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.”…
For its tenth year, the 2010 Scottsdale International Film Festival plans to roll out a collection of seriously dynamic feature films. The five-day, thirty-film festival will screen several award winners, such as Reykjavík-Rotterdam, a thriller that, to date, is one of the most expensive films in Icelandic cinema history; the…
Strictly speaking, the two scrappy Irish kids in Lance Daly’s Kisses aren’t homeless, but in every sense that matters, they have only each other for shelter. Kylie and Dylan (played by Kelly O’Neill and Shane Curry, both plucked from Dublin schools and oozing forlorn defiance) live next door to each…
After obligatory helicopter views of New York’s skyline open Adam McKay’s The Other Guys, we’re introduced to Danson and Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson), a duo of headline-grabbing, unflappable supercops who keep the city exciting, if not safe, with law enforcement by the Michael Bay book. The Other…
Not too much beats a good movie and a drink. It’s why we’re pretty excited about FilmBar Phoenix, the independent theater opening this November at 815 N. Second Street. Since the departure of The Palms Theatre and the Sombrero Playhouse, downtown has been indie theater-less, and the multi-plex AMC at…
Film fan and Madcap Theaters director Andrea Beesley-Brown, aka the Midnite Movie Mamacita, has a well-known appreciation for cult films and grindhouse cinema, but it turns out, she’s also a fan of funny movies about marijuana.This weekend, Madcap Theaters will show one of the first films ever made about marijuana,…
Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass has plenty of fans — it copped an award at Cannes in 2009 — but I don’t see what they see. The 87-year-old filmmaker’s latest is an insufferable exercise in cutie-pie modernism, painfully unfunny and precious to a fault. Adapted from a novel by Christian Gailly,…
In Steve Carell’s first few episodes of the American version of The Office, his character, Michael Scott, hewed closely to the template created by the series’ British mastermind, Ricky Gervais. Scott, like David Brent before him, was cruel and obtuse, a nightmare of a boss who thinks he’s a leader…
Paul Rudd talks about playing himself, Party Down, and Dinner for Schmucks When last I saw Paul Rudd, in person, it was March 2009 in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Austin. It was 3 in the morning, hours after I Love You, Man had its première at the…
