Anthem Family Stars in Docu-Series on WEtv

When the Bruce family began their life together, they seemed to have everything going for them. Todd Bruce had a prosperous contracting business and two children — Heather and Levi. Laura Rumsey, a teacher and mother to five children — Bailey, Danielle and triplets Whitney, Dylan, and Rex — was…

Inside Job Will Make You Seethe

Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s follow-up to his Iraq War gut-twister No End in Sight, is a documentary that inspires less shock and awe than sickening ire. The movie opens with the cautionary tale of little Iceland, an idyllic nation so stable that, as put by one local, it enjoyed “almost…

Scottsdale Community College Film School Open House

Here’s a secret that shouldn’t be one: Scottsdale Community College boasts one of the strongest film programs in the state. And that’s good news for local aspiring filmmakers. From 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 4, the SCC Film School is hosting an open house at the campus, located…

“Monsters” Screening at Valley Art Theatre Tonight

If you’re feeling your caffeine high starting to wane at the beginning of the work week, the Valley Art Theatre is giving an advanced, free screening of “Monsters” tonight and is hosting the Phoenix launch of UK energy drink, “Relentless.” Should be fun if you can hold still in your…

ASU’s MovieFest Screens 16 Short-Film Finalists on Monday

The Campus MovieFest, a student film competition we blogged about in September, has selected 16 short films by ASU students and will host a screening of them Monday evening at MADCAP Theaters. If you go, you might get a good slice of the artistic diversity within the school’s film program;…

Conviction: Hilary Swank Emotes and Gets Her Brother Out of Jail in This Bit of Award Bait

After Fox Searchlight’s Amelia spectacularly flamed out last October, the studio tries again to grab awards-season honors with another biopic starring and executive-produced by Hilary Swank. Gone is the Kansas-patrician enunciation and smartly tailored Depression-era trousers; as Conviction’s Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts high school dropout and single mom who…

Clint Eastwood Chokes the Life Out of Hereafter

Life is wonderful, death is wow, chance is weird, and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter is a puddle of tepid ick. Is America’s last cowboy icon prospecting for more Oscar gold? Taking for his map an original screenplay by British docu-dramatist Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), Eastwood rides a sleepy burro deep…

Lights, Camera, Movies in the Park

You know you live in Arizona when … you can catch a nighttime, outdoor movie from October until mid-December. Every year a few valley parks set up screens and extend an open invitation to catch a free movie under the stars (so long as it isn’t raining). If you’ve been…

It’s Kind of a Funny Story Imagines the Nuthouse as a Hipster’s Paradise

A film seemingly designed to get every New York City honors student face-punched at college, It’s Kind of a Funny Story chronicles a privileged Brooklyn high-schooler’s super-cool institutionalized mental-health break. Hot for his best friend’s girlfriend, stressed out over an application to a prestigious summer school, and audaciously neglectful of…

Never Let Me Go: Children Are Sentenced to a Certain Fate

Published five years ago, Kazuo Ishiguro’s massively praised Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate universe where life has been extended and catastrophic illness eliminated, thanks to an evolutionary advance, namely the harvesting of vital organs from specially bred human clones. But that’s backstory. Despite its lurid premise,…

Waiting For Superman: Davis Guggenheim Ignores Too Many Inconvenient Truths

Davis Guggenheim’s call-to-arms documentary on the failures of the U.S. public-education system — thoroughly laudable in intention if maddening in its logic and omissions — originated with his own guilty conscience. An Academy Award winner for 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth, the director, whose debut doc, 2001’s The First Year, heralded…

Talk Cinema Film Series Begins Oct. 19 in Scottsdale

In the mood for some gambling? The Talk Cinema film series, a cross-city event that gives advanced screenings of independent and foreign films, will hit the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts on Oct. 19. Tickets are available now, but there’s a catch — you won’t know what movie is…

Let Me In: More Vampire Young Adults

An orphan for all practical purposes, 12-year-old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has been left to sprout like a weed. At home, he gets sparse recognition from his divorcée mother; at school, he absorbs castrating taunts from a pack of bullies who’ve gleaned “eternal victim” from his spacey stare. Owen fills the…

The Social Network: David Fincher Comments on Mark Zuckerberg’s Status

The Social Network is a wonderful title, at once Olympian in its detachment and self-descriptive in its buzz. Everyone will opine (and Tweet) on this Scott Rudin-produced, Aaron Sorkin-scripted, David Fincher-directed, universally anticipated tale of Facebook’s genesis and founding genius — at least until something sexier comes along. The main…