Eugene Weekly

Windows. Lenses. Curtains. More windows. There are layers between the actors and the audience in Todd Haynes’ Carol, some of them narrative, some literal. Haynes loves to show the gently blurred image of Rooney Mara, elfin and pensive, shot through glass. Mara, though the various award nominations (and the title) might suggest otherwise, is the star of Carol. As Therese, an early-1950s young woman with a department store job, a well-intentioned beau and a lovely little apartment, she floats through the film with wide eyes and the occasional sharp glance. Continue reading →

Although the party line these days is that one must have a stridently absolute, carefully outlined position about being pro or con Quentin Tarantino, it is in fact possible to have thought Inglourious Basterds was brilliant and also to find The Hateful Eight a tiresome, incoherent, overlong slog. Continue reading →

Spotlight is a brilliant piece of meta-storytelling: a film that tells a story about how another story was found. In early 2002, the The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published a story uncovering years of hidden abuse by Catholic priests. That piece is out there, online, for anyone to read. But what director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) and his co-writer Josh Singer tease out, in a movie that plays like a quiet, tense thriller, is how that story came to be — and how it took decades to come to light.  Continue reading →

Mockingjay Part 2 has no illusions about being anything but the final movie in a series. There are no reminders, no “previously, on The Hunger Games” montages to put you back in the story; it just starts, opening on a Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who is, as we so often see her, bruised but not broken. Which, in a nutshell, is the problem with this movie: It doesn’t know how to grapple with the way that book-Katniss really is broken, traumatized and angry after all she’s been through. Continue reading →

Someday, a movie will be worthy of Carey Mulligan again. An Education deserved her; little else has, though her sharp performance in Inside Llewyn Davis was a highlight. Mulligan is so delicate looking, so fresh-faced, that filmmakers either underestimate her or don’t know what to do with her. Like Brie Larson, so prickly and good in Room, she hides a steeliness behind wide eyes. I want to see her play a superhero, but she’d probably get cast as the sidekick. Continue reading →

Noah Baumbach has been making delightful movies about white twentysomething angst for, well, 20 years. He aged up a little bit with this spring’s While We’re Young, which lovingly skewered both its fortysomething leads and the twentysomething “artists” they befriended. The director got a little sweeter with 2012’s Frances Ha, the first movie in which Greta Gerwig served as his star, co-writer and muse. Mistress America, which Gerwig also co-wrote, is somewhere in the middle.  Continue reading →

Set in the less traditionally photogenic streets of Los Angeles — the ones lined not with palm trees and fancy lounges, but with doughnut shops, car washes and dicey motels — Sean Baker’s sun-drenched, scrappy, vibrant Tangerine follows the day-long quest of Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez). Flat broke and fresh out of prison, Sin-Dee is hell-bent on finding the cisgender white girl that her boyfriend-slash-pimp Chester (James Ransone) has been sleeping with. Continue reading →