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JASON BECKER: NOT DEAD YET “We’ve told you, sir. You are not welcome at Guitar Center .”
★ CELL COUNT Cell Count has a few patchy bits—all you haters will be grumbling about the ending—but it’s nicely shot, staged, acted (it features local favorites John Breen and Sean McGrath), and the practical effects are great. With little money and a lot of atmosphere, Cell Count stages its body horror in a sterile, fluorescent-soaked medical clinic where sufferers of a mysterious disease are given experimental treatments, “the Cure.” But the six patients (and two inmates) soon discover the cure is worse than the disease. With echoes of your favorite John Carpenter and Ridley Scott joints, Cell Count’s got enough viscera and production values to make it a bloody winner. See review of The Weather Outside, next page. COURTNEY FERGUSON Mission Theater.
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE A new documentary—co-directed by Ken Burns—about five teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989. Living Room Theaters.
A CHRISTMAS STORY It’s the holiday classic that just won’t go away. Laurelhurst Theater.
★ FAST BREAK A must-see for anyone with an interest in the history of either the Trail Blazers or Portland itself, Fast Break comprises footage shot during the Blazers’ legendary 1977 championship season. Much of the documentary is devoted to chronicling how Bill Walton spent his time off the court—which, because the man was a giant (literally) hippie, involved a lot of bike riding down the 101 and clambering through the woods picking blackberries. There’s also a ton of great archival footage of the absolute frenzy that surrounded the team during that period, filtered of course through Portland’s own hippie sensibility—a scene of a huge crowd singing a “Rip City” ballad as a folksinger strums on an acoustic guitar is particularly classic. ALISON HALLETT Hollywood Theatre.
FLIGHT A clumsy, preachy, feature-length infomercial for AA. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters.
★ HAPPY 200, CHARLES DICKENS See Film, this issue. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditrium.
HITCHCOCK The making of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 horror film Psycho is fodder for Hitchcock, the new by-thenumbers biopic. Making a movie about one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time is a dangerous game, and while Hitchcock is competent—and occasionally even breezily entertaining—it mostly plays like a TV movie. NED LANNAMANN Century Clackamas Town Center, City Center 12, Fox Tower 10.
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY See review this issue. Various Theaters.
HOMEGROWN DOCFEST Short documentaries made by students in the NW Documentary Workshop—PLUS. “A SPECIAL PERFORMANCE FROM NATIONAL YODELING CHAMPION LARRY WILDER.” More info: nwdocumentary.org. Mission Theater.
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.
Portland’s Historic non-Profit tHeatre
enter taining Por tl and since 1926
JAPANESE CURRENTS The NW Film Center’s annual series of contemporary Japanese films. This week’s films include Nuclear Nation, Monsters Club, and Rent-a-Cat. More info: nwfilm.org. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
★ JASON BECKER: NOT DEAD YET Jason Becker was meant for greatness. A master guitar player, Becker was discovered by Shrapnel Records and eventually took over Steve Vai’s slot playing with David Lee Roth—all before he graduated from high school. Then he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and given three-to-five years to live. Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet documents Becker’s life leading up to his crippling diagnosis and into the present, where he still composes music and speaks with an eye sign language designed by his father. The film conveys his amazing story well with old footage, pictures, and interviews with friends and family, but somehow falls just short of emotionally pulling you in. Still, it’s inspiring and worth a watch. ARIS WALES Clinton Street Theater. ★ KILLING THEM SOFTLY The story of Killing Them Softly is timeless: Here are a bunch of guys struggling to get by, fighting back despair, and screwing each other over for money. While it’s based on George V. Higgins’ 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, Killing Them Softly feels utterly contemporary—largely because writer/director Andrew Dominik has picked up Higgins’ story and plopped it down a few decades later. Now it plays out in the gray ruins of post-Katrina New Orleans, with a soundtrack of news stories about the 2008 financial crisis leaking from every TV and car radio. Suddenly, that bunch of guys struggling to get by, fighting back despair, and screwing each other over for money is part of a bigger story. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters. ★ A LATE QUARTET At the start of A Late Quartet, Christopher Walken’s character explains to a group of his cello students that Beethoven’s late quartet, Opus 131, is not the standard four movements but instead has seven parts and that you have to play them straight through with no breaks, which causes your instruments to go all out of tune with one another. “It’s a mess,” he says. It’s also a metaphor about how basic entropy affects togetherness. The togetherness, say, of a musical group that’s been playing together for 25 years when the oldest member finds
★ MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. THEATER LOCATIONS ARE ACCURATE FRIDAY DECEMBER 14-THURSDAY DECEMBER 20, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. FILM TIMES AND SHORTS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE AT PORTLANDMERCURY.COM.
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SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT
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A Parisian man murders the dude who was sleeping with his wife, then assumes his identity and flees to Yugoslavia. Like you do. Living Room Theaters.
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THE BIG PICTURE
★ HOLY MOTORS Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) traverses Paris in the back of a massive white limousine. With faithful driver Céline (Edith Scob) at the wheel, and with the limo’s cabin packed with a makeup table and more rubbery prosthetics than Cloud Atlas, Oscar goes to a number of “appointments”—and at each, he drastically changes his face, his hair, his clothes, his mannerisms, his cohorts. First he appears as a privileged businessman, then a filthy, deranged, fucked-up leprechaun; sometimes he’s a decrepit, panhandling old woman, later he’s a father, an assassin, a guy wearing a motion-capture unitard who goes down on a woman wearing a motion-capture unitard. Holy Motors might very well be brilliant, and it also might very well be 2012’s version of the emperor’s new clothes. ERIK HENRIKSEN Fox Tower 10.
THE MISFITS
★ ANNA KARENINA Prediction: Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina is going to be the Speed Racer of literary adaptations—defended by nerds, derided by other nerds, and baffling to the public at large. It’s an audacious interpretation of Leo Tolstoy that’s overstuffed and overflowing with style. I can’t be sure that it’s a good movie—but I was so overwhelmed by its boldness that I can’t deny I kind of loved it. JAMIE S. RICH Century Clackamas Town Center, Fox Tower 10.
TuESday dEcEMBEr 18 · 7:30pm See the Mercury movie section for showtimes, and visit our NEW website
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w o o d T H e a T r e . org December 12th, 2012 portlandmercury.com 45