Portland Film Festival Review: GRU-PDX

September 1, 2015 by J Simpson Posted in Festival Coverage, Festival Reviews Tagged Daniel Barosa, Documentary, GRU-PDX, Music, Portland, Portland Film Festival, Quatro Negro 2 Comments

Sometimes, to really appreciate what you have, you have to view it through someone else’s eyes. GRU-PDX, which opens the third installation of the Portland Film Festival, is filmmaker Daniel Barosa‘s loving glimpse into Portland’s underground music scene, with all of its quirks. In 2013, the atmospheric indie rock duo Quatro Negro flew to Portland, Or. to make a record with The Helio Sequence. While GRU-PDX started out to document the record-making process, it quickly expanded outward to gaze at Portland’s music scene, both over- and under-ground, looking at the way it’s changed in the wake of the “Portlandia”-hype. Read More

Wes Craven: Horror High and Low

September 1, 2015 by Madelyn Sutton Posted in Retrospectives Tagged Horror, In Memoriam, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wes Craven Leave a comment

Wes Craven (1939-2015) was famous to horror fans and general cinephiles alike for popular, well-made horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, both of which achieved broad critical and financial success. His films’ popularity can be attributed to their effective scares and original imagery, but they also often share a real depth of conceptual underpinning. Many of Cravens’ fans may not know that he held a Master’s degree in Philosophy and Writing and taught as a Humanities professor before embarking on his filmmaking career, and that this background contributed significantly to many of his films. Read More

Portland Film Festival Returns! Sept. 1 – 7 Preview

September 1, 2015 by J Simpson Posted in Festival Coverage Tagged Documentary, Film Festivals, George C. Romero, Music, Northwestern Premier, PFF15, Portland Film Festival, Wendy Froud, Will Vinton, Workshops, World Premier, Zombies Leave a comment

Zombies! Madness! Faeries! Reggae!

Portland Film Fest returns, in its 3rd incarnation, cementing its place as a cultural tour de force and earning its reputation as one of the “Top 25 Coolest Film Festivals In The World 2014” from MovieMaker Magazine. Portland is at an interesting crossroads in its cultural evolution. On one hand, it is the run-down, rusted, gloomy, economically-depressed and overly-tattoed old school version of itself, which we all know and love. On the other, it is a shining mecca for the 21st Century, a beacon of progressiveness, DIY ethos, and collaborative creative communities. Read More

Fall 2015 Film Preview – 22 Films To Buy Tickets for Now

September 1, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Beasts of No Nation, Black Mass, Bridge of Spies, Carol, Creed, Crimson Peak, Everest, Fall Movie Preview, Goodnight Mommy, Pan, Sicario, Sleeping With Other People, Spectre, Steve Jobs, Suffragette, The Danish Girl, The Good Dinosaur, The Green Inferno, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, The Martian, The Night Before, The Visit, Trumbo 1 Comment

September is upon us as summer creeps into the rear view. Torrential rains, blistering cold spells and the grotesqueries of changing leaf colors is set to drive the masses into the theaters. But is there anything worth seeing? But of course there is! We’ve compiled our Fall 2015 Film Preview to get the ticket-buying ball rolling and your film nerd anticipation building. Right up until an absolutely action-packed Holiday movie season, there’s a bounty of cinema that’s geared up to do nothing short of blow the doors off. If everything pans out as it should, we ought to be seeing some of the year’s first viable Oscar films as well as some of the year’s biggest blockbusters. Read More

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Blu-Ray Review

August 31, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Blu-Ray/DVD Reviews Tagged DVD/Blu-Ray Review, George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road, Nicholas Hoult, Tom Hardy 2 Comments

Synopsis: “Years after the collapse of civilization, the tyrannical Immortan Joe enslaves apocalypse survivors inside the desert fortress the Citadel. When the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads the despot’s five wives in a daring escape, she forges an alliance with Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a loner and former captive. Fortified in the massive, armored truck the War Rig, they try to outrun the ruthless warlord and his henchmen in a deadly high-speed chase through the Wasteland.” Read More

FEAR THE WALKING DEAD “So Close, Yet So Far” Recap/Review

August 31, 2015 by J Simpson Posted in TV Reviews Tagged Alycia Debnam-Carey, Cliff Curtis, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Fear The Walking Dead, Frank Dillane, Kim Dickens, TV Recaps, Zombies 3 Comments

“Can I have my knife back now?” – Tobias

The action heats up quick, like a saucepan full of nitroglycerin on the stovetop, as the contagion begin to spread. And we haven’t seen anything yet. “So Close, Yet So Far” leaves behind the family melodrama of “Pilot”, or rather, it imports it into this new world that is beginning to form as the old one decays, both with a bang and a whimper. Read More

Out in Theaters: MEMORIES OF THE SWORD

August 29, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Heung-Sik Park, Memories of the Sword, Out in Theaters, Reviews, South Korea Leave a comment

From the very first shot of Memories of the Sword, the taste of Asian martial arts cinema at its most gravity-defying floods your palette. Much of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s DNA has been spliced into Heung-Sik Park‘s South Korean swashbuckler what with all the running up bamboo, nonchalant wind-walking and artful swordsmanship. Its similarities to that cornerstone of modern Asian cinema do not however prove to be its undoing as Memories of the Sword is an often beautifully realized, artfully photographed cinematic experience filled with rich characters and even richer histories. Read More

Talking With Jason Schwartzman of 7 CHINESE BROTHERS

August 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged 7 Chinese Brothers, Interviews, Jason Schwartzman Leave a comment

I like to consider Jason Schwartzman and I best buddies. Now as to whether he feels the same way, I can only speculate a resounding “Yes.” The following interview took place during the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival, where I first acquainted with the dapper star of Bob Byington‘s secretly hysterical 7 Chinese Brothers and took to asking him soul-searching questions pertaining to his preference for cats or dogs. Join us as we discuss injecting himself into the role, if he’s as snide as the characters he plays, his preference for a lazy day and what it’s like co-starring in a movie with his dog.

Out in Theaters: 7 CHINESE BROTHERS

August 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged 7 Chinese Brothers, Bob Byington, Jason Schwartzman, Olympia Dukakis, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tunde Adebimpe Leave a comment

The old “I could watch so-and-so read a phone book” adage speaks to an ability to turn the banal into something unexpected and has been liberally applied to the works of anyone from Bill Murray to Daniel Day Lewis. In a similar but distinctly different vein, there’s something mundanely alluring about planting Jason Schwartzman in a room and allowing him to made snide riffs on each and every thing. The Rushmore-starrer possesses uncommon command over his ability to make you feel lesser, even if he’s day drunk, mostly unemployed and in the middle of getting punched in the face and Bob Byington capitalizes insanely on his ability to do such. Read More

Out in Theaters: WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS

August 28, 2015 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Emily Ratajkowski, Max Joseph, Out in Theaters, Reviews, We Are Your Friends, Wes Bentley, Zac Efron Leave a comment

I could rant and rave about EDM culture till the MDMAddicts foam at the mouth. What’s supposed to be about music really only appears to focus on grabbing the nearest thing and doing it — be it man, woman or drug. Famous DJs make trash music that sells because it’s what we all want to hear. A new-age art form that’s endemic in my generation, EDM shows more about how we’ve raged than how we’ve changed. I hoped We Are Your Friends might delve into the DJ lifestyle that’s evolved into an addiction. At some points, it blurs the lines and senses and manages to say something poignant. Then it OD’s and it’s a bad trip from there. Read More