C O U R T E S Y O F G R AV I TA S V E N T U R E S
MOVIES = WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: ENID SPITZ. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: espitz@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
OPENING THIS WEEK The BFG
B- The BFG was my favorite book growing up, and like all Roald Dahl books, it’s an ecstatic mix of the sentimental and cruel—the story of a young orphan named Sophie abducted by a lovable Big Friendly Giant who catches and releases dreams. It is also a cavalcade of bodily functions rendered funny and an encyclopedia of brutality at the hands of other, evil giants like Bonecruncher and Fleshlumpeater. It’s clear that Steven Spielberg loves the book just as much as I do, and that’s the whole problem with the movie. Dahl’s book is devoted to wonderment and the clanging together of jabberwocky gobblefunking words…and so is much of the movie. The BFG’s first hour is a shamblingly slow, largely plotless sightseeing tour of giants-ville, less awestruck and mournful than merely lethargic. And it makes ill use of one of the most splendid animated creations in filmdom— the BFG himself (Mark Rylance). His empathetic face hurdles the uncanny valley with ease. It’s the young Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), not the giant, who feels dead-eyed. Luckily, the movie’s second half redeems the early languors with a slapstick comedy of farting dogs and queenly manners. My niece and nephew may not have left the movie with a sense of the beauty and fragility of the world, but they did really love the fart jokes. PG. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
An Evening With the J.U.M.P. Society
B- Each short film in this showcase from the Juneau Underground Motion Picture Society has an eccentric edge to its comedy, an awareness of the great outdoors, and lots of Alaskan pride. You’ll see a music video for Playboy Spaceman in which Juneau natives sing the lyrics to “Right in Front of You,” and a short called “Frankie” about a belligerent bear who can’t stay off the sauce or out of the dumpster. Alaska Robotics contributes a sarcastic edit of a Senate floor session into a suspenseful short film, and a sweded parody of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” titled “Space Weird Thing” in which the lyrics have been rewritten using only the thousand most common words in English. Many of these films feel carefree, akin to the impulsive silliness of high school broadcasts. It’s clear the society is really having a blast making movies. The fact that these vibrant productions come from a land with a winter longer than ours shows we could all use more Alaskan humor in our lives. NR. LAUREN TERRY. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 8:30 pm Wednesday, June 29.
Nuts!
C- Kudos to filmmaker Penny Lane and writer Thom Stylinski for the clever approach they take to their new highconcept documentary, Nuts!, about John Romulus Brinkley, a real-life Kansas doctor who in 1917 attempted to cure impotence by transplanting goat testicles in men. Too bad, though, the onscreen result is less than stimulating—much, much less funny or cute than it thinks it is. Only in America could a jerk-off like Brinkley nearly win the governorship of the Jayhawk State, build his own radio station to broadcast the world’s first infomercials, and make millions doing it. Such a shame then, that as his biography unfolds in wonderfully rendered animated re-enactments, the jokes meant to carry these scenes fall noticeably flat. What should have been a triumphant reveal at the film’s climax instead flops out flaccid due in no small part to all the forehead-pounding boredom that precedes it. R. LUKE JOHNSON. Cinema 21.
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Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt
A- Ada Ushpiz’s black-and-white doc about the colorful life of German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt carefully combines interviews of supporters and haters, love affairs and her think pieces such as Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) on the big screen in a way 21st-century audiences can relate to. Actress Alison Darcy reads excerpts from Arendt’s personal diary and love letters to her married professor, though Arendt’s theories are displayed archaically in 40-year-old television footage. Vita Activa will make you an Arendt expert in a mere 125 minutes, in case you wanted to skip reading her work or a boring biography. NR. AMY WOLFE. Living Room Theaters.
The Purge: Election Year
In writer-director James DeMonaco’s dystopian future America, all crimes are legal for one day of the year. This third installment, set 10 years after the last Purge we witnessed, follows Senator Charlene Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), a front-runner in the next presidential election, who is calling for an end to the barbaric holiday. If she lives through this one. Screened after deadline; see wweek.com for Lauren Terry’s review. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Pioneer Place, Tigard.
STILL SHOWING Alice Through the Looking Glass
D James Bobin has turned down the
quirk from Tim Burton’s atrocious predecessor—viewers are mercifully spared another Johnny Depp dance number— but the basic problems remain. Alice is a bland action hero. Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen is ear-piercingly obnoxious. Depp’s Mad Hatter just plain sucks. Time (Sacha Baron Cohen, with a thick German accent) provides an occasional laugh here and there, but they’re surrounded by a mess of lame attempts at wit, faux profundity and unearned emotional resolutions. It’s bad, and everyone involved should feel bad. PG. JOHN LOCANTHI. Clackamas, Division, Living Room Theaters.
The Angry Birds Movie
Perhaps the greatest Finnish-American collaboration this decade is this movie based on a game based on anger management therapy and avian flu. PG. Academy, Avalon, Clackamas, Valley, Vancouver.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
D Batman and Superman are fighting, and it’s hard to choose a side. The new Superman is boring and out of place in the 21st century. Batman, on the other hand, has been reinvented as a huge dickhead. Played by Ben Affleck with a characteristic lack of gravitas, Batman walks around in a silly metal suit killing people. You know how Batman never kills people? He does now. Even when he doesn’t have to. He even tries killing Superman because, you know, “he might be bad later.” With nobody to root for, BvS:DoJ is just an unconscionably long slugfest simultaneously attempting too much and accomplishing almost nothing. PG-13. ALEX FALCONE. Vancouver.
Captain America: Civil War
A- Captain America: Civil War, though,
is proof you can jam pretty much every superhero in your roster into one film and still let individuals shine. In pitting team Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) against Team Cap (Chris Evans) over a suspiciously fascist registration law for “enhanced humans,” directors Joe and Anthony Russo could have just put the heroes in a big-ass sandbox and let
Willamette Week JUNE 29, 2016 wweek.com
PITCH PERFECT: Flula Borg.
FEATURE
Buddymooning With Flula Borg THE GERMAN YOUTUBE STAR SPEAKS ON BROMANCE AND PORTLAND HIKES. BY LAU R EN TER RY
@LaurenYTerry
The star of Grimm, the villain in Pitch Perfect 2 and the director of the Al-Jazeera documentary Borderland used to be roommates, and back then, they swore they would make a movie together. Buddymoon, opening this Friday, makes good on that promise. It is a charming, bromancein-nature comedy following David Giuntoli and German YouTube phenomenon Flula Borg as fictional versions of themselves. The trio filmed in Oregon, ad-libbing most of the dialogue in the unscripted film about a morose actor who gets dumped right before his wedding and agrees to go on his honeymoon hike with his eccentric foreign friend Flula instead of his wife. Alex Simmons directs with reverence for the Pacific Northwest, incorporating diary entries from Meriwether Lewis throughout the buddies’ trek. Before Buddymoon’s release, Flula Borg talked with WW about —FLULA peeing in cars, his crush on Grimm and hiking in Portland.
traveling in Germany. I moved to America shortly after, and we ended up living together in L.A. We met the director of Buddymoon, Alex Simmons, while looking for a housemate on Craigslist. He was not a casual encounter, I promise. Why did you film in Oregon? Besides us really liking Portland, it worked out nicely with David about to start another season of Grimm. We had to fit in filming between that and my wrapping up Pitch Perfect 2, so we did it in 10 days. If those 10 days hadn’t worked out, the movie probably wouldn’t have happened. When it actually came to pass, we were so excited that we couldn’t resist using our real names in the movie. Do you have a favorite place in Portland? In Portland, it’s like a Miss America pageant, but all of the winners are mountains and trees. I love beer, coffee, rain, the nature. Portland and the hiking are like lasagna: There are lots of good little things, but you have to bite it all at once to get the dozens of delicious flavors. BORG
“PORTLAND AND THE HIKING ARE LIKE LASAGNA.”
WW: A lot of your YouTube videos take place in cars. Are you homeless? Flula Borg: I enjoy to save money on rent, yes. But I find that there’s a lot of inspiration when you’re in the car. There’s such a driving culture here, especially in L.A. What’s come out of your most inspirational L.A. traffic jams? One time I was driving with my friends’ dogs, and one starting peeing in the back seat. I realized we should all be outside all the time and had a metaphysical breakdown and wrote a song about it. How did you and David Giuntoli end up being roommates? Just like in the movie, I met him while he was
Were you familiar with the story of Lewis and Clark? I know some American history, but that was a deep cut. Alex is from Idaho and knew a lot about their story. It was Alex’s call to make it more of a backbone during the editing, having David read the passages from the Meriwether Lewis journal in voice-overs. I’m like a crazy jumping bean the whole movie, and David is like a sleepy twinkie— his character needed more. Will the three amigos reunite? We would like to make a TV show happen, for sure. I have asked too many times for a cameo on Grimm, so I don’t think it will ever happen. I think David knows I’d go nuts on that set. SEE IT: Buddymoon is not rated. It opens Friday at Living Room Theaters and on demand.