THE RAIN FALLS DOWN ON PDX: WEEKEND ROUNDUP FOR 5/11

Here we go again...it's the weekend roundup of films opening in and around PDX.

First up, Cinema 21 hosts Portland's theatrical run of the Norwegian crime-thriller Headhunters.  I'm still kicking myself for not being able to make the press screening for this one.  Dan Halsted, programmer for the Hollywood Theatre and the Grindhouse Film Festival personally chose it for one of his single night PIFF After Dark screenings back in February.  By all accounts from those who attended, it was a unique take on the genre.  Cinema 21's Tom Ranieri commented via e-mail that it's "a lot of fun, some of it gruesome fun certainly."

The NW Film Center continues their month-long Studio Ghibli retrospective, Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli, with Kiki's Delivery Service (reviewed here), Only Yesterday and Princess Mononoke.  It's a rare chance to see these films on the big screen; Only Yesterday has never had an official North American release!  And I believe that two out of the three features will be 35mm prints!  More info on the Studio Ghibli series available here.

Over at the Hollywood Theatre, the annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthuluCon runs through the weekend.  Highlights include It's in the Blood, starring Lance Henriksen (Aliens, The Terminator),  and The Horror Express with Christopher Lee (The Wicker Man) and Peter Cushing (Star Wars).  All info pertaining to tickets and passes can be found here.

Living Room Theaters begins showing Jesus Henry Christ with Michael Sheen and Toni Collette today.  They're also getting the magnificent The Deep Blue Sea (reviewed here), which just finished a two week run at Cinema 21.

The Laurelhurst Theater & Pub continues its winning series of classic screenings with John Ford's eternally great 1956 anti-western The Searchers, starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter and Natalie Wood.

And, finally, PSU's student-run 5th Avenue Cinema has a three-day screening of Michael Haneke's incredible (as well as incredibly disturbing) 1997 home-invasion classic Funny Games.

A lot on the horizon for next week, including a 35mm print of Jaws at the Hollywood Theater, Cinema Project's latest event (reviewed here), the opening of QDoc (Portland Queer Documentary Festival), HD Fest at the Living Room Theaters, etc.  Keep your eyes on the blog as we'll be following all of these and more over the coming days.

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THE HUNTER: IN SEARCH OF A LOST NATURE

 

Sometimes a film won't easily cut loose its secrets, demanding that you sign up for the long haul, 'cause, otherwise, maybe you're not worthy of making its acquaintance.  Terence Davies' new film The Deep Blue Sea (reviewed yesterday) works in that mode as does Daniel Nettheim's The Hunter, adapted from the novel by Julia Leigh.  It's a film where motives are made transparent, while meanings remain opaque until nearly the end of the picture.  Those who found Claire Denis' 2009 film White Material impossible to shake from memory will find something to capture their imagination here, while others may simply find their patience dwindling within the first quarter of the film.

Willem Dafoe plays Martin, the hunter referenced in the title, hired by a shadowy firm interested in cloning to track and harvest the genetic material of what's believed to be the last of the long extinct Tasmanian tiger (aka Tasmanian devil).  He arrives in Australia presenting himself as a scientist to the already stirred-up townspeople; there's a struggle being fought in the woods between the local environmentalists and loggers.  Martin sets up lodging in the home of Lucy (Frances O'Connor), a woman whose husband disappeared while on the path of the tiger, leaving her children without a father.  And it's not long before Lucy and the kids (Finn Woodlock and Morgana Davies) begin to look at Martin as a possible proxy for their missing patriarch.

The film resists overdeveloping the human relationships; Sam Neill shows up here and there as a vaguely menacing individual who's been hired to guide Martin to the edge of the wilderness.  Most of the characters conveniently melt away whenever it's time for Martin to get back on the path.  What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a man vs. nature narrative that pivots strongly on the question of whether or not our "opponent" has been or should be reduced to raw materials.  That might sound like a rather preachy tale; I assure you it is not.  The Hunter leans strongly on its wide open passages, sequences where dialogue and explanation take leave in favor of wrestling with the unknown.  And, by doing so, it rises above simple proselytizing.

 

The Hunter begins its run at the Living Room Theaters on Fri.,  April 27th.  More info available here.

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THE DEEP BLUE SEA: TERENCE ADAPTS TERENCE, SEDUCTIVELY AND SORROWFULLY

Opening with the voice of Hester (Rachel Weisz) reading a suicide note addressed to her lover, Freddie (Tom Hiddleston), Terence Davies' (Distant Voices, Still Lives) adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea is saturated with a deep and convincing melancholy from the get-go.  It also begins quite inscrutably at first, favoring a thick atmosphere that steals one's breath, before eventually allowing the viewer to enter into a conscious understanding of what's driving this seductive, trance-inducing well of sorrow.

Set against the backdrop of 1950s London, the story revolves around Hester's decision to kill herself; the present time of the film occurs across a single day, though much of the story is based in events of the past, remembrances of what's brought her to this point.  Her sexless marriage to a much older man, William (Simon Russell Beale), has been compromised by the affair with Freddie.  And, now, the glow of the new relationship has dimmed, leaving her passion somewhat mangled and misdirected due to Freddie's inability to love her with an intensity equal to her affection for him.

Freddie's newly acquired coldness is located in lingering issues surrounding his service in World War II.  Hester sadly comments, "his life stopped in 1940.  He loved 1940.  He's never really been the same since the war."  As for her own situation, she tells William that, "zero minus zero is still zero," roundly rejecting any notion that the happiness of the past can be reclaimed by her or any of the lovers in the story.

This is a gorgeously shot film, nearly every frame is lit from within by a sumptuous orange/yellow glow that perfectly accentuates the mood of the piece.  Each performance hits its mark quite magnificently but Weisz is exceptional, possibly the best she's ever been.  The Deep Blue Sea demands a small amount of patience at first, but, if one invests the effort, the film rewards the viewer with a hypnotic and perfectly pitched glimpse of the not too distant past; a time and place where despair, divorce and pressures of social convention were no less stressful than they are now.

The Deep Blue Sea starts its run at Cinema 21 on Friday, April 27th.  More info here.


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