Sound Cinema: Pickford Film Center
Marquee at Grand Ave, Pickford Film Center, Bellingham.
The Evergreen Echo
When I started this column, I began with a list of theaters and where they are located. This was in late 2024. To find a new theater to visit this month, I went to my list and picked out the Pickford Film Center in Bellingham. To plan my trip as per usual, I went to their website to see what was playing. I noticed something I had not expected: the Pickford Film Center had expanded.
So much of this project came from the fact that many independent Seattle theaters had permanently closed after declining sales or the business decision to save the body of a theater group by cutting off a failing branch. Even after starting this column, several theaters I had covered, or had planned to cover, closed for good. To see that just a year ago a new theater had sprung up is heartening. It's not monumental, but it is a start.
The Pickford Film Center at Grand Ave. was an effort by the Center's board of directors to further meet the demand for the cinematic experience in downtown Bellingham. They had found a space not very far from their home location on Bay St. and in August 2021, the work began to bring the space to life. In August 2025, the Grand location opened. This makes the Grand the youngest theater, by nearly a decade, covered so far here in Sound Cinema.
The space is very stylish. It is longer than it is wide. The lobby feels like a modern boutique with candy, merchandise, and books for sale at the side and a counter outlined in black with popcorn and ticket takers. The two main screens are off a small staircase to the left of the lobby. The restrooms are multiple individual rooms with a communal sink outside. Based on the film I had chosen, it felt fitting that the two restrooms I used during my visit featured movie posters of Ang Lee's NC-17 erotic thriller Lust, Caution and Alex Cox's rock biopic Sid & Nancy.
I was in the Joy theater which is off to the right of the stairs. With the stairway up to the entrance, it creates a slope for the seats in a stadium configuration on the first tier and a gentle slope on the second. The seats themselves, being very new, were quite comfortable and there was plenty of legroom to be had.
I mostly chose the Grand for its film selection. As much as I really enjoyed The Odyssey, I wanted something new and the other feature currently at Bay St. is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which I have waffled on whether or not to see as the MCU Spider-Man films are not my favorite. So, I chose New Queer Cinema pioneer Gregg Araki's latest comedy, I Want Your Sex.
Theater inside the Grand at PFC
The Evergreen Echo
I Want Your Sex is about a recent college graduate, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), who takes a job as an assistant to provocative artist Erika (Olivia Wilde). The pair fall quickly into a sexual relationship with Erika as domme to Elliot's sub. The film is enticing at first and could go in any number of directions, but it eventually falls flat. Anything all-encompassing it wanted to say about intergenerational views on sex and relationships gets bogged down by the views of the filmmakers that Gen Z is ultra prudish in person while being addicted to internet porn. Spoiler: It also walks too thin a line in trying to be darkly humorous about a situation in which a subordinate is sexually groomed by a superior.
The Grand has a full calendar of upcoming new releases as well as several films that are a part of its Grandiversary celebration. A cannot miss of that series is RRR (Rise Roar Revolt), a raucous Bollywood musical about two men who form an epic friendship so strong it can take on the entire British Imperial system through revolution, glorious moustaches, and dancing. The Grand will also host several National Theatre Live performances as well as a handful of Exhibition on Screen showings. As far as upcoming new releases, the Grand will host filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun's highly anticipated follow up to 2024's I Saw the TV Glow, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
To have two movie theaters within blocks of each other would typically be a mistake for any arts group to make. Yet, the Pickford Film Center has created a model that will work for them in the long run. They have a vibrant film community and a thriving restaurant scene all around to create a terrific night out downtown. It is so invigorating to see new spaces open up and expand to reach more people. It fills my heart with gladness to know that even as the theater landscape seems to be shrinking, there are pockets of hope for film exhibition's future.
