that can spread unchecked without a robust press to hold it accountable. It takes place following the horrifying fatal 2015 fire at the Collectiv nightclub in Bucharest, Romania. The fire killed 27 people. Widespread government health care fraud, corruption, and greed on all levels would kill 37 more. The film shows footage of the initial fire itself, caused by a pyrotechnic effect that set alight soundproofing foam, and the chaos that ensued. It is a starkly terrible event, which only makes it more horrific that the aftermath saw more preventable death. When the fire was put out, the horror continued for the victims and their families. The focus of the documentary is journalists Cătălin Tolontan, Mirela Neag, and Răzvan Luţac, who head up the team that blows the lid off the entire scandal. It is their reporting that shakes the country to its core. CHASE HUTCHINSON
Hollywood Theatre

Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan
You know Shane MacGowan as the wild-toothed lead singer of the Irish punk-rock band the Pogues, but Julien Temple's documentary delves into the musician's story before achieving fame, highlighting his extensive knowledge of music. Variety classifies it "in the upper echelon of recent rock docs."
Hollywood Theatre

A Dog Called Money
On his reporting trips to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington D.C., photojournalist Seamus Murphy was accompanied by none other than British punk-rock icon PJ Harvey, who used what she saw to record a live album whose recording sessions were open to the public. This music-filled documentary goes behind the scenes into the studio and the lives of the people the pair met on their journey. 
Clinton Street Theater

Free Time Remind List
For his latest work, the 88-year-old director Manny Kirchheimer (Stations of the Elevated, Dream of a City) restored 16mm footage that he and his friend Walter Hess (heard of him?) shot in New York between 1958 and 1960, which shows a different version of the city we're used to seeing—one filled with quiet "in-between moments" and architecture around the boroughs.
Cinema 21

The German Lesson
As part of his prison sentence after WWII, a man writes an essay reflecting on his childhood in a German village during the war.
Clinton Street Theater

Gunda Past Event List
A mother pig, a flock of chickens, and a herd of cows take the place of human subjects in Victor Kossakowsky's sleepy, experimental portrait of non-human life. You shouldn't be at all surprised to learn that it's executive-produced by Joaquin Phoenix. 
Northwest Film Center

Insert Coin
Praised as the "Sex Pistols of the video game industry," this documentary provides an oral history of a group of highly dedicated Chicagoan geeks who created some of the most iconic video games of our time, from Mortal Combat to NBA Jam
Hollywood Theatre

Jazz on a Summer's Day
Filmed on a balmy night in Fort Adams State Park at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, this 4K-restored classic is believed to be one the first concert films ever recorded (!). It boasts Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O'Day, Chuck Berry, Dinah Washington, and other legends among its lineup, closing with Mahalia Jackson's rendition of "The Lord's Prayer" at midnight
Clinton Street Theater

Love in Dangerous Times
Filmed and set in Portland during COVID, writer-director Jon Garcia's romantic comedy follows a playwright who, in the midst of struggling to finish a play (could this be its own genre? seems like it) gets in meaningful cahoots with a woman he matches with on a dating app. Dating during the pandemic is something many of us can relate to, and everyone goes about it differently, so this should be an interesting anthropological study.
Various platforms

Monsoon Remind List
Hong Khaou's latest film stars Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) as a Vietnamese-born Englishman who returns to Ho Chi Minh City for the first time since childhood to reconnect with his roots after the death of his mother. There, an online date with an American clothing designer (Southside With You's Parker Sawyers) turns into something more.
Cinema 21

Myth of A Colorblind France
The list of Black artists and creatives who have traveled to France (specifically Paris) to free themselves of America's racist bedrock is a long one, and ranges from James Baldwin to Josephine Baker to Augusta Savage. But to what extent was the City of Lights more accepting of people of color than the US? That's at the center of this documentary featuring interviews with French scholars Michel Fabre and Francis Hofstein, as well as contemporary artist Barbara Chase-Riboud, poet James Emanuel, hip-hop producer Ben the Glorious Bastard, and others.
Cinema 21

Nationtime
Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte narrate William Greaves's long-lost, newly-restored film about the National Black Political Convention of 1972, where 10,000 black politicians, activists, and artists went to Gary, Indiana, to forge a national unity platform.
Hollywood Theater & Cinema 21

Silent Voices
Donna Hayes's new film Silent Voices centers nine people of color who have been killed by Portland Police over the years, with each character coming to life to tell their stories. As they speak, a chorus of words taken from comments posted online and news articles about their killings echo in the background.   
Open Signal

Sing Me a Song
Returning to one of the subjects of his 2013 drama Happiness, Thomas Balmès's new film follows a teenage boy studying in a monastery in the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, where smartphones and other modern technology are beginning to compete with ancient practices. Zoomer that he is, the music-loving student strikes up a friendship with a singer on WeChat from the capital city of Thimphu, and he ends up selling medicinal mushrooms to raise enough money to meet her IRL. 
Cinema 21

Song Without a Name
The newborn baby of Georgina, an Indigenous Andean woman, is stolen from the clinic at which it was born and is never returned. When she's met with indifference by the Peruvian legal system, Georgina goes to a journalist, who uncovers an epidemic of fake clinics and abductions in 1980s Peru. Melina Leon's thriller is based on true events.
Clinton Street Theater

World of Wong Kar-wai Remind List
Let Chinese director Wong Kar-wai take you over with the sonically perfect, poetic, excruciatingly cool, often blood-soaked romantic time-jumpers and thrillers featured in this Janus Films series. It includes all his greatest hits from the late '80s to the early 2000s, including As Tears Go ByDays of Being WildFallen Angels, Happy TogetherThe Hand, and his best-known works Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love. With many of the same actors gracing the screen in each film, we have no doubt that taking in his entire oeuvre will feel like one long, wild ride in a singular universe.
Hollywood Theatre & Cinema 21

Zappa Past Event List
If 2016's Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words didn't quell your obsession with the zany, occasionally cringy, ultimately very talented late rocker Frank Zappa, bust open a jar of peanut butter (Zappa's favorite tour snack) and catch this new documentary from Alex Winter, aka the guy who stars alongside Keanu Reeves in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Hollywood Theatre and various platforms

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