Eugene Weekly

If you are wary of what we might term the “mature romantic comedy” — having been burned by things like the atrocious Something’s Gotta Give — please understand that I am right there with you. The previews for Enough Said didn’t do the movie any favors, and to want to see the film simply because it features James Gandolfini in one of his last roles feels slightly dark and morbid. But maybe you loved Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld, or you can’t get enough of Catherine Keener in roles that don’t insult her intelligence. Continue reading →

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a marine biologist and/or work at a marine park. As you can see, I did nothing of the sort. But one thing lingers from those younger days: a whopper of a sense of awe at the sight of whales, seals, even sea lions, those goofy things — and orcas.  Continue reading →

Maybe the most bittersweetly delightful thing about James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now is the way it captures the feeling of a drawn-out ending. For Aimee (Shailene Woodley), Sutter (Miles Teller) and their classmates, it’s the end of high school, a time when everything is bitingly vital and yet nothing matters much, since it’s all going to change in a few weeks anyway. What happens next is of the utmost importance, but no one really knows what that next thing will be, least of all Sutter, who has yet to get around to applying to college. Continue reading →

If we’re going to invent new sub-genres for Edgar Wright movies, a la the rom-zom-com (Shaun of the Dead), we need one for Lake Bell’s directorial debut, which is a … well … it’s a fem-fam-film-rom-geek-com? That needs some work. (Maybe Bell, a sharp and nuanced writer, can come up with something clever.) In a World… is a movie built for film geeks, trailer junkies and, well, anyone who’s ever noticed Hollywood’s sexist side. Which I like to think is, by now, all of us. Continue reading →

It’s been six long years since the last Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg collaboration, the gets-better-with-age Hot Fuzz. Wright and Pegg have kept plenty busy: Wright directed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, my favorite comic book movie that comes off like a video game movie, and Pegg, of course, is Scotty in the new Star Trek franchise. Pegg and the third member of this trio, Nick Frost, spent some time on the disappointing Paul, while Frost memorably appeared in the entirely excellent Attack the Block (which Wright executive produced).  Continue reading →

Science fiction, contrary to what its frequently fluffy appearances at the multiplex might lead you to believe, is a brilliant medium for ideas. You can invent anything: a starfleet based on equality, a future destroyed by robots, a world of passively invading alien parasites. You can dream up new versions of the future, or meld past and present; you can envision impossible technology. Science fiction is built to tell us who we are by imagining where we might be going.  Continue reading →

Broken begins with loosely shuffled snippets of character and drama. When the film snaps into narrative focus, it’s with a sudden act of violence: On a quiet cul-de-sac, a young man washes his car. A passing neighbor girl says hello. The boy appears not quite all there: He has a hard time putting words in order, but he seems kind. As the girl departs, another neighbor appears, pulling his shirt off before knocking the young man halfway across the car. Continue reading →

It’s possible — though maybe not common — to go through your entire life not realizing that the line Merry Clayton sings in the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” begins, “Rape, murder!”  Continue reading →

Like Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt has an all-encompassing biopic title, but focuses on one key moment of its subject’s life. In 1961, the German thinker and writer Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) went to Jerusalem to cover, for The New Yorker, the trial of Adolf Eichmann. It was a chance to get up close to the horrors of her past; as a young woman, she had been held in a camp in France. Continue reading →