Eugene Weekly

Léos Carax’s baffling, magical Rorschach blot of a film, Holy Motors, is a magic mirror: It gives you what you want from it. If you think it’s funny, you’ll be amused; if you think it’s serious, you’ll be somber. Continue reading →

The Hobbit is not a particularly large book. It’s a friendly size, a book that a kid can read happily, without tripping over the endless pages of description — and walking — that fill The Fellowship of the Ring. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is not the same size. The first film in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy pulls from Tolkien’s seemingly endless trove of Middle-Earth lore, filling out An Unexpected Journey until it’s more of a war story than the sprightly adventure on which it’s based.  Continue reading →

Taylor Guterson’s quietly likable debut feature, Old Goats, is a very Northwestern film — damp, relaxed, full of the mellow charms of its Bainbridge Island setting and featuring more cups of coffee than you can count. The film showcases three old goats, each wrestling with age in a specific way: Bob (Bob Burkholder), who’s just written a memoir detailing his colorful life and plentiful sexual conquests, can hardly hold still; he’s constantly asking friends for a ride or offering unsolicited advice on their futures. Continue reading →

The first half hour of Atonement director Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina is such a joy to watch, I began to doubt my expectations of the story. This has a tragic ending, doesn’t it? Terrible things are going to happen? For that matter, unfortunate things are happening in the first act, but the clever way they’ve been pieced together is a magical distraction, and appropriately so. Continue reading →

Lincoln, contrary to what its name implies, is not a defining portrait of a man, though Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance as Abraham Lincoln is one of his defining roles. Stooped, quiet, introverted, exhausted, brilliant and prone to making his point via stories, Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is the calm center to a complex and flawed film about the 16th president — and about the role of politics in America’s terrible relationship with race. Continue reading →

The Sessions, a candid, gentle film about a paralyzed man’s quest to have sex, walks a tricky, balanced, grave and funny path that’s all its own. Struck by polio at a young age, Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) lives mostly in an iron lung; he can get out for a few hours at a time, his assistant pushing him on a gurney. Three assistants are key in the film: Amanda (Annika Marks), a pretty young woman with whom Mark falls in love; Rod (Hawkes’ fellow Deadwood alum W. Continue reading →

If you look at Richard Gere’s body of work, it appears he should be on movie screens constantly. A film or two every year, an I’m Not There slipped in between every couple of Unfaithfuls. But Gere still gives the impression, somehow, of popping up every so often, not remaining constantly visible, not sustaining a movie star presence. And when was the last time Gere actually impressed you? Continue reading →

If you’re somewhere in your 30s and grew up with a television, Wayne White’s work probably slipped into your young mind somewhere. As a young artist, White landed a job on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, where he designed (and voiced) some of the show’s iconic characters. His work turned up in the music videos for Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” and Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time,” and he worked on a host of other children’s shows. Continue reading →

If you’ve been thinking that maybe Tim Burton has slipped a little, you’re hardly alone. This spring’s Dark Shadows came and went, hardly a blip on the radar screen of pop culture, and 2010’s Alice in Wonderland was such a murky muddle that even Johnny Depp and a plethora of talented actresses couldn’t turn it into something watchable. Continue reading →

Time-travel stories are always tricky. As a viewer, you have to accept paradoxes and twisting strands of plot, and writer-director Rian Johnson’s Looper — the fall film I looked forward to the way some people anticipated The Master — will not hold your hand on this matter. The explanation is quick and to the point: In the future, time travel will be invented, then outlawed, then used by outlaws. The future mob hires loopers, men (and only men, apparently) who assassinate victims who have been sent back in time to be killed. Continue reading →