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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 6, 2007)
APRIL fc aro IUStOUt,39 îonday WINE SHOP & BAR Enjoy local and European artisan-style wines. gay service indusrry nite with dj synthetic spinning electroclash tuesday FREE pool FREE foosball FREE WiFi Wild Tigers I Have Known intimately explores the turmoil of queer adolescence and feelings of being "different." , Premonition Sandra Bullock plays a wife and mother who wakes to a horrible day when her husband dies in a car crash. But she’s soon caught in a time loop, where every morning is either a day in the past or the future. Can she prevent her husband’s death? Premonition wants to be a “chick flick Memento,” but its time travel logic is flawed from the start, and there are many long moments of gloomy boredom. The cast is good enough to carry attention, but with every new focus on Bullock waking up, I felt more and more like taking a nap. C + —AM Pride This inspirational film is based on the tme story of a former swimmer (Terrence Howard) working as a janitor who rebuilds a pool in a Philadelphia recre ation center and starts an all-black team. Although the underdog sports drama is a predictable cliche, this story, encouraging minority teens to overcome odds and become winners, is still timeless. B- —YPB The Taste of Tea Further prœf that the Japanese can hold their own with America’s best and brightest indie auteurs in style, hipness and out-there humor. Unfortunately, The Taste of Tea is about 45 minutes too long and the forlorn love story at its core buried beneath so many layers of surreality, non sequiturs, poop and poetry you might not be able to find it. “It might be hard for you to understand, because it’s my world,” a mother muses to her daughter halfway through the film. “Even 1 don’t get it.” Opens April 6 at Holly w<xxl Theatre. B- —TL Wild Tigers I Have Known Writer/director Cam Archer’s debut feature, executive produced by Portland's own homegrown queer cinéaste, Gus Van Sant, is admirable (not to mention beautiful) in its aesthetic quest for a ten der sort of simplicity. Rarely is the turmoil of queer adolescence explored with so much intimacy and so little archness. The film somewhat episodically depicts the events and accompanying emotions in the junior- high-bound life of barely pubescent Logan (the wonderfully vulnerable Malcolm Stumpf), the foremost of which is an all-consuming crush on a slightly older boy, Rodeo (Patrick White). Logan lives with his loving but harried mother (Fairuza Balk) in what appears to be a minor tourist town on the California coast. (The film was shot in Santa Cruz.) The empty rides and boardwalks make for a lovely and apt background for Logan’s feelings of being “different”—not part of the usual (hetero sexual) teenage rituals—and Archer (along with cinematographer Aaron Platt) creates wonderful visual compositions that tell whole stories in themselves. In fact, most of the information we get about Logan comes from simply observing his routine, which, true to many a teen experience, consists mostly of masturbating and watching TV, along with his wanderings, either alone or with Rodeo, on the beach and through the wixxls. All this is interspersed with Logan’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts, often addressed to himself and spoken in voice-over. The only suspense here arises from Logan’s bold, devious and dcximed scheme to seduce Rixleo, which comes to a naturalistic, unresolved end eschewing the false finality of most dramatic resolutions in the movies. The film’s primary flaw lies in its lack of decisiveness about what it wants to be. Much of it has rhe feel and pace of an “experimental," non narrative filru to be responded to on a purely visual, emotional level. But other scenes seem randomly to go for much more straightforward dramatic story telling. It’s a mixture that sometimes «forks and sometimes d<x?sn’t, and when it doesn’t, it can feel like the narrative/dramatic version of the film vying with the non-narrative/p<x.‘tic one, each interfering with and watering down the other. Wild Tigers is, therefore, not a perfect film. But, like Miranda July’s You and Me and Everyone We Know, it’s so delicate and aspires to something so rarely personal that most viewers will be responsive to and protective of it (and its characters) regard less. Both as a first feature by a promising director and as a seemingly guileless at»mpt to genuinely acknowledge the awkward, horny outsider many of us same-sexers were as we came of age, it’s an important and rewarding effort. . Screens 7 p m. April 19 and 430 p.m. April 22 at Northwest Film Center. B + —Christopher McQuain © www.badgirlwines.com portlands biggest tuesday nite hosted by cory with rhe GO of Boxxes &. fso dj wednesda TOraoke with your hosts anthony and josh- over 30,000 songs to choose 2929 SE Powell Blvd. (503) 231-VINO thursda die original thursday nite watering hole with dj dougalicious fnday— with dj sam rhe GO of Boxxes the hottest hip hop nite hosted by cory Saturday thei O (and small enough for your date) pordand’s best dj line up w/ fso, dougalicious, levente, seth button, dj tronic and leonetri of the sexy crew, come party with 600 of your closest friends. Sunday losted by heather - * r? cinema has come to us senses LIVING RtlOM r i » i f s h h foi movie inloimannn anil shown«, visit us al www livmgroomtheaieis.com
