Lebanon, written and directed by Samuel Maoz, is not just the year’s most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of any kind I’ve seen in 2010. Actually, Lebanon — which won the Golden Lion at Venice, after being rejected by Berlin and Cannes — hardly seems like…
Steve Weiss, head honcho of No Festival Required, has been named film programmer of the soon-to-be-launched FilmBar. Weiss brings some pretty good microcinema experience to the indie venue that plans to screen new, classic, and international flicks when it opens in late November. In 2002, after Jeff Cochran pulled the…
Rebuilding Hope, a documentary that follows three men who fled civil war-torn Sudan and into the United States as children, then return to their homeland as adults, is available for purchase online following a local screening in Phoenix. Gabriel Bol Deng, Koor Garang and Garang Mayuol, the subjects of the…
The Tillman Story, director Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary about Pat Tillman’s family’s search for the truth about his death, opens in theaters nationwide today. We recently caught up with Bar-Lev to ask a few questions about the film. What compelled you to make The Tillman Story? [Tillman’s death] was a story…
Independent filmmaker Tommy Wiseau is as enigmatic as his movies. Several times during our 20-minute phone interview, he says, “I don’t like to talk about myself.” But one thing Wiseau will discuss at length is his movie The Room, which screens at MADCAP Theaters Friday and Saturday, September 3 and…
Back before Ghost Rider and Knowing, Nicolas Cage actually stumbled into a few good movies. Really, we checked. One such film was Raising Arizona (given, that was also in 1987), and it’s having a homecoming. The film’s studio, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, is celebrating its 75th anniversary and is…
“You’re going back to animation after this, right?” a voice asks over the hammering coming from behind a whimsical house facade on the second floor of the ASU Art Museum.A small neighborhood of white houses lines the three walls of the room; In the center is a darker, more elaborate…
Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals safety who enlisted in the Army Rangers eight months after September 11, read Emerson, Chomsky, and, though an atheist, the Bible. Resembling a beefier Seann William Scott, he shunned cell phones, cars, and professional-athlete megalomania. A fiercely private (and principled) person, his death in Afghanistan…
Sometimes you feel bad for movie marketers, tasked with connecting any given film to as large an audience as possible. Take, for example, The American. Judging by the film’s trailers and advertisements, it’s a fast-paced Euro-stylish thriller starring George Clooney as a dashing, conflicted hero. Yet it quickly becomes apparent,…
Happily sampling nasty beats and riffs from the Scorsese catalog, the new Aussie crime saga Animal Kingdom begins with a hushed but breath-holding set piece: A gawky lad watches TV on the couch next to his dozing mum . . . until the already-summoned EMTs arrive and the boy calmly…
In 1993, inspired by his second cousin Danny Trejo’s work in Desperado, Robert Rodriguez wrote a screenplay around the character of Machete — a stringy-haired, leather-faced, ex-federale turned down-and-dirty hitman turned violent crusader on behalf of his fellow illegal immigrants. While Trejo played a different character named Machete in Rodriguez’s…
Tickets are now on sale for the third annual Arizona Underground Film Festival, which rolls through Phoenix and Tucson September 18 to 25. Last week, the festival announced the first six films to make the cut. What to expect: A comedy about German hit men, a surreal skateboarding flick, a…
With a small, well-chosen cast, sly script, and slippery, ambivalent characters, The Last Exorcism gives a welcome twist to the demonic-possession movie revival. A fourth-generation minister, Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) of Baton Rouge’s Church of St. Mark was groomed for the pulpit. Onetime child preacher Cotton has grown out of…
The Tillman Story, a documentary about the death of former Arizona Cardinal and Army Ranger Pat Tillman, opens in Los Angeles and New York City today. The film, directed by Amir Bar-Lev (My Kid Could Paint That), chronicles the Tillman family’s search for the truth about Pat’s death in the…
The Switch is a loose adaptation of a Jeffrey Eugenides story called “Baster,” published in The New Yorker in 1996 and deemed fit for inclusion in the 2001 best-of anthology Wonderful Town. Last week, when asked by the New Yorker’s book blog about the film — which stars Jennifer Aniston…
Midway through Lottery Ticket, a teen-comedy-cum-wish-fulfillment fantasy, the movie’s hero, Kevin Carson, goes on a spending spree. The holder of a $370 million lottery ticket that he can’t cash in until after the July 4 holiday, Kevin accepts a $100,000 loan from a local gangster, and proceeds to spend it…
Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love, and the consequential movie adaptation (in theaters tonight) ignited a gimmick heyday in the form of furniture lines, tea sets, language kits, toe readings, you name it … or check it out in our EPL rundown. But the EPL folks and trend suckers really…
A NYC-based film festival created in 2003, the Rural Route Film Festival is an annual showcase for indie films that deal with rural folks and places. Their definition of “rural” runs the gamut from the Wild West and Canada to Siberia and the harsh deserts of Argentina. In 2008, the…
Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is every bit as faithful to its source material (Bryan Lee O’Malley’s six-volume series about a 22-year-old go-nowhere man-boy fending off his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes) as Zack Snyder’s Watchmen was to his (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ brooding comic-hero deconstruction). Both…
“If the money’s right, we don’t care where the job is.” So explains the leader of hired-gun task force The Expendables, Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone). This credo lands Ross and his team in the Gulf of Aden as our story begins. Somali pirates staging a videotaped decapitation are pinned down…
“No Damn Trespassing, Beware of Mule!” warns the hand-carved sign posted near the high-country cabin of Tennessee recluse Felix Bush (Robert Duvall), whose abrupt decision to re-engage with the larger world propels Get Low, an imperfect but rewarding new film. It is 1938, and Felix, who’s been in a self-imposed…
Besides doing fun domestic partner stuff like arguing about why dirty socks don’t go on the couch and whose last name will come first in their hyphenated union, Phoenix New Times staff writer Niki D’Andrea and her girlfriend, Esther Groves, like to occasionally get out of the house for “dates.”…
