Eugene Weekly

Have you read any Magnus Mills? No, there won’t be a test. But if you’ve read the Scottish author’s wonderful The Restraint of Beasts or peculiar All Quiet on the Orient Express, and if you can think of the peculiar sort of existence the men in his novels have — their work repetitive and disconcerting work, their goals as arbitrary as anything, their situations just a little off — you may find it easier to sink into the out-of-time, mildly surreal, darkly funny world of Skeletons. Continue reading →

It’s about time Rhys Ifans — probably still best known as Hugh Grant’s peculiar roommate in Notting Hill — got himself a big, juicy whopper of a leading role. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. Mr. Nice, based on the true story of Welsh drug dealer and jack of many trades Howard Marks, starts out relatively strong, even carrying the absurdity of Ifans playing a high schooler. Continue reading →

Alan Tudyk and Taylor Labine in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil Winner, SXSW Midnighters Audience Award Eli Craig’s feature debut, which showed in perfectly appropriate midnight screenings at SXSW, is a fairly low-budget hillbilly slasher comedy packed with almost gentle send-ups of horror clichés. I loved it a little bit. Maybe more than a little bit. Perhaps you want to know a little more than that. Continue reading →

Matt McCormick’s first feature-length film is a pensive character piece with a perfectly Portland heart — something that’s easy to say and harder to explain. Some Days Are Better Than Others is a three-pronged, subtle narrative about disconnection, loneliness and slow, quiet change; the SXSW film booklet says it “asks why the good times slip by so fast while the hard times always seem so sticky.” Continue reading →

The word Micmacs, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) explained before the screening of his new film, is slang for “shenanigans,” a word which sounded impossibly playful in Jeunet’s thick French accent. “Impossibly playful” is also one way to describe the film, which is as sweet and joyful and imperfect a revenge fantasy you might hope to see. Continue reading →

Yes, you could go see Alice in Wonderland this weekend. (I certainly plan to.) But you could also do something a little different and hop over to DIVA for one of the screenings of this year’s Oscar-nominated short films. Pick animated only, live-action only or go all-out and watch both — though if you have to pick, for my money, the animated set is the way to go. Continue reading →

Oh, internet. Continue reading →

Let me gush a second: I pretty much loved Star Trek. It did a lot of things right, and it looked gorgeous, especially to eyes disappointed by the terrible effects in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I loved Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy the best of all, but John Cho is a respectable Sulu, Sylar Zachary Quinto a perfect Spock (I really only thought of Sylar once, when he glares at the council) and Zoë Saldana a whip-smart Uhura. The bad guy was a little stock, but the time-split really thing works for me. Continue reading →

In 2006, a little movie called Brick surprised the hell out of me. A high school noir, thick with complicated, stylized detective language, mysterious figures and femme fatales? Skepticism levels were high — and for some people, the conceit didn’t work. Continue reading →

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in Adventureland. Immediate thought upon leaving the theater after Adventureland: I want to hug that movie and everyone involved with it. I’d also like to buy them all a beer. Though that would probably be a lot of beer. Continue reading →