Eugene Weekly

Superman, who originally hails from both a different planet and a different era, is often a tough sell with modern audiences who’ve gotten used to conflicted heroes, anti-heroes and intriguing bad guys. Superman — with a smile and a cape, the embodiment of a certain kind of American ideal — is just so good. It turns out he’s a little conflicted after all.  Continue reading →

In 1994’s Before Sunrise, twentysomethings Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) met on a train. After one very talkative, very special night together, they parted ways, agreeing to meet in six months. It was nine years before they met again, in Before Sunset: Jesse wrote a book based on their first meeting, and Celine found him at a Paris reading.  Continue reading →

There are 27-year-olds who have their shit together, but I wasn’t one of them. If you were, you may watch Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha as a sort of anthropological study: the still-questing twentysomething, running into pitfalls and learning (the hard way, of course) that expectation goes hand-in-hand with entitlement, and neither are in sync with reality very often. Continue reading →

The popular perspective on animation tends to lie within the realm of Saturday morning cartoons or late-night adult comedy like South Park or Family Guy. But Portland’s Northwest Animation Festival is trying to change these classic conceptions of animation. And this year, the festival is bringing its expansive, carefully curated program down to Eugene. “We’ve put a lot of effort into building our audience in Portland,” says festival director Sven Bonnichsen. “We’re hoping to do the same in Eugene.” Continue reading →

Four years ago, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot pulled off a slick little trick. A shiny, whizbang movie with an excellent ensemble cast, the 2009 Trek restarted the series timeline, giving Abrams and company endless freedom to boldly go to entirely new places, unencumbered by the history writ in the TV shows and earlier films.  Continue reading →

Director Baz Luhrmann’s risky, gamboling Romeo + Juliet (1996) proved, once again, that Shakespeare’s best stuff can withstand any infringement of time and run with it — including gang warfare, palm trees and the wowzers of an acid trip. Recall, if you dare, the raw but playful sexuality of this scene: Claire Danes as Juliet, spying through a massive fish tank and catching her first aquamarine glimpse of Romeo, as the gaunt, slightly extra-terrestrial face of a young Leonardo DiCaprio seems to swim through the coral. It’s an exquisite moment. Continue reading →

Stanley Kubrick created The Shining to exorcise his guilt for helping fake the 1969 Apollo moon landing, to represent the genocide of Native Americans or to retell the Greek myth Theseus and the Minotaur. Continue reading →

It feels oddly rude to complain about a movie like The Company You Keep, with its sprawling cast of oft-underused actors from across generations and its well-intentioned plot, which sweeps Vietnam-era radicals up and drops them into the present. But Robert Redford’s latest film is an unsettled mixed bag, despite valiant efforts from Chris Cooper, Anna Kendrick, Richard Jenkins and Nick Nolte (to name just a few). Continue reading →

Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is nobody special. On Earth in 2077, he and his colleague/girlfriend Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are the clean-up crew of a dead planet. (You might, distantly, be reminded of Wall-E.) An alien war destroyed the moon, which spreads like a smashed boulder across the sky; the parts of the planet not already destroyed by the war were subject to earthquakes and tsunamis. Now, giant machines suck up what’s left of the ocean, creating power for human colonies in space. Continue reading →