Remake The Graduate today, and an adult might corner Benjamin Braddock and whisper, “Startups.” Debut director Max Joseph gives that a good shot, though the result — the EDM-fueled, drug-laced dream-crusher We Are Your Friends — is so sweaty and silly that people may not notice. Like Mike Nichols, Joseph…
A for Apocalypse The latest Y.A. end-times drama dares not to play by the book There’s a strain of science fiction writing that evokes a chilly kind of coziness, usually by introducing us to individuals or small groups of people who have found their way to the country in the…
Can you hear that? The buzzing sound you hear is the awards season murmuring of a thousand press agents as they gear up to tell us which movies to care about over the next few months. Some pretty heavy material is coming to the big screen, starting with a couple…
Spillers Storytelling nights seem to be sweeping the city these days — with New Times’ monthly Bar Flies among them — and this week a new series starts. Spillers: Short Fiction and Tall Drinks features six storytellers performing edgy, and often funny, short fiction in 10-minute sets. Speakers include creator…
“You could make five different N.W.A movies. We made the one we wanted to make.” That’s director F. Gary Gray during an audience Q&A after a recent screening of Straight Outta Compton, the long-awaited N.W.A movie. In our review, Amy Nicholson writes that there’s much more to the group’s story:…
Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra is a bloody valentine attached to a bomb. It’s violent, brash, inventive, and horrific, and perhaps the most romantic film of the year. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart star as Mike and Phoebe, two West Virginia stoners blissed out on weed and each other. “We’re the…
An opening line can make or break a movie, but there are times when a clunker shouldn’t be held against an otherwise sweet, well-observed picture. Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s Ten Thousand Saints starts with a dud, rendered in voiceover: “I’ve heard people say that life is like a…
Brooke, Greta Gerwig’s latest Manhattan creation, is a hurricane gobbling up lives. She’s a singer, restaurateur, interior decorator, math coach, spinning instructor, and self-described autodidact. When 18-year-old admirer Tracy (Lola Kirke), Brooke’s sister-to-be following their parents’ Thanksgiving wedding, squeaks that she wants to write short stories, Brooke devours that idea,…
Looking for something to do this week without spending some of your hard-earned money? We can help. Free is one of our favorite four-letter words, and this week we found five no-cost events in the Valley this week that are sure to pique your interest. Wether you’re looking for something…
In a world gone mad for superhero movies, what chance does the light spy caper have? Audiences will put total faith in a guy wearing a red metal suit, but the soft woolen folds of the bespoke kind barely register. When a whole city can be blasted to smithereens thanks…
From the trailer, and just from its initial vibe, Joel Edgerton’s directorial debut, The Gift, looks like your stock “When bad things happen to good people” thriller, complete with a soulful pet dog you just know is going to get it. But dog lovers, and everyone else, should know that Edgerton (who…
In the holy trinity of N.W.A., each icon had a power: Dr. Dre produced, Ice Cube wrote the words, and Eazy-E was the comic relief. N.W.A.’s biopic, Straight Outta Compton, blurs those roles. Both Dre and Cube produced the film and seem to have edited the script with a red…
Promising and disappointing all at once, Jon Watts’ backroads thriller Cop Car heralds the arrival of a significant director, one adept not just at the usual action and suspense but also at the fleet, affecting depiction of lives as they’re actually lived. In the opening scenes, the camera glides alongside…
The Aristocrats Best of Enemies toasts Vidal and Buckley’s televised insult comedy. Even if you’re the sort who believes there can be no such thing as too much political coverage, it can’t hurt to cast a fond glance back to 1968, when only three networks — NBC, CBS, and the…
Less than a generation ago, Yonkers, New York, became the face of segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation in my backyard. A federal court order to construct 200 units of low-income residences east of the Saw Mill Parkway, i.e., in the white part of town, led to riots and bombings, death…
Perhaps unexpectedly, choosing the greatest kids movies of all time is quite the serious task. First of all, just deciding what constitutes a kid movie is surprisingly difficult. Should we judge by the ratings and only go with films rated G? PG? Include a few that are PG-13? Instead of…
Amid a month of not-so stellar releases (we’re looking your way, Fantastic Four), Phoenix Film Festival offers a great reason to head to the theater. For the first time ever, the must-attend spring movie event debuts its summer showcase. Kicking off the showcase is Noah Baumbach’s latest Greta Gerwig vehicle, Mistress America,…
“This conversation is the best one I ever had,” David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) tells us as The End of the Tour wraps up, and the movie, a pleasantly talky chamber piece, gives us welcome bursts of it. That long chat, with a David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) abashed by the…
It’s heartbreaking that, in his last dramatic film, Robin Williams plays depressed and repressed, burdened by secrets, a man incapable of connecting. Williams invests himself in the role of a closeted Nashville bank manager married to a woman for whom he feels only sexless affection. Clearly, the actor was moved…
Sometime in the 1980s, Marlon Brando had his face digitized, presumably as a way of leaving just a bit more of himself after his departure from this planet. As we see it in Stevan Riley’s documentary Listen to Me Marlon, that speaking, moving hologram looks like a cross between George…
Jonathan Demme’s rock ‘n’ roll dramedy Ricki and the Flash exists in a wormhole where the last five decades of pop culture are a blur. There’s 66-year-old Meryl Streep, playing a broke singer who ditched her family to dominate the stage with the whiskey growl of Janis Joplin, the jangly…
Jason Segel didn’t tell his book club he’d been cast as novelist David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s biopic The End of the Tour. “I didn’t want to sound like Fancy Pants McGee,” admits Segel over lunch in Los Angeles. (Especially since the 6-foot-4-inch comedy actor is famous for dropping his…
