Straight Outta Compton‘s Truth Gets Lost in Paperwork

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…

Irrational Man finds Woody Allen Skeeved by Emma Stone’s Older Lover

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…

10-ish Things You’ll Learn From I Am Chris Farley

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…

Nina Hoss Illuminates Phoenix

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…

Ricki and the Flash Almost Rocks

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…

In Praise of Jon Stewart, the Bro Who Evolved

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…

Cruise’s Mission: Impossible Series Gets Street-Smart

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…

Vacation Is No Pleasure Trip

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…

The Ten Best Movies of 2015 (So Far)

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)…

iPhone Feature Tangerine Is Sweet and Tart

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…

Pixels Isn’t Worth Your Quarters

Here’s a shocker: In Pixels, his latest, Adam Sandler plays a stunted man-child who turns out to be very, very special. That’s his ecological niche: the Manic Potbellied Dream Dork, or, if you prefer, the fragile Sand-Man. Sandler films have predictable scripts: In two hours or less, he’ll transform from…