Just got back from the press screening for The Host, which is playing at the Portland International Film Festival this year. The Host is awesome—a sharp, hilarious, relevant, scary, cool monster movie from South Korea. Don’t miss it when it plays PIFF on Feb 17 and 19. (It’s also supposed to open wider sometime in March.)

The Host is easily my favorite thing I’ve seen for PIFF so far this year, but there’s a ton of other solid stuff too. (And yeah, there’s some not-so-solid stuff, but let’s just ignore that shit and hope it just goes away.) Check out Marjorie’s great story on PIFF in this week’s Film section, and check out our Film Shorts (in the Mercury’s paper version now, online tomorrow) to get a feel for some of the other films playing. And even more info can be found at PIFF’s official site.

Best bets for opening week: Eagle vs. Shark (screening Feb 12, 13, 15), Hear and Now (Feb 10-11), and The Lives of Others (Feb 9). And as a preview for the following week, here’s the trailer for The Host.