A nebbishy screenwriter who longs to publish a novel, Gil (Owen Wilson) is tentatively working on a book set in a nostalgia shop — much to the open frustration of Inez (Rachel McAdams), his all-too-modern, rich-girl fiancée, who has a tendency to talk about him in catty, judgey tones as…
Most sequels are born of good box office rather than good ideas — if you build it and they come, you simply must build another one — but it’s hard to imagine a more calculating, creatively bankrupt piece of real estate than The Hangover Part II. Trade out Las Vegas…
Tenacious indie Kelly Reichardt has specialized in quirky, minimalist quasi-road movies in which loners come unmoored in some great American space. Meek’s Cutoff is that and more — one great leap into the 19th-century unknown. The members of a small wagon train crossing the Oregon Trail in 1845 follow their…
CANNES, FRANCE — The last-day screening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ruminative, challenging Once Upon a Time in Anatolia strengthened an exceptionally ambitious and coherent competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — although Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or, Ceylan’s late entry shared the second place…
When New Times blogger Michelle Martinez and her partner, musician E.J. Rodriguez, are not watching movies, they’re talking about them.They’ve even been known to stop a movie to discuss it. Michelle: At times, 13 Assassins was so violent, I had to close my eyes. There are just some things you…
The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee “Scratch” Perry, which opens at Filmbar this week, is part chronicle Perry’s life, and part history of Reggae and Dub music (both pioneered by Scratch). Though Perry’s words are thickly slurred, often-subtitled, and clouded in a thick, low cloud of “smoke,” his…
After having sunk into self-important tedium with its two most recent overstuffed installments, Pirates of the Caribbean seemed destined for permanent burial at sea. And yet the soggy franchise and Johnny Depp’s foppish rapscallion return again for On Stranger Tides — to search for the fountain of youth, no less,…
An earnest, intermittently droll dramedy about a manic-depressive toy manufacturer and his bewildered family, The Beaver is a parable that’s not easily parsed. While director Jodie Foster fails to maintain a consistent tone — could there be such a thing as inspirational satire? — the movie’s lopsided wobble is undeniably…
CANNES, FRANCE — Midway through the Cannes Film Festival, the competition has been all about family — more specifically all about parents (and parent surrogates) and their troubled children, many of both types pretty much from hell. Brad Pitt seems a good bet for red-carpet glory as the domineering autocrat…
Erotic art has a history of being hushed, censored, or flat out destroyed.Secret Museums, playing at FilmBar for the rest of the week, is taking a more public approach. The subtitled documentary travels through the excavated streets of Pompeii, and the carefully guarded shelves of private collectors (and the hidden…
FOX announced last night that Napoleon Dynamite will attempt a (hopefully doomed) animated comeback mid-season of next year. This just in: the nerdy, annoying, nasal-voiced cartoon character may also accelerate the apocalypse countdown. Buckle up…
Nothing goes better with a movie than dinner (and perhaps vise versa), which Chow Bella has all figured out. Dinner and a Movie pairs all sorts of films with themed recipes each week.Today features The Third Man starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, who find themselves in the middle of…
Besides doing fun relationship stuff like arguing about how to discipline their dog, New Times blogger Tyler Hughes and his girlfriend, Jackie Cronin, go to the movies. Tyler: Going in to Bridesmaids, I was sure that you’d like this movie more than I would. I’m a big fan of SNL scribes…
Movie theater proprietors are a pack of nervous nellies, and rightly so. Cineastes and buying up gigantic high-tech televisions left and right for their posh home theatres. Everyone seems to get their fix with Netflix these days. And, worse yet, Hollywood is practically itching to stream just-released movies directly to…
Bridesmaids is a high-profile test case. Directed by Paul Feig (a sitcom journeyman most lovingly known as the creator of Freaks and Geeks), it’s the first female-fronted comedy produced by Hollywood kingpin Judd Apatow, who has weathered criticism in the past for his brand’s dude-centric point of view. It’s also…
Jake Lipson, Danny Miller, James Harkins, Yihyun Jeong, Josh Kanter, and Myles Kramer have more on their schedules than semester finals and summer vacations. This week, they’re screening the result of a year’s worth of interviews and documentary footage in The Border. The project began in Paul Hoeprich’s film/news production…
Besides doing fun relationship stuff like arguing about how to discipline their dog, New Times blogger Tyler Hughes and his girlfriend, Jackie Cronin, go to the movies. Tyler: Seeing THOR just made me more excited to see The Avengers movie coming out next year. There were so many references to the…
Something Borrowed is based on a 2005 work of chick literature by Emily Giffin. It was directed with extraordinary impersonality by Luke Greenfield (Rob Schneider’s The Animal), and produced by Hilary Swank in collaboration, apparently, with the restaurant Shake Shack — one of the lifestyle brands prominently featured in this…
After more than a decade of high-profile Hollywood reboots, the shelves at Marvel and DC are starting to look empty. First came the obvious candidates: comic book vigilantes like Batman and Daredevil transformed seamlessly into action/crime anti-heroes. Then came teen idol Spider-Man, social-pariah super-group the X-Men, righteous rageaholic Hulk, and…
Perhaps the only day when you can watch Star Wars Lego animations, drink a Hairy Wookiee, and quote cheesy, punned movie lines, like “May the fourth be with you.”…
Garfield tells the true story of one of downtown Phoenix’s first neighborhoods banding together to reclaim a historic neighborhood from crime and city abandonment. Members of the Garfield community, including Garfield Organization founder Lupe Sisneros, reached out to ASU students to make a film that would educate others about the deep-rooted…
Nothing goes better with a movie than dinner (and perhaps vise versa), which Chow Bella has all figured out.Dinner and a Movie pairs all sorts of films with themed recipes each week.Today features Pedro Almodovar’s Volver starring Penelope Cruz, who takes over a village restaurant and cooks for a visiting…
