During his 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Herman Cain rhapsodized about the fence he’d build on the U.S.-Mexico border: 20 feet tall with barbed wire, electricity, and a moat. “And I would put those alligators in that moat!” he cheered. For Machete Kills, Robert Rodriguez built that fence but left…
CBGB begins with a bit of misdirection. You think punk started at 315 Bowery. You’re wrong. It began in a basement in Connecticut with two ne’er-do-wells, John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil. There, according to the film — a mostly turgid, boring-as-hell, campy slog that gets more wrong than right —…
There definitely are some geeks out there who are worried about Zero Charisma. Does the movie take a lot of cheap shots or does it for once accurately show what it’s like to be a geek? Zero Charisma is more of a nuanced character study than a broad comedy, and…
© 2013 – Troublemaker StudiosTrejo in Machete Kills.In this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, our critics discuss Captain Phillips and Machete Kills, both out on Friday, October 11…
The Birthday Boys with executive producer Bob Odenkirk (center)An actor’s unique look can accentuate any comedy performance. On an August Sunday afternoon at a private home in Sherman Oaks, California, Tim Kalpakis, a member of sketch group the Birthday Boys, with a Dick Tracy–square jaw, is prepping a bit as…
GravityOn this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, the Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek both praise Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock), saying the director exhibits a “lovely human touch” with film, which is set in space, and that it’s “so different than anything else he’s…
“What a shitty place to die.” Whatever your feelings about Dallas, that’s a pretty harsh assessment. Then again, the character in Peter Landesman’s well-intentioned but unfulfilling Parkland who says it, an aide to fallen President John F. Kennedy, can probably be forgiven for his snotty Yankee attitude. Next month marks…
In their experimental new film, Metallica endeavor to translate the anger and pain in their music into a visual medium. Directed by Nimród Antalis, Metallica Through the Never is the band’s second big-screen effort, the first being being the 2004 behind-the-scenes documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. That debut, created…
Some movies are so tense and deeply affecting that they shave years off your life as you’re watching, only to give back that lost time, and more, at the end. Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is one of those movies. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts — one a medical engineer,…
Like all kid protagonists in movies, Wadjda’s Wadjda wants one pure thing so much that the very concept of want shades into need. If this plucky Saudi Arabian girl (played by preteen Waad Mohammed) doesn’t get a bicycle, it seems, some fundamental quality of hers might not survive adolescence. Her…
The Scottsdale International Film Festival is back in its 13th year and full of premières, special advanced screenings, and thought-provoking documentaries from all over the world. The four-night event runs October 4 through 8 at Scottsdale’s Harkins Shea 14 Theatre and promises everything from all-star casts to special Q&A sessions…
Scottsdale’s Harkins Camelview 5, one of the longest-running movie theaters in Arizona, has been screening indie and art house flicks for a few decades now. And if a group of local historic preservationists, architecture aficionados, and longtime patrons have their way, it will keep doing so for years to come…
Phoenix Comicon’s preview night has never been the biggest part of the annual four-day fandom free-for-all. And that’s not a slight by any means. It’s always has a good turnout, typically amongst the more die-hard members of local geekdom who are eager for a peek at what’s going down in…
To paraphrase the Bee Gees, Joseph Gordon-Levitt should be dancing. He’s already done it in (500) Days of Summer, where he led an exuberant ensemble routine that out-Dr Peppered any Dr Pepper commercial. Then there was his smashing Saturday Night Live re-creation of Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” — like…
With so many violent movies and lurid movies and straight-up bad movies — most just so much murderous product — it’s rare anymore to be seized by that feeling, as a film plays, that maybe there’s a reason for this particular violent or lurid or bad movie to exist. They…
Isaiah Washington didn’t want to play John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper who triggered three weeks of terror in 2002. The man — make that murderer — felt too familiar. Like Washington, Muhammad was a veteran and a father of three. Both were analytical, observant, and quick to vent their…
When a relatively young actor dies suddenly, as James Gandolfini did in June, it’s tempting to wonder about the roles he’ll never get to play. When we didn’t know we’d be losing him so soon, it was always fun to see Gandolfini show up, a casual surprise: In 2012 alone…
The last time Metallica made a documentary, they let the cameras into their therapy sessions, their private lives, their struggles with their families. It wasn’t good for their image, but it made for a compelling film. This time they reverse tactics. In Metallica: Through the Never, the most immersive concert…
Kids are assholes, or at least cartoons think so. Animation has inked a grand tradition of cruelty, from Wile E. Coyote’s countless failed firebombings to modern-day kiddy cash-grabs where the most common punchline is a fall or a fart. Can’t we all just get along? In Cody Cameron and Kris…
Mild spoilers up to The Bridge’s ninth episode below. Artisanal murders are all the rage these days. On Showtime’s Dexter, NBC’s Hannibal, and Fox’s The Following, small-batch, labor-intensive, sold-with-a-story slaughters have become TV’s equivalent of the Cronut. Handsome, intelligent, and mannered as court eunuchs, serial killers have become the new…
It’s 1976, a year when all the groovy girls are traipsing around in tiny suede skirts and all the cool guys have Badfinger hair. One of those guys was English racing driver James Hunt, the charismatic rapscallion who won that year’s Formula One World Championship — the embroidered badge on…
Lizzy Caplan as Virginia Johnson and Michael Sheen as William MastersIn 1957, the same year that The Ed Sullivan Show refused to shoot Elvis below the waist, a gynecologist and a former nightclub singer began hooking strangers up to electrodes and asking them to fuck in the name of science…
