Another weekend of smoggy isolation is met with some good news in the form of sexy short films (an encore of the 15th Annual Hump Film Fest Past Event Like List ), Latin American-centered features (the Portland Latin American Film Festival Past Event Like List ), a chilling small-town horror story (Spiral), and more great movies and shows streaming through Portland theaters and nationwide. Read on for the full scoop, and don't forget to check out our list of where to watch this year's Emmy-nominated shows in preparation for this Sunday's awards ceremony.
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LOCAL
15th Annual Hump Film Fest - Encore Presentation
Past Event
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List
Our colleagues, the creators of HUMP!, were crushed to cancel their originally planned fall tour. But after receiving enthusiastic support and permission from the filmmakers to show their films online, they knew that the show must go on! Even if we canât watch together in movie theaters, we can still watch the 16 sexy short films, curated by Dan Savage, in the privacy and safety of our homes. Dan will introduce the show and then take you straight to the great dirty movies that showcase an amazing range of shapes, colors, sexualities, kinks, and fetishes!
EverOut
Saturday only
CoVideothon
The Clinton Street Theater is stepping up its digital game, baby! The historic movie house's new Vimeo channel features lots of content (plenty of which costs zero dollars) from local and faraway filmmakers and performing artists, including Affable Gentlemen Storytelling's DiagnoseThis! Tales of a Medical Actor and Greg Hamilton's documentary Thou Shalt Not Tailgate, with more being added all the time.Â
Clinton Street Theater
Crypticon Seattle Film Festival
Past Event
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The Pacific Northwest was made for fall. This is our fucking season. We thrive in darkness, solitude, and moisture. This is our time to patiently sit through this uncontrollable wildfire smog, then don our best comfy sweater and pick out our favorite seat on the couch for three daysâ worth of creepy-crawly movies that can lead us into the season that is our birthright. Doing that festive labor for us this year is Crypticon, the annual horror film festival that is now online thanks to insert-2020-extenuating-circumstance-here. This weekend fest, now in its 14th year, serves up the full horror spectrum in a series of shorts (plus one feature film) that run the gamut from gross to gory and eerie to electrifying. If your favorite season of American Horror Story was 1984, I highly recommend the âIn the Woodsâ film block. Have a nasty fantasy about boning Viggo Mortensen in The Road? Then buy a ticket to âTraveling Fears & More!â Or go right ahead and buy a weekend pass to get access to each delicious morsel of sick, twisted, pre-Halloween action. KIM SELLING
EverOut
Opening Friday
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
Mr. SOUL!
Past Event
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Did you know that even when people first started saying that the revolution would not be televised, it was already happening? Ellis Haizlip was an openly gay and proud Black television host who not only believed he could host "the first Black Tonight Show," he actually did it from 1968 to 1973, and made sure to shine his spotlight on as much Black literature, poetry, music, and politics as he could with the time he had. Melissa Haizlip's loving documentary features rare live performances and interviews from Al Green, Muhammad Ali, Cicely Tyson, James Baldwin, Bill Withers, and more, with an original score by Robert Glasper.
Hollywood Theatre
Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
Past Event
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There are documentaries, and then there's Werner Herzog turning the camera on himself to muse about all manner of existential concern. And that's what's going on here, with Nomad featuring the director/philosopher discussing his long friendship with travel writer Bruce Chatwin, who shared with Herzog an unquenchable thirst for truth.
Living Room Theaters (available for private screenings) and Hollywood Theatre
Our Time Machine
Looking at the works of contemporary Chinese artist Maleonn, it's easy to see how much his father's former role as the artistic director of the Shanghai Chinese Opera Theater inspired himâMaleonn's conceptual pieces often center subjects in thespian-like costumes, surrounded by props, lit by warm spotlights. In this documentary, Maleonn undertakes a new project to connect with his aging dad through a couple of steampunk-ish mechanical puppets. "I want to use it to show my father how much I appreciate everything he's done for me," says the artist. You will absolutely sniffle and ponder your own mortality.
Hollywood Theater
Portland Latin American Film Festival XIV
Past Event
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The Hollywood Theater is moving the Portland Latin American Film Festival online, which is bittersweet. Bitter: Everyone loves a big screen, especially at this historic gem. Sweet: You'll have a full 48 hours to watch a film once you hit play. From September to November, the festival will present six movies from Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Switzerland, and Belgium that celebrate and honor the cultural diversity of Latin America. This week's film is CĂ©sar DĂaz's debut Our Mothers, the winner of the Cannes Film Festival Camera d'Or in 2019, set in the aftermath of Guatemala's bloody 20-year civil war.Â
Hollywood 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
Vinyl Nation
Has the resurgence of vinyl in the digital age made music fandom more inclusive or more divided? This documentary traces the audio format's history and revival.Â
Hollywood Theatre
NATIONAL
All In: The Fight for Democracy
You can't look at an American election (like the one we have looming in November) without confronting the reality of voter suppression. That's what's in store for Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés's documentary centered around the expertise of former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives Stacey Abrams, who breaks down laws and barriers to voting rights that you might not know about.
Amazon Prime
Premiering Friday
Alone
A story told in five parts, Alone is a remake of the Swedish film Försvunnen. It's a lean and effective survival story about a road trip gone awryâand it more than surpasses its source material. Jessica, played by Jules Wilcox, has packed up all her possessions into a U-Haul and moved without telling anyone. She's running from a recent loss and wants to start over in the Pacific Northwest. She gets much more than she bargained for when a man, played by a menacing Marc Menchaca, begins pursuing and harassing her. What starts as a misunderstanding on the road becomes a game of cat and mouse as Jessica must overcome various obstacles, from a punctured tire to a series of gruesome injuries, to be free of her pursuer. What makes Alone stand out from other cat-and-mouse stories is how Jessica handles her situation. Far too often, characters are either trapped by their circumstances with no agency orâeven worseâmake terrible decisions that undercut the tension. Jessica makes a series of smart choices to try to escape her situation, making it more tense when they donât work. The real fear comes from a character taking the best course of action only to have it not be enough. CHASE HUTCHINSON
Shudder
Archer
This animated show for adults, about a spy who emerges from a coma believing that he and all his coworkers lived through an L.A. noir and went to space, is back with its 11th season. Catch the premiere on FXX, or catch up on previous seasons on Hulu.
FXX
Babyteeth
Praise for Shannon Murphy's Babyteeth (adapted for the screen by Rita Kalnejais from her play of the same name) revolves mostly around its light and colors and attention to small objects, which, looking outside in September 2020, might just be worthy of your time for a couple of hours. The film follows Milla (Sharp Objects' Eliza Scanlen), a teenager with a terminal illness who falls mutually in love with a greasy sad-boy Moses (Toby Wallace).
Hulu
Premiering Friday
Challenger: The Final Flight
This docuseries delves into the 1986 explosion of NASA's Challenger space shuttle, which shocked just about everyone after a quarter-century of smooth space flights.
Netflix
The Devil All the Time
Not that you needed any more convincing, but Antonio Campos proves that police stations aren't always on the side of safety for all. His new unsettling Netflix thriller, which features Robert Pattinson as a mean preacher, follows a young man who's determined to protect his loved ones from the evangelical-tinged corruption that plagues his small rural town.
Netflix
The Fight
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Five civil rights attorneys fight for justice on behalf of a migrant mother separated from her child, a transgender soldier at risk of losing his career, and basic reproductive and voting rights that face threats from the Trump administration. This Kerry Washington-produced documentary will absolutely give you a new sense of appreciation for the ACLU.Â
Hulu
Premiering Friday
The Great Pottery Throw Down
Now that The Great British Bake Off has piqued your interest in reality shows made across the pond, turn your attention to this pottery show made byâwait for itâthe same people. Is there anything more soothing than watching shiny-wet clay being shaped on a wheel? No. Â
HBO Max
Pen15
If you were a sentient being who grew up remotely within the vicinity of the early-2000s, any given scene in Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle's hilarious show about the perils and occasional joys of awkward teenhood, in which they play versions of their past selves, can feel like reading your old journal from middle school; feelings you thought were buried forever in the time capsule behind your school's football field resurface like a craggy hand from a grave, but you can't stop reading. This time, though, you realize (hopefully not for the first time) that it wasn't your own essence that bred that era of sadness and insecurity and appreciation for penis jokes; it was just impossible, socially constructed standards publically sizing you up for the first time. The new season looks like more of what everyone loved from the previous one, but with a pool party and more makeout sessions.Â
Hulu
Premiering Friday
Raised by Wolves
Raised by Wolves begins with a falling star. It is a spaceship that lands on a planet called Kepler-22b. In the spaceship, which is small and shaped like the kind of smooth pebble you might find along the bank of a river and decide to keep, are two androids named Father and Mother. The father is black, and mother is white. They are Adam and Eve. The implication of this racial coding is that the colors of humankind spring from this primordial miscegenation, but let's not get into that in this post. Let's instead turn our attention to the androids, and focus not on their mission, which is to seed a dusty planet with humans, nor on their place in the kind of science fiction cinema that Ridley Scott initiated in 1979 with the film Alien (a shot in the second episode, "Pentagram," of a dead and decapitated android makes this clear enough). Rather, let's focus on the blunt fact that they do not believe in God. The humans do believe in God, or at least some of them do, but not the androids. They are strict atheists. CHARLES MUDEDE
HBO Max
RBG
"Over the long course of her career, RBG repeatedly defended the rights of everyone to live free from bias, but, as Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg says, Ginsburg 'quite literally changed life for women.' With intimate interviews with family and friends, as well as RBG herself, the film captures the life of a woman with a heart none of us wants to stop ticking," wrote Katie Herzog about Julie Cohen and Betsy West's 2018 documentary. RIP, RBG.Â
Hulu
Residue
Returning to Washington, D.C. after several years of trying (and failing) to write an autobiographical script in L.A., a Black man finds that gentrification has all but obliterated his old neighborhood, Q Street. This is Merawi Gerimaâs debut feature.Â
Netflix
Shermanâs Showcase
This eight-episode special, which aired on IFC last year, comes from the minds of former Late Night writers Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle. It tells the story of a phony commercial selling an imaginary box-set of a fictional vintage TV program that satirizes various aspects of Black pop culture. "It plays like a 21st-century version of The Groove Tube, Tunnel Vision, and The Kentucky Fried Movie, grind-house comedies from the â70s that Iâd guess Quentin Tarantino and Rza watch together on the regular while sharing a frosty 40," wrote Michael A. Gonzales for Vulture.Â
IFC
Premiering Friday
Sing On!
Contestants are judged (by Titus Burgess, in part) on how accurately they can perform someone else's interpretation of a song in this new take on the singing reality-show genre.
Netflix
Spiral
Spiral stars Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman as Malik in an unsettling and surprisingly affecting story of small-town horror. Malik is a writer moving to a new place with his partner Aaron. He's looking for a fresh start. Aaron's daughter is also in tow. Chill, right? Maybe? No. Malik will soon wish he'd never set foot there. On arriving, Malik begins to notice strange goings-on in the community. The neighbors appear to be doing some ritualâmaybe a red flagâand there's a palpable sense of hostility toward them as newcomers, which reaches a boiling point when Malik's home gets tagged with a homophobic slurâdefinitely a red flag. If you scroll through the comments on Spiral's trailer, youâll see the reductive suggestion that the film is âbasically Get Out for Gays.â That's... not exactly right. Malik is not just visiting, like in Get Out, he's moving to the neighborhood. That distinction gives the story a very different perspective. Him being unwelcome means his attempt to start fresh will have failed, which provides the film complex emotional stakes. CHASE HUTCHINSON
Shudder
Staged
David Tennant and Michael Sheen take their Good Omens chemistry to the Zoom room (or whatever platform filmmakers use to film things in quarantine). They play two actors who continue rehearsing together online despite the COVID-19 cancellation of their West End play.
Hulu
We Are Who We Are
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The director of Call Me By Your Name brings us another story of an American teenager plopped in an Italian village, this time care of his military mom (Chloe Sevigny), who's been assigned to take over the American military base there. With limited options for socializing, he makes friends with a group of American kids who also live on the base, and the relationships he builds there drive the series.
HBO Max