Never one to betray the courage of his convictions, Luca Guadagnino excels at the unrepentantly grandiose and ludicrous. The title alone of his previous narrative feature, I Am Love (2009), signaled operatic sweep and loony sincerity, qualities further exalted by the film’s visual ravishments and seductive voluptuousness. The Italian director’s…
Yes, teenagers can be terrifying. Anyone who’s ever crossed the street to avoid whatever angst they might hurl at you out of boredom or unfounded antipathy knows this. Some can be like doughy bread, waiting until all the neurons coalesce, while others can be a ticking time bomb. In Memoria,…
None of us should give a crap about anything anyone says in Elstree 1976, but such is the nature of modern fandom that we do — even those of us whose affection for Star Wars is now more an occasional indulgence than a heated obsession. Jon Spira’s documentary is a…
People’s memories of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 Band of Outsiders (showing in a DCP restoration) tend to emphasize the obvious delights: the scene where the three young leads (Anna Karina, Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) do the Madison in a Paris café, or the one where, with the goal of beating…
You know that primly annoyed nice-ish guy that Jason Batemen always plays? The straight-arrow whose barely-held-in disgust suggests that universal American feeling that it’s everyone but you who is the selfish idiot? If you’ve ever suspected that the real Bateman was himself swallowing back some annoyance at the stupidity of…
It’s easy to think, based on the marketing, that the first feature film from acclaimed comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele will be a hundred minutes of an adorable kitten dressed in a do-rag and gold chain for easy laughs, but Keanu is so so much more than that…
Each week, we’re recapping season one of Fuller House, episode by episode. Danny Tanner’s home, so get ready for some hugging. The eighth episode of Fuller House, titled “Secrets, Lies and Firetrucks,” is as literal as it gets, somehow nicely wrapping up a bunch of story lines that seemed to exist in…
If nothing else, Captain America: Civil War stands as something of a corrective to this spring’s other superheroes-bludgeoning-each-other opus, Batman v Superman. While that film was severe and downcast, Civil War is expansive, at times even light. BvS strove to redefine its superheroes to fit newer, darker, borderline-sociopathic molds; Civil…
Is it too much to ask that all these holiday-themed rom-coms — Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve and now Mother’s Day — one day merge with the Halloween movies? Michael Myers might be the only one in either franchise with a truly cutting response to all the rhetorical musings about relationships romantic,…
If you thought the billionaire played by Steve Carell in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher was eerie, please allow me to introduce you to the real John du Pont. A dangerous concoction of lonely and paranoid, du Pont was blessed with money and mobility and cursed with the kind of childhood that…
Each week, we’re recapping the second season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt episode by episode. Pop on your shants and thigh tops. “Kimmy Goes On A Playdate!” opens with Kimmy in full-on eighth-grader mode as she demands a job at a local year-round Christmas store, employing convincing arguments like “I’VE GOT…
The 2016 NFL draft is nigh upon us, and the Arizona Cardinals are looking to capitalize on a successful season by making an explosive pick with the 29th overall selection in the first round. There is a lot of talent for the Cardinals to choose from when the clock starts…
Fairy tales were meant to be oral stories. Translating the tangents of old women in far-flung villages (whose chips on their shoulders about, say, their brother’s failed shipping business might inspire long asides about the shipping industry) into written texts doesn’t always make for the most linear, easy read. In…
Like The Imitation Game, The Man Who Knew Infinity is a Great Man biopic about a man most viewers have probably never heard of. Srinivasa Ramanujan was a brilliant, self-taught Indian mathematician who in his brief time on this earth made seismic contributions to his field. That he’s largely unknown…
Drag devotees know the eighth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race is far from over, but if tuning in to Logo TV on Mondays isn’t enough fierce to get you through the week, more than a dozen former contestants have put aside feuds (whether real or made for reality TV) and…
Hannah Arendt is unlikely to be a social media star. Newly relevant 40 years after her death, the German-born philosopher’s work is distinctly ill-suited to contemporary tools of relevance. Twitter’s context of no context values aphorism, parody and potted wisdom — branded content available in bulk. The author of The…
The lure of everything Cuba is strong. It’s in the news, on top of everyone’s travel list and in our movie theaters. But the recent films about Cuba aren’t exports from the still-embargoed country. Most come from visiting filmmakers. Irish director Paddy Breathnach captures a gorgeous portrait of Cuba with…
When it comes to TV adaptations of sci-fi and fantasy novels, Terry Brooks, author of The Elfstones of Shannara, said it best at the Tucson Festival of Books: “The book is always better!” But some book-to-TV adaptations are better than others. For every loving adaptation like Jonathan Strange and Mr…
The second season of Amazon’s Catastrophe might do for the #TGIF-style family sitcom of the late ‘80s and ‘90s what the first did for the ailing rom-com: open-mouthed resuscitation on the operating table after one too many Garry Marshall–fueled heart attacks like Valentine’s Day. (Or New Year’s Eve? It doesn’t…
Nearly every Alien movie begins the same way: in the vast loneliness of space, in a ship that’s running on its own. In the first film, Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), the camera slowly glides through the dark, lifeless corridors of the commercial towing vehicle Nostromo before locating the sleeping bodies…
In ’81 he accessorized his trench coat with high heels and bikini briefs. In ’84 that coat got dandified, high-collared and famously purple, Edwardian formalwear over a frilled tuxedo shirt over that wicked slick of chest hair. It was the get-up of a perv or a president, a look that…
Harkins Theatres announced on the evening of April 21 that its Tempe Marketplace 16 Cine Capri location will pay tribute to the late artist Prince with two screenings of Purple Rain this weekend. It’s the second local film tribute announced to honor the Purple One, who died at his Minnesota…
