It’s a bad omen when, early on in Oz the Great and Powerful, we learn that the full given name of its wizard is Oscar, also the ceremony that star James Franco once presided over as calamitously as he does this sagging Disney tentpole, a gargantuan attempt to turn L…
“Why is there evil in the world?” That question and its corollaries — Where does evil come from? Why can so many create and commit it with apparent immunity? — are at the core of the film Bless Me, Ultima, whose 7-year-old hero, Antonio, wrestles with riddles that have likely…
Twenty minutes into the first full-length movie based on L. Frank Baum’s most beloved novel, a duck pukes into the face of Larry Semon, the star and director. Semon’s 1925 flop, titled The Wizard of Oz, opens and closes with a Geppetto-esque toymaker reading to his granddaughter from a well-loved…
Have you ever wondered how to run a movie theater? What about where the film and theater industries are headed? Dan Harkins, owner and CEO of the Harkins Theatres chain, will be speaking Wednesday, March 6, at his Valley Art Theatre, on Mill Avenue in Tempe, about just that. See…
To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, there are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky in Jack the Giant Slayer. And what would a big-budget, mildly revisionist, 3-D spin on “Jack and the Beanstalk” be if those fearsome beasties didn’t somehow make it down to sea level, where a storybook…
Calling Happy People: A Year in the Taiga a Werner Herzog film is something like calling the dozen books released in 2012 with James Patterson’s name on them “novels written by James Patterson.” It simply isn’t so in the traditional sense, though in this case, the end product isn’t some…
It’s a cliché of the voting world that even the staunchest liberals — especially of the privileged male variety —tend to drift rightward through middle age and beyond. Yesterday’s protesters develop the libertarian malaise; its progressives seek to fence in their fiefdoms and tax-proof their stock portfolios. Not so the…
There’s a reason, beyond basic Judd Apatow oversaturation, that hardly anyone went to see his mewl of middle-aged despair This Is 40. A movie about a marriage already in progress — as opposed to one about a marriage just waiting to happen, the province of the romantic comedy — is…
Honestly, when it started six years ago, Californication was provocative, ballsy, and fun, with laugh-out-loud dialogue and plenty of smart musings about love, sex, family and responsibility. Over five seasons, anti-hero Hank Moody (David Duchovny) has drank and fucked his way through a series of Hollywood writing jobs, all the…
Guy humor is always with us, kind of like the poor. For as long as cavemen have been etching fart jokes into the walls of caves, women have been rolling their eyes, as they didn’t yet have the language tools to whip up outraged essays for Jezebel. Still, given the…
What could be better than catching one your favorite classic films on the big screen while lying on the grass, enjoying the cool breeze, and noshing on good eats? Biltmore Fashion Park brings back its annual Movies in the Park, starting Friday, March 1, at 7:30 p.m. See also: Coffee,…
Inject a little culture into your weekly film routine by dropping into FilmBar throughout the month of March for the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema event. The 18th edition of this series of French-only flicks has a lot of great entries, but we know the five films you’d be très stupide…
Sunday night’s Oscars possibly was one of the best in recent times. There were a few what-were-you-thinking dresses (see Jane Fonda, Anne Hathaway, Norah Jones), and Seth MacFarlane managed to offend many, as to be expected. But aside from a few nomination snubs, there weren’t any real award snubs or…
A new film is screening around the Valley for Black History Month featuring a family of strong women persevering in Phoenix. The documentary centers on two of Phoenix’s champions of the black community: Helen K. Mason and her maternal grandmother, Mary Green. See Also: – Sundance 2013: America’s Black Indie…
Good short film anthologies are lovingly culled from disparate sources, so it’s no surprise that the entries in this for-hire horror anthology — in which 25-odd international filmmakers were tapped to provide brief, cheap chillers pegged to a letter of the alphabet — are berserkly inconsistent. What’s unexpected is how…
If Sundance signals the annual launch of American indie cinema’s new product line, the 63-year-old Berlin Film Festival offered the year’s first major look at what the rest of the world has to offer. In addition to the 19-film official competition, there are two even larger “parallel” sections (the Panorama…
Depending on your perspective, Zooey Deschanel is either the cutest, funniest, most adorable little retro-kookster on Earth, or she’s an irritating try-hard with zero comedy chops. The only thing the world seems able to universally agree on is that Deschanel has nice bangs. As such, her sitcom — New Girl,…
Child characters endowed with adult intelligence tend to be disappointing puppets through which authors articulate their own views. But allowing a brilliant fictional child her own voice and agency (not to mention age-appropriate behavior) represents this whole other imaginative leap — riskier, but way more interesting and rewarding if actually…
To celebrate the 85th anniversary of the Oscars, designers at Shutterstock created their own posters for each film nominated for Best Picture. The posters, stylized as Pop Art, draw from the genre’s greats — Keith Haring, Robert Indiana, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. Looks like the Oscars might…
It’s one of our favorite seasons of the year. No, not spring (that’s our second): Awards Season, and the biggest awards show is upon us. The Academy Awards, aka the Oscars, will air this Sunday, February 24 at 7 p.m. EST on ABC. While this year’s show should prove interesting…
Just in case its screenings of art-house films, funky nightlife events, and voluminous beer selection weren’t enough to cause you to roll into FilmBar after dark, the folks behind the downtown Phoenix indie theatre and culture den have come up with a few more reasons to visit. FilmBar’s proprietors announced…
Roman Coppola Gives Charlie Sheen the 8 1/2 treatment. As he’s questioned by a therapist in the opening scene of the film bearing his name, we see Charles Swan III’s subconscious literally spurt out of his head. It’s visualized as an animated collage largely made up of ladies’ long, disembodied…
