Now that the tidal waves of hype and backlash have (mostly sort of) come and gone, it’s safe to say that, no, Lena Dunham’s Girls is not a younger, newer version of Sex and The City (for those looking for that, we’ll leave you and your Fendi baguette with CW’s…
Game of Thrones recently wrapped up its second season on HBO, but if you’re still catching up on and have a sharp eye, you might catch a familiar face on Season 1, episode 10, about 12 minutes in. During the scene, King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) takes Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) to…
Three generations of fine actresses are squandered in Bruce Beresford’s Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, an incompetently structured film that pits hippies against squares with the usual wearying results. This head-hammering, clash-of-values family-healing dramedy makes sure to literalize all its uplifting messages; gentle admonitions about “letting go” are immediately followed by…
With her high cheekbones, feline brown eyes, and heart-shaped mouth, actress Aubrey Plaza is bombshell hot. But in an unusual twist for a 20-something performer at the beginning of her career, Plaza’s natural foxiness is a resource that has gone largely unexploited. Not exactly a character actress, as she hasn’t…
Rock of Ages, a new star-clogged pop-musical diversion, is a cinematic event. It’s not every day, after all, that you get to see two great American traditions — guitar/bass/drums rock music and Tin Pan Alley musical theater — so thoroughly, mutually degraded. This mess originated as a stage production, first…
Steve Weiss is definitely a name to know in the Phoenix film scene, but the local indie programmer says he’s no film buff. Instead of seeing films through traditional outlets like theaters, Netflix, or getting them through ubiquitous Red Boxes, Weiss says his job requires him to dig through boxes…
Long before there were YouTube reaction videos (and we all had to find someone to surprise in our own time), there was nothing quite like sharing the fun fact that Christopher Walken auditioned for the role of Han Solo. The reaction is complex: laughter, disbelief, confusion, this desperate need to…
It’s 1965, the rainy end of summer on the rocky coast of a fictional New England isle. Twelve-year-old Sam (Jared Gilman), a scrawny, bespectacled outcast with an unusual aptitude for cartography, disappears from the Khaki Scout camp, absconding with a couple of bedrolls and an air rifle, and leaving behind…
Arriving in theaters on the back of a portentous ad campaign, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus assumes the air of something more than a summer movie, a blockbuster with brains that links the genesis and the ultimate fate of mankind beyond the stars. It is, incidentally, the story of an ambitious mission…
It’s a warm spring evening on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, and the crowd jostling for hors d’oeuvres in the lobby of the Paramount Theater exudes the anticipatory hum of a gala studio première. Only tonight’s feature presentation isn’t a new summer blockbuster or year-end prestige release. Rather, it’s…
Look no further, Prometheus fans: We’ve got just what you need to make it through these last few nail-biting days ’til the Friday premiere of Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated return to sci-fi. Forget Legos and Peeps, this is the Prometheus trailer in paper, and it’s brought to you by Phoenix…
Sometimes a movie screens for one night only, and sometimes it shows for weeks or months. That’s why when it comes to moviegoing, planning ahead is crucial. Planners that we are, we’ve selected five must-see flicks screening in the Valley this month. Stock up on your preferred salty, sweet snacks…
Lips a standard pinky-orange. Hair a dark, dusty brown. Accent…sort of British. That’s Kristen Stewart for you, as dear, dear Snow White. Stewart – the child actor turned Twilight megastar – is often criticized for taking that old adage of acting for the camera (“Do nothing”) a bit too seriously,…
If ever there was a perfect example of pure, fresh, classical simplicity unnecessarily trodden under with complications, it is Snow White and the Huntsman. Had it trusted by the native charm of its cast and the sensory seduction of its often-astonishing images to humbly, naively retell its story, this Snow…
Can any one of the millions of Americans who saw Men in Black 2 in 2002 describe its plot today? A single scene? I saw both MIB movies upon their original release and have as little memory of the experience as if I’d been mind-wiped with one of those “neuralyzing”…
Many adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby have seen the silver screen, and this summer director Baz Luhrmann will release his own starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki, and Amitabh Bachchan. The movie follows the literary story of writer…
The celebrity of tatted-up rockstar-style cat behaviorist Jackson Galaxy, who hosts Animal Planet’s My Cat from Hell (with new episodes premièring June 30), has helped make it possible to be perceived as a hipster and a crazy cat person, and for that, the rest of us crazy cat people are…
Arizona filmmakers Susan Broude and Tami Pivnick set out with some heavy goals: to give a voice to bullied youth across the nation, to challenge everyone to treat others as they would like to be treated, and to empower people to help put a stop to verbal abuse and cyberbullying…
In his third collaboration with director Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen plays Admiral General Aladeen, the young, dumb dictator of fictional North African nation Wadiya. Under Aladeen’s rule, oil-producing, uranium-enriching Wadiya is a hostile threat to global peace and capitalism. And yet, Aladeen himself is so attracted to Western culture…
Every once in a while, a movie comes along that’s so utterly shameless that it achieves a certain grandeur. Peter Berg’s Battleship, which, I swear to God, is described in its Wikipedia entry as an “American science fiction action naval war film,” is one such movie. Over the past few…
Twentysomething Silver Lake couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) talk their way into an unnamed cult that meets in the basement of a San Fernando Valley split-level in the middle of the night to follow the teachings of the enigmatic Maggie (Brit Marling). A supposedly sickly yet ethereally…
Richard Linklater’s Bernie is the rarest of rarities: a truly unexpected film. It might be classified as a black comedy, for it deals with the murder of an 81-year-old woman in a fashion that is not exactly tragic. But unlike most movies that fall under that label, it never indulges…
