At first, before the murders, the story might sound like some nihilistic last-century tropical sitcom, what Sherwood Schwartz would have come up with if he’d been into Nietzsche. In 1929, German physician Friedrich Ritter, brain aflame with the promise of the superman, persuaded his lover, Dore Strauch, to abandon Berlin…
Greetings from Cannes! It’s an unwritten rule — maybe it should even be a written one — that no one who is lucky enough to come to Cannes for the film festival, now in its 67th year, should, in any way, shape, or form, complain about being here. But may…
Harrison Ford has been a good soldier in the Star Wars. He did whatever was asked of him by his commanding officer, George Lucas, even when his commanding officer was wrong. Now that Ford is back in Star Wars, and J.J. Abrams is running the show, Abrams’ first order of…
2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. & Legendary Pictures Productions LLCGodzilla, opening May 16.Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson recommend Neighbors (Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron) and Godzilla (Bryan Cranston, Godzilla) and are joined by special guest, James Beard Award-winning L.A. Weekly restaurant…
Nicholas Stoller’s hilarious Neighbors splashes into summer with the satisfying swish-plop-hooray of a winning beer pong serve, making the director, who also wrote March’s Muppets Most Wanted, the first filmmaker in history to simultaneously have in theaters both a kiddie flick and an R-rated comedy where two men sword-fight with…
Although it’s based on the true story of the illegitimate daughter of a Royal Navy captain and an enslaved African woman, Amma Asante’s Belle’s richest inspiration comes from a painting. A 1779 double portrait hanging at Scone Palace in Scotland, it shows a pretty blond teenager decked out in typical…
Jason Baldwin had already been in prison for several years when his friend Mojo shook him awake at 2:30 one morning. “My first thought was, ‘I hope he’s not taking me for an escape, because I don’t want to get killed,'” Baldwin recalls. Instead, Mojo led him without explanation to…
Five years after her death, Vivian Maier is a superstar. An art world darling who might very well, were she alive, appreciate the attention her gorgeous portraiture is receiving. And who would likely not, if the secrecy with which she lived her life is any indication, be thrilled about our…
Stock up on snacks and dig up a cardigan, because this month you’re heading to the movies. Jackalope Ranch has rounded up five must-see flicks this May. From arty vampires and time-traveling mutants to the prime of Miss Lindsay Lohan, here’s what’s worth heading to the theater to watch…
Everything in the opening scenes of Jeremy Saulnier’s nerve-wracking revenge drama Blue Ruin is the color of a bruise, from the ocean to the bullet-hole-pocked 1996 Pontiac Bonneville that homeless near-mute Dwight (Macon Blair) calls home. It’s fitting. Dwight has never overcome the pain of his parents’ murder when he…
One of the great pleasures of regular moviegoing isn’t seeing great films. It’s finding the little oddballs, the modest entertainments that miss just as often as they hit, but leave you with the feeling that someone poured heart, soul, and a sense of humor into the work at hand. Fading…
Watching Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live, you maybe sometimes wondered if she was from outer space, perhaps some planet where women have big foreheads, tiny hands, and sing like chickens on helium. As sheltered housekeeper Johanna in Liza Johnson’s proudly frustrating Hateship Loveship — a pun on the emotions…
How much can you take away and still have a movie? Steven Knight’s Locke is an experiment in reducing contemporary screen storytelling to its irreducible essentials, which isn’t quite the same thing as being an “experimental” film, despite the ravishing early reviews from England. It shows us just one actor,…
The temperature hangs in the mid-70s in Miami, and New York City-based actor/writer/director John Turturro remarks, “It’s just so nice to be outside. I’m so happy to be outside.” Though it’s breezy, his neat crop of salt-and-pepper hair remains unshakable. He sits in the shade of a large gazebo at…
Hola, Hollywood. Phoenix College’s 14th Annual Latino Film Festival will include six movies that explore the complexities of Latin cultures in communities across the United States and South America. The festival, which offers six days of independent and documentary screenings, is open to students and the general public alike. Perhaps…
The vampires who walk among us — and they do — are not the Twilight kind, or the True Blood kind, or even the Buffy kind. In the world of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, the director’s most emotionally direct film since Dead Man, and maybe his finest, period,…
Going bald is the best thing that ever happened to Jude Law. Britain’s prettiest export did the best he could with his burden of good looks. He played a genetic ideal in Gattaca, a robotic ideal in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and in The Talented Mr. Ripley, his golden god perfection…
Has it ever occurred to contemporary commercial filmmakers that maybe audiences could take a movie’s word for it that a character has been tortured? That perhaps implication and skilled acting could communicate the idea with sufficient power, and that we might all be spared the screaming and limb-breaking and slow-motion…
Tom Hiddleston can pull off extreme looks. In The Avengers, he strutted around in Loki’s two-foot horned helmet. For Midnight in Paris, he finessed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prim finger waves. And in his latest, Jim Jarmusch’s vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive, Hiddleston lounges bare-chested in velvet-cuffed robes. The only…
The sexual politics of Nick Cassavetes’ decidedly un-romantic comedy The Other Woman are intriguingly European and, at their core, kind of groovy. Wronged Connecticut wifey-wife Kate (Leslie Mann) seeks out her husband’s mistress, sexy city-slicker and high-powered lawyer Carly (Cameron Diaz), looking to her for answers: Why is my husband…
Since 2002, the year Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man hit theaters, the other Spider-Man, the hero of the actual comic books, has joined the Avengers, revealed his secret identity to the world, and become a highly paid inventor who has engineered, among other marvels, a limitless energy source science has dubbed “Parker…
Sometimes it’s helpful to know certain details about how a film has come together. And sometimes it’s just so much information. Transcendence, the directorial debut of Christopher Nolan’s go-to cinematographer, Wally Pfister, was shot on film rather than digitally, as most big Hollywood movies (and nearly all small ones) are…
