Cinema Pacific Preview: The Best of the 36th Northwest Film and Video Festival

This well-ordered and wisely chosen selection of shorts from Portland’s Northwest Film and Video Festival is a promising overview of Northwest short film. Most of the selections are smart, spry and inventive — and a surprising number are animated, all in different styles and with wildly varying subject matter. “The Mouse That Soared,” which opens the program, is a playful, vividly colored short that aspires to be one of the brief, wordless pieces that preface Pixar films. The animation is a little high-gloss, but the characters are charming. Continue reading 

SXSW Film: ‘Cold Weather’

I would be wary of too highly praising the low-key and charming Cold Weather were it not for one thing: I went into the movie with what might’ve been, in another film, an unfairly high level of anticipation. A critic whose opinion I generally hold in high regard, L.A. Weekly’s Karina Longworth, called it the first unqualified hit of SXSW. Continue reading 

SXSW Film: ‘Lemmy’

I’m not the world’s biggest Motörhead fan, but even I can’t even see the name “Lemmy” without seeing that creased brow and hearing “The ace of spades! The ace of spades!” in my head. Motörhead is universal; Motörhead is monumental. Motörhead’s Lemmy is as deserving of a documentary as any musician who’s been doing his thing for more than 30 loud years. Continue reading