Eugene weekly., August 17, 2017, Page 26, Image 26

Annual Sale starts Friday August 25th!
MOVIES
BY RICK LEVIN
Total Cycling
We’ll be closed on Monday, August 21st,
as we ride north to view the
Total Eclipse through bicycle wheels.
Facebook/arrivingbybike
2705 Willamette • 541.484.5410
Mon–Fri 11–7, Sat 10–6, Sun 12–5
AUGUST 18-24
THE MIDWIFE (SAGE FEMME)
11:45 2:05 4:45 7:20
CITY OF GHOSTS
FRI-SUN 4:20 8:30
MON
4:20
TUE-THU 4:20 8:30
LANDLINE
DAILY
12:30 2:50 5:10 7:25 9:30
AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL:
TRUTH TO POWER
DAILY
11:45 2:25 5:00 7:20 9:40
THE LITTLE HOURS
DAILY
12:00 9:30
THE HERO
FRI-SUN 2:10 6:25
MON
2:10
TUE-THU 2:10 6:25
COLUMBUS
8/18-8/24
492 E. 13th Ave
541-357-0375
DAILY
SNEAK PREVIEW WITH Q&A
MON
7:30
43 W. BROADWAY
(541) 686-2458
REGULAR
ADMISSION
$9 ADULTS
$8 STUDENTS
$6 SENIORS
$6 BEFORE 5 PM
OPEN EVERY DAY
26
COMING SOON
GOOD TIME WHOSE STREETS?
PATTI CAKE$
WOODSHOCK
THE TRIP TO SPAIN
DAVID GILMOUR LIVE AT POMPEII
REBEL IN THE RYE
BUY TICKETS ONLINE AT
BROADWAYMETRO.COM
A ugust 17, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
MOVIES
THAT
bijou-cinemas.com
MATTER
Serving the Eugene Community for Over 35 Years!
STEP (PG)
The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore
is documented, as they try to become the fi rst in their families to
attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against
the backdrop of social unrest. 97% RT.
ABBY QUINN, EDIE FALCO AND
JENNY SLATE IN LANDLINE
1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00
THE BIG SICK (R)
Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani and grad student Emily
Gardner fall in love but struggle as their cultures clash. When Emily
contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail fi nds himself forced to face
her feisty parents, his family’s expectations, and his true feelings.
98% RT.
3:30, 6:00
MAUDIE (PG-13)
An arthritic Nova Scotia woman works as a housekeeper while she
hones her skills as an artist and eventually becomes a beloved fi gure
in the community. Starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke.
1:00 pm
THE BEGUILED (R)
The unexpected arrival of a wounded Union soldier at a girls’ school
in Virginia during the American Civil War leads to jealousy and
betrayal in an atmospheric thriller from acclaimed writer/director
Sofi a Coppola.
8:30 pm
Local beer, wine and cider... & now kombucha on tap!
TICKET PRICES: MATINEE before 5pm $6
ADULT $8 | STUDENT $7 | SENIOR 62+ $6 CHILD age 12 & under $6
LIKE FATHER
LIKE DAUGHTER
LIKE SISTER LIKE ALL
A family in crisis struggles to reconnect in Gillian
Robespierre’s pitch-perfect new comedy Landline
bout 20 or 30 minutes into writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s new film Land-
line, I started tearing up, and I continued tearing up intermittently throughout the
rest of the movie. Quiet, sniffly, sometimes giggly tears, the kind that leak unex-
pectedly from the far corner of your eye and that you wipe off with a shirtsleeve
pinched between your forefinger and thumb.
I was crying not because I was sad — though the movie certainly contains moments
of sadness — but rather because I was completely immersed in the messy human drama
on screen, so authentically and artistically rendered that it completely suspended my inner
critic. I love when that happens, rare as it is. It’s why I go to the movies.
There is absolutely nothing new or remarkable about the outward trappings of Landline,
a familiar familial dramedy about a pair of smart, liberal Manhattanites (John Turturro
and Edie Falco) trapped in a stale if comfortable (or vice versa) marriage, and their two
daughters: Dana (Jenny Slate), about to be married to the milquetoast hipster Ben (Jay
Duplass), and Ali (Abby Quinn), a whip-smart teenager who dabbles in heroin and reacts
viciously, and hilariously, to her family’s staid hypocrisies.
As the strangely fetishistic title suggests, the film is set in 1995, just before the digital
dawn of the dirty laundry age, when a bunch of people riding in a car together actually had
to either talk or sit in awkward silence. In this sense, the film is a subtle jab at our present
ridiculousness, when the slightest personal crisis is a reason to hang your whiner flag on
social media.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that Landline can be defined solely by its mid-
’90s era (which it nonetheless renders with an accuracy that puts a one-dimensional movie
like Singles to shame). There is a timeless quality to the way Robespierre captures a family
in freefall, in moments of rich and complex emotion that are rendered with a pitch-perfect
balance of pathos and bathos. There really isn’t a false note in the movie.
Of course, Robespierre is aided by a dream cast that just happens to be perfectly matched,
one to the other and altogether. Turturro, always an expert at capturing the shambling
melancholy of masculine failure, is fantastic as a husband whose infidelity is indiscernible
from a cry for help, and Falco brings a furious vulnerability in the role of a proud, pinched
control freak on the verge of complete implosion.
Slate is equally captivating as the good girl who, mirroring her father’s romantic crimes,
indulges in an affair that sends her life off the rails, in surprising ways, and Duplass is
appropriately doughy as her lovably tame fiancé, the kind of guy who treats sex like a polite
transaction of recessive favors.
In a sense, though, the film belongs to Quinn, who practically crackles on screen; she
is the moral and emotional barometer of this film, a kid wise beyond her years but self-
burdened with holding her family together. The chemistry she and Slate share on screen, as
two sisters reconnecting in crisis, is the beating heart of this film.
Though small in scale and reach, Landline contains disarming emotional depths; its
laughs are honestly earned, and its fully fleshed, fallible but lovable characters, ever
slouching toward some kind of redemption, are rendered with an honesty and intimacy that
is too rare these days. The film ends on an ambiguously upbeat note that is wonderfully in
keeping with the tolerance and forgiveness it displays toward each of its flawed characters
— a kind of grace through flailing. (Broadway Metro)
A