Five Must-See Movies in Metro Phoenix This June

Grab a sweater and your snack of choice, you’ve got some movies to see. Here are our top picks for flicks this June. Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector @ FilmBar No matter the niche, there’s almost always a following. Take, for instance, VHS. The entertainment…

Grumpy Cat Lands a Movie Deal

Take that film degree and stick it where the sun don’t shine, because Arizona’s own Grumpy Cat (a.k.a. Tardar Suace) just landed her first movie deal. See Also: Our Nine Favorite Faces of Tardar Sauce, The Grumpy Cat from Arizona The Grumpy Cat Does the Harlem Shake (Sort of) The…

The East: Brit Marling Saves the World From the World-Savers

You’re either with Brit Marling or you’re against her. The 29-year-old filmmaker (who describes herself on Twitter as a tree climber/actor/writer/producer) catapulted out of obscurity in 2011 with two obfuscatory indies — Sound of My Voice and the mournful sci-fi drama Another Earth. Marling specializes in films about faith, loyalty,…

What Maisie Knew Might Be a Great Film About Childhood

There are times during the affecting tumult of What Maisie Knew when you may think, “At last, a first-rate American movie about what being a kid actually feels like!” And then there are times when, despite the scrupulousness of co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s adherence to the perspective of…

In Omit the Logic, Richard Pryor Crucifies Himself, Again and Again

“Least you got to see a motherfucker crucify himself,” Richard Pryor spits in the most surprising footage director Marina Zenovich has unearthed for her new documentary Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic. The scene is of Pryor’s last great cock-up just before his last, great comeback. Pacing restlessly before a Hollywood…

After Auteur: How M. Night Shyamalan Became Just Another Director

Wait, you didn’t know that After Earth, the Will Smith–Jaden Smith sci-fi adventure hitting theaters this weekend, is the latest from Shyamalan, he of The Sixth Sense fame and Lady in the Water infamy? Columbia Pictures has done everything in its power, in both trailers and print and TV advertisements,…

After Earth: Smith Family Robinson

The surprise twist in the new M. Night Shyamalan film is that the film is directed by M. Night Shyamalan, a fact that the movie—like the posters and commercials—won’t admit until after you’ve already sat through it. While at heart a Pinkett-Smith family bonding project, the kind of sci-fi play…

The Latest Hangover Punches Down

The unlikeliest of all the Hangover trilogy’s comic implausibilities might be its four pampered, rich-boy leads unironically calling themselves the “Wolf Pack” without anybody ever making fun of them. In the slobs-versus-snobs comedies of the 1970s and ’80s, the snooty rich kids were always the antagonists, bullying the nerds and…

The Sublime Dumb Play of Fast and Furious 6

There’s one key truth that separates the tank-topped gearheads of the Fast and Furious movies from the rest of us. Every problem these lugnuts face can be solved by doing the one thing these lugnuts love most: driving really fast. It’s what it would be like if you could deal…

Cannes: Marion Cotillard Shines in James Gray’s The Immigrant

You know those two little lines you get in your forehead when you frown? The ones that, if you frown too much, stick there for good? The French have a name for that: “the lion wrinkle.” And by the 10th day of Cannes, there are a lot of lion wrinkles…

Fast & Furious & Elegant: Justin Lin and the Vulgar Auteurs

Justin Lin may strike some as out of place in the pantheon of contemporary auteurs. The Taiwanese-born American filmmaker, best known for having directed Fast Five and its sequel, Fast & Furious 6 makes unabashedly populist blockbusters for mainstream audiences — hardly the purview of a “serious” artist. His films,…

Cannes: The Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis

I. First, Something About the Badges (Then We’ll Get to the Coens) Someday I’m going to write a song and call it “Ballad of the Blue Badge.” I haven’t figured out a rhyme scheme yet, let alone a melody, so please allow this outline to suffice: At Cannes, the color…