Mother of George Offers a Vital, Gorgeous Fertility Tale

The inability to have a child is often treated as a “white people problem,” the province of middle- and upper-class couples who end up resorting to expensive fertility treatments. But Andrew Dosunmu’s supple, observant drama Mother of George puts a different spin on the issue: A woman who longs for…

That Carrie Remake Is Surprisingly Good

Kimberly Peirce changes almost nothing in her rallying remake of Brian De Palma’s classic about a troubled telekinetic teenager. She doesn’t have to. Yes, now the mean girls who pelt Carrie with tampons upload a cell phone video of the attack, and the well-meaning jock who squires the school outcast…

Valentine Road Is a Great, Urgent Doc About the Murder of an LGBT Teen

Perhaps the best and worst thing about young teenagers is that they’re capable of what George W. Bush fans used to call “great moral clarity.” In HBO’s sure-to-make-you-bawl documentary Valentine Road, Aliyah, a student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, breaks down the differences between gayness and…

It’s a Good Time for Bruce Willis, Action Star, to Die Hard

Something’s seemed different about number-one American action hero Bruce Willis lately. His action movie output in recent years has mostly been stunt casting in mediocre sequels (The Expendables 2, G.I. Joe: Retaliation), or supporting roles in little-seen B-movies (Setup, Catch .44, Fire with Fire), as if he’s in a who-can-co-star-with-50-Cent-the-most…

In Captain Phillips, Tom Hanks Goes Where Few Actors Dare

Tom Hanks has built a career out of playing aggressively noble roles, so it’s only natural to want to see him taken down a peg. But it’s no fun to watch him suffer at the hands of Somali pirates in Paul Greengrass’ true-life adventure Captain Phillips. Hanks plays the commander…

Concussion Pales Before Deneuve and Buñuel

“After 40, you have to choose between your ass or your face,” one offscreen spin-class participant remarks to her fellow affluent fitness enthusiasts within the first minute of writer-director Stacie Passon’s poorly conceived Concussion. The remark is a paraphrase of a quote attributed to Catherine Deneuve, and the first of…

Machete Kills Is a B-movie Worth Buying

During his 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Herman Cain rhapsodized about the fence he’d build on the U.S.-Mexico border: 20 feet tall with barbed wire, electricity, and a moat. “And I would put those alligators in that moat!” he cheered. For Machete Kills, Robert Rodriguez built that fence but left…

CBGB Could’ve Been Good, But . . .

CBGB begins with a bit of misdirection. You think punk started at 315 Bowery. You’re wrong. It began in a basement in Connecticut with two ne’er-do-wells, John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil. There, according to the film — a mostly turgid, boring-as-hell, campy slog that gets more wrong than right —…

Podcast: Why Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity is a Near-Perfect Movie

GravityOn this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, the Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek both praise Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock), saying the director exhibits a “lovely human touch” with film, which is set in space, and that it’s “so different than anything else he’s…

Parkland Can’t Quite Honor Life After JFK

“What a shitty place to die.” Whatever your feelings about Dallas, that’s a pretty harsh assessment. Then again, the character in Peter Landesman’s well-intentioned but unfulfilling Parkland who says it, an aide to fallen President John F. Kennedy, can probably be forgiven for his snotty Yankee attitude. Next month marks…

Metallica: Through the Never‘s Weird Provocation of White Aggrievement

In their experimental new film, Metallica endeavor to translate the anger and pain in their music into a visual medium. Directed by Nimród Antalis, Metallica Through the Never is the band’s second big-screen effort, the first being being the 2004 behind-the-scenes documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. That debut, created…

Gravity Is a Thrilling Breakthrough

Some movies are so tense and deeply affecting that they shave years off your life as you’re watching, only to give back that lost time, and more, at the end. Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is one of those movies. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts — one a medical engineer,…

The Moving Wadjda Reveals the Lives of Saudi Girls

Like all kid protagonists in movies, Wadjda’s Wadjda wants one pure thing so much that the very concept of want shades into need. If this plucky Saudi Arabian girl (played by preteen Waad Mohammed) doesn’t get a bicycle, it seems, some fundamental quality of hers might not survive adolescence. Her…

5 Must-See Movies at The Scottsdale International Film Festival

The Scottsdale International Film Festival is back in its 13th year and full of premières, special advanced screenings, and thought-provoking documentaries from all over the world. The four-night event runs October 4 through 8 at Scottsdale’s Harkins Shea 14 Theatre and promises everything from all-star casts to special Q&A sessions…