The music in Chico & Rita has all the soul its lovers haven’t. The Oscar-nominated animated musical Chico & Rita opens with a jaw-dropping swoop over modern-day Cuba, a well-grimed and bustling island of densely packed buildings that, here, is immaculately detailed and tinted just so, as to make it…
Recording “Les Filles du Crazy,” an anthem that they’ll later lip-synch onstage, half a dozen women — performers at the Crazy Horse, Paris’s classy nudie cabaret — sing of themselves, “They are the soldiers of the erotic army.” The military metaphor proves apt, as Frederick Wiseman’s spellbinding documentary on the…
In the opening scene of Friends With Kids, a conspicuously placed copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion on the bedside table of Jason (Adam Scott) marks him as a nonbeliever. His doubt also extends to conjugal matters, for he is unconvinced that married parents could ever be happy. Sharing…
The foundations of Silent House are laid atop La Casa Muda, a nil-budget 2010 Uruguayan horror film that enjoyed an afterlife in international film festivals. It is not surprising that La Casa Muda was hastily snapped up for an English-language remake, for the concept is the sort of low-overhead, trend-conscious…
Sometimes a movie screens for one night only, and sometimes it’ll show for weeks — months even. That’s why when it comes to catching an independent or limited-release film at a local theater, planning ahead is crucial. Planners that we are, we’ve selected five must-see flicks screening in the Valley…
Directed by Oren Moverman (The Messenger) from a script by Moverman and L.A. noir master James Ellroy, Rampart tracks the downward spiral of LAPD cop Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson). A Vietnam vet whose personal code allows for extreme bad behavior in the name of a hazily defined greater good, Brown…
Academic types talk a lot about the intersection of art and science — about how artists can add depth to their work using scientific concepts and vice-versa. But few fields are built on the sole premise of merging imagination and calculation. Origami, documentarian Vanessa Gould argues, is one of them. Her 2008 documentary…
“There’s no one way to live our lives,” hopes the displaced, adrift couple at the center of Wanderlust. Shopping between the prefab identity options available to them — squeezed, stressed urban professionalism, suburban McMansion soul death, rural counterculture opting out — George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) are…
Every year, you enter your office’s Oscar pool and carefully select the major categories while haphazardly guessing the minor ones (Animated Short, Makeup). Every year, you lose. Why? Because you’ve got it backward: Oscar pools are always decided on the margins, where information is sketchier and outcomes are harder to…
Act of Valor is, according to the opening titles, “based on real acts of valor,” whatever that means. It stars real active-duty Navy SEALs, and, as the uniformed representative of the New York Coast Guard, 9th Regiment who introduced my screening explained, much of it was filmed with live-fire ammunition…
Holocaust culture has proved to be essentially infinite — almost 70 years since the end of World War II, and untold stories of decimation and survival are still hitting the mainstream with no light at the end of the tunnel. Agnieszka Holland’s new film, In Darkness, opens a scab perhaps…
Attention Hunger Games addicts: your chance to grab tickets to the Hunger Games film and meet a few of the film’s stars is coming sooner than you think. If you’re willing to stand, sit, or camp in line, the odds might be in your favor.Tickets for the March 23 midnight premiere…
To the glee of graff fans and pop-culture fiends, creators of The Simpsons announced this morning that an upcoming episode will guest star the kings of street art: Shepard Fairey, Ron English, Kenny Scharf and Robbie Conal. This March 4, all four will be appearing in an episode titled “Exit Though…
Just in time for Cactus League Spring Training, here’s your guide to places where you can party, scheme, trash talk, make out, and dance like one of Vh1’s Baseball Wives — Erika Monroe Williams, Brooke Villone, Anna Benson, Chantel Kendall, Tanya Grace, and Jordana Lenz. The ladies made the Valley’s…
Hostilities in This Means War are declared as two workmates compete for the affection of the same woman. The contested objective is Lauren (Reese Witherspoon), a product tester who decides to apply comparative shopping techniques to dating. Her would-be beaus, FDR (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy), are best friends…
In August 2000, a San Francisco graphic designer – going by the unassuming handle “Someguy” – left 100 blank journals in random places around the city, just waiting to be found. Soon after, he released 900 more, posting them out one by one to eager participants across the globe. He left a…
This year’s Academy Award-nominated shorts offer a little something for every viewing temperament — though some categories require sitting through a lot of mediocre to get to the good. Of the five documentaries, Saving Face and God Is the Bigger Elvis were not made available for critics, but the other…
“You just have to get crazier” were the words of advice that mighty choreographer Pina Bausch once gave to one of her dancers, who fondly recalls the moment in Wim Wenders’ soaring 3-D tribute to the woman who revolutionized the art with her tanztheater (“dance theater”) — and who died…
The Vow, a full-bodied lunge for the heartstrings, has a humdinger of a premise, forcing its characters to face a question that most of us ask ourselves: If you could do the past five years over again, would you live them the same or take a mulligan? A young, married…
“He’s sooo hot,” the woman sitting next to me at the screening of Safe House sighed to her friend as the film’s opening images of Ryan Reynolds working out flashed on the screen. She then went on to fiddle with her BlackBerry for half the movie. Based on those two…
Vh1’s latest reality endeavor, Baseball Wives, is based in (where else?) spring training hotspot Scottsdale. The catty crew includes Anna Benson, Erika Monroe Williams, Tanya Grace, Brooke Villone, Jordana Lenz, and this week’s final femme Chantel Kendall.The six women have (or have had) romances with MLB players, and, as it’s…
Sometimes a movie is a one-night deal, and sometimes it’ll stick around for weeks. So when it comes to catching an independent or limited-screening film at a local theater, planning ahead is crucial. That’s why we’ve selected five must-see flicks screening in the Valley this month. Stock up on salty…
