Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono’s skin-crawler Cold Fish tells the tale of a mild-mannered fishmonger sucked into the bloodcurdling world of a murderous fellow seafood salesman. The hair-raiser screens at The Royale in Mesa on Friday, August 19, at 11 p.m., and Saturday, August 20, at 9 p.m.”Cold Fish is a…
Is there such thing as a sincerely calculated naïveté? Or put another way, does Miranda July have any idea of how annoying she is? On the basis of The Future, writer/filmmaker/performance artist July’s second feature, I’d guess that she must. A fabricator of her own screen image, July — the…
A cinematic reboot for the patron saint of 98-pound weaklings, Conan the Barbarian is both truer to the vision of its character’s creator, Robert E. Howard, and more satisfyingly pulpy than John Milius’ 1982 movie incarnation. Director Marcus Nispel, along with no fewer than three screenwriters, eschews the lugubrious mythmaking…
Directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by David Nicholls, based on his novel, One Day stars Anne Hathaway as Emma, a too-serious would-be writer in coke-bottle glasses and combat boots. She’s nursing a crush on Dexter (Jim Sturgess), her too-good-looking rich boy college classmate. She’s earnest, tenacious…
In 2008, Ali Vincent lost 112 pounds and won $250,000. The then-32-year-old from Mesa was a cast member on The Biggest Loser and became the show’s first female winner. Today, she’s a speaker, spokeswoman, author, and soon-to-be creator of her own charitable foundation. And she says it all started with an open…
A couple of the Valley’s newest independent cinemas are about to become a bit more dependent on one another. Phoenix’s FilmBar and Mesa’s The Royale recently joined forces and are partnering up in a “strategic alliance.”Filmbar owner Kelly Aubey says a partnership with The Royale was a no-brainer, considering both…
As a documentarian, Errol Morris is less a humanist than a connoisseur of “human interest,” and Tabloid, his ecstatically received and queasily entertaining new movie, is not so much a return to form as a reminder of his ongoing fascination with the freak-show fringe of American life. Dealing with Holocaust…
More than just the Hollywood It Girl of the moment, Emma Stone is a real actress, and in The Help, she gets an ostentatious, Oscar-baiting Big Scene in which to prove it. Stone is, to borrow a phrase from Bret Easton Ellis’ Twitter account, thoroughly post-empire — she doesn’t need…
Money-back guarantees feel like such a remnant of the old economy. Does the depressed consumer class even expect companies to make good on their advertised word anymore? But maybe the dream of free slices scammed from over-promising pizza parlors springs eternal. At least that’s the game being run on Jesse…
If you thought the woman who climbed into a polar bear cage at the Berlin Zoo in 2009 was crazy, just wait until you see the full story of Timothy Treadwell, the naturist and grizzly/brown bear enthusiast who camped in the Alaskan wilderness for 13 seasons to be closer to…
Filmmaker Janus Metz’s documentary, Armadillo, is about as raw as they come.Metz and cameraman Lars Skree spent six months following a group of Danish soldiers working at an army base (Armadillo) in the Afghan province of Helmland. The soldiers patrol an area where Taliban forces are often less than a…
The gearheads at the Rusty Spoke Community Bicycle Collective are offering their own version of the summertime cinematic drive-in experience tonight when they present a “bike-in” screening at their location on Grand Avenue. Fittingly enough, the film being featured is Easy Rider, the landmark movie masterpiece that’s all about life on…
What happens when you commission three guys to take 18 flights to 11 countries spanning 38 thousand miles in 44 days with two cameras? You get a terabyte of film that, when edited down to one minute, gives a unique view into countless corners of the world. Read more about the Australian-based…
,” a web series shot in and around Phoenix that follows an intergalactic crime fighting team … that’s also the worst space crew ever. Blackwell says his goal in creating the series was for enjoyment, both for himself and for an audience. None of the episodes are sequential, but will always…
Besides doing fun relationship stuff like arguing about how to discipline our dog, New Times blogger Tyler Hughes and his girlfriend, Jackie Cronin, go to the movies. Tyler: So, if I remember correctly you haven’t seen any of the original Planet of the Apes movies, including that awful Mark Wahlberg…
Portland. With images of co-op shops selling trinkets and totes with birds on them, grizzly bearded men dressed in plaid, and tattooed girls riding Dutch bikes, the city’s been the backdrop of hipster dreams ever since indie kids got tired of Brooklyn. Naturally, the granola city is also the backdrop…
A uniquely Freudian entry in the body-switching comedy canon, The Change-Up stars Jason Bateman as standard issue anal-retentive lawyer/family man Dave, and Ryan Reynolds as Dave’s classically anal-expulsive stoner/playboy childhood friend Mitch. When sober, Dave begrudgingly tolerates Mitch’s wild-animal routine. One night, when both are drunk, Dave admits he’s secretly…
There may be nothing as Old Hollywood as the narrative about a pretty girl summoning up a dose of pluck to triumph over adversity. And yet Brit Marling — the lithe, stunning co-writer and star of 2011 Sundance Film Festival hits Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, who gives…
So much petty drama has clouded the release of Michael Rapaport’s A Tribe Called Quest documentary. One version of the backstory casts the first-time director as a doofus actor wanna-be (arguably best known for his role as Phoebe’s boyfriend in Friends) who persuades the seminal, but privately splintered, hip-hop crew…
The making of a monkey activist in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The latest descendant of the half-century old de-evolution concept that began with Pierre Boulle’s novel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an origin story. Predicting an ape-supremacist future, Rupert Wyatt’s film is set in…
Domestic partners Niki and Esther aren’t huge fans of Conan O’Brien. Before they went to see the documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop at The Royale in Mesa, Niki had watched maybe two whole episodes of Late Night with Conan O’Brien in the early ’90s, and Esther was more familiar with him…
So you’re a fan of both cowboys and aliens, but aren’t sure if the flavors will taste well when mixed.Luckily, those on the fence about Cowboys & Aliens (opening this Friday), don’t have to waste their time and money at the theater to discover its western/sci-fi mashing plot — they can…
