Cats, ‘Animal House’ and sci-fi at Maine movie houses in August
"State of Firsts." (Image courtesy of Melissa Langer)
Welcome to August in Maine, when the sun really gets in its last licks, the bugs are still hungry and there’s truly no place better to spend a hot summer night than a nice cool movie theater showing something weird and wonderful. This time around, Maine’s indie movie venues bring you everything from cute kitties to some real animals, vital documentaries to vintage nuclear annihilation, and plenty more in between.
‘State of Firsts’
July 31-Aug. 5, Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square, Portland, portlandmuseum.org/films
In 2025 Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender person elected to the United States House of Representatives. This documentary chronicling the Delaware Democrat’s rocky and triumphant rise grapples unflinchingly with the bigotry McBride faced on the campaign trail and once she took her seat, with Republican colleagues like Nancy Mace, Bill Self, Mike Johnson and Mary Miller lobbing thuggish attacks in the House floor but not deterring the newly elected lawmaker from buckling down and doing the job she was elected for. With trans people becoming the GOP’s latest scapegoat and favorite target any time things don’t go their narrow-minded way, this film documents one trans lawmaker’s courage and dedication to doing the people’s work in the face of the cynical, opportunistic cruelty of small-minded people.
‘CatVideoFest 2026’
Aug. 8-20, PMA Films, 7 Congress Square, Portland, portlandmuseum.org/films
You know you love your cats — almost as much as you love filming their delightful antics on your phone and posting it online. Thankfully, the fine folks at Oscilloscope Laboratories comb through endless hours of such kitty content each year to bring you nothing but the cream on top, with this year’s “CatVideoFest 2026” providing pure, undiluted big-screen catnip for anybody who loves watching adorable felines doing what they do. This yearly, 70-minute jolt of uncomplicated, deeply necessary joy-fuel has proven so enduringly popular that not just the PMA but the Strand Theatre in Rockland is also running this year’s program. Plus, proceeds go to local animal shelters, making your ticket a win-win for you and your little cat buddies everywhere.
‘Animal House’
Aug. 5, Nickelodeon Cinemas, 1 Temple St., Portland, patriotcinemas.com
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The Nickelodeon’s Wayback Wednesday film series offers viewers a chance to reflect on just how our nostalgic favorites have aged. Now, have nearly 50 years of changing attitudes toward (checks list) consent, misogyny, underage sex, drugs, and drinking and college hazing culture evolved in that half-century since John Belushi and the disreputable frat boys of Delta House threw their last toga party? Thankfully, a bit. Does that make this 1978 blockbuster comedy from the minds behind the National Lampoon magazine (including Harold Ramis and Doug Kenney) still riotously hilarious? An emphatic yes, even if the peeping, manipulative woman-chasing, and the occasional plot twist of what would now be considered statutory assault inspire more guilty pleasure than they used to. Just looking at the woeful flood of imitator college comedies that followed “Animal House’s” success is to marvel at how perfectly everyone involved here hit the comic targets they were aiming at, no matter how low. It’s easy to do raunch, but only truly smart people can make the disreputable so enduringly entertaining.
‘WarGames’
Aug. 5 and 8, Kinonik, 121 Cassidy Point Drive, Portland, kinonik.org
Speaking of throwbacks, why not settle in for a surprisingly still thrilling bit of 1980s Cold War teen end-of-the-world action comedy. It’s 1983, the Commies are the unequivocal bad guys, those newfangled home computers are mysterious and threatening, and Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy can open a movie. He’s a precociously cheeky computer nerd who, in a quest to play some unreleased computer games, accidentally hacks into NORAD’s top secret anti-Russian nuclear program. This mix of teen comedy and apocalyptic techno-thriller works splendidly thanks top action movie maestro director John Badham, who keeps things speeding along at such a zippy clip that we don’t have time to chuckle at computers with Speak and Spell voices or the improbability of a whiz kid penetrating the highest levels of nuclear security. (If anything, the current administration has put to bed any thought that the nuclear codes are under control of the best and brightest.) Film-on-film freaks Kinonik have been showing pristine prints of several of Badham’s films (“American Flyers,” “Ladyhawke”), so this is the perfect opportunity to relive your childhood in crystal clear quality.
‘Sheep in the Box’
Aug. 7-29, PMA Films, 7 Congress Square, Portland, portlandmuseum.org/films
Starts Aug. 7, Maine Film Center, 93 Main St., Waterville, watervillecreates.org
“Sheep in the Box.” (Image courtesy of Toho)
If the techno-paranoia of “WarGames” feels a little goofy in 2026, this eerily emotional sci-fi drama from director Hirokazu Koreeda suggests that, just maybe, our worries about the potential of technology to go places we don’t want were warranted after all. In the near future, a married couple loses a son, so they engage a perfect artificial replica of the boy. As the couple grapples with conflicted feelings about this high-tech method of managing their grief, the new child begins to grow and change in unexpected ways that challenge everything. A powerfully potent yet gentle examination of love, loss, and our only-growing dependence on tech, this is another impossibly lovely meditation on what it means to be alive (or sort-of alive) from the director who brought us 1998’s exquisite “After Life.”
Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and his cat.
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Tagged: movies, Screen Time
