Eugene Weekly

It’s impossible for me to assess my attributes as a film critic, though I can say I’ve mentored with some of the best. My dear friend Richard Jameson, former editor of Film Comment, has taught me more about movies, and how to watch and discuss them, than the thousands of pages I’ve read over the years. I call Richard, fondly, the populist snob: a man of Apollonian discernment who nonetheless finds lasting quality in more mainstream stuff, and who can discuss Spielberg with as much acuity and energetic acumen as he can Fassbender or Godard. Continue reading →

In 1984, a pair of shaggy Jewish brothers from a suburb of Minneapolis released a low-budget neo-noir crime thriller that, with its hard edges and bold style, would do for independent cinema what Nirvana, a few years later, would do for indie music. Continue reading →

Hang high in Colorado, Robert Redford, because we have another film festival worth digging into here in Eugene May 9-11. The Archaeology Channel is hosting its 11th International Film and Video Festival at The Shedd and just like the subjects depicted on screen, the festival is aging into something to behold, showcasing 18 films from around the globe.  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 →

Is it just me, or is the Eugene theater scene undergoing something of an ascendance these days? Is there a minor renaissance of the dramatic arts going on in our midst? Could it be that, along with the hip, new vitality of our downtown, pushing out decades of apocalyptic slouch and economic zombification, this city is also experiencing a similar surge in creative endeavors and the venues that host them? Continue reading →

Having just watched Jonathan Glazer’s latest movie, Under the Skin, I’m now thoroughly convinced that we have entered a post-human age — an era of catastrophic reckoning in which humanity, threatened with inevitable extinction, will figure less and less as the engineer of its own destiny. Continue reading →

This year, Cinema Pacific packs quite an international punch, with a focus on films from Chile and Taiwan and a slew of interactive events, EW spoke to Festival Director Richard Herskowitz to find out what not to miss. Here are some of the highlights:   Chile’s Crackerjack Playwright 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 →

A very involved thesis could be written about the deluge of prickly issues raised in Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II, Lars von Trier’s four-hour, two-film epic about sexual discovery and degradation. Continue reading →

“Sol Seed is so much more than a band. It’s kind of a way of life,” says Sky Guasco, didgeridoo player and percussionist for the popular Eugene-based group. Since Sol Seed won EW’s Next Big Thing in August 2013, the group’s been busy: “We quit our day jobs and became full-time musicians,” Guasco says. “We started touring full-time every other month. On the off-months we were recording.”  Continue reading →