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Molly Templeton was Eugene Weekly's longtime arts editor, now freelance movie reviewer. She is publicity manager at Tin House Books.
Fifteen years ago, Lukas Moodysson’s feature debut, Show Me Love (limply retitled from the evocative Fucking Åmål), gave us a beautifully honest, complicated and lovely tale about small-town teenage life and love. Moodysson’s latest, We Are the Best!, is another gloriously told tale about Swedish teens — though they can barely claim the word. Continue reading
The illegitimate, biracial daughter of a British navy admiral, Dido Elizabeth Belle, was born into complicated circumstances. In Belle, director Amma Asante and screenwriter Misan Sagay take some liberties with what’s known about the real Belle, but strict accuracy isn’t the point of Asante’s lush, Jane Austenesque film, which belongs fully to Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Continue reading
Days of Future Past opens in a dark future, a world devastated by war. A ragtag band of mutants, led by Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan), puts up a decent fight against the Sentinels, but they have zero hope of victory against the shape-shifting, mutant-hunting robots. In a last-ditch effort, Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) sends the consciousness of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back into his ’70s self. Continue reading
Languid, elegiac, mournful and unexpectedly funny, Jim Jarmush’s Only Lovers Left Alive introduces us to the ancient Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton), a pair of vampires who’ve been married so long they think nothing of living on opposite sides of the world. He lurks in Detroit, a reclusive, black-clad musician whose work quietly slips into the world via his human friend Ian (Anton Yelchin, shaggy and game). Continue reading
Remember when Jude Law was pretty? Go back and watch Existenz, or A.I. or Gattaca, when he was often blonde and proper, and always a little bit cold. Then watch Dom Hemingway, in which he is, in so many ways, the opposite: earthy and sweaty and living it up. His hair sweeps back from a sharply pointed hairline, dyed dark brown and never clean; he’s carrying just enough extra weight (by movie-star standards) that his clothes bunch and puff in the wrong places, like real-person clothes. Continue reading
If you’re a little wary of Lars von Trier — never sure whether you’re going to take him seriously and get laughed at, or laugh at him and find you should’ve taken him seriously — you are hardly alone. His last film, Melancholia, was surprising for not offending or pushing buttons; instead, it left me crushed and dazed. Continue reading
Though only three of them are actually dark, this year’s crop of Oscar-nominated live-action shorts (now playing at Bijou Metro feels disproportionately heavy. There’s one bit of likable fluff (the Finnish “Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?”) involving a flustered family in a morning rush; there’s also a bit of humor in Mark Gill’s “The Voorman Problem,” which stars Martin Freeman as a doctor asked to examine a prisoner who claims he’s a god. Continue reading
The Great Beauty is a glorious jumble, which is fitting for a movie that’s about life, the universe and everything (to borrow a very useful phrase from Douglas Adams) — and a little bit about nothing at the same time. Plot-wise, there’s not much to it: After turning 65, novelist-turned-journalist Jep (Toni Servillo) has a bit of an existential crisis about his shiny, glamorous life. Sort of. Continue reading
Spike Jonze’s Her takes place in a clearly futuristic Los Angeles, a spotless, sparse playground for disconnected souls, filmed as a place that is perpetually sunny and disconcertingly sad. Through this shiny, metal-and-glass metropolis march hundreds of humans having the sort of disconcerting earbud conversations we’re becoming accustomed to now. These folks aren’t talking to a friend on the other side of the country, though; they’re talking to their operating systems. Continue reading
Of all the things to appreciate about the new Coen brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis, I’m hung up on the color and the light. These days, it’s easy to give your photos a retro feel; just open Instagram and let the magic happen. It’s not so easy to make your entire film evoke the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, right down to the cars, the streets and the color of Dylan’s jacket, which is echoed by the bag schlepped around by Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac). Continue reading