With her flame-colored ringlets, Merida, the barely adolescent heroine of Pixar’s 13th feature, looks like a wee Rebekah Brooks, maybe a pint-size Florence Welch. Despite these resemblances, Merida remains an original: Brave, set in the Scottish Highlands in the 10th century, is the animation studio’s first film with a female…
Apocalypse movies are a venerable enough genre (and reliable enough as box office cash spigots) to support a few lightweight, funny-sad-romantic entries every once in a while. Given the right touch, this approach can be just the antidote to the idea-free, effects-laden blockbusters and art house pity parties that dominate…
All of you fans of the bike-’til-you-drop documentary Ride the Divide rejoice. The brand new follow-up film, Reveal the Path, will have a special screening July 2 at Fatso’s Pizza in North Phoenix.Reveal the Path follows Tour Divide champion and pedal turning automaton Matthew Lee and Prescott-based endurance freak Kurt…
(Second season spoilers!) The success of Game of Thrones means George RR Martin has achieved what people are supposed to achieve. The book-turned-HBO epic will carve Martin’s bearded effigy into the nerd pantheon alongside Lord of the Rings and 20-sided dice until the next time cycle comes around. Martin crafts…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Katherine Figueroa could hardly be more different: One is an aging lawman nationally known for his pink-underwear prisons, who in unguarded moments regrets never taking voice lessons to improve his signature performance of “My Way.” The other is the 9-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants, born in…
Now that the tidal waves of hype and backlash have (mostly sort of) come and gone, it’s safe to say that, no, Lena Dunham’s Girls is not a younger, newer version of Sex and The City (for those looking for that, we’ll leave you and your Fendi baguette with CW’s…
Game of Thrones recently wrapped up its second season on HBO, but if you’re still catching up on and have a sharp eye, you might catch a familiar face on Season 1, episode 10, about 12 minutes in. During the scene, King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) takes Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) to…
Three generations of fine actresses are squandered in Bruce Beresford’s Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, an incompetently structured film that pits hippies against squares with the usual wearying results. This head-hammering, clash-of-values family-healing dramedy makes sure to literalize all its uplifting messages; gentle admonitions about “letting go” are immediately followed by…
With her high cheekbones, feline brown eyes, and heart-shaped mouth, actress Aubrey Plaza is bombshell hot. But in an unusual twist for a 20-something performer at the beginning of her career, Plaza’s natural foxiness is a resource that has gone largely unexploited. Not exactly a character actress, as she hasn’t…
Rock of Ages, a new star-clogged pop-musical diversion, is a cinematic event. It’s not every day, after all, that you get to see two great American traditions — guitar/bass/drums rock music and Tin Pan Alley musical theater — so thoroughly, mutually degraded. This mess originated as a stage production, first…
Steve Weiss is definitely a name to know in the Phoenix film scene, but the local indie programmer says he’s no film buff. Instead of seeing films through traditional outlets like theaters, Netflix, or getting them through ubiquitous Red Boxes, Weiss says his job requires him to dig through boxes…
Long before there were YouTube reaction videos (and we all had to find someone to surprise in our own time), there was nothing quite like sharing the fun fact that Christopher Walken auditioned for the role of Han Solo. The reaction is complex: laughter, disbelief, confusion, this desperate need to…
It’s 1965, the rainy end of summer on the rocky coast of a fictional New England isle. Twelve-year-old Sam (Jared Gilman), a scrawny, bespectacled outcast with an unusual aptitude for cartography, disappears from the Khaki Scout camp, absconding with a couple of bedrolls and an air rifle, and leaving behind…
Arriving in theaters on the back of a portentous ad campaign, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus assumes the air of something more than a summer movie, a blockbuster with brains that links the genesis and the ultimate fate of mankind beyond the stars. It is, incidentally, the story of an ambitious mission…
It’s a warm spring evening on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, and the crowd jostling for hors d’oeuvres in the lobby of the Paramount Theater exudes the anticipatory hum of a gala studio première. Only tonight’s feature presentation isn’t a new summer blockbuster or year-end prestige release. Rather, it’s…
Look no further, Prometheus fans: We’ve got just what you need to make it through these last few nail-biting days ’til the Friday premiere of Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated return to sci-fi. Forget Legos and Peeps, this is the Prometheus trailer in paper, and it’s brought to you by Phoenix…
Sometimes a movie screens for one night only, and sometimes it shows for weeks or months. That’s why when it comes to moviegoing, planning ahead is crucial. Planners that we are, we’ve selected five must-see flicks screening in the Valley this month. Stock up on your preferred salty, sweet snacks…
Lips a standard pinky-orange. Hair a dark, dusty brown. Accent…sort of British. That’s Kristen Stewart for you, as dear, dear Snow White. Stewart – the child actor turned Twilight megastar – is often criticized for taking that old adage of acting for the camera (“Do nothing”) a bit too seriously,…
If ever there was a perfect example of pure, fresh, classical simplicity unnecessarily trodden under with complications, it is Snow White and the Huntsman. Had it trusted by the native charm of its cast and the sensory seduction of its often-astonishing images to humbly, naively retell its story, this Snow…
Can any one of the millions of Americans who saw Men in Black 2 in 2002 describe its plot today? A single scene? I saw both MIB movies upon their original release and have as little memory of the experience as if I’d been mind-wiped with one of those “neuralyzing”…
Many adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby have seen the silver screen, and this summer director Baz Luhrmann will release his own starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki, and Amitabh Bachchan. The movie follows the literary story of writer…
The celebrity of tatted-up rockstar-style cat behaviorist Jackson Galaxy, who hosts Animal Planet’s My Cat from Hell (with new episodes premièring June 30), has helped make it possible to be perceived as a hipster and a crazy cat person, and for that, the rest of us crazy cat people are…
