Welcome back to Middle-Earth. It has been nearly a decade since writer-director Peter Jackson last set foot on J.R.R. Tolkien’s hallowed ground, signing off on a spectacular trilogy of films adapted from the British author’s Lord of the Rings novels. There were box office billions and well-earned Oscars aplenty and…
It’s dispiriting that a film about the romantic life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who cultivated a small coterie of mistresses, should exhibit so little interest in what so engaged its hero: the women’s individual hearts and minds. Instead, Hyde Park on Hudson quickly introduces us (and FDR) to the president’s…
The way films come and go, in and out of theaters, usually it’s easier to miss a movie than catch it. That makes planning ahead a must when it comes to moviegoing in the Valley. That’s also why we’ve handpicked five must-see flicks screening this month to add to the…
David Chase looks like he wants to whack somebody. Not just anybody, mind you, but the middle-age guy with the bad dye job a few tables away from us in the Library Bar of the Regency Hotel. “Hiya!” bellows the dye job into his phone. “I’m sittin’ here watchin’ the…
Fans of ABC’s Bachelor and Bachelorette shows have surely marked their calendars for the big event taking place this Sunday. For those of you who may not be obsessed with all things Bachelor, the evening will mark the second time a couple of contestants will actually walk down the aisle…
Anthropologist and self-admitted yard sale enthusiast Spencer MacCallum serendipitously helped change the life of a Mexican potter, his town, and the entire tradition of an art form after wandering into a run-down second hand store in Deming, New Mexico nearly 30 years ago. It was in Bob’s Swap Shop where…
Early in Waiting for Lightning, skateboarder Greg Hunt utters a surprising truth as he marvels at the giant ramp Danny Way has put together in order to jump the Great Wall of China: “They would never let anyone build something like that here.” It’s a throwaway remark that’s also an…
A wan comedy about gambling that takes no risks, Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite has none of the stinging sordidness of The Grifters, his 1990 movie about chiselers and con artists. That tight, nimble adaptation of Jim Thompson’s high-pulp, strained-through, Greek-tragedy 1963 novel endures as the only other good film…
Everybody’s favorite holiday debacle comedy “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” will be showing during Civic Space Park’s PJ’ s in the Park event Friday, December 7. The Griswolds (who recently reunited for an Old Navy ad) will be shown in all their chaotic glory right after a screening of the Christmas…
An adaptation of George V. Higgins’ 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly anatomizes a self-policing underground economy of junkies, killers, and administrators to indict a present-day mainstream world — the world into which the film is being released by Harvey Weinstein, heralded by misleadingly generic TV ads…
Could there be a more unsympathetic character in today’s culture than a well-born white male who uses his privilege irresponsibly? A highly improvised fictional exposé in search of the elusive heart and soul of hipster nihilism, The Comedy stars alt-comic superstar Tim Heidecker as Swanson, a trust fund 35-year-old hanging…
Depending on whether you count direct-to-video releases, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is either the fourth or sixth film in the low-rent, Panda Express-level Universal Soldier franchise, the descendant of a rip-off of The Terminator. But less money equals less studio oversight, and the directors of low-budget sequels to 20-year-old…
If David Cronenberg and Luc Besson had a mutant baby, it still wouldn’t be able to make a movie quite as hypnotically badass as Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, a fact that might be surprising to those who reasonably assumed that the Jean-Claude Van Damme-and-Dolph Lundgren-headlined franchise had died some…
Part of the renascent body-count action industry, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning and its mere existence might shock many Americans. “There are four Universal Soldier movies?” those shocked Americans would say. They might also be taken aback by the bracing violence that marks the film from stem to stern: the…
The misadventures of one of America’s favorite futuristic families continue tonight at the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination. Brought to life in the early 1960s, The Jetsons introduced television audiences to a cast of characters immersed in technology of the future. George Jetson supports his family with a…
“Coast Modern” is an independent documentary that spans three generations of modernist architecture along the Pacific Northwest coastline from LA to Vancouver. The film gives history and showcases pioneers of this particular style while taking you directly inside some of these architectural marvels. It also includes interviews with some of…
It’s almost the weekend, which means you’ll have plenty of time to catch up on the shows you diligently recorded, queued, and bookmarked throughout the week. In celebration of the television you’ll be watching (and maybe lying about later), we’re introducing a short series of guilty pleasures on the small…
A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a Titanic-by-way-of-Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone. It’s no shock that Ang Lee brings to his high seas adventure graceful and refined aesthetics devoid of any unique signature or pressing…
Early in Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins with a sack of fat connecting chin to neck) walks the red carpet at the première of his 1959 chase film, North by Northwest. “You’re 60 years old!” shouts a reporter to the corpulent master of suspense, then nearing his…
Joe Wright’s dust-blowing new adaptation of Anna Karenina faces a towering mountain of precedent: not only the greatest novel by the man Nabokov called “the greatest Russian writer of prose fiction,” but the whole checkered history of Leo Tolstoy at the movies. A visit to Tolstoy’s imdb.com page gives the…
“I can’t think of a more pathetic situation for an actor than to do a film and not connect to it,” Irrfan Khan says. “And I pray to God that I never face that situation.” Khan might not be one of the most prominent stars in Bollywood, especially not when…
We’ve now been able to screen Lourdes Lee Vasquez’ The Immigration Paradox, which premièred in Phoenix in September. Though lengthy and sometimes a bit eye-glazy with legitimate sociohistorical info, the film’s thought-provoking and beautifully shot. Whether it leaves you in hope or despair about the human tendency to exploit one…
