During his 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Herman Cain rhapsodized about the fence he’d build on the U.S.-Mexico border: 20 feet tall with barbed wire, electricity and a moat. “And I would put those alligators in that moat!” he cheered. For Machete Kills, Robert Rodriguez built that fence but left…
Something’s seemed different about No. 1 American-born action hero Bruce Willis lately. His action movie output in recent years has mostly been stunt casting in mediocre sequels (The Expendables 2, G.I. Joe: Retaliation), or supporting roles in little-seen B-movies (Setup, Catch .44, Fire with Fire), as if he’s in a…
There are definitely some geeks out there who are worried about Zero Charisma. Does the movie take a lot of cheap shots, or does it for once accurately show what it’s like to be a geek? Zero Charisma is more of a nuanced character study than a broad comedy, and…
“If you don’t want to see sex with a duck, leave about an hour and 10 minutes in,” says Bart Weiss, Dallas VideoFest’s organizer and programmer. We’re eating a sensible breakfast in Oak Cliff as Weiss describes a historical documentary called Natan, which screens this weekend at VideoFest. It’s about…
Long before The Daily Show became the most trusted name in fake news, including the one with the smarmy guy from Sportscenter who threw away his late night career to star in a Rob Schneider movie, and even long before the first season of Saturday Night Live gave a much…
*Editor’s Note: Nobody in Dallas is showing Teen Witch? IT’S HALLOWEEN MOVIE SEASON PEOPLE. GET EXCITED! In Dallas, theaters have rolled out the orange carpet to usher in a season of gore, spoof and general Halloweenocity. ( Movie Tavern in Denton The college town go-to hosts a Retro Cinema series…
AMC’s original-drama wave crested over the weekend, when a record 10 million people bid a Badfinger-scored farewell to Walter White and Breaking Bad. Walking Dead (which returns next weekend) and Mad Men (next year) will keep things going, but fans will of course want more-more-more. The network is hoping a…
Blue Caprice looks for sense in what, to all other appearances, was a senseless moment in recent history. Over the course of three weeks in October 2002, John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo terrorized citizens of the Washington D.C. area, and America as a whole, by randomly sniping at least…
Does anyone else notice how much modern horror movies suck? Sure there’s an occasional creative hit like the first Paranormal Activity or The Cabin in the Woods, but the second a horror movie shows a modicum of popularity, Hollywood runs into the dirt with an endless series of pointless sequels…
GravityOn this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, the Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek both praise Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock), saying the director exhibits a “lovely human touch” with film, which is set in space, and that it’s “so different than anything else he’s…
What a shitty place to die. Whatever your feelings about Dallas, that’s a pretty harsh assessment. Then again, the character in Peter Landesman’s well-intentioned but unfulfilling Parkland who says it, an aide to fallen President John F. Kennedy, can probably be forgiven for his snotty Yankee attitude. Next month marks…
Some movies are so tense and deeply affecting that they shave years off your life as you’re watching, only to give back that lost time, and more, at the end. Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is one of those movies. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts — one a medical engineer,…
Sunday, along with more than six million Americans, I watched the end of Walter White. I didn’t think I could handle alone the emotional toll of saying goodbye to Breaking Bad, so I decided to head to the Granada Theater to scream cheer with a crowd at three huge screens…
Can you truly separate an artist from his art? Arguments from either side of the question grow inflamed in the case of Orson Scott Card. The author of the much-loved Ender’s Game has done everything possible to submarine the film adaptation’s upcoming box office release — which is a nice…
When a relatively young actor dies suddenly, as James Gandolfini did in June, it’s tempting to wonder about the roles he’ll never get to play. When we didn’t know we’d be losing him so soon, it was always fun to see Gandolfini show up, a casual surprise: In 2012 alone…
It’s 1976, a year when all the groovy girls are traipsing around in tiny suede skirts and all the cool guys have Badfinger hair. One of those guys was English racing driver James Hunt, the charismatic rapscallion who won that year’s Formula One World Championship — the embroidered badge on…
Mild spoilers up to The Bridge’s ninth episode below. Artisanal murders are all the rage these days. On Showtime’s Dexter, NBC’s Hannibal, and Fox’s The Following, small-batch, labor-intensive, sold-with-a-story slaughters have become TV’s equivalent of the Cronut. Handsome, intelligent, and mannered as court eunuchs, serial killers have become the new…
To paraphrase the Bee Gees, Joseph Gordon-Levitt should be dancing. He’s already done it in (500) Days of Summer, where he led an exuberant ensemble routine that out-Dr Peppered any Dr Pepper commercial. Then there was his smashing Saturday Night Live re-creation of Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” — like…
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was the go-to screening for teachers during union strikes, rainy recesses or just to grab a smoke break to prevent them from tranforming into the headmaster from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” Even though it is not totally faithful to Roald Dahl’s famous children’s book,…
Teen Wolf – watch more funny videos From concept to execution, Teen Wolf is a positively perfect ’80s film that makes absolutely no sense. Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox) has lived in the same town his entire life. When his adolescent hormones shift, he realizes that he’s a werewolf. This…
Continuing their quest to squeeze every single cent from parents nationwide, Disney has decided to re-release The Little Mermaid in select theaters under the billing “Second Screen Live.” What the hell is second screen live? Glad you asked! Second Screen is Disney’s iPad app that invites film watchers to “interact”…
Lizzy Caplan as Virginia Johnson and Michael Sheen as William MastersIn 1957, the same year that The Ed Sullivan Show refused to shoot Elvis below the waist, a gynecologist and a former nightclub singer began hooking strangers up to electrodes and asking them to fuck in the name of science…
