Beautiful Creatures Is a Ravishing Chastity Fantasy

Here’s a question you can spit back next time someone complains that our popular culture is depraved: “Then why are our high school witches, vampires, and superheroes so passionate about their abstinence?” That Twilight hunk and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man have won tween hearts and Hollywood billions by cavalierly refusing to…

A Toast to Lena Dunham’s Panties

Internet assholes are always yelling about what Lena Dunham doesn’t wear on Girls, but let’s talk about something she does. Bros who think everything should be marketed to them never get tired of pointing out that Dunham’s Hannah Horvath seems to be topless more often than not, a point of…

The Five Best Wes Anderson Commercials

Those who enjoy film director Wes Anderson’s visual style, witty dialouge, and sepia-soaked color schemes — well, they just get it. Some people, actually a lot of people, don’t. There’s very little middle ground on the subject, which is why he might not be a natural choice to direct commercials…

Cold War Drama Barbara Is One for the Ages

Set in East Germany in 1980, Christian Petzold’s superb Barbara is a transfixing Cold War thriller made even more vivid by its subtle overlay of the golden-era “woman’s picture,” the woman in question being Dr. Barbara Wolff, brilliantly played by Nina Hoss in her fifth film with the writer-director. Yet…

Side Effects: May Induce Queasy Pleasure

If Side Effects, an immensely pleasurable thriller centering on psychotropic drugs, really is Steven Soderbergh’s final big-screen film, as the director claims it will be, then he has peaked in the Valley of the Dolls. Scripted by Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote the screenplay for Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011), Side…

Identity Thief‘s Melissa McCarthy Is Not Your Best Friend Anymore

To watch Melissa McCarthy as lovable chef Sookie St. James on seven seasons of the Gilmore Girls was to see an actress perfect the art of playing a sidekick. As best friend of the show’s protagonist, Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), McCarthy dutifully provided comic relief and a shoulder on which…

Five Must-See Movies in (And Around) Phoenix This February

Load up on your snack of choice, bucko. You have some movies to see. Here are five flicks and festivals you don’t want to miss this month. Bloody Hero International Film Festival @ Phoenix Center for the Arts Sounds like a horror fest, but don’t let the “bloody” party of…

Director Dave Grohl, Rockers Toast L.A.’s Sound City

Here’s something you don’t get to say too often: It’s a shame when Paul McCartney turns up. Before McCartney arrives, rasping, puppy-eyed, and eager to have a go at the hot new grunge sound of 1993, Dave Grohl’s Sound City is an exciting, sometime illuminating documentary about how a squad…

Fear a Steady Diet of Movies Like Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Steven Spielberg and his jaunty little apologue about the 16th president of the United States aside, it’s no longer enough in movies for a historical figure or literary character to do simple stuff like abolish slavery or find a man of intelligence and character. Abraham Lincoln is reduced to slaying…

Stand Up Guys Is a Blow to Al Pacino’s Legacy

Please, for his own good, somebody clap Dustin Hoffman into a chastity belt. Based on what Al Pacino suffers in Stand Up Guys, and the identical humiliations visited up Robert De Niro in Little Fockers, it seems that Hollywood will not be satisfied until it has speared a hypodermic into…

Tabu‘s Brilliant Look at Colonial Fantasy

Tabu is one of those truly unique movies you can get tongue-tied just trying to describe: a tragic pop pastiche? A lyrical Old Hollywood melodrama projected on a bedsheet? A celluloid curio à la Barnum’s Fiji mermaid? At such times, it’s better to stick with a simple “wonderful.” Although the…

An Ode to Liz Lemon: The 30 Greatest Lines from 30 Rock

The end is nigh. 30 Rock-aholics will say farewell to Tina Fey’s sitcom when its one-hour season finale airs on January 31. The two-parter is the last installment of farty nerd goddess Liz Lemon’s adventures, and it promises guest appearances from Salma Hayek, Julianne Moore, T-Pain, and Nancy Pelosi, among…