Terry Gilliam is a gifted, ambitious filmmaker who, sadly, may now be more famous for being misunderstood and underfunded than he is for actually making movies. The Zero Theorem isn’t likely to reverse that equation. In this half-squirrely, half-torpid sci-fi adventure, Christoph Waltz, with a shaved head and a face…
Simon Pegg has always been more like a cartoon than a real boy. He’s one part Charlie Brown to two parts Tintin, a round-faced runt who can channel both childlike depression and old-fashioned cowlicked pluck. In Pegg’s new film, Hector and the Search for Happiness, director Peter Chelsom simply allows…
The Boxtrolls is a kiddy charmer that makes you laugh, cower, and think of Hitler. That’s an unusual trifecta, but then again, this is an unusual film. If the German Expressionists were skilled at stop-motion animation, they’d have already made it. This is cartoon Caligari, a fable set on a…
Groupie has come to be an ugly word, a misogynist dig that’s used all too casually by men and women alike. A groupie is a woman who doesn’t “do” anything; she gets all of her glamour via her association with a strong man, most often a rock star. How can…
It’s the kind of forward-thinking experience David Bowie himself might have predicted. Just for one day, on silver screens across the country, a movie about a museum exhibition — featuring the rocker’s groundbreaking albums, outlandish costumes, and clips from his artistic videos — will briefly tantalize the world — and…
Grumpy Cat has finally found her voice. Well, technically Hollywood has found it for her. The online feline sensation from Phoenix, known as Tardar Sauce by her owner and Grumpy Cat to virtually anyone with a computer, is set to star in her own Lifetime movie, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas…
Photo by Atsushi Nishijima – © 2014 – Universal PicturesNeeson in A Walk Among the Tombstones.Special guest Inkoo Kang, film critic at TheWrap and news editor at Indiewire’s Women and Hollywood blog, joins Alan Scherstuhl of the Village Voice and Amy Nicholson of the LAWeekly to discuss a variety of…
Filmmakers: If you’re looking to compete in a film challenge but you don’t want to be limited to just 48 hours, IFP/Phoenix has just the event for you. See, unlike many local film challenges that force teams to entirely conceptualize, film, and edit pieces in two days, the Mystery Box…
High class meets high convenience as two of our favorite spots for arts and culture in downtown Phoenix join forces. This fall, FilmBar and Arizona Opera are teaming up to bring movie-goers and opera-lovers a cinematic series that really hits the high notes, by screening live recordings of some of…
Sure, you’ve probably had your fair share of dirty gin martinis while slumped over the Durant’s bar, but do you know the man behind the restaurant? Well, a new film from director Travis Mills will focus on just that. While the local tie of Durant’s Never Closes is a draw,…
Four years ago, comedian Bill Hader told his agent he wanted to do a drama. It took awhile. “I used to think typecasting wasn’t a thing, and it totally is,” Hader admits. “That’s an industry feeling: ‘How can I take that person seriously when I know they’re capable of such…
“I’ll always be anti-authoritarian, as long as I live,” says Terry Gilliam, the comic provocateur who’s been taking aim at the establishment for over four decades. The only thing that changes: his targets. In Life of Brian, it was religion. In Brazil, the government. And in his latest film, The…
#454887520 / gettyimages.comJustin Long, Kevin Smith, Haley Joel Osment and Genesis Rodriguez of Tusk pose for a portrait during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.This summer, a prankster stole Kevin Smith’s Twitter account and tweeted, “Before this comes out I want to state that I am a gay proud man.”…
What’s fascinating, new and neglected across all major video platforms. Among other things, cinema has always been a ready-made self-eulogizer — Hollywood was making two-reeler silent comedies about the craft of moviemaking before the viewing public even knew what it entailed, and documentaries about famous and forgotten threads of film…
The sex scene almost makes it worth sitting through Atlas Shrugged III, the last and least of the cheapjack adaptations of Ayn Rand’s brick-thick celebration of taking your ball and going home. About an hour in, after she’s toured and left the hidden Colorado enclave of the captains of industry…
Married Women Over 30, here’s a pitch for a movie: My Dinner With Idris. You never thought it would happen to you, but one rainy night when your handsome and successful but distracted husband who doesn’t appreciate you is out of town, Idris Elba (The Wire, Mandela: Long Walk to…
Adam Wingard’s The Guest opens with a wet-eyed woman (Sheila Kelley) sitting so still in a chair in her desert ranch house that all we hear is the clock loudly counting seconds. We sense that she’s been sitting like this for months, and the film is charged with anticipation. Horror,…
In two minutes, the Beatles captured the empty life of sad singleton Eleanor Rigby. Director Ned Benson is devoting three films to her namesake — a New York divorcée (Jessica Chastain) — and this first entry, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, barely explains her at all. Wan and adrift,…
They’ve done it at last: made a Liam Neeson-stomps-some-ass flick where, as the credits roll, there’s more stuff to be glad you saw than Neeson himself. Based on one of those Lawrence Block novels that are pretty smart but also too invested in the mechanics of rape and torture, the…
Kevin Smith is a bright guy who over the years has become a little too taken with his own persona, his own jokes, his own cult following — it’s the filmmaker’s equivalent of getting high on your own supply. No matter how awkwardly pontifical or ill-shapen his movies have gotten…
“I’ve spent my whole life playing it safe,” whines Judd Altman (Jason Bateman), the middle-class milquetoast at the center of This Is Where I Leave You. Yes, well, so has director Shawn Levy, but on the basis of his latest vacuous trifle he has no apparent intention, as Altman does,…
Be a part of the world’s first global film festival when the Manhattan Short Film Festival screens its 10 finalists at the Phoenix Art Museum on Wednesday, October 1. With screenings taking place in 47 countries over the span of 10 days, the MSFF is massive. However, the real reason…
