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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 2018)
9/14-9/20 MOVIES BY RICK LEVIN 492 E. 13th Ave 541-357-0375 MOVIES THAT bijou-cinemas.com MATTER Serving the Eugene Community for Over 35 Years! THE WIFE (R) Starring Glenn Close & Jonathan Pryce 1:30, 3:45, 6:00, 8:15 ACTIVE MEASURES (PG-13) One Week Only! Friday & Saturday 1:00, 3:30, 6:10, 8:30 Sunday 2:30, 5:00, 7:30 Monday 1:00, 3:30, 6:10, 8:30 Tuesday 1:00, 3:30, 8:45 Wednesday 2:00, 4:30 Thursday 1:00, 3:30, 8:45 Eugene Public Library presents BOOK GROUP & MOVIE: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN Sunday 11:00 am - Book Group Discussion 12:00 pm - Movie Tickets $5.00 TAWAI: A VOICE FROM THE FOREST Tuesday 6:00 pm Q&A with Director/Explorer Bruce Parry after the film BLUSH SKATEBOARD VIDEO PREMIERE (Free!) Wednesday 7:00 pm Encircle Film Series presents DARK MONEY Thursday 6:00 pm Q&A following the film TICKET PRICES: MATINEE before 5pm $6 ADULT $8 | STUDENT $7 | SENIOR 62+ $6 CHILD age 12 & under $6 SEPTEMBER 14-20 MANDY ONE WEEK ONLY FRI-MON 11:00 3:50 8:45 TUE-THU SHOWTIMES TBD THE BOOKSHOP 11:00 1:30 6:10 FRI-WED THU 9/20 THERE WILL BE BLOOD SHOWTIMES TBD 3100: RUN AND BECOME FINAL WEEK DAILY Nicholas Cage battles the forces of crazy evil in the instant cult classic Mandy 11:00 3:15 LEAVE NO TRACE FINAL WEEK FRI-WED 12:50 8:30 THU 9/20 SHOWTIMES TBD SORRY TO BOTHER YOU FINAL WEEK FRI-MON 1:30 6:20 TUE-THU SHOWTIMES TBD THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS FINAL WEEK DAILY 5:05 9:15 BLACKkKLANSMAN FRI-MON 11:00 2:00 5:00 8:00 TUE-THU SHOWTIMES TBD EIGHTH GRADE FINAL WEEK FRI-WED 4:00 7:15 THU 9/20 SHOWTIMES TBD 43 W. BROADWAY (541) 686-2458 REGULAR ADMISSION $9 ADULTS $8 STUDENTS $6 SENIORS $6 BEFORE 5 PM OPEN EVERY DAY OREGON INDEPENDENT FILM FEST PREMIUM ADMISSION/NO PASSES OR DISCOUNTS TUE-WED 5:00 FAHRENHEIT 11/9 SNEAK PREVIEW/NO PASSES OR DISCOUNTS THU 9/20 7:00 METROarts: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS PREMIUM EVENT ADMISSION THU 9/20 7:00 TIX SENIOR & STUDENT $7 SUNDAYS $2 OFF 762-1700 | 180 E. 5TH AVE DAVIDMINORTHEATER.COM $3 TUESDAYS SEPT 14TH - SEPT 20TH *SAT/SUN MATINEE ONLY ($5 TIX) HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3 3:15* THREE IDENTICAL STRANGER 7:05 22 RBG 3:30* MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN OCEAN’S EIGHT 5:00 WON’T YOU BE SORRY TO MY NEIGHBOR? BOTHER YOU 7:15 8:50 5:15 UPGRADE 9:00 I can’t help but feel there’s a sly political comment hiding in the “44” baseball jersey worn by a bloody Nicholas Cage as he sets out to exact revenge for the fiery execution of his girlfriend at the hands of a “crazy evil” van-load of Jesus freaks and acid- drenched hippies in Mandy, the hallucinogenic new horror film by director Panos Cosmatos. “That was my favorite shirt,” Cage, as lumberjack Red Miller, informs the oozing Satan spawn who has just slashed poor Red across the chest as he sits with one arm handcuffed over his head, his other hand nailed, crucifixion-style, to the floor. Tough spot to be in. Thanks, Obama. But current politics be damned, literally, because Mandy is ac- tually set in 1983, and we know this not only because the film tells us, but because early on we hear a televised broadcast of Ronald Reagan addressing the nation, speaking in sunshiny terms about how people are tired of “pornography and abortion” and blah blah blah. Red and his girlfriend Mandy (a nearly translucent and wonder- ful Andrea Riseborough, of The Death of Stalin fame) are living far away from such trickle-down nonsense — in fact, the life they’ve created for themselves looks damn near Edenic, holed up as they are in a remote cabin in the woods, and so perfectly in love. She is an artist of air-brushy gothic dreamscapes, no doubt influenced by her obsession with the occult. Mandy, you see, is an ethereal, heavy-metal sort of girl, a dark-side-of-the-moon moonchild, and Red simply adores her. But then Mandy, walking along the road one night, catches the eye of cult leader Sand Jeremiah (Linus Roache), who instructs his minions to kidnap her, whatever the cost. And so henchman Broth- er Swan (Ned Dennehy) conjures a demonic gang of bikers, whose price for arising is “blood for blood.” And all hell breaks loose. Mandy is pure grindhouse madness, and it’s exhilarating. Co- written by Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn, the film unleashes every B-movie trick in the book — animated sequences, unapolo- getic gore, outrageous comedy, breathless action, druggy phan- tasmagoria — and yet, for all its excesses, it remains somehow tasteful, never trafficking in the gratuitous. Its amorality is deeply moral, and the artistic choices Cosmatos makes are exquisite. The film transcends the self-consciousness of camp through a rigorous application of aesthetic certainties, like Evil Dead meets The Wild Bunch. “You’re a vicious snowflake,” Red tells the demon who shreds his “44” shirt, and from this point on — about the halfway point September 13, 2018 • eugeneweekly.com — the movie coils up and springs, transforming itself into a com- pressed revenge fantasy that doubles as one man’s descent into the underworld. Cosmatos waste no time getting where he wants to go; the edit- ing is rapid and blunt, almost post-narrative, moving like a comic- book slideshow meant only to titillate and satisfy. The economy of the storytelling approaches ridiculousness, which suits the film’s atmosphere perfectly. It is relentless. You can’t look away. At the center of all this chaos, of course, stands Cage — the aggrieved everyman, a bit dull in daily life until pushed utterly beyond his limits, at which point he becomes the embodiment of human insult, a raw nerve reflecting the world’s bullshit in a fun- house mirror of noisy rage. Jack Nicholson was good at this sort of thing, but Cage is even better, or at least more familiar: Most of us look more like Cage than Nicholson when we lose our shit, an eruption that usu- ally combines melodramatic pathos with the antic slapstick of ag- grieved outrage, all of it undergirded by a righteous indignation that is undeniable, if not irrefutable. Cage, at once utterly unhinged and manically focused, has nev- er been better, but his acting (I want to say “acting out”) is sweet- ened and spiced up by a pair of equally admirable performances. As Mandy, Riseborough is enthralling, the haunting embodiment of Medieval painting, forever threatening to evanesce into the spir- it realm. She’s perfect for the role. And Roache, playing a two-bit lysergic anti-Christ with a Na- poleon complex, presents a chilling portrait of pathological narcis- sism run amok: thin-skinned and murderous, grandiose and frag- ile, he’s a little man with a charismatic front whose followers are hypnotized by their own rampant fear of falling afoul of his erratic temper. You know, like other vicious snowflakes we know and fear. In a world as scary as this one is right now, Mandy makes an intuitive sort of sense. Like Fargo (both the movie and the series) or No Country for Old Men, Cosmatos’ movie confronts unmiti- gated evil with a kind of pedestrian goodness — but unlike those two films, it takes that goodness, gives it a killer hit of acid and a wicked crossbow, and then drags it kicking and screaming to a place beyond good and evil, where the only proper response is an equal and annihilating insanity. Thank God it’s only a movie. Art, and Nicholas Cage, go where we dare not. And it’s a gruesome, crazy, funny good time — a carnival ride through the dark side of vengeance. (Sneak preview 7:30 pm Thursday, Sept. 13, at Broadway Metro, opens Friday) ■
