Eugene Weekly

Nightcrawler begins as a sleek, beautifully filmed portrait of desperation in uncertain times. Under Los Angeles’ flickering lights, people are desperate to keep their jobs, or to find jobs, and a degree of dubiousness is par for the course. Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a small-time thief, stealing scrap metal for cash, when he stumbles onto a new career: At a crime scene, there’s a man with a camera, gathering footage for local news. Inspired, Bloom buys his own gear and hires an “intern,” Rick (Riz Ahmed). Continue reading →

Mockingjay, on first read, wasn’t my favorite book in the Hunger Games series — not by a long shot. A long trudge to a deadly battle, it was initially memorable for all the time Katniss seemed to spend crying in a closet, worrying about Peeta Mellark, who was captured at the end of Catching Fire’s Quarter Quell. I didn’t want crying Katniss; I wanted victorious Katniss, angry Katniss, a Katniss who would lead the rebellion against the Capital. Continue reading →

As Terence Fletcher, longtime character actor J.K. Simmons fuses bits of the roles he’s best known for — the warmth of Juno’s dad (Juno), the shoutiness of Peter Parker’s boss (Spider-Man) — into one glorious wreck of a man. Fletcher is the tyrannical leader of the best jazz band in the finest music school in the country: He shouts, he intimidates and he humiliates, and he does it all with the firm belief that his students (disappointingly, they’re all male) will benefit from it. There is no “good job” with him. Continue reading →

Alejandro González Iñárritu hasn’t directed a feature film since 2010’s Biutiful, an agonizing, overworked downer made bearable by Javier Bardem’s mournful performance. Continue reading →

One peek at the trailer for Listen Up Philip and you’d think it was another painfully indie, pseudo-intellectual film in which nothing happens — and, for the most part, this is accurate. The movie follows the despicably self-centered mind of aberrant Jewish novelist Philip Lewis Friedman, played by Jason Schwartzman (no stranger to neurotic roles, or even neurotic Jewish novelist roles). Continue reading →

Something wicked this way comes, again, and just in time for Halloween: A witch’s brew of spooky, campy, gory and/or otherwise terrifying short films made lickety-split by aspiring auteurs right here in Eugene. Upwards of 35 teams have signed up for Eugene Film Society’s 72-Hour Horror Film Competition, which should make for a fun night of fright when Bijou Art Cinemas on 13th holds its “Audience Award” screenings of the top entrants at 8 and 10:30 pm, Oct. 31.  Continue reading →

Let us now praise the British ensemble cast, for it is a thing of beauty and magic. The current example of this cinematic alchemy is on display in Pride, in which the likes of Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton share the screen with a whole handful of fresh young faces. Nighy stands tall and reserved; Staunton is a loving force of nature, the polar opposite of her best-known role as Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbridge. But if this movie has a star, it’s the American-born Ben Schnetzer, who plays activist Mark Ashton with a compelling mix of charisma and anger. Continue reading →

Every war is a failure, of course, but for this country the Vietnam War signals something profoundly shameful and unappeased in our national fiber — a colossal moral fuck-up compounded by diplomatic arrogance and political deceit, in which a generation of Americans, and every generation thereafter, came to regard the government with a cynicism from which we have never recovered. Continue reading →

If there’s one key flaw in David Fincher’s precise, elegant, wicked Gone Girl, it’s that it is just so precise and elegant that sometimes the wickedness struggles to come through. Likewise, Rosamund Pike’s Amy Dunne, the perfect, rich, beautiful wife, is so icy-gorgeous, so regal and poised, her voiceovers spoken in such flat affect, that it’s hard to imagine her ever having any fun.  Continue reading →

If nothing else, The Skeleton Twins taught me something I didn’t know: I might be willing to watch Bill Hader in anything. As depressed, off-kilter, semi-self-destructive Milo, Hader has a different sort of presence onscreen. His usual solidness transforms into something gawky and loose; when Milo describes himself as being built like a frog, he’s not wrong. A sturdy desperation lurks around Hader’s mild but expressive face. He’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop. In fact, he might be the one to drop it. Continue reading →