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Your Weekly Roundup of New Movies: “Limbo’s” Unforced Comedy Is Remarkably Shrewd Yet Innocent What to see and skip while streaming at home or going to the theater. (TIFF)
Limbo Syrian refugee Omar won’t pluck his oud (an 11-stringed Middle Eastern lute) outside his home country. It doesn’t sound right on Scottish soil, he says. Given the natural acoustics, who could blame him? Omnipresent in U.K. director Ben Sharrock’s spare comedy are the oppressive gusts and rumbling waves of this Scottish isle, creating a sensorial conundrum for asylum seekers like Omar awaiting their papers. The wild, whistling remoteness all around is a prison of freedom. All the while, Omar (Amir El-Masry) hauls his encased oud around “like a coffin for [his] soul,” teases flatmate Farhad (Vikash Bhai), exemplifying
Willamette Week
The need for strong, independent local journalism
is more urgent than ever. Please support the city we
love by joining Friends of Willamette Week.
Your Weekly Roundup of New Movies: In the New HBO Documentary “Our Towns,” Bend is Portrayed as an Economic Success Story What to see and skip in theaters or while streaming. (HBO)
Our Towns When journalists Deborah and James Fallows conclude their new HBO documentary in Bend, the Central Oregon hub is held up as a beacon, having reinvented itself into a year-round tourist destination after weathering the 1980s timber crash. Evolving municipal identity runs through all eight profiles in