Screen Listings

BOY CULTURE: It's Friday the 13th—time for a whore movie!

1408

In this film, based on a Stephen King short story, John Cusack checks in to 1408, an infamous New York City hotel room haunted by a stable of ghosts. Cusack plays Mike Enslin, a hack writer of haunted travel guides who aims to spend a quiet evening in the Dolphin Hotel's most sinister room—known more for its body count than its turndown service. The first half of the film gets some help from sharp cameo performances by Samuel L. Jackson as the Dolphin's reluctant manager and Tony Shalhoub as Enslin's rapid-fire New York editor, but this is Cusack's show. Once the door closes, Cusack drinks and talks himself into an increasingly manic performance, playing off the different ghoulies and hallucinations. 1408 doesn't reinvent the haunting genre by any means, but rather pays homage to its classic form, amalgamating every trick the haunted house has inside four walls. PG-13. RYAN HUME. Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Vancouver Plaza.

After the Wedding

Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, After the Wedding is a family melodrama so jam-packed with explosive secrets and lies that it's simply exhausting to endure. It's like a year's worth of soap-opera material crammed into two hours: Old flames unexpectedly reconnect, a child meets a long-lost biological father, then someone dies of a terminal illness. R. MARTIN TSAI. Living Room Theaters.

American Scary

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] A documentary celebrating bad accents, low production values and flame-retardant costumes, American Scary tracks the tradition of the "horror host," from Vampira's entrance into the pop-cultural subconscious in the 1950s to the obscurity of the 2 am time slot on local TV stations from Nashville to San Francisco. But don't expect to relive your ghoulish memories. Filmmakers John Hudgens and Sandy Clark are content to let a parade of hosts talk about guiding viewers across the Styx of their own worst nightmares, without showing much of the cheesy archival footage that would have us all feeling nostalgic for the time when we were scared of vampires, devil-worshipers and werewolves (instead of neo-cons, Bible-beaters and the oil lobby). Boo! PAUL LEONARD. Hollywood Theatre. Saturday-Sunday, July 14-15.

Best of the Northwest

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The NW Film Center's distillation of last year's Film and Video Festival features works from local boys Matt McCormick (Fifty Years Later) and Chel White (A Painful Glimpse into My Writing Process). PDX, represent! Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. 7:30 pm Thursday, July 12, and 9:15 pm Saturday, July 14.

Black Book

Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in 23 years plays out just like the Hollywood blockbusters he has left behind. Black Book is a World War II epic complete with nail-biting twists and turns, giant explosions and bare breasts. Never mind that director and screenwriter Gerard Soeteman apparently spent 40 years researching the historical facts that serve as its basis—the damn thing is entertaining enough for the multiplexes. Carice van Houten plays a brave Jewish woman who refuses to die. After the Nazi bastards wipe out her family, she joins the resistance, bleaches her pubic hair, infiltrates Sicherheitsdienst headquarters and seduces an officer played by Sebastian Koch (The Lives of Others). Once again, Verhoeven boldly goes where few, if any, filmmakers have gone before, not least by eschewing the somberness of most Holocaust films and including a sympathetic SS officer and a duplicitous Dutch resistance fighter. R. MARTIN TSAI. Living Room Theaters.

Boy Culture

[SHORT RUN] Directed by Eating Out's Q. Allan Brocka, Boy Culture is the queer equivalent to eating caviar on a plate of Ritz crackers. While it sounds and looks amazing on the surface, it begins to turns to mush as soon as you bite into it. Brocka, who adapted it from a much-loved book, once again overplays gay stereotypes at the expense of his stories. Thankfully, the actors here—including Derek Magyar in a star-making turn as the soulful yet soulless man-whore, "X"—pull Brocka's script out of his ass before it starts to stink. As X worms his way into the hearts of his roomies and one of his clients, a reclusive old fart who isn't who he seems, you can't help but wonder what a great director might've done with this compelling story and cast of misfits from the land of hot boys. Boy Culture will never be a queer classic like Brokeback Mountain. But in a season giving us both John Travolta in drag (Hairspray) and Adam Sandler in a same-sex marriage (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry) this film will at least give you a semi both below and above your trouser belt. BYRON BECK. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, July 13-19.

Captivity

Elisha Cuthbert gets tortured by another clever psychotic. The trailer alone inspired WW intern Alistair Rockoff to write, "This is entertainment? Really? Which way to the nearest fundamentalist church?" In a stunning development, the movie was not screened for critics. R. Cedar Hills, Cornelius.

Crazy Love

Dan Klores' worthless documentary on the blinding of 22-year-old Linda Riss, and her subsequent marriage to the man who hired goons to toss lye in her face, exemplifies inept filmmaking of an exceptionally pernicious kind. Klores knows from the start where he's going with the material—he makes no new discoveries. His stylistic technique consists entirely of devices that have been done to death by television, which is where Crazy Love belongs. The first, second and third-act "revelations" seem to be on a timer, going off right on cue. Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole songs dot the soundtrack in a desperate bid to add a trace of 1950s period authenticity; mostly, Klores assembles giant heads in endless closeups, and the eyewitnesses' recollections are scored to the standard-issue horror electronica, tubas-in-distress, or marimbas in an apocalyptic fit that we've heard before. What's truly obscene about this saga of a disabled woman, who's so lonely that she yields to the desire of a violent stalker, is that Klores glorifies sleaziness yet sanitizes the proceedings just enough not to upset middle-class, high-white tastes. Crazy Love may sound "fun" in a sick sort of way, yet even at that level the movie flops. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower.

Decades: Born in Fire

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A surprise standout of February's Wild Rivers, Wild Fire and Wild Creatures Film Night, Decades unleashes a scathing attack on the negative impact post-fire salvage logging has had on forest regeneration in the Siskiyou National Forest, and the money that's behind it. The clips in which the dean of OSU's College of Forestry, Hal Salwasser, basically incriminates himself for trying to suppress publication of a grad student's findings that were unfavorable to the logging industry burns quite the lasting impression. BRYAN VAN NORDEN. Hollywood Theatre. 6:30 pm Wednesday, July 11.

Dreaming Lhasa

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A woman journeys to Dharamsala, the home of the exiled Dalai Lama, in this drama from New York filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. Try not to get it confused with the other Dalai Lama movie opening this week. You can't swing a cat in this town without hitting a Dalai Lama movie. Living Room Theaters.

Evan Almighty

With minimal screen time in the ho-hum Bruce Almighty, then C-lister Steve Carell managed a near-impossible task: Blubbering in tongues as news anchor Evan Baxter, he stole the movie from ham-fisted Jim Carrey. Carell's now an A-lister, so it makes sense that he's now got his own Almighty role. Evan Almighty finds Evan quitting the news business for a stint in Congress, until God Himself (Morgan Freeman) instructs him to build an ark. Director Tom Shadyac's values and message—don't rape the environment, and trust in God's will—make for a decent enough family movie. However, with all the effort—and reported $175 million—put into slapstick and Dr. Dolittle animal action, it's a shame that it isn't a little deeper, sweeter and funnier. Carell's natural charisma and comic timing are the best effects in this otherwise underwhelming comedy. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Vancouver Plaza.

Evening

Claire Danes may have the widest mouth of any actress in movies right now, and in Evening, as the preposterously named Ann Grant, Danes is all teeth, lips and nervous tics. She shares the role with that moribund old ham Vanessa Redgrave—who, as Ann on her deathbed, cryptically utters, "Harris and I killed Buddy." Flashback to Danes in the 1950s as young Ann, dancing in front of Rhode Island old-money picture windows with rich alcoholic Buddy, a self-consciously tortured bon vivant sweatily overacted by Hugh Dancy, who seems a natural for the suicide-of-the-week sweepstakes. The screenplay by Susan Minot and Michael Cunningham announces Buddy's demise so far in advance that the movie has nowhere to go once he expires. Mostly, the movie registers as a monument to WASP phoniness—it preaches the gospel of accepting no responsibility for your actions whatsoever. PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower, Lloyd Mall, Cedar Hills, City Center.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

The central crisis of Rise of the Silver Surfer is no less than global destruction, but when the world's most venerated heroes are as insipid as the Fantastic Four, with their cheesy-looking powers and unbearable "jokes," it's hard not to root for annihilation. So you might find yourself hoping that the elastic idiot Mr. Fantastic gets entangled in the axles of a passing train and ripped in half, or that Jessica Alba's Invisible Woman is overcome by her fantastically uninteresting emotional struggle with fame and pulls the ultimate vanishing act: jumping from her penthouse apartment's window. Nothing half so cool actually happens. PG. ADRIAN CHEN. Lloyd Mall, Division, Forest, Sherwood, Cinema 99.

Free Monday Movies: Animation

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Rarities include Disney's 1942 Stop That Tank. Because if there's one thing we need to stop, it's tanks. Mississippi Station, 3943 N Mississippi Ave. Monday, July 16. Screenings start at sundown. Free, naturally.

Introducing the Dwights

In Secrets and Lies a decade ago, Brenda Blethyn's shrieking-harpy number seemed fresh, or at least authentic. By Little Voice, she had already grown shrill and stale. Her newest role, as an overbearing music-hall entertainer who bursts on stage with, "Good evening, ladies and genitalia!" does nothing to expand her range. As her soft and sensitive cutie-pie son (Khan Chittenden) watches from the wings, Mama Dwight's anti-male stage patter steamrollers forth (with such unforgettable quips as, in reference to sex with the boy's father, "It's like 'avin' a wardrobe fallin' on ya—with a key still in the lock"). The sitcom-derived shenanigans include a little girl, no older than 10, singing Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," and Chittenden's tentative exploration of romance with a raggedy, dishwater blonde (Emma Booth), who's the sort of cat-dragged-in tart only upheld as a sex symbol in dismal comedies. The movie, which begins with Janis Joplin screeching "Piece of My Heart" in the opening scene, leaves an unanswered question: If men are so terrible, how do they get to be so awful, if not from exposure to women like the ones here? R. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower.

Knocked Up

In Judd Apatow's magnificent new comedy, the bewilderment of an entire generation finds a face in Seth Rogen. He's that teddy bear who's been hulking in the corner of Apatow's frames since television's Freaks and Geeks, and here he takes top billing as Ben Stone, a layabout who isn't too sure he's cut out to be a leading man. He bumps into Allison (Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl) at a club, and takes her name at the bar. They both take a few too many shots, she takes him home, he doesn't take proper care with the condom. When Ben learns, eight weeks later, that his boys have swum, he is prepared to do the honorable thing, but he isn't prepared in any other way—and he isn't aided by a glimpse into the hostile marriage of Allison's sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her husband, Pete (Paul Rudd). Knocked Up is a sex comedy in the same way that most people's lives are sex comedies: Nobody's getting any. R. AARON MESH. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Cinema, Eastport, Division, Cedar Hills, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.

La Vie en Rose

As 1972's Lady Sings the Blues desecrated Billie Holiday, so this biopic portrays Edith Piaf as a frog-voiced pig. Piaf may have been crude, yet must the movie's point of view be crude as well? Director Olivier Dahan's favored camera setup is a darting motion across the foreground, like someone skulking around the back of a room; he places Piaf (Marion Cotillard) at the top of the screen, peering at her through the crowds. After a while, this becomes a sickening effect, as if the story were being told through the eyes of an off-screen stalker. Dahan gives La Vie en Rose the high gloss of prestige, yet after milking us for sympathy over poor little whore-nurtured Edie, brought up in her granny's Normandy brothel and temporarily blinded in childhood, he tries to wring a cheap laugh out of her bopping into a metal pole. The adult Piaf's grief-stricken flutters and cries are photographed head-on, as if close-ups of misery automatically constitute great cinema. PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower.

License to Wed

Seriously, who goes to see all these wedding movies? Every single one of them—American, Polish and big fat Greek; Muriel's, Betsy's and Julia Roberts' best friend's—has been box-office gold. After exhausting the bridezilla and monster-in-law material, the next best thing Hollywood could think up is Robin Williams as a harebrained reverend teaching a marriage-preparation course that involves lessons on celibacy and parenting. If you've seen the trailer for License to Wed, you've pretty much seen everything that's funny about the movie—which is not much. Still, what other summer tent-pole blockbuster out there is a destination for retirement-home buses? After Man of the Year and RV, Williams must be really desperate for a hit. PG-13. MARTIN TSAI. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Evergreen, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.

Live Free or Die Hard

Director Len Wiseman's take on John McClane packs a hard action wallop, offering up some of the biggest thrills so far this summer. What sets the fourth installment of the series apart from other summer dreck is that the majority of the action in Live Free—from an amazing overhead shot of mass motor destruction to a nail-biter of a chase in a Washington, D.C., tunnel—is done with real stunts. At 52, Bruce Willis remains a seminal action hero, a knuckle-dragger fighting cyberterrorists with bullets instead of brains. It goes way overboard at the end—when fighting a Harrier jet, Willis is more superhero than everyman—but the majority of the film will have audiences screaming, "Yippee-ki-yay, mother—" Nope. Not in a PG-13 Die Hard. It's obvious this was an R-rated film edited down, and the movie suffers from poor overdubbing ("jughead" still looks like "fuckhead" on Willis' mouth) and skimps on the blood. Still, it's fine popcorn, loaded with buttery goodness, amazing stunts and its fair share of jolts. If only it felt like a Die Hard movie. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Broadway, Pioneer Place, Lloyd Cinema, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Evergreen, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.

The Lives of Others

Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) works for the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. It's 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall crumbles, but despite the corruption around him, Wiesler remains committed to the cause—until he sees a production by one of East Germany's few loyal playwrights, rising star Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and instantly becomes entranced by Dreyman's leading lady (Martina Gedeck). When Wiesler is ordered to spy on the couple, the once-robotic Stasi operative is tested beyond imagining. R. BECKY OHLSEN. Fox Tower, Hollywood Theatre.

Maximum Car-nage Double Feature

[SHORT RUN, REVIVAL] Two classic pedal-to-the-metal pictures: Maximum Overdrive screens at 7 pm, and Vanishing Point shows at 9 pm. Clinton Street Theater. Friday-Wednesday, July 13-18.

A Mighty Heart

Director Michael Winterbottom has made a very dull movie out of an exceptionally shocking event. A Mighty Heart recounts the last days of Daniel Pearl, the journalist beheaded by Pakistani jihadists in 2002, from the perspective of his wife, Mariane, a French reporter played here by Angelina Jolie. It is a grueling slog of a picture—and somehow forgettable as well, like a long hike through dreary terrain. Every element of A Mighty Heart is a mere precursor to the moment when a colleague says, "I'm sorry, Mariane...Daniel didn't make it," and Angelina Jolie begins to wail. It's an awful sound: half animal despair, half Oscar bid. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.

Nancy Drew

As a lifelong Nancy Drew fan, I was reticent about seeing the most recent attempt to bring her to life to the silver screen. But I was pleasantly surprised that director Andrew Fleming (Dick) managed to insert Nancy into modern times while keeping her moral compass and cute '50s clothing intact. The film has Nancy (Emma Roberts) accompanying her father to Los Angeles. One could gripe about how the movie takes the easy way out, relying on stereotypes of vapid Hollywood teenagers, but even though it strays from the character of Nancy a bit (she would never kiss Ned!), it succeeds in providing an entertaining and much-needed alternative to the shite that's spoon-fed to kids today (i.e., Bratz: The Movie). PG. ANDREA MANNING. Lloyd Mall.

Ocean's Thirteen

The latest round-up-the-gang lark opens with an Elliot Gould heart attack and closes with deferential references to Sinatra—signs that Steven Soderbergh's franchise is showing its age. As is so often the case with the elderly, it's the sex drive that's first to go. Clooney, Pitt and Damon maintain their effortless cool (very effortless: It's an ease that borders on sedation), but their female foils—Julia and Catherine—are MIA, released with the offhand remark, "It's not their fight." The brusque dismissal doesn't make Ocean's Thirteen misogynist or reactionary—it simply turns the casino-robbing caper into a sexless sausage fest. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Division, Cedar Hills, City Center.

Once

Irish director John Carney has found a loophole to the logical problem that haunts every musical: Why are these people breaking into song at the slightest provocation? Carney's solution is to make Once, a winsome movie about a street musician trying to finish a demo tape. Yes, he croons in the street, but that's his job. So it's perfectly reasonable that the unnamed busker (Glen Hansard) should conduct a hesitant romance with a Czech flower seller (Markéta Irglová) via rhyming couplets and guitar strumming. Shot on digital video and set to Hansard's own music (he's a member of The Frames), Once has the same ratio of irritation and appeal as a first album by any lachrymose singer-songwriter: You can condemn it for being histrionic and self-pitying, but you'll have to do so with a lump in your throat. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.

Paris, Je T'Aime

Pierre Adenot's swoony, cocktail-shaker orchestrations open and close this "film collectif," promising a pop version of Old World romance that this failed omnibus of 18 vignettes never delivers. In a stumble down the Champs-Élysées, various directors compete to see who can make the worst segment. Taking the prize in hatefulness, the Coen brothers present a degrading skit in which tourist Steve Buscemi is beaten senseless, allegedly to comic effect, in the Tuileries subway station. Alexander Payne, of the overrated Sideways, continues his condescending mockery of the working classes by making cruel fun of an overweight mail carrier (Margo Martindale). In "Le Marais," Gus Van Sant chimes in with a contribution on his all-time favorite subject: lissome gay dudes making eyes and acting like moo-cows at each other. R. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

The title is meant literally: At the 30-minute mark of the latest Pirates installment, the ship carrying all the surviving characters drops off the face of the earth. The world—much like this movie—turns out to be flat, and down tumble Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightly and Geoffrey Rush over a great waterfall that flows to inky oblivion. Unfortunately, after they die the movie still has two hours and 15 minutes to go. PG-13. AARON MESH. Division, Forest, Hilltop, Tigard Cinemas, Cinema 99, Vancouver Plaza.

Private Fears in Public Places

Alain Resnais, the 85-year-old maker of such pedigreed bores as Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour, begins his new film firmly ensconced at the bottom of the trash heap. The low point occurs early—leading lady Sabine Azéma has tomato soup splattered all over her face—then the movie gets less terrible as it goes on. It almost reaches "good" during a late-night conversation between a man and a woman seated across a kitchen table; Resnais uses snow dissolves throughout to transition from one scene to the next, but in this sequence the walls disappear. It snows inside as two strangers bare their souls. There's also some nice sexual chemistry between Lambert Wilson and Isabelle Carré, as a military macho and a waif who meet via the personals, but Avenue Montaigne managed this sort of fluff much better. N.P. THOMPSON. Living Room Theaters.

Ratatouille

To call director Brad Bird's Ratatouille the best animated film of the year is accurate, but misleading. The story of a foodie rat's rise in Paris' culinary world is packed with more humor, better voice work and more brilliant animation than the flat Shrek the Third could ever hope to muster. It's not just the best animated film this year, it's the best animated film to come out of the U.S. since Bird's last effort, The Incredibles. The story of a rat named Remy (Patton Oswalt) who finds himself secretly spicing up bland food in a Paris eatery is aimed at kids, but it's loaded with so much madcap humor that adults won't be able to resist. That's Bird's gift. Whether his characters are saving the world from destruction or saving a pot of soup from bad aftertaste, there's a sense of urgency and awe in his films. Ratatouille's technical marvels and storytelling are trumped by this unique quality. Bird twists the ordinary in a way we've never seen, and accomplishes something no other movie this summer has—originality. G. AP KRYZA. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Cinema, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Lake Twin, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.

Reel Blues

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] The NW Film Center contributes to the Waterfront Blues Festival with screenings of rhythm-oozing documentaries. Credit Union Blues Stage, Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Johnny Otis Reunion screens at 10 pm Thursday, July 5. Hendrix & the Blues and The Losers' Club screen at 10 pm Friday, July 6. $8 admission to the festival.

Shrek the Third

The latest marketer's wet dream finds Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots (Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas, reprising their voice roles) searching for a distant heir to the throne of Far Far Away. There are laughs aplenty in Shrek the Third. But the main thing the franchise had going for it all along was its wit and originality. Sadly, the third time around that's what's missing. PG. AP KRYZA. Cornelius, 99 West Drive-In, Tigard-Joy.

Sicko

Michael Moore's latest smear campaign has in its crosshairs his most reprehensible villain yet: the health insurance industry, a numbers racket disguised as a medical service. The first half of Sicko is a forceful complaint: We meet the victims of HMO deceit, who line up to tell wrenching stories of lost mortgages, legal loopholes and dead relatives. None of this could be mistaken by anyone with the slightest intelligence for a nuanced policy discussion, but it's an effective broadside, and fairly entertaining. It's also too good to last. As Sicko drags into its second hour, Moore exchanges his old standby of hyperbolic accusations for a cloying credulity. Shouldering his way to the center of the screen, Moore visits Canada, England, France and Cuba, rejoicing at their universal care. Doubtless some of the acclaim is deserved, but without asking a single probing question, Moore crosses an ethical line. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Lloyd Cinema ,City Center.

Spanish Docs

[THREE NIGHTS ONLY] There's no such thing as an unbiased opinion of Fidel Castro, and Oliver Stone's portrayal of the Cuban dictator in the 2003 documentary Comandante doesn't help much. While Castro, who wears Nike sneakers, is at times elusive, he does address tough questions and comes out looking more like a visionary than an anachronism. In contrast to the live, hourslong speeches on Cuban national television that aired before he fell ill, Castro's face to the Western media is markedly savvy. (This is a little surprising as there's no free press in Cuba with which to practice.) Yes, this film is a little biased, but what piece of work about Castro isn't? A must-see. Elsewhere in the NW Film Center's series, Cuban exile and world-renowned pianist Bebo Valdés journeys to Brazil and finds The Miracle of Candeal. While Brazil's broken barrios are most famous for drug wars and bloodshed, they're also the incubators for some of the most impassioned music in the world, and Candeal is a place where bloodshed has nearly dissolved as the town has embraced music under the likes of musicians Mateus and Gilberto Gil. This Spanish-made documentary by Fernando Trueba has the magic of Black Orpheus and the potency of Buena Vista Social Club. After all, Brazil's unique history is not unlike Cuba's, wherein a mix of Catholicism, mysticism, African slavery and European domination has created unique terroir. Don't walk, run. MIKE THELIN. Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. Comandante screens at 7 and 9 pm Friday, July 13, and at 7 pm Sunday, July 15. The Miracle of Candeal screens at 7 pm Saturday, July 14.

Sum of the Parts

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] You've got to hand it to the dedication of a guy like Portland-based writer, director, editor and actor Raymond Steers—who apparently spent the past eight years making Sum of the Parts on a shoestring budget with volunteer actors. Steers has made a dollar-store Enemy of the State, a tale of an ordinary guy who gets hunted down by an elusive group of operatives called "Agent 17" after his friend "Nut" gives him a nifty pocket-sized black electronic device "1,000 times more powerful than anything we've ever heard of." It may or may not also have the power to change a person's DNA at the push of a button. (The iPhone ain't got shit on this thing.) Sum of the Parts relies heavily on video tricks like split-screens and motion graphics, touches that might have seemed slick back in 1999 when Steers started the project. But today, they just feel tiresome, derivative and a little hokey. There's actually a pretty cool film buried within Sum of the Parts, in the hundreds of still 35 mm photographs spliced throughout the whole movie—on their own, Steers might have had an interesting La Jetée-inspired short sci-fi art flick on his hands. But at nearly two hours, it feels long, overextended and in need of its own DNA replacement. LANCE KRAMER. Hollywood Theatre. 9 pm Saturday, July 14.

Ten Canoes

Set among Aboriginal Australians in the days before white folks came crashing in, it's a story within a story about what happens when a young man covets his brother's wife. But it's really about the power of storytelling. With unconventional narration and scenes that echo history-museum dioramas, the film has an almost National Geographic feel. It's also really funny, irreverent and gorgeously filmed. BECKY OHLSEN. Living Room Theaters.

Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama

[SHORT RUN] In his seminal essay on Mahatma Gandhi, George Orwell cautioned, "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent." This is not advice that Rick Ray has taken with him to India. Ray, a specialist in travel documentaries, alternates between breathtaking shots of the western Himalayas and voiceover fretting about what questions he will ask the Dalai Lama. He winds up an eager pilgrim, tossing sincere softballs at the exiled god-king of Tibet. So the wisdom he receives ranges from the banal ("quality is more important than quantity") to the borrowed ("destroying your enemy, you destroy yourself") to the completely unserious (His Holiness' solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "I think more festivals...more picnics!"). The monk come off as an extremely gentle man—and the obvious inspiration for the vocal inflections of Yoda—but one dulled by veneration. He could stand to be asked 10 real questions. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, July 13-19.

Transformers

If it offers the world nothing else, Transformers is proof that Michael Bay is a lot like beer. It doesn't matter that the Autobots and the Decepticons—metallic jumbles of shapes that never quite coalesce into recognizable figures—look like they were designed by Frank Gehry. It doesn't matter that the relationship between Shia LaBouf and his Camaro-cum-alien Bumblebee borrows liberally from the plot of E.T. None of it matters, because Transformers is a movie that offers the twin pleasures of laughing at Bay's turgid filmmaking and gasping at his unprecedented effects. Until it doesn't. Because watching Transformers is a lot like drinking alcohol while enjoying a game like darts or bowling. For a time, you find that the inebriation actually improves your play. And then you hit that moment universally known as the Beer Curve, and your aim—along with everything else—starts to wobble. The fun of Transformers, which increases the more mindless it gets, hits the same wall once you realize that every imaginable curiosity has been thrown at the screen, and there's still another 30 minutes of kinetic aerial battling left to endure. This is the Michael Bay Curve, and while I can't stop you from trying it for yourself, I can warn you that it's going to make you nauseous. PG-13. AARON MESH. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Cinema, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cornelius, 99 West Drive-In, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.

Unconscious

Anyone who's made it through Psychology 101 will get a kick out of this Spanish romantic comedy set in the Freudian milieu of 1913 Barcelona, where apparently there are enough sexual complexes to fuel a Woody Allen retrospective. Strait-laced doctor Salvador (Luis Tosar) joins his wife's sister, Alma (Leonor Watling of Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her), in a search for her missing psychoanalyst husband. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Living Room Theaters.

Waitress

The knowledge of director Adrienne Shelly's death seeps into her movie about a pie-baking cafe server (Keri Russell) with dreams of escape, making the movie somehow sadder and more valuable. Waitress' portrayal of rural life occasionally slips into condescension (small-town folk don't rely so heavily on no double negatives), but that's the only sour note in a sweet confection. Russell's heroine channels the misery of a loveless, abusive marriage into her cooking—giving the results names like "I Hate My Husband Pie"—but finds a new outlet in her obstetrician (Nathan Fillion, delivering his usual terrific performance), who delivers a special brand of patient care. The affair develops in unexpected directions, and the lovers are nicely supported by Andy Griffith and Shelly herself. For 107 minutes, death shall have no dominion. PG-13. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre, Tigard-Joy.

You Kill Me

Hitmen are people, too! Every so often one might even shed his hardhearted façade and endure such humiliating ordeals as a high-school reunion and AA meetings—which can make for a promising caper comedy. Reminiscent of The Matador, You Kill Me has Ben Kingsley as a hired gun with a drinking problem that's becoming a liability to a tenuous Polish crime outfit in Buffalo, N.Y. Finally given an ultimatum, he heads to San Francisco, joins a 12-step program and works temporarily as a mortician. Anyone who was captivated by all the seething in Sexy Beast will probably find Kingsley amusing as the hapless henchman here. Alongside Dennis Farina and Philip Baker Hall, he breezes up more cool and panache than the entire cast of Ocean's Thirteen can manage. You Kill Me is bitingly witty, but its humor is too understated to be everyone's cup of tea. R. MARTIN TSAI. Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Tigard Cinemas, City Center.

Young People's Film + Video Festival

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Selected works from the K-12 set in Northwestern schools. Following the "children should be seen and not heard" dictum, the NW Film Center has mandated that all entries be silent movies. (Note to the extremely credulous: We made that last part up.) Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. 2 pm Sunday, July 15.