Daniel Schay cornered me at a cocktail party a few years ago. Usually, encounters between myself and theater people don’t go well, and often involve a thespian telling me how disappointed they are in my recent critique of their work. But not Dan, who died suddenly last Thursday. Dan wanted…
You may know John Carney as the writer and director of Once and Begin Again, both indie romantic comedies with fantastic soundtracks about struggling musicians in major cities. His new film Sing Street, which debuted locally this past Sunday at the Phoenix Film Festival, makes the three a sort of spiritual trilogy. The film sets…
To read poet Marilyn Hacker’s work is to enter a landscape both wild and artfully contained, where classic forms of poetry are no longer emissaries from a lost world of meticulous manners and pristine hosiery, but are transformed into a call for dynamic action or a lament for fallen revolutionaries…
Give your best scissors and most beloved camera a long, hard look before you head out to see the new crop of exhibitions opening on Third Friday this month. Because you might be amazed by what some local artists have accomplished using these tools most of us tend to take…
The effortless charisma of Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer, the headliners of the first two Barbershop movies (released in 2002 and 2004), helped keep those over-plotted comedies buoyant. Cube and Cedric are back as Calvin and Eddie in Barbershop: The Next Cut, but even their enormous appeal can’t rescue…
Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room is an impeccably crafted cinematic torture machine — in the best possible way. The premise will make some cringe, while making others giddy: A punk band, trapped in a club in the middle of nowhere, have to fight off a bunch of murderous skinheads to get…
Score one for going home again. After misfiring with Begin Again, a film that asked us to worry over a disillusioned A&R man’s efforts to coax a folk-pop album out of Keira Knightley, writer-director John Carney has turned back to the striving Irish of Once, his breakout hit. He’s also…
In Where We Stand: Class Matters, bell hooks argues that people with wealth sometimes have a difficult time understanding the fact that they’re wealthy because they know there are others who have more than they do. When watching Amanda Marsalis’ feature film debut, Echo Park, it’s difficult not to think…
What do you get when you make a superhero movie with a male lead but keep your female audience at the forefront in your decision-making? Apparently a box office hit. By now, you’ve probably heard about the wild success of the little superhero film that could: Deadpool. Nobody expected much…
Hardcore Henry screened as a midnight movie at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and was so ecstatically received that a distributor bidding war ensued. Six months later, the film has hit theaters nationwide and fallen flat, thanks to intensely negative reviews from critics upset by its unceasing violence. It didn’t…
“Hey, Joe, we’re thinking of having some people over to play games,” your friend says. Sounds great, you think. You work up the courage to go, stretching outside of that awkward personal bubble you’ve fortified. You even work up the nerve to use some mouthwash. You might even shower. Hey,…
If you live in metro Phoenix, chances are you know of Amy Silverman. She’s a commentator on KJZZ and managing editor of New Times. She’s been heard on This American Life, seen in The New York Times, and documents her experiences with her family on her blog, Girl in a Party Hat. But…
With the summer just a few page turns of the calendar away, comic book publishers are starting to preview their upcoming events and high-profile launches. And while variant covers and overpaid pencillers might trick you into forking over some of those hard-earned dollars, sometimes it’s hard to find that particular…
Colonia is not a “thriller,” so let’s get that out of the way. It’s a love story that also happens to be set in one of the most viscerally horrifying cult prisons in history. (The story is “based on true events.”) If that premise sounds jarring to you, you’re not…
Stately, earthy, graphic, riveting: Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull is one of those art-house studies that plops the camera down someplace far from us and, in exquisite long takes, examines the lives that almost seem to just be happening there anyway. No matter how rigorously worked out each shot and its…
Here’s about as convincing an argument as I can imagine for the existence of the modern Hollywood blockbuster. Disney and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book reinvigorates an oft-told tale with star power, technology and calculated charm. It’s been billed as a live-action remake (it’s too good to be called a…
To create his film Rwanda and Juliet, Canadian filmmaker Ben Proudfoot traveled to Kigali with a movie crew and a plan. There, they followed Andrew Garrod, a former Dartmouth College professor and the co-founder of a decades-old group called Youth Bridge Global that mounts Shakespeare productions in hopes of inspiring…
New Times picks the best things to do in metro Phoenix from Monday, April 11, through Thursday, April 14. Once Upon a Mattress If you’re famous, your big break came along somewhere back there, and however hard you worked and prepared, chances are it was serendipitous and unexpected. For Carol Burnett,…
Batman v. Superman isn’t necessarily a horrible film. Stay with us here. Yes, it’s bad. But, no, it’s not horrible. There are things to like, even if you didn’t enjoy Man of Steel and think Ben Affleck is still a weird choice to play Batman. The action and pure CGI porn…
Here’s a question faced by the creators of almost every superhero adaptation: How do do you pull this off without copying Frank Miller’s Batman? Too many modern superhero dramas — including the Dark Knight films, Arrow, Daredevil and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — either ape the dour realism…
When you picture sunrise in Old Town Scottsdale, a double set of flashing disco lights might not come to mind. But that’s what you’ll find at a new fitness studio called Studio 103, where even the 6 a.m. classes blend calorie burning with club-style dance. Located at 4385 North 75th…
These days, any new found-footage horror film inherently fights an uphill battle to distinguish itself. It’s been almost 7 years now since Paranormal Activity inspired renewed interest in the genre, and few of the imitators in its wake have managed to recapture its critical or financial success. These low-budget thrillers now…
