There are worse ways for a television star to transition into film than a horror movie. There are also better movies to do it in than The Boy. Still, Lauren Cohan of The Walking Dead shines bright in William Brent Bell’s dim genre exercise, a vital presence opposite a lifeless…
There’s essentially one joke in the Kung-Fu Panda movies. A ridiculous, adorable creature executes some extravagant action-flick flourish — vaulting over roofs, dropping a bad guy, striking a poster-perfect superhero pose. Then the battle music fades and that adorable creature breaks badass character to remind us it’s totally relatable, even…
Here’s an odd thing to say of a lavishly expensive 3D IMAX maritime disaster flick that hits theaters just a month after the last one: They don’t make them like this anymore. There’s a reason for that, of course — the parents and grandparents who like ’em stolid and corny…
We’ve all been there. A sizeable head cold left me laid out in bed, browsing my TV for something to keep my mind occupied. Since Hulu knows me better than I know myself, my recommendations featured The Hills right in front. I watched the show in real time while living…
Sesame Street has relocated to an alternate universe. Everything there is the same, but also slightly different. Blame gentrification, or the show’s new network, or the hostile scheming of that old meany, Oscar the Grouch. Whatever the reason, every child’s favorite inner city suburb has changed. The venerable kiddie show…
“Who can give me the derivative of X?” a high-school teacher asks early in the YA-apocalypse mashup The 5th Wave. As soon as she asks that, the lights blink off, everybody’s cellphones die and jets tumble from the sky. We never hear a student respond, but here’s my Official Fan…
Call it a dissenting opinion if you must, but Dirty Grandpa has sporadic moments of hilarity: the spontaneous “USA! USA!” chant that erupts after an out-of-his-mind Zac Efron announces to spring breakers that he’s just unknowingly smoked crack, or Aubrey Plaza commanding as foreplay that Robert De Niro, as the…
January has been a rough one for fans of the arts — with the deaths of David Bowie, Lemmy, Alan Rickman, and Glenn Frey. We’ve seen tributes to Bowie and Frey pop up across the state. And starting on Friday, January 22, Harkins Valley Art will celebrate the legacies of Bowie…
“Every film is a documentary of its actors,” Jean-Luc Godard once said. Starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Haigh’s shattering marital drama 45 Years expands that maxim: As we gaze at and listen to these performers, whose characters reflect on nearly a half-century together — almost as long as…
The movie they’re selling isn’t the movie this is. Sony Pictures Classics is peddling Nicholas Hytner’s film of Alan Bennett’s play and memoir The Lady in the Van like it’s the usual twinkly Best Exotic time-with-our-elders holiday entertainment. There’s Maggie Smith, dressed up as what my grandmother used to call…
A dry-rubbed lark from the often harrowing ultra-realist territories of the Romanian New Wave, The Treasure is about almost nothing — a shaggy-dog daydream as flyaway as its protagonists’ thoughts of instant wealth. Director Corneliu Porumboiu, whose 2006 12:08 East of Bucharest may still be the movement’s funniest film, reportedly…
After months of uncertainty, Alamo Drafthouse has announced a new location for its first-ever Arizona cinema. Originally, the Texas-based movie theater chain, which offers films, events, booze, and food, had planned to open at The Row in downtown Chandler. But those plans fell through in October 2015. Alamo representatives announced…
Two degrees and nearly two decades into the American educational system, I suddenly realized a simple truth: I learned more about life from Clarissa Darling than I did from any of my teachers or professors. For those poor souls who never got to know Clarissa like I did, let me…
But what about the meaninglessness of everything? William Monahan’s Mojave is one of those ’90s-style chatty-killer movies, mixed with one of those ’90s-style guns-in-the-desert existential cheapies, the kind of picture where good-looking dudes shooting each other is passed off as elemental and beautiful rather than just what it actually is…
Critics rarely receive love from filmmakers. Last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, Birdman, featured a vengeful harpy of a theater reviewer (played by Lindsay Duncan) hellbent on annihilating a play before she’d even seen it. Birdman was joined in its release year by other unfair portraits of critics in Top…
Alan Rickman has died at the age of 69. To Americans of a certain generation, he’ll always be Hans Gruber from Die Hard; to those of a slightly fresher vintage, he’ll never not be Severus Snape. But it was his ability to transcend the typecasting of those iconic roles that…
Benghazi is a hashtag battle-cry, a call to arms that many Americans don’t understand. Unlike the simplicity of “Remember the Alamo!” a bleat of “Benghazi!” still has people wondering, “Wait, what happened? And why are we mad?” Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi has an explanation, though…
The world is reeling from the sad news that British actor and director Alan Rickman has died at the age of 69. His fans and co-stars have taken to social media to share their grief and to reminisce about their favorite roles in his career. Whereas some performers find a…
Actual angel from heaven and French Bulldog-Chihuahua mix Roxy is 15 weeks old, weighs in at a mere 6 pounds, and will be the first-ever Arizona shelter dog to represent her home state in Animal Planet’s annual Puppy Bowl. Yes, we agree that she is literally the cutest. And, no,…
What are the limits of representation? That’s a moral question that hovers over any depiction of the Final Solution, and it’s not considered lightly by László Nemes’ Son of Saul, which turns unimaginable horrors into tangible ones. By venturing inside the death factory of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nemes risks greeting obscenity with…
A sure-bet time-waster with a clutch of big laughs? A 100-minute brief on Hollywood’s lack of imagination? Grist for future essays about how quickly the idea of Ice “Fuck tha Police” Cube playing a gun-happy hero cop became routine? Whatever you make of Ride Along 2 beforehand is certain to…
On Friday, January 15, Degrassi: The Next Class will première on Netflix under their easy-to-binge model, with all 10 new episodes arriving at the same time. The news of the previous iteration’s cancellation on it’s long-time network, Teen Nick, created an outcry not only from it’s fans who had followed the…
