Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona

Felicity Jones plays Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Mimi Leder's On the Basis of Sex, which opens by showing the future Supreme Court justice as a Harvard Law School student, then as a lawyer taking on the first world-shaking sex discrimination case.

On the Basis of Sex Shrewdly Makes RBG Into a Feminist Jimmy Stewart

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 23, 2018

Leder’s film mostly devotes itself to the future Supreme Court justice’s first world-shaking sex discrimination case, 1972’s Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue: Ginsburg and her husband ... argued against a discriminatory statute before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals

Christian Bale (left) plays Dick Cheney, accompanied by his wife Lynne (Amy Adams), in a scene from Vice, Adam McKay’s film about the former vice president who seemed content to serve as the dark lord of George W. Bush's administration.

Vice Can’t Make Sense of Dick Cheney, but It Can Give You a Headache

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 23, 2018

Don’t look to Vice for psychology or even a sense of presence; McKay uses the Cheneys’ grim unknowability as an excuse not to bother going for either

KiKi Layne (left) plays 19-year-old Tish and Stephan James is 22-year-old Fonny, a couple in love who face obstacles along the way, in If Beale Street Could Talk, writer-director Barry Jenkins' first film since the Oscar-winning Moonlight.

Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Does James Baldwin Proud

By Chuck Wilson

Dec 22, 2018

Baldwin’s central story, dialogue and time-jumping narrative structure are all in place, but so, too, is a sumptuous visual style that serves to deepen the novelist’s themes of racial injustice and the powerful countering force of love

In Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, Rohan Chand plays the title character who must learn the law of the jungle from his animated animal pals while proving he is predator rather than prey.

With Mowgli, Netflix Has Its First Blockbuster

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 22, 2018

This time, though, the lessons are urgent, the jungle threatened by man, the wicked tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) a true terror vowing to one day taste that boy’s blood

Jason Momoa (right) plays Aquaman, a hard-drinking surface-dweller townie raised in a Massachusetts lighthouse, and Amber Heard is Atlantean battle-mermaid Mera in James Wan’s superhero epic.

Aquaman Proves Superheroes Are Better Down Where It’s Wetter

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 21, 2018

Not incidental to Aquaman’s pleasures is its vision of a mixed-race hero, played by a mixed-race actor, fighting to protect and understand clashing aspects of his heritage

The cast of Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns includes Emily Blunt (middle) in the title role as a crisply officious wonderment of a nanny, and Lin-Manuel Miranda (back right) playing a chip-chip lamplighter named Jack.

Emily Blunt Rules, and Mary Poppins Returns Is Not at All Atrocious

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 21, 2018

True to the spirit of the chipper, somewhat aimless live-action Disney day killers that inspired it, Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns gets better the further it wanders from its actual story.

In Ben Is Back, Julia Roberts (left) stars as Holly Burns, an ordinary woman struggling with the return of her teenage son (played by Lucas Hedges) named Ben, who is an addict out from his rehab clinic early by his own choice.

Ben Is Back Pits a Dazzling Julia Roberts Against the Opioid Scourge

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 17, 2018

With the quickest blink or nervy glance, Roberts communicates to us both what her character, an ordinary woman named Holly Burns, has convinced everyone around her to think she’s feeling but also all of her secret doubts, fury and anguish

Among the alternative Spider-folk in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse are (from left): Brooklyn teen Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), the 40ish Peter Parker (voiced by Jake Johnson) and Spider-Gwen (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld).

Into the Spider-Verse Is the Best Superhero Movie Since The Dark Knight

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 12, 2018

It sets a host of alternative Spider-folk running amok in the New York City of Brooklyn teen Miles Morales, the mixed-race Spider-Man (his father is black and his mother Latinx) invented for the comics in 2011 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli

In the film Mortal Engines, Christian Rivers’ adaptation of Philip Reeve’s apocalyptic YA novel, London is one of the gigantic, mobile cities built atop a colossal tank-treaded vehicle that stalks its much smaller prey.

Cities Roll, Fight, and Eat Each Other in the Otherwise Meh Mortal Engines

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 12, 2018

The film plays as if a three-hour epic has been sliced down to size in the editing, but only the scenes establishing character and context have been cut

Saoirse Ronan plays Mary Stuart, riding alongside a group of men including cousin Henry Stuart (Jack Lowden) in Josie Rourke’s intimate Mary Queen of Scots, a film that examines men’s hostility to a woman with power.

In Mary Queen of Scots, Great Women Face Hard Truths About Wielding Power

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 12, 2018

The actresses share only one scene in the film, but Mary Queen of Scots sets them up in counterpoint, two divergent approaches to the question of how women who wield power can actually govern the men around them

Adriano Tardiolo plays the angel-faced title character, a lanky naif who rarely speaks, is prone to extended stupors and has the dreamy look of Elijah Wood’s Frodo Baggins, in Alice Rohrwacher's Happy as Lazzaro.

Netflix’s Exquisite Happy as Lazzaro Asks: What’s to Live for After a Life of Toil?

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 11, 2018

This time, we meet the sharecropping peasants of the remote village of Inviolata, living lives of seasonal toil, lives that look — except for the occasional radio or lightbulb — like they might have a century or so ago

In United Skates, the HBO documentary directed by Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown, the differences in skate style are surveyed on rinks in cities including Los Angeles and Chicago.

HBO’s United Skates Takes a Thrilling Spin Through Roller-Skate Culture

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 11, 2018

And much of the present-day free-skate footage, shot at what have come to be known as “Adult Nights” at skating rinks, also proves invigorating, an invitation to relish the momentum, the joy and the peacocking pride of grown-up skaters

The fate of the little girl in the red coat, played by Oliwia Dabrowska, was one of the gripping storylines in Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Holocaust epic that is returning to the big screen in honor of the 25th anniversary of its release.

As Fascism Rises, Schindler’s List Has Become Almost Radical

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 6, 2018

Today, I’m still awed by the film’s scope and scale, by its relentless energy and attention to detail, by its interest in faces and names and coats and belongings

Yalitza Aparicio plays Cleo, the caretaker of a privileged family in the early ’70s who also becomes the soul sister and friend to matron of the home Sofia in Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographical film Roma.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma Is a Masterpiece of Memory

By Yolanda Machado

Dec 5, 2018

The writer-director shot Roma in chronological order, without showing the cast the script, unveiling it to the actors the same way it is for the audience, piece by piece, a chance to marinate in each moment as it plays out

Lorenzo Ferro plays Carlos, the criminal protagonist of Luis Ortega’s El Angel, an Argentine ripped-from-history crime drama that follows a young man turned on mostly by desires he can’t quite articulate.

Vivid Argentine Crime Drama El Angel Studies the Killer Behind a Baby Face

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 5, 2018

El Angel is a crime spree as improvised reverie, one with a subject who is as quick to give away his loot as the director is to make the subtext explicit

In Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters, the heads of a household trying to survive include father Osamu (played by Lily Franky, right) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando, left), who find a young girl named Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) and decide to keep her.

Kore-eda’s Big-Hearted Shoplifters Toasts the Family That Steals Together

By Bilge Ebiri

Nov 28, 2018

Based on a collection of true news items about exactly what the film’s title promises, Kore-eda’s story centers around a household that at first might appear to be a somewhat ordinary family that has merely fallen on hard times

Academy Award winner Emma Stone plays the impoverished, fallen-from-grace Abigail, the daughter of a one-time nobleman who lost her in a card game, in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite.

Emma Stone and The Favourite’s Royal Women Scheme Deliciously

By Bilge Ebiri

Nov 28, 2018

It’s the early 18th century, there’s a war on with France, and the persistently ill, somewhat childish Anne struggles both to assert her authority and to preserve her kingdom and her crown

Gael Garcia Bernal plays Juan, the mastermind behind a break-in at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, in Museo, Alonso Ruizpalacios’ ambitious, restless film based on a real theft from the 1980s.

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Museo Is Year’s Best and Most Existential Heist Film

By Alan Scherstuhl

Nov 22, 2018

Its centerpiece is a breathless break-in at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, as two 30ish suburbanites, played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Leonardo Ortizgris, attempt to loot artifacts from what is known as the Mayan room

Willem Dafoe plays Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate, Julian Schnabel’s marvelous film about the last days of the Dutch painter who struggles to bear the weight of the beauty he sees.

Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate Invites Us to Look Through Van Gogh’s Eyes

By Alan Scherstuhl

Nov 21, 2018

Probing the painter’s senses as he tramps about the south of France, Schnabel’s film is drunk with light, a little touched in the head itself, giving over to van Gogh’s perspective through gorgeously disorienting POV shots ...

In the latest remake of Robin Hood, Taron Egerton (left) plays the title character who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, while Jamie Foxx portrays Little John as a Moorish commander set on overthrowing the evil English leadership.

The Latest Robin Hood Robs From the Past to Give the Present Nothing

By Kristen Yoonsoo Kim

Nov 21, 2018

The actual 2018 Robin Hood remains a haphazard action thriller taking place sometime during the Crusades, with Taron Egerton basically reprising his breakout Kingsman role as a scrappy normie getting recruited and trained for skilled combat

Film Reviews

Game Changer

Chain Reaction Figures

I support

Keep New Times Free.

This Week's Issue