America’s sweetheart Jennifer Lawrence truly can do anything. In the course of three months, she’s managed to graciously lose an Oscar (her third nomination in four years), swan above the mansplaining condescension of a male pundit who tsk-tsked her for getting drunk in public, and burst into the summer blockbuster…
Remarkable as it seems, there’s still poetry to be found in the idea of kids tooling around with nothing much to do. Whether you grew up in a small town or a midsize-to-large city, in 1962, 1982 or 2002, you probably remember getting into a car, unwisely, with the first…
Let’s rewind 20 years, to the summer of 1994. O.J. Simpson has been arrested for murder, the World Cup is in America and being ignored, and the biggest hits at the multiplex are Forrest Gump, The Lion King, True Lies and Speed. Notice anything odd about those movies? There’s not…
The phrase “summer movies” will never not mean broad, action-driven crowd-pleasers to me: I counted the days until Batman (June 23, 1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (July 3, 1991), and Jurassic Park (June 11, 1993) were released. For every Dark Knight there are 10 Prometheuses — and that’s just among…
In 2014, any filmmaker who has a feel, and a flair, for romantic melodrama is doomed, and just one recent example from the world of blockbusters suggests why: In the final moments of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the hero tragically fails to save a major character, but the moment, coming…
It was Jason Tugman’s first day of work. Almost a decade later, he still remembers the screams. A former circus fire-eater, he’d taken a job as a lighting technician for The Oprah Winfrey Show after burning off a chunk of his tongue. The pay was $32 an hour and he…
It’s been a few days since I saw David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, screening here in competition, and I’m still not completely sure what I think of this sometimes-smart, sometimes-arch ultra-black comedy about shallow Hollywood types. But one thing’s for sure: Julianne Moore is a knockout in it. Moore…
#492425863 / gettyimages.com Marion Cotillard, the star of the Dardenne Brothers’ competition film Two Days, One Night, showed up for the photo call on Tuesday in a mini-dress encrusted with a riot of buttons, a whimsical and rather adorable choice for an actress who, on-screen just a few minutes earlier,…
James McAvoy knows not to trust the British tabloids. While flogging his grotty drama Filth, based on the Irvine Welsh novel about a coke-addicted, double-crossing cop, they breathlessly reported that the Scottish actor had dived so deep into method acting that he’d convinced a German hooker to punch him in…
I haven’t looked forward to a new Godard movie since…never. The first Godard movie I saw upon its release in a movie theater was First Name: Carmen, in 1983, which overwhelmed me: I didn’t yet understand that it’s OK not to completely comprehend everything a filmmaker puts in front of…
In our film section this week, we take a look at some of the coming summer movies that will offer us a chance to cool off in the dark for a bit. Here on Mixmaster, asked a few local luminaries in the film scene to share some of their favorite…
In our film section this week, we take a look at some of the coming summer movies that will offer us a chance to cool off in the dark for a bit. In that vein, Mixmaster asked Alice to offer a mom’s take on the joy of summer family films…
Summer has officially arrived, bringing along with it a drove of blockbuster films that are usually less than memorable. If you’re looking to while away the hours in a dark, chilly theater without watching a mind-numbing movie, look no further than the Oak Cliff Film Festival. In its third year,…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, the Village Voice’s Alan Schestuhl and L.A. Weekly’s Amy Nicholson are joined by special guest Chris Klimek to discuss the strange career of Tom Cruise, the new X-Men movie, and why Han Solo should die…
A romance ripped from the pages of Deuteronomy, Frank Coraci’s Blended posits that the best reason for a woman with sons and a man with daughters to get married is that they can take care of each other’s kids. Quel pragmatisme! In the world of this sitcom love story, men…
When the season premiere of I Wanna Marry Harry airs tonight, America will watch 12 women compete for the love and affection of Prince Harry. OK, not really. That’s just what the show leads the contestants, including three women from the Dallas area, to believe…
In the current issue of the Observer, I take a long look at the creation of AMC’s new drama, Halt and Catch Fire, which was inspired by a local software salesman and co-created by that salesman’s son, Plano-born screenwriter Chris Cantwell. You should totally read it. Really. But you could…
In Chef, Jon Favreau’s newest movie opening in Dallas theaters today, the title character (played by Favreau) walks through the streets of Santa Monica and stops to stare at a street performer’s puppet. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll skeleton marionette named Mr. Bonetangles, and as the chef pauses to watch…
What-could-have-been has to be a tough subject for the town of Waxahachie. Its biggest claim to fame these days is being the birthplace of Thomas Everett Blasingame, who when he died in 1989 at age 91 was the oldest working cowboy American West. That’s not much to hang a town’s…
Godzilla is the movie monster with the mostest. King Kong may be just one gorilla-chest-hair behind, but not even the greatest of apes can quite match the half-dragon, half-dinosaur who first stomped and chomped his way through Tokyo in Ishiro Honda’s 1954 extravaganza Godzilla. In that picture — even more…
Chef, the back-to-his-roots indie flick from Jon Favreau (Iron Man), is to modern foodie culture as his own Swingers is to ’90s swing revival. Favreau plays Carl Casper, a culinary bad boy, barreling egotist and divorced father with a chef’s knife tattoo stretching down his right forearm and “El Jefe”…
Looking for a chance to shout “Only in America”? Only in America — or an American movie — could the story of the first two Indian players to be signed to a Major League Baseball team get spun as an L.A. sports agent’s journey toward realizing the importance of family…
