Dan Harkins on Camelview 5’s Impending Closure in Scottsdale

The single-screen cinema, with its balconies and ushers and double features, has joined vaudeville and silent pictures in our hazy American memory. And yet those of us intent on sanctimonious navel-gazing must whine, occasionally, about the good old days, when one saw two carefully paired feature-length films and a couple…

10 Films From Sundance to Watch For

For Robert Redford, Sundance’s opening day was a bummer. He woke up to learn the Academy had snubbed him for a (deserved) Best Actor nod for the sparse yachting drama All Is Lost, and he had to spend his typically triumphant morning press conference swatting down questions about being sad…

Labor Day: Jason Reitman’s Film Takes Too Much Work to Believe

Quick, somebody check Jason Reitman’s house to see if the real man has been turned into dust by a body snatcher. Though his name’s on the poster, it’s impossible to believe that the sardonic boy wonder of Juno, Thank You for Smoking, and Young Adult would direct this stilted romance…

Desperado LGBT Film Festival Closes This Weekend

For some, the first things that come to mind when thinking of gay cinema are films like Brokeback Mountain and Blue Is the Warmest Color. While these flicks have their merits, they barely scratch the surface of LGBT film. The fifth annual Desperado Film Festival is here to broaden viewers’…

What Separates Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac from Porn?

Let’s start with the ending: the closing credits disclaimer that insists that none of the lead actors in Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac filmed penetrative sex. If there is real sex in the movie, and it sure looks like there is, it must have been done by one of the eight…

Asghar Farhadi Explores an Unlikely Union in The Past

Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi solidifies his status as one of cinema’s finest living dramatists with The Past, a superb follow-up to 2011’s Oscar-winning A Separation that again situates audiences amid interpersonal, familial, and household crises. Working from a script that incisively plumbs a thicket of logistical and emotional complications, Farhadi’s…

Stuntwoman Zoë Bell on the Hard, Satisfying Work of Ass-Kicking

New Zealand stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoë Bell is fully aware of her unique position as an action star who also does her own stunts. After working as Lucy Lawless’ stunt double on Xena: Warrior Princess, Bell was discovered by Quentin Tarantino on the set of Kill Bill. After that, Bell has enjoyed…

I, Frankenstein: Fire Bad, Movie Not So Great, Either

There are four good things we can say about I, Frankenstein, another muscles-and-rubble comic book adaptation just un-terrible enough not to alienate its core audience, yet never consistently grand or surprising enough to win over anyone else. First, Aaron Eckhart brings it, scowling like a champ beneath his jigsawed scar…

Is Sugar the New Cigarettes? Fed Up, a New Sundance Film, Thinks So

© Courtesy of Sundance InstituteSixty years ago, Fred Flintstone hawked Winston cigarettes. Today, he pitches cereal. And both can kill. Stephanie Soechtig’s rabble-rousing documentary Fed Up argues that it’s time to attack Big Sugar just like we successfully demonized Big Tobacco. Narrated by Katie Couric, Fed Up is the first…

Lost ’70s Mess The Visitor Is Rich and Strange

If it were the late ’70s, and you were a wunderkind film artist a bit embarrassed about your zeal for space-opera kids’ stuff, you went out and bagged yourself a great to class your movie up: Alec Guinness; François Truffaut; Max von Sydow done up like a disco gladiolus. That…