* Adore. You heard of wife-swapping? How about son-swapping? Naomi Watts and Robin Wright are best friends who start having sex with each other's sons. It's all very literary.
* Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's slick directorial debut. You will be asked to believe that porn is better than Scarlett Johansson. I remain unconvinced. There is nothing better than Scarlett Johansson.
* Gravity. See this in the biggest, loudest theater you can. Then again, if you need me to tell you that, you must be living somewhere no one can hear you scream.
* Inequality for All, a documentary about the widening gulf between the 1% and the working poor, as well as the disappearing middle class. Luckily, your host for this sobering journey is the affable Robert Reich.
* Rush, a middle-of-the-pack racecar movie from Ron Howard.
* Short Term 12, one of the year's best. Brie Larson stars in this potent drama about counselors for troubled teens who find some of the kids' problems hit a little too close to home.
My Oregonian columns...
We're shaking things up a bit. Online, the column I write will now be broken up and the individual movies listed on their own; the Friday paper will still print them all together. These first few, naturally, are the old way.
* September 6: go on pilgrimage in the documentary Walking the Camino, see Richard Elfman introduce a colorized Forbidden Zone, and watch the Everything is Terrible! website come alive.
* September 13: Two from Charlie Ahearn, the Trent Harris retrospective, and a dreadful Portland-made documentary.
* September 20: two documentaries--the art-themed Herb and Dorothy 50X50 and Rise from Ashes, about the Rwandan bicycle team--alongside a revival run of Tarantino's Elmore Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown.
* Cutie and the Boxer, a documentary about two Japanese artists who have been married and living in New York for four decades.
* Gideon's Army, a personal look at public defenders and the Herculean nature of their professions.
* Salma, the true story of an Indian poet who transformed confinement into art.
* The Trials of Mohammad Ali, a documentary looking at what happened to the champ when he stopped being Cassius Clay and started to stand up for what he believed.
* A Tribute to Les Blank: Three nights of Southern culture, music, and food.
* Plus, two creative, off-the-beaten path screenings: From Nothing, Something asks a variety of artistic types why they do what they do, and Vanessa Renwick shows us what it is she does in the Wild Beasties program.
ON DVD/BVD...
* Between Us, a smart indie drama with Julia Stiles and Taye Diggs.
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