November 14-20, 2025

Hello, friends!  

So many movies and so many events this week at the Pickford! Continuing at Bay St. are the runaway hits Frankenstein and Bugonia, and continuing on Grand Ave. are the tenderly moving Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere and the electrifying Die My Love as well as Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke’s Blue Moon, which you all liked so much, we had to move it to a bigger theater!

We’ve also got three new films hitting our screens for theatrical runs: Train Dreams (on Bay St.), The Mastermind (on Grand Ave.), and The Running Man (on Grand Ave.). 

The lovely Train Dreams has a sadly short theatrical window, but it's a film, like Frankenstein, that should be seen in cinemas: a beautiful, lyrical film that feels a bit Terence Malick-inspired, and it's set right here in the Pacific Northwest and was shot in Eastern Washington and Snoqualmie, highlighting the glorious beauty of our state. 

It's based on the novella by Denis Johnson, and it's directed and co-written by Clint Bentley and co-written by Greg Kwedar, both of whom you may remember from their work on the superb Sing Sing, which played at the Pickford last year and was nominated for three Oscars.  

The story of Train Dreams follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a logger and railroad worker, over a period of time in the early to mid 20th century, and the film immerses us in his life, from his working days and nights in the forest with his fellow loggers (William H. Macy is truly wonderful, playing another logger), to his romance and marriage and life with his wife (a terrific Felicity Jones), to other changes and heartbreaks along the way as the years go by.

It's the kind of film that burrows under your skin and makes you feel all kinds of things, a deeply intimate story of one particular man but a story that is also sweeping in its exquisite beauty and scope. I loved it.

Our second new film this week is The Mastermind, directed by the great, the marvelous, the wonderful Kelly Reichardt, who has never made a bad film--every single one is a masterpiece--and this one carries on the tradition. It's so very good. 

It's a heist movie--Josh O'Connor plays a character in a small town in the midst of the Vietnam-era who decides to steal a few pieces from the local art museum--but it's a heist movie in only the way Reichardt could do it: less about the thrill of the heist and more about the nature of the person doing it and how it reflects on the world in which he lives. Without giving too much away, I will say, I wasn't quite sure exactly what she was up to, in terms of what the film was saying thematically, until the very end, but then it hit me with such grace and an almost casual power that it was breathtaking. It’s very much the kind of ending Reichardt often offers, whether it’s Certain Women hitting me with an emotional wallop in the final moments, or Meek’s Cutoff presenting one of the most provocative and powerful final images of the decade, The Mastermind’s ending, too, packs that kind of pungence because of how carefully and masterfully the film leads us up to that moment.    

It's a striking film, too, in that I think Reichardt has least sympathy for her main character (unlike, say, the vulnerable and gentle main characters in Wendy and Lucy or First Cow), but, no matter the film, she's never not clear-eyed about who her characters are, and her precision at laying bare their faults and moral failings has never been better--or, I must say, funnier--than here. And O'Connor is the perfect actor for her, embodying a shambolic sort of guy who has more confidence than he deserves to and never seems to quite comprehend his own smallness even in his repeated failings. But he's so fully human, too, that it's also difficult to judge him--because he could, really, be any of us. 

And a film that offers perhaps the very opposite kind of vibe from the quietly sly The Mastermind is the explosive The Running Man, the newest film from the beloved Edgar Wright (who made such Pickford favorites as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and a new iteration of Stephen King's novel of the same name (which was set in 2025!) or, if you prefer, a remake of the 1987 The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

The basic storyline is the same--a man has to compete on a TV game show where it's life and death stakes--but, interestingly, Wright sticks a bit closer to the original novel (while giving us a slightly happier ending). In the 1987 film, Schwarzenegger was a wrongfully convicted police officer who could win his freedom only by playing the game; in the novel and here, our main character, Ben Richards, is living in a dystopian world where poverty is the norm, and goods, food, and medicine are scarce; his wife is a sex worker and he has lost his job; they need money--fast--to pay for the medicine their daughter needs, and so in desperation, he chooses to join the game show as a contestant where he must survive assassins who will try to kill him as well as evade the everyday people who might record and report his whereabouts. 

Wright gathered a terrific cast for this update on the original story--Glen Powell (as Ben Richards), Josh Brolin (as Dan Killian), Lee Pace, Katy O'Brian (whom y'all might remember from Love Lies Bleeding), Colman Domingo, William H. Macy, Michael Cera, and Emilia Jones, among others. (Domingo and Cera are especially delightful in their roles and are perfectly suited to the Edgar Wright oeuvre.)   

It's a film that rips along and is never not highly entertaining.  I wished, by the end, the satirical elements present in the original story and refreshed for this story-update could have been slightly stronger, particularly since we’ve seen Wright do satire so beautifully in films like Shaun of the Dead, but in this film, Wright does ably touch on key issues of our times, resulting in some potent scenes, images, and themes. Notably, it depicts a world in which everything and everyone everywhere can be filmed and everything on film can be edited, a circumstance that can be exploited equally by authoritarian militants or by wealthy figures who control the media and access to the facts, and who thus control the narrative. 

I am not sure if there was ever a more pointed film for us in a digital age of misinformation, online conspiracies and influencers, AI manipulation, and bids to control the very news we consume. Wright, at least, in the film, leaves us with some hope; I suppose what hope there is in our real world to combat media manipulation and disinformation will be ours to determine. 

We also have some wonderful events this week, alongside our theatrical-run films: 

On Saturday, November 15, we’ll be screening Apollo 13, Ron Howard’s nail-biting depiction of the near-disaster that was the Apollo 13 lunar mission, and it’s a part of our ongoing happy collaboration with Bellingham Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and our Symphony on Screen series. The opening musical theme from Apollo 13 will be featured in BSO’s November 9th concert, and BSO ticket-holders will receive $1 off their Pickford movie ticket. Get your ticket for the November 9 Bellingham symphony here, and then join us on the 15th for the film! 

And in honor of one of the great American actresses who left us this past month, Diane Keaton, we’ll be playing Baby Boom on Sunday, November 16 at 1:00 pm. Baby Boom, perhaps, is not her most iconic role nor most well-known (that would be Annie Hall), but it is one of the few films in her filmography, which gave her the full, unabashed lead. In so many other films, she shares the spotlight. And while she always made any film she was in better--what would The Godfather be without her heartbreaking performance?--Baby Boom is, from start to finish, Diane Keaton's film. Its feminism is, of course, somewhat dated, but as with so many of her films, her presence, her warmth, her depth, is unmistakably splendid, and it's a film I watched repeatedly in high school and still I turn on whenever I'm looking for something to cheer me up. 

Here’s to you, Diane Keaton: we’ll love you forever. 

I’m also delighted to say that our Exhibition on Screen series is back this year with Caravaggio, after a wonderful season last time (featuring Van Gogh, the Impressionists, and Michelangelo). The Exhibition on Screen films are always gloriously shot, offering us an up close and personal view of some of the greatest works of art ever made, and this is no less glorious. The series also offers a fascinating look at the artists behind the works, and this deep dive into Caravaggio’s life is beautifully done. 

Co-director Phil Grabsky writes of Caravaggio, “Caravaggio has always loomed large in my mind – an artist of unmatched intensity, technical brilliance and dramatic force. Despite this, he is often reduced to a kind of tabloid figure; the brawling, dangerous outsider with a sword in one hand and a brush in the other. In this film we set out to peel back the layers of caricature and show the real man. Yes, there were conflicts and court cases, but they are a fraction of a much bigger, more intricate, and frankly more interesting story. Caravaggio was deeply thoughtful, spiritually inquisitive, and artistically revolutionary. He believed deeply in the power of realism to connect with people on an emotional level. He chose models from the streets not to shock, but to speak truth. He painted saints with dirt under their fingernails because he understood that the divine resides in the real, the raw, the human. That takes courage. It takes conviction. And it takes a kind of empathy that few artists before or since have managed to express so powerfully. This is not a film about a man in the shadows. This is a film about an artist who used light to reveal the soul.”

Join us on Wednesday, November 19 at 5:30 pm (or on Sunday, November 23, at 11:00 am)!    

After delighting us in 2024, Perfect Days is back for a one-time only very special screening on Thursday, November 20, in collaboration with Western Washington University and the day-long symposium they are hosting on Friday, November 21, a symposium devoted to exploring the richness of Perfect Days: "Noticing the Neglected: Public Architecture, Perfect Days, and Perspectives on Equity.” The symposium is open to the public and free of charge, and more information can be found here. The illustrious Dr. Linda C. Ehrlich, a speaker for the symposium, will be joining us at the Pickford as well, for an introduction before the film screening. 

Join us for Dr. Ehrlich's introduction and film on Thursday evening, and then check out the symposium on Friday! It promises to be quite a special set of events. 

And it’s been a long, impatient year, waiting for the second half of the film that defied gravity and warmed our hearts last November, but the moment has finally arrived: on Thursday, November 20, at Bay St., there are two chances to see advance screenings of Wicked: For Good at the Pickford before it opens with full showtimes on Friday. For those who want a refresher of the first film, we’re playing a Wicked+Wicked:For Good double feature on Thursday morning at 11:00 am--over 5 hours of musical goodness (and wickedness), with an intermission included. And for those who just want to see Wicked: For Good on Thursday evening, we’ll be screening the new film at 8:15 pm. Tickets are going fast for both screenings; get ‘em while they last! 

Finally, one of the dearest and sweetest films of the year is here for an advanced screening on Grand Ave. on Thursday evening, November 20: Rental Family. Brendan Fraser plays Phillip, an American expat who travelled to Japan for an acting job and never left. He loves his new home in Tokyo and would never consider returning to the U.S., but he lives a lonely life – until he is offered an unusual acting job, to play a stand-in in real people's lives. I’ll have more to say about this one next week, but suffice to say, this is exactly the kind of lovely--but not saccharine--film I’m always looking for this time of year, and Fraser is a delight. Join us on Thursday at 7:45 pm! 

See you at the movies, friends! 

Melissa