The murder of the children should be the most disturbing thing. But for many viewers, that isn’t the case in the four films chronicling the arrest, conviction, and 18-year incarceration of Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin for a crime they didn’t commit. The crime-scene photos of three young…
In Movies and TV, Alex Karpovsky Is Only Playing an Asshole. The coffee shop in New York’s Union Square might be packed on this cold afternoon, but scanning the crowded bar, it’s hard to miss Alex Karpovsky looming at the far end — even if you’re not familiar with his…
In George A. Romero’s deeply silly 1993 Stephen King adaptation The Dark Half, Timothy Hutton stars as Thad Beaumont, a writer whose highbrow pretensions don’t pay the bills. When Thad needs to make a quick buck, then, he seals himself into his study and grinds out a nihilistic thriller to…
David KrutaStacie Passon’s Concussion is a happy surprise.Sometimes, one film in a festival lineup can help to reveal another in sharper relief. To wit, one of the loveliest entries in Sundance 2013’s U.S. Dramatic Competition, James Ponsoldt’s deeply felt coming-of-age drama The Spectacular Now, looked even better after the premiere…
Rachel MorrisonMichael B. Jordan (The Wire), who’s fully up to the challenge, in Fruitvale.You could hear a pin drop during the first Sundance screening of writer-director Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale, an enormously powerful and moving debut feature based on the shooting death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by Oakland transit police in…
Steve Wiley is Jackalope Ranch’s Parent Hood. He’s a slightly unorthodox father of five who will weigh in weekly with his mildly-rebellious views and observations. If you’d like to see how he came to write this column, watch the intro video. This week he addresses the importance of critical thinking…
In May in the Summer, Dahlia (Arrested Development’s hilarious Alia Shawkat) is a lesbian tentatively trying to step out of the closet. Editor’s note: This story was written by Village Voice Film Writer Scott Foundas, who will be reporting from the Sundance Film Festival throughout the week. In his brief…
The second season of Lena Dunham’s genius HBO show GIRLS is officially underway, and we’re definitely looking forward to seeing where this season takes us … and by “us,” we mean the girls of course: Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna. If you don’t want to bother with watching the first…
A chiller about two abandoned girls and their bond to the wraith of the title, Mama never delivers the primal terror its premise would suggest. Instead, the movie — the first feature by Andy Muschietti, who co-scripted with his sibling Barbara and Neil Cross — distracts with too much foolishness:…
We’re now a generation removed from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brief, odd reign as the biggest star in movies. This Coppertone age lasted from 1990, when two of the 10 top-grossing pictures were Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall and Kindergarten Cop, until 1993, when Last Action Hero — an attempt at a tonal gene…
For the next 10 days, all Hollywood eyes — and those of many a filmgoer — will turn toward the frigid wilds of Park City, Utah, reportedly experiencing its chilliest winter in a decade. Their collective hope: to discover at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival (January 17 through 26) the…
Octavia Spencer is an American actress celebrated for her role in The Help, in which she played Minny, an outspoken maid. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor…
I’m not a romantic. Really. I don’t need grand gestures or outrageous gifts — at least not in real life. I’m not a big fan of fairy tales, and I was never really into the whole Disney princess scene. In preschool, when other little girls played house, I’d stick the…
Our shiny, golden man is back for the 2013 Academy Awards. Nominees for this year’s awards were announced this morning, with a few surprises. We’ve listed them below, and we’re plotting award-time strategy (and perhaps a drinking game). So grab the popcorn and catch up on these flicks before February…
Originally slated to open last September, Gangster Squad was delayed when the movie-theater shooting in Colorado, suddenly made a scene of gunfire in Grauman’s Chinese Theatre “inappropriate.” Four months later, a turn in the film’s plot that relies on gunning down an adolescent risks recalling Newtown, but the proximity of…
When he died in December 2011, Kim Jong-il left behind more than a dynastic regime and a closet full of drab pantsuits. Jong-il, who ruled the hermetic North Korea from his father Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 until his own passing 17 years later, was a noted cinephile and…
There are two things that are certain in life. One is that death will come for every one of us. The other is that every film Michael Haneke makes will have a fair shot at the Cannes Palme d’Or. Amour, Haneke’s much-garlanded latest, is set almost entirely within a well-appointed…
January is a dumping ground. Here lie your already failed resolutions, holiday cookie weight, and all the movies that weren’t up to December’s Oscar-bait snuff. But don’t fret. Thanks to a few theaters, museums, and Phoenix-based movie buffs, this month won’t be all lost when it comes to moviegoing. Mark…
Victor Moreno grew up watching movies and rending B-list flicks from a shop across the streets from his paren’t house. He comes from a family of lawyers, but broke tradition after graduating from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU (which he paid for by designing websites for…
Squeaking by with an Obama 2012–size victory margin, Paul Thomas Anderson’s thrillingly strange The Master tops this year’s Voice Film Critics’ Poll. It’s just ahead of Kathryn Bigelow’s electrifying hunt–for–bin Laden procedural, Zero Dark Thirty. Although set some 60 years apart, both films offered portraits of a traumatized America trying…
View the full 2012 Village Voice Film Poll Best film: 1. The Master (333 points; 46 mentions) 2. Zero Dark Thirty (296 points; 43 mentions) 3. Holy Motors (295 points; 46 mentions) 4. Moonrise Kingdom (233 points; 38 mentions) 5. This Is Not a Film (186 points; 28 mentions) 6…
The end of cinema? Hardly. More than ever, boiling this concluding year down to the 10 “best” movies feels both arbitrary and reductive. Ideally, I’d have 25 unnumbered slots. I’d cite another five, formally varied nonfiction films: Tchoupitoulas, Detropia, The Ambassador, Only the Young, and How to Survive a Plague…
