Hold on to your popcorn, Hillsboro! It looks like Friday movie nights under the stars this August are set to be a nostalgic sweep through the classics sprinkled with a dash of new age dazzle. Thanks to a bunch of community movie buffs, the 2024 Pix in the Park summer movie lineup has been decided, and it’s straight-up fanfare. Barbie is ditching the dream house, Mario and Luigi are leaping out of the console, and the dinosaurs are roaming once again – but this time in the great outdoors of City of Hillsboro parks.
Nearly 3,000 votes were cast through Engage Hillsboro and its Spanish counterpart, Conéctate Hillsboro. The engaged voters spun the roulette of film favorites from February to March, dictating which flicks were destined to flicker beneath the Oregon sky. The big winners? An assembly of cherished throwbacks and chart-topping newbies alike. According to the results posted by the city, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" from 2023 snagged a whopping 1,982 votes in the animated category, leaving poor "Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken" in the underwater dust with 663.
Moving onto the Blockbuster round, Barbie struts her stuff to the leading spot with 1,856 votes, sending "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" back to the fantasy board with a lower 841. Time-traveling back to the '90s, "Jurassic Park" roared its way into the throwback classic category with 1,789 votes, with Ferris Bueller's day off seemingly over with a tally of 936 votes. As for the animated Disney throwbacks? "Hercules" flexed with 1,351 votes, topping "Princess and the Frog" at 1,305 nods.
Not to be outdone, Spanish-language films also got their turn in the limelight. "Wish," a fresh release from 2023, enchanted Spanish-speaking voters, garnering 164 votes while the biopic of Tejano superstar Selena captured 119 hearts, as reported by the City of Hillsboro. These curated cinephile choices exemplify the diverse tastes of the Hillsboro population, setting up a summer of communal movie-watching that's as much about community building as it is about entertainment. So circle those Fridays in August on your planners, movie lovers—it's showtime!
