As has been widely noted, Woody Allen’s Crisis in Six Scenes isn’t really a television series; its six episodes are not particularly self-contained, and plot developments crest and climax willy-nilly regardless of where each segment ends. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour movie, the longest one Allen’s ever made, and with the option…
Fred Armisen and Bill Hader are a rarity in the comedy world: funny people with hearts of gold. It was obvious all those years when they were cast members on Saturday Night Live. They handled their characters — whether living, dead or purely fictional — with a visible sweetness. Think…
Normally, you’d have to log a lot of miles to see dance performances created by nearly two dozen diverse choreographers. But local dance festivals are making it easier to sample the metro Phoenix dance scene, where offerings include classical ballet, contemporary dance, and flamenco, to name a few. For several…
The 2016 edition of New Times’ Best of Phoenix is out now, featuring a series of “as told to” profiles that explore how our city’s proximity to Mexico makes it better. People really want to talk to their stylist. That’s almost more important than the haircut. The color. Because I…
Mention the words “rock opera,” and most people think of either Tommy, the tale of a pinball wizard with a disturbing childhood, or Jesus Christ Superstar, about the perils of mixing faith with fame. Now though, there’s a new rock opera to add to that roster. It’s called Something Inside…
In the fall of 1927, a 20-something pilot named Ruth Elder and Captain George Haldeman, her former flying instructor, took to the skies in American Girl, a small monoplane they were to navigate across the Atlantic Ocean, mimicking Charles Lindbergh’s famed flight from New York to Paris. “Anniston Beauty Promises…
New Times picks the best things to do in metro Phoenix from Friday, October 7, through Sunday, October 9. For more, see our curated calendar of events. The 17th Annual Best of Phoenix A’Fare Best of Phoenix 2016: Bordertown hit stands a week ago, and that means it’s time to celebrate…
Lotus Contemporary Art gallery is relocating to Scottsdale. Gallery owner and artist Denise Fleisch will reopen the space, previously located in the Roosevelt Row arts district of downtown Phoenix, on Thursday, October 6, with an exhibition titled “Unraveled” at 7077 Main Street #6. Lotus Contemporary Art, Five15 Arts, and Galleria…
The 2016 edition of New Times’ Best of Phoenix is out now,featuring a series of “as told to” profiles that explore how our city’s proximity to Mexico makes it better. I was born and raised in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, and moved to Phoenix 15 years ago. I never…
It’s absolutely possible to have too much of a good thing. During just a few short hours this Friday, October 7, well over a dozen new art exhibits are happening in downtown Phoenix. Sure, it’s theoretically possible to see them all. But you won’t have much fun if your Friday…
There’s little in the way of setup or explanation for what the “bad batch” is or how the members of such a motley, unfortunate tribe of humans were banished to a desert wasteland in Ana Lily Amirpour’s post-apocalyptic action dramedy. Instead, Amirpour just lets the camera linger on a sign…
I want to take a moment to apologize to Anne Hathaway. Ms. Hathaway, as you’ve grown from precocious princess (The Princess Diaries) and embattled intern (The Devil Wears Prada) to destitute prostitute (Les Misérables) and back again to Disney royalty (Alice Through the Looking Glass), I’ve sometimes judged you unfairly,…
The images are unsettling: photographs of moist, pink skin, stretched and bloated; rows of wet, shiny teeth glistening from a cavernous maw; clumps of straw-like blond hair bursting from the neck hole of a starched white shirt. Created by an anonymous Scottsdale artist, these digital montages are as troubling as…
The month before Fish Tank writer/director Andrea Arnold premiered her film American Honey at this year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival (where it won the Jury Prize), she spoke before an audience with director Ira Sachs as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. The following are excerpts of her remarks, edited for clarity…
Forgiveness is tricky and personal, and you can’t be blamed for not offering it. Buying a ticket to Nate Parker’s slave-revolt drama The Birth of a Nation demands at least some measure of it. As you’ve probably heard, while a student at Penn State, Parker — the film’s star, director,…
When Relativity Media — the production company/distributor behind Masterminds, the newest vehicle for Zach Galifianakis to do his painfully committed schtick — started getting press, co-founder/co-CEO Ryan Kavanaugh boasted of his secret sauce for success. A proprietary risk-evaluation algorithm that crunched variables like cast, release date, relative examples in the…
Here’s a great example of how not to open your documentary. “After releasing my film in 2012 about marriage equality, I was at a loss of what topic to explore next,” says Cassie Jaye in the halting tones of a hostage reading her captors’ statement to the world. That comes…
They say there’s no accounting for taste, and here to prove it is The Greasy Strangler. A fringe-inhabiting genre provocation destined for a self-selecting audience with strong stomachs, co-writer/director Jim Hosking’s feature-length whatsit tests sensibilities, but Hosking forgets that oddity isn’t a substitute for quality. The film offers a chance…
Outside of dudes killing dudes, there’s little the moviegoers seem to love more than weddings, a truth that Elite Zexer’s heartsick desert drama Sand Storm exploits for a first-act sucker punch. The nuptials that teen Layla (Lamis Ammar) is driving her father Suliman (Hitham Omari) toward, the frame of a…
Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience might be the most narrative film of Terrence Malick’s career. The enigmatic director’s recent work has been marked by a turn toward elliptical, stream-of-consciousness meditations, pretty much discarding any semblance of conventional storytelling. But going as far back as Badlands (1973), he’s had a…
You might have let yourself act surprised as the waters have risen and the floods have come. But you can’t anymore, not after 13th, Ava DuVernay’s miraculous cine-history of the criminalization of American blackness. Few films shake and astonish like this one, even though nothing in it should be a…
It takes all of two minutes of listening to Emily Blunt’s voice-over in The Girl on the Train before you have to wonder whether this narrator might be unreliable. As her Rachel rides Metro-North in and out of Manhattan, detailing her growing obsession with the ostensibly perfect couple she steals…
