10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2014

Next year is rapidly approaching, and the movie future is looking bright for film buffs, movie geeks, and indie flick lovers alike. Although some announcements, like Batfleck and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, may cast doubt in the minds of some (including us), the return of directors like Wes Anderson…

The Wolf of Wall Street: Martin Scorsese Attacks Excess with Excess

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is the kind of movie directors make when they wield money, power, and a not inconsiderable degree of arrogance. Sprawling and extravagant, it revels in all manner of excess, including sexual debauchery, hearty abuse of liquor and Quaaludes, even dwarf-tossing. Its antihero, the…

The Dreary 47 Ronin Falls on Its Sword

Solemn as a funeral march, humorless as your junior high principal, as Japanese as a grocery-store California roll, Keanu Reeves’ let’s-mope-about-and-kill-ourselves samurai drama has exactly three things going for it. First, the cockeyed sensuality of Rinko Kikuchi as a spider-puking evil witch who can transform herself into a fox, a…

DeNiro vs. Stallone vs. Your Memories of Better Movies

The surprise in Grudge Match, the not-quite-a-comedy that pits Rocky Balboa against Raging Bull, isn’t that it has the chutzpah to posit a universe in which Sylvester Stallone and Robert DeNiro have, since the early ’80s, been equally matched rivals. The surprise is in how easily audiences will buy it…

Walter Mitty Is a Clown’s Stab at a Masterpiece

In the 20 years since Reality Bites, his directorial debut, Ben Stiller has metastasized from sketch comedy lunatic to Generation X darling to blockbuster king. Among the funny men, most of whom have calcified into cliques (yawn, Anchorman 2), he’s the last of the triple-threat writer-director-stars, and the only one…

Voice Film Club Podcast: Her and Anchorman 2

Joaquin Phoenix in Her.On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, this paper’s film critics talk about Spike Jonze’s Her and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, in addition to the wave of films all coming out before the year’s over. Listen to it on iTunes or below on Soundcloud…

American Hustle Is a Con to Fall For

The best movies about con artists work a bit of flimflammery themselves. They’re not necessarily dishonest; they just can’t resist making the truth shinier than it is in real life. There may not be much behind the sparkling tinsel curtain of David O. Russell’s extraordinarily entertaining American Hustle. But what…

Saving Mr. Banks Mansplains, Disney-Style

How stubborn was Walt Disney? He spent 26 years wheedling Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers to sell him the film rights to her book — call it determination or bullying. Travers thought he was a hack who would louse up her story with cartoon penguins. Walt thought she was a…

Llewyn Davis Turns Out to Be a Carey Mulligan-Terrifying Punk

Three types of artists hinge on authenticity: punk bands, folk singers, and rappers. Actors, like Oscar Isaac, are phonies by definition. But the star of the Joel and Ethan Coen’s new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, gets that pressure to keep it real. In high school, he was a straight-edge punk…

Sedona Film Festival Bring Stars, Awards in Its 20th Year

If you’re looking to take a trip up to Sedona, we’d suggest waiting until February so you can attend the Sedona International Film Festival. The nine-day event features documentaries, animation, foreign films, and even some indie flicks with big-name actors. Although the full list of films and workshops for the…

21 Movie Romances That We Loved in 2013

In 2013, love came in many forms: girl on zombie, boy on smartphone, and James Franco on — count ’em — two hot bikini babes at the same damn time. Sure, romantic comedies are as extinct as Oprah Winfrey’s chances of winning Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, but…

Lavish and Lurid, The Great Beauty Is What It Says It Is

Some movies come barreling out of their caves like armies on the sociocultural warpath, self-consciously defining themselves as psychographic events, marking The Way Things Are Now and becoming part of history in the process. Given the ambition, we should embrace these rare explosions when they happen, even more so now…

The Punk Singer Digs Into Kathleen Hanna’s Moment

The age of the riot grrrls entered like a screaming woman and exited like a cooing teen. The woman was Kathleen Hanna, the Bikini Kill frontwoman who kicked boys out of her mosh pits and insisted, “I’m not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody’s boot…

The Late Paul Walker Gets Harrowed in the Gripping Hours

The late Paul Walker practiced the kind of manly American acting that often doesn’t look like acting at all. In movie after movie, many of them of the fast and/or furious variety, Walker performed the difficult trick of seeming to really be the apple-pie tough guys he played. In those…