Drive-in movies have been huge this summer, but the window of time when that will be seasonally appropriate is nearing its end, so if you can, consider getting out to see classics like Psycho or Dirty Dancing this weekend. If you'd rather play it safe and stay at home (a choice we also support!), there are also plenty of brand-new and new-to-streaming-service options worth checking out, like Jazz on a Summer's Day Past Event Like List and Project Power. Read on for all the details.
Jump to: Drive-Ins | Supporting Local Theaters | Streaming This Weekend
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DRIVE-INS
99w Drive-In Double Feature
Past Event
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: Grease & Dirty Dancing
Drive-ins are probably the only way to get any sort of big-screen action back in your life without, you know, trapping yourself inside a dark box with other people while no vaccine exists and air conditioning is just circulating everyone's coughs, sneezes, and spittle into as many rooms as possible. Instead, you can pull up in your car, turn up your speakers, and let 99w fill your windshield their latest throwback double-feature, one that caters to a very specific audience: People who really like grown adults playing naughty teenagers doing a lot of singing and dancing and (gasps, looks around, leans in close) the sex. First up: Grease, now deemed a family classic, but chock-full of terrible "life-lessons" for anyone watching, followed by Dirty Dancing, which was considered empty trash upon release but is actually pretty thoughtful about its storytelling. Plus, shirtless, glistening Swayze! Jerry Orbach! Jennifer Grey carrying a watermelon!
Cinema Unbound
Past Event
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: Milk, Fast Times at Ridgemont High & Do the Right Thing
Northwest Film Center and Portland Art Museum are transforming Zidell Yards into a drive-in theater (building it from scratch, in fact) dedicated to showing how freeing good film can be by screening classics, new releases, and little-seen gems on as big a screen as they can. Each movie will be preceded by a regional short to help spotlight even more unique and necessary voices in cinema.
Drive-In Saturday
Past Event
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: Psycho
The Bijou Theatre, Lincoln City Cultural Center, and the City of Lincoln City are bringing movies back to the big screen. Specifically, the big screen on the outside of the Lincoln City Cultural Center, where they'll be showing some of Hollywood's biggest crowd-pleasers all August long.
Cinema Under the Stars
Past Event
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: The Sandlot
You thinking about maybe not driving out to the Hangar at Oaks Park and enjoying this screening of the kids' classic The Sandlot? YOU'RE KILLIN' ME, SMALLS. DJ Agent Meow is once again running the sound, and proceeds from the drive-in screening help benefit the Rose City Rollers.
PDX Drive-In Movie Spectacular
Past Event
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: Aliens, Jurassic Park & The Thing
Now more than ever, this annual transformation of the Expo Center into a deluxe drive-in experience is absolutely needed, and the Expo Center, with the help of Hollywood Theatre, is delivering: Contactless concessions, strong safety precautions, and a lineup of films that includes, this weekend, Aliens (Thursday), Jurassic Park (Friday), and The Thing (Saturday).
SUPPORTING LOCAL THEATERS
Creem: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine
Past Event
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There was once a time when magazines were healthy and thriving, and the words on their glossy pages could shift culture and make stars out of many a stringy, floppy-haired, fleet-fingered would-be guitar-god. Creem was one of the most influential of such magazines, and this documentary charts the mag's beginnings as an underground zine, basically, to becoming a publishing powerhouse and a must-read thanks to people like publisher Barry Kramer and its most famous columnist, Lester Bangs.
Hollywood Theatre
The Exterminating Angel
Luis Buñuel's 1962 satire of cosmopolitan society, set at a dinner party that devolves into the sort of surreality only Buñuel can conjure up, comes with no shortage of shocking-yet-silly scenes to be lodged in your brainmeats forever.
Hollywood Theatre
Gremlins: A Puppet Story
Past Event
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Legendary effects specialist (or special effects legend? Either/or) Chris Walas leads this behind-the-scenes journey made especially for Hollywood Theatre viewers, walking the audience through how Gremlins got made, and featuring very rare photos and video from his own personal archive.
Hollywood Theatre
Jazz on a Summer's Day
Past Event
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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.
Hollywood Theatre and Clinton Street Theater
John Lewis: Good Trouble
Past Event
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The late civil rights activist and Georgia congressman John Lewis fought for voting rights, gun control, healthcare reform, and immigration over the course of his long career. Using archival footage and interviews from his late years, Dawn Porter's documentary Good Trouble explores Lewis's childhood, his 1957 meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and his lasting legacy on social justice movements of the present. A portion of proceeds will be donated to Don't Shoot Portland.
Hollywood Theatre
Lucky Grandma
Past Event
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In this crime caper set in New York's Chinatown, a recently widowed 80-year-old woman follows a fortune teller's advice and heads to the nearest casino to win some big bucks. But things don't go so great, as they often don't at casinos. When two gambling gangsters show up at her door and start demanding money, she and her newly acquired bodyguard do what must be done: kick ass for the duration of the film.
Clinton Street Theater
Sundance Film Festival Shorts
Past Event
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See six short films selected from this year's Sundance Film Festival, including Malaysian director Diffan Sina Norman's "Benevolent Ba," about a devout woman's path to sacrificial slaughter, and Ashley Williams's "Meats," about a pregnant vegan's newfangled craving for meat.
Hollywood Theatre
The Virtual Portland German Film Festival
Past Event
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The Clinton Street's annual celebration of German film moves online for 2020, but you can still support the theater (and the filmmakers) by checking out a lineup of compelling films across a wide range of genres, All films in German with English subtitles.
Clinton Street Theater
You Never Had It: An Evening with Bukowski
Past Event
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A special screening of this short documentary that does exactly what it says it does: Puts you in Charles Bukowski's living room for a night as the famously grumpy poet and writer smokes about five million cigarettes, drinks, and opines on whatever the hell crosses his frontal lobe at the time.
Clinton Street Theater
STREAMING THIS WEEKEND
Les Misérables
Remind
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Some have criticized director Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of Les Misérables for its lack of subtlety, but to be fair, there’s never been anything subtle about Les Miz. Distilled from Victor Hugo’s sprawling 1,400-page novel into a syrupy liqueur of human sorrow, the Les Miz musical has always been a calculated sobfest from start to finish. This is a musical in which nearly every member of the expansive cast dies, often violently, and usually at the point of abject despair. You are going to cry, goddamnit, even if the ghosts of the dead have to come back for the finale and hand-massage your tear ducts. Which they do. (And Anne Hathaway’s “I Dreamed a Dream” is fucking amazing.) GOLDY
Available via Netflix
Starting Friday
Lovecraft Country
Based on Matt Ruff's 2016 novel, this new series directed by Misha Green takes place in the 1950s Jim Crow South, where a Black man enlists the help of his friend and uncle to find his missing father—a journey rife with racist obstacles and supernatural spooks. It's executive-produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, so you know you're in for some existential scariness met with jump-out-of-your-seat moments.
Available via HBO Max
Premiering Sunday
Project Power
Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Dominique Fishback star as an ex-soldier, a cop, and a teen (respectively) who hunt for the source behind a dangerous new pill that gives users five minutes of superpowers. You'll get your summer blockbuster fix from the sheer number of explosions and zoomy cars.
Available via Netflix
Premiering Friday
Safety Not Guaranteed
Seeking a cure for her ailment as a disaffected magazine intern, Aubrey Plaza agrees to help her colleague (New Girl's Jake Johnson) with a story about an obsessive/paranoid/grief-stricken Mark Duplas on a time-travel journey, after seeing his ad in the local paper. This indie gem is still as funny and sweet as it was back in 2012.
Available via Netflix
Selena + Chef
If a vacuum bag for celebrity quarantine content has taken up residence in your brain, look no further than this new amateur cooking show hosted by none other than singer and former Disney Channel teen wizard Selena Gomez, who leans on the virtual counsel of famous chefs (like LA's Antonia Lofaso and James Beard Award-winning duo Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo) to whip up ambitious meals in her home kitchen.
Available via HBO Max
Sputnik
Alien meets Russia's real-life role in the Space Race in director Egor Abramenko's debut, in which an astronaut loses his memory and becomes host to a freaky extraterrestrial creature after a faulty 1983 Soviet space mission.
Available via VOD
Premiering Friday
Ted Lasso
A gum-chewing American football coach is drafted to lead a British football (aka soccer) team, and he doesn't know he's in for a whole new game than what he's used to. This comedy series is a riff on the character Sudeikis, portrayed in a series of promos for NBC Sports' coverage of the Premier League.
Available via Apple TV
Premiering Friday