Maybe the highest compliment that can be paid to John Carter, the long-awaited version of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is that it looks just like it ought to look. Again and again, watching it, I was struck by how seamlessly the filmmakers had captured the visual flavor of the cover paintings [...]
For those unfamiliar with The Lorax, the 1971 children’s book on which the new film Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is based: It’s an environmentalist parable told by a mysterious character called The Once-ler. Once an industrialist, The Once-ler is now a recluse living in a wasteland of his own making. He and his family chopped [...]
Even if, like me, you’re not an especially big fan of the Japanese anime style, don’t miss The Secret World of Arietty. We’re only in February, but I would have to have an outstanding year at the movies indeed for this 2-D animated feature from Japan’s Studio Ghibli not to be somewhere on my 2012 [...]
A woman falls in love with her fiancé’s estranged brother. An aging, successful businessman cheats on his wife. These are the plot and subplot, respectively, of Moonstruck, which turns 25 this year. To someone who’d never seen the film, that description might sound more like the basis for a sordid melodrama with a violent, tragic [...]
Despite the title, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a mostly quiet movie, and for quite a while it keeps its emotional distance, too. The central character, Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), the son of a Manhattan jeweler (Tom Hanks), speaks in a direct, declarative manner, even when, a couple of times, he raises his tone [...]
Phoenix Film Critics Society, of which I am a proud founding member, announced its 2011 Award winners shortly before New Year’s Day. Among those selected were The Artist for Best Picture; its director Michel Hazanavicius as Best Director; its star Jean Dujardin as Best Actress; and its sultry costar Berenice Bejo as Best Supporting Actress. [...]
Opening Dec. 23 at Harkins Valley Art theater in Tempeis Footprints, a mystery tale in which a woman wakes up with amnesia in front Grauman’s Chinese, and searches for her identity on Hollywood Boulevard. The independent film’s editor is a Kyrene Corridor native by the name of Travis Rust, who credits two experiences at Marcos [...]
2006’s Happy Feet was a truly crazy movie, a blend of Pixar-style animation, Bollywood musical and a streak of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Set in a world in which penguins sing to connect with their soulmates, the film focused on the unfortunate young Mumbles, unable to carry a tune but endowed with a natural [...]
At the beginning of Martha Marcy May Marlene, the title character—all those names are hers—flees a cult in rural upstate New York. In desperation, she calls her older sister Lucy, who’s had no idea of her whereabouts for the past couple of years. Lucy comes and picks her up, and takes her to the upscale [...]
All it means, really, is “object,” yet somewhere along the line in American pop culture the word “thing” came to mean something scary, a monster, a freak. Maybe it says something about humans that it’s what’s undefined, not consigned to a pigeonhole, which raises our collective gooseflesh. There were Lovecraft stories like “The Thing on [...]
