Brooke, Greta Gerwig’s latest Manhattan creation, is a hurricane gobbling up lives. She’s a singer, restaurateur, interior decorator, math coach, spinning instructor and self-described autodidact. When 18-year-old admirer Tracy (Lola Kirke), Brooke’s sister-to-be following their parents’ Thanksgiving wedding, squeaks that she wants to write short stories, Brooke devours that idea,…
There’s steady, scary thrill in the final third of Meru, the latest attempt to conquer the climb-and-tweak-the-nose-of-God mountaineering documentary, a genre that has yet to reach its apex. The terrible beauty of the Shark’s Fin point of northern India’s Mount Meru is enough to make this worth seeking out on…
Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, run down the worst and best of the movies they saw this summer, which as summers go, wasn’t so terrible! Among the best performances were those by Sam Elliott, wonderful in two movies,…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast: We love Guy Ritchie’s stylish, charming The Man From U.N.C.L.E., while LA Weekly film critic Amy states her case for American Ultra. We move onto Lily Tomlin’s memorable performance in Grandma (be sure to read our interview with Tomlin, too). Later, Village Voice film editor…
Here at the Dallas Observer Arts and Culture section, we are proud, sort of, we guess, to announce Another Former Bachelor Contestant Hosts A Thing And You Can Go If You Want. It’s art and culture, baby. For this edition, Dallas guy and a former Bachelor himself Sean Lowe and…
Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra is a bloody valentine attached to a bomb. It’s violent, brash, inventive and horrific, and perhaps the most romantic film of the year. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart star as Mike and Phoebe, two West Virginia stoners blissed out on weed and each other. “We’re the…
Is it in honor of its subject that the high-flying doc Being Evel indulges so often in hilarious overstatement? “He opened the door and invited people to buy a ticket to watch truth,” one talking head insists, somehow keeping his face straight. Another speaks of how in the early 1970s…
“You could make five different N.W.A movies. We made the one we wanted to make.” That’s director F. Gary Gray during an audience Q&A after a recent screening of Straight Outta Compton, the long-awaited N.W.A movie. In our review, Amy Nicholson writes that there’s much more to the group’s story:…
When we heard Exxxotica was coming to town, we imagined a cross between Willa Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and the Playboy Mansion. Lights would be low, porn stars would be just as attractive in person, walls would be draped in velvet and around every corner we’d find a Champagne fountain. (Basically,…
In a world gone mad for superhero movies, what chance does the light spy caper have? Audiences will put total faith in a guy wearing a red metal suit, but the soft woolen folds of the bespoke kind barely register. When a whole city can be blasted to smithereens thanks…
Less than a generation ago, Yonkers, New York became the face of segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation in my backyard. A federal court order to construct 200 units of low-income residences east of the Saw Mill Parkway, i.e., in the white part of town, led to riots and bombings, death…
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…
