May 16-22, 2025

Hello, friends! 

This week, the comedy-horror film Clown in a Cornfield (from the director of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil) continues for one final weekend, and Sinnersand We Were Dangerous will be with us for one last hurrah as well before they leave our screens on May 22. Be sure to catch them before they’re gone! 

New this week and here with us only for a limited run (last showings are May 22) is the extraordinary feature film debut The Legend of Ochi from director Isaiah Saxon. Movies for families -- particularly films that aren’t extremely broad, commercial films -- are rare in cinemas, and films with this kind of unique artistic creativity are even rarer. It won't be for the very youngest of kiddos, given there are some frightening sequences (parents might find Common Sense Media guide helpful while deciding what’s best for their families), but Ochi is a wonderful throwback to an earlier era of films from the 1980’s, prior to the advent of CGI, films like The Neverending Story, E.T., and Labyrinth, where ingenious practical effects ruled the day, where previously unknown child actors won our hearts, and where it was ok if the story was genuinely a little scary.  

Here, an absolutely riveting Helena Zengel plays Yuri, a young farm girl in the imaginary land of Carpathia, where legends of supposedly dangerous forest monsters called “the Ochi” haunt the human inhabitants and where some, including Maxim, Yuri’s father (played by an always terrific Willem Dafoe), decide hunting and eliminating the Ochi is their best path to safety. When Yuri meets an adorable baby Ochi, who resembles a furry baby Yoda and who has been separated from its mother, Yuri decides to leave her father’s violent ways and bring the baby back home to its family. 

It’s a story of adventure, of family, and of overcoming prejudice and finding one’s way to love and acceptance. And if the story is, at times, a bit overstuffed, the practical effects are simply stunning, the baby Ochi is irresistible, and the lead actors -- particularly Zengel, Dafoe, and Emily Watson (who plays Yuri’s estranged, but wise, nature-loving mother) -- sell the space of this magical, fantastical world in the same way the film’s forebears, The Neverending Story and Labyrinth, did. 

And I’m not sure if this is some kind of Pickford record, but in addition to our theatrical-run films, we’ve got special events lined-up for you every single day this week: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday!  

On Sunday, our Alfred Hitchcock Presents series returns with Strangers on a Train, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel and starring Farley Granger (whom we also saw in Rope), Ruth Roman, Patricia Hitchcock (Hitchcock’s daughter), and Robert Walker, as one of the very best villains in the Hitchcock canon. It’s a film that asks, what happens when a respectable tennis star with an inconvenient, troublesome wife and an ambition for politics meets a friendly, charismatic stranger who proposes murder -- and an ironclad alibi -- as a solution to his problems?  

Full of light and shadow, of doubles and double-crossings, of queasy carnivals and careening merry-go-rounds, of dark desires and doppelgangers, and, of course, of murder, Strangers on a Train is one of Hitchcock’s most thrilling films.  

Join us on Sunday at 1:00 pm! I’ll be on hand, too, to offer a few more comments by way of an introduction. 

Also on Sunday, for all the post-hardcore and art punk Fugazi fans out there, we’ve got the new music doc We Are Fugazi from Washington D.C.. True to the spirit of the band, the documentary is fully comprised of“crowd sourced, fan recorded live shows and rare archive footage.” It’s billed, in fact, as a “nondocumentary,” and it aims to “pay tribute to Fugazi’s prowess as a live act — for old fans to remember and for a new generation to discover what they missed,” a celebration of “fans and their cameras, as much as the band itself.”

 Join us on Sunday at 3:45 pm!  30% of all ticket sales will go to KZAK LPFM. 

On Monday, May 19, The Mountain Runners returns for what is now an annual Pickford tradition in the week leading up to the Ski-to-Sea race. The documentary tells the riveting story of the origin of the race, which was first run in 1911 and where the extraordinary athletes included woodsmen, loggers, coal miners, a bedspring maker, postman, a milkman and a wrestler.  

We’re pleased to say that co-director Brian Young -- and a surprise special guest -- will be joining us after the film for a Q&A. Join us Monday at 6:00 pm!

Five years ago, on May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a murder that was captured on camera and that sparked a summer of history-making nationwide protests for Black lives and against police brutality. In the small town of Lynden, brave young students of color, led by Amsa Burke, formed their own protest, the town’s first-ever march for racial justice, and were met by fierce counter-protesters, violent rhetoric, and guns. 

Returning to the Pickford after screenings with us last summer, Lyndentells the story of Amsa, the march, and the yearlong fallout after the march, where members of the town grappled with the uncomfortable truths the march -- and the town’s response to it -- exposed.  

Join us on Wednesday at 6:00 pm for this single, special event screening, commemorating the 5-year anniversary of the protests and in sober recognition of the ideological divides the film illuminates that still haunt our nation today.