Meryl Streep in a comedic role is one of the few good things in Ricki and the Flash, and the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton sands down many of the rough corners of the ground-breaking rap group’s controversial history. On this week’s Voice Film Club, Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek…
In the holy trinity of N.W.A., each icon had a power: Dr. Dre produced, Ice Cube wrote the words and Eazy-E was the comic relief. N.W.A.’s biopic, Straight Outta Compton, blurs those roles. Both Dre and Cube produced the film and seem to have edited the script with a red…
Even if you’re the sort who believes there can be no such thing as too much political coverage, it can’t hurt to cast a fond glance back to 1968, when only three networks — NBC, CBS, and the perennial laggard ABC — jockeyed for the attention of the American public…
At the start of Woody Allen’s campus comedy Irrational Man, caddish professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) drives up to a new school that’s already steeled itself for his arrival. “Of course, my reputation — a reputation — preceded me,” admits Abe. Such defensiveness also applies to his tabloid-attacked director, who…
1. Really, it’s all in one line of dialogue. Late in Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four, that ever-lovin’ man-mountain Benjamin J. Grimm sets himself at last to the good work of bad-guy punching. As he rushes off to pound Doctor Doom, he mutters, “This is what I do.” He’s resigned to…
One of the biggest and most fist-shaking misconceptions about anime is that it’s made just for children. Often when asking folks what they think of when they hear the word “anime,” these are always mentioned: Pokémon and Dragonball Z. It’s sadder than a Weeping Willow. Sure, a lot of —…
Last night we weren’t about to miss the screening of I Am Chris Farley at the Texas Theatre. Now we have lots of thoughts and feels. Here are a few of them. It was good, not great. (See 9 through 12.) Bob Saget and Chris Farley were friends?!? “Yep, they…
Please remove your ignorance blinders and wake up for a second because what you witnessed on Sunday night’s second season premiere of Bachelor in Paradise was not real. In a somewhat elaborate ceremony to announce Dallas native Marcus Grodd and his BIP sweetheart Lacy Faddoul in holy freakin’ matrimony was…
During this week’s meeting of the Voice Film Club, Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, discuss the Marlon Brando documentary Listen to Me Marlon. Our trio of film critics then move to The End of the Tour, the film…
Some of the best love songs are those whose lyrics perch precariously between “I adore you, let’s be happy forever” and “I’m miserable without you, where have you gone?” Together, the melody and words of Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s 1943 ballad “Speak Low” take the shape of a vaporous…
“This conversation is the best one I ever had,” David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) tells us as The End of the Tour wraps up, and the movie, a pleasantly talky chamber piece, gives us welcome bursts of it. That long chat, with a David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) abashed by the…
Jonathan Demme’s rock ‘n’ roll dramedy Ricki and the Flash exists in a wormhole where the last five decades of pop culture are a blur. There’s 66-year-old Meryl Streep, playing a broke singer who ditched her family to dominate the stage with the whiskey growl of Janis Joplin, the jangly…
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was a boon to comedy, but the comedians who feasted then look gouty today: A small group of white, male millionaires — one of whom would later confess to having multiple office affairs, perhaps to distract from sexual-harassment allegations — collectively decided to call Lewinsky, then a 22-year-old…
Anecdote #1: Chris Farley made a habit of pouncing on Mike Myers — at the same exact time each week — during the early- to mid-1990s era in which the two starred on Saturday Night Live. The elfin Myers deliberately took showers at a fixed, quiet time, but each week,…
Jason Segel didn’t tell his book club he’d been cast as novelist David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s biopic The End of the Tour. “I didn’t want to sound like Fancy Pants McGee,” admits Segel over lunch in Los Angeles. (Especially since the 6-foot-4-inch comedy actor is famous for dropping…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast: The Vacation reboot disappoints, as does Adam Sandler’s Pixels (but it can’t be near as bad as critics are describing, says the Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl). Meanwhile, the ’40s noir melodrama Phoenix might be one of the year’s best, says Voice film critic…
BoJack Horseman lurched out of the gate last year with a whole lotta animal puns and one uncomplicated thesis: Old sitcoms suck. An aggressively stupid and mawkish show from the late ’80s called Horsin’ Around, about an equine-human hybrid in Cosby sweaters who adopts three adorable orphans, made its star,…
At 53, Tom Cruise is past the retirement age of every James Bond except Roger Moore. Yet his 19-year-old Mission: Impossible series ticks on, counting down the seconds till its next explosion — and Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is determined to unman his cross-Atlantic competition. Forget high-tech gadgets. The older Cruise…
It’s been 32 years since the release of National Lampoon’s Vacation, in which Chevy Chase, as dad Clark Griswold, packed his Griswold clan into what looked like a Country Squire from Hell and sought the family-bonding experienceTM by driving cross-country to a mythical mega–amusement park known as Walley World. If…
Sadie Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” and “Dancing with the Stars” fame is here to make everything a little bit brighter. To make the sun shine a little bit more. To direct a little bit more of god’s smile at you and your loved ones. OK, we’re sorry for that, but…
We run down the 10 best movies of 2015 (so far) on this week’s episode of the Voice Film Club. Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, joined by Amy Nicholson at LA Weekly, each share a few of their favorites on this mid-year (well for Hollywood, anyway)…
There’s probably only one humanist film that opens with the words, “Merry Christmas Eve, bitch!” accompanied by the proffering of a single, sprinkle-dusted doughnut. In Sean Baker’s Tangerine, best friends, transgender women and prostitutes Sin-Dee and Alexandra (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor) catch up at a doughnut joint on…
