Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
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MOVIES
Hairspray (1988) John Waters (aka the King of Filth) ventures into family-friendly territory with his 1960s-set comedy about a “pleasantly plump” teenager who gets on a local TV dance show and also finds the time to successfully protest against racial segregation. Not to be confused with the 2007 Hairspray movie musical. OMSI Bridge Lot, July 22.
Cinema Paradiso (1988) In this exalting ode to movie theaters, a young boy in Sicily develops a lifelong passion for cinema after being taken under the wing of a local projectionist. As he ages, however, he realizes that life doesn’t always mirror the magic of the movies—but sometimes, if we’re lucky, it can. The perfect way to celebrate the return of that sacred tradition of going to the theater. Hollywood, July 24-25.
Donnie Darko (2001) EVERETT COLLECTION
HEAVY HEART: Stark imagery and visceral acting by podcaster Jude Brewer elevate Your Heart Is Mine.
One Long Scream From music video to morbid experimental film, Your Heart Is Mine may be unusual, but it’s winning awards and garnering attention. BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P FEI FER
@chance_s_p
SEE IT: Your Heart Is Mine streams at filmfreeway.com/ YourHeartIsMine. Free.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the titular Donnie Darko, one of the most iconic emo teens in film history. Depressed and troubled (all around him are familiar faces, worn-out places, worn-out faces), Donnie has visions of a man in a grotesque bunny suit called Frank who tells him the world will end in 28 days. Drew Barrymore, Jena Malone and Patrick Swayze co-star. Clinton, July 26.
Claudine (1974) In this 1970s Harlem-set romantic dramedy, a garbage collector named Roop (James Earl Jones) falls for Claudine (Diahann Carroll), a mother of six scraping by on welfare. Though Roop is at first intimidated by her chaotic home life, and systemic economic inequality threatens the pair’s stability, their love manages to overcome all obstacles. Hollywood, July 26.
Dark Star (1974) LETTERBOXD
Merging ASMR-ready sound design, confessional poetry, ghostly cinematography, a showstopping monologue, and enough spilled water to devour an entire security deposit, the Portland-made short film Your Heart Is Mine is an expression of tension burrowed so deeply, no amount of moviemaking can relieve it. Exhibited last year to positive receptions at the Oregon Scream Week Horror and the Sherman Oaks film festivals, Your Heart Is Mine was conceived piecemeal and birthed uncomfortably by Vancouver, Wash., filmmaker Jake Whiston, perhaps best known as half of the Portland folknoir duo Whiston & Warmack. “I think giving you a coherent answer would be dishonest,” Whiston says of the film’s evolution from music video idea to macabre experimental drama. The director compares the finished product to shaking off a nightmare, which suits the 20-minute short’s oppressive gloom. It begins in a black-and-white bathroom with images of a frighteningly distant, long-locked woman (nearly recalling The Grudge). Within this traumatic childhood memory, we absorb the whispered mantra (“your heart is mine”) of a deceased mother and volatile artist played by Portland’s Zoe Stuckless. That voice still echoes within her adult son Charles (Jude Brewer) as color flows back into the present tense and local thespian Tim Jaeger unloads a sinister, almost Tywin Lannister-esque dressing down on his silent son about movers who ruined their apartment by setting off the sprinkler system. From there, Your Heart Is Mine grows only more eerie, driven by Whiston’s obsession with rhythm and the titular song by Jared Hinton, aka People, that announces the film’s climax. There’s a fixation with floor-bound water droplets, then a father-son tussle so intimate it literally bumps into the camera, then a prolonged encounter with a sex worker having very little to do with sex. “When these strings hit, something awful has to happen,” says Whiston of his instinctual writing process. He confirms it’s difficult to summarize how these narrative and stylistic pieces fully unify. The editing, Whiston says, amounted to a brawl between artistic ambition and the subconscious.
“[The film] is almost kind of stupidly metaphorical for how I felt during making it,” he adds, “wrestling with all these forces I didn’t have control over.” Ultimately, Your Heart Is Mine is elevated by stark imagery and visceral acting, including the film debut of Portland podcaster and author Jude Brewer. The host of the literary podcast Storybound (with a new season featuring Chuck Klosterman and Matt Haig) embodies hapless protagonist Charles—stunted into overmatched silence by the emotional assaults of his ever-present, spectral mother and wickedly eloquent father. Brewer spends most of the movie in claustrophobic close-up: clenching, swallowing, thinning his voice into a quaver through which he’ll try to ask the father about the mother’s untimely death. “It felt like a very unconventional protagonist for a film,” Brewer says. “I’m literally not in control of any of it. I’m just forced to experience it.” While the film’s genre remains an unsolvable question, both director and star particularly appreciate the accolades from last year’s Oregon Scream Week Horror Film Festival, at which Brewer was named Best Actor. “It’s definitely horror of a kind,” says Brewer, comparing his performance to one long unutterable scream. “I was just trying to torture myself for, like, four days basically. I think a much more experienced actor would not do that, probably.” After several more submissions, Brewer and Whiston hope additional 2021 festival appearances lie ahead for Your Heart Is Mine, but for now, audiences can view it online, with headphones recommended to fully immerse in its spine-tingling sound design and the score Whiston devised partially by smacking butter knives against wine bottles. The self-deprecating director calls his own film flawed, but it’s an equally fascinating and devastating pit in which to spend 20 minutes, steeped in intense craft, untrained Method acting and sensory precision. Good thing too, because there’s no escape.
Horror master John Carpenter’s debut feature is a sci-fi comedy about the Dark Star, a dilapidated starship tasked with the mission of destroying unstable planets. Bored after 20 years of the same routine and frustrated by their faulty equipment, the isolated crew soon finds themselves in a series of misadventures. Clinton, July 23.
ALSO PLAYING: Clinton: Flower Storms: Iranian Animation, July 21. Astro Boy (2009), July 22. The Iron Giant (1999), July 24. Hollywood: The Producers (1967), July 23. The Wizard of Oz (1939), July 24-25. Smokey and the Bandit (1977), July 27. OMSI Bridge Lot: Flashdance (1983), July 23. Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com
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