Phoenix Movie Reviews - Phoenix Movies Guide

DVDs by Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, and Other Masters of Horror Can Turn Your Pad into a Haunted House

Apart from the stray slasher flick, Halloween is traditionally a dead spot on the Hollywood calendar. This week's big release? The Michael... More>>

By Brian Miller

Published: October 29, 2009

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant Fails to Get In on the Vampire Trend

Like the ominous fingernail moon early on in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, the bloodsucker trend is again in a waxing phase thanks to... More>>

By Aaron Hillis

Published: October 22, 2009

Coco Before Chanel Proves Coco Chanel Hagiography Is So Last Season

Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel gives us Belle Époque Coco, opening in 1893 with a grim scene of the 10-year-old waif and her sister... More>>

By Anderson, Melissa

Published: October 22, 2009

Where the Wild Things Are: Spike Jonze Can’t Quite Get Into the Spirit of the Wild Rumpus

Directed by Spike Jonze from a 400-word children's picture book published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are may be the toughest adaptation since... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: October 15, 2009

A Serious Man: The Coen Brothers Aim Their Contempt at Members of "the Tribe"

The Yiddish shtetl shtick that opens Joel and Ethan Coen's new movie — a Jewish peasant stumbles on an old Hasid who may or may not be a... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 08, 2009

Capitalism: A Love Story Shows Michael Moore Is a Marxist, But He’s Still Selling the Same Old Shtick

The ushers at a packed screening of Michael Moore's latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, came proudly decked out in T-shirts bearing slogans... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 01, 2009

Ricky Gervais Can Get Only So Far (or So Funny) with The Invention of Lying

The Invention of Lying's plot hook sounds like a pile-up of Jim Carrey-Tom Shadyac concept comedies. The assumption is that there isn't much... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: October 01, 2009

The September Issue Captures Vogue’s Lioness at Her Peak – Goodbye to All of That!

When, in the early '00s, I worked as a freelancer for a publication two floors below Vogue — this was pre-Devil Wears Prada — each... More>>

By Anderson, Melissa

Published: September 24, 2009

Bright Star: An Ode to John Keats’ Great Love Affair That Is More Harmonious Than Tumultuous

Set in the bucolic suburbs of early-19th-century London, as fresh and dewy as a newly mowed lawn, Jane Campion's Bright Star recounts the love... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: September 24, 2009

The Informant! Gets Cute With Massive Corporate Scandal and Blows the Story

As evidenced by The Informant!, it's a hell of a tricky thing turning real-life pulp into floss sugar. The story of Archer Daniels Midland... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: September 17, 2009

Thirst: Park Chan Wook Gets Positively Trendy – With a Vampire Flick

Finally, there's a vampire movie worthy of the title The Hunger — even if it arrives under the more potable name Thirst. Carnal appetite,... More>>

By Jim Ridley

Published: September 17, 2009

9: Wall-E Would Never Escape Shane Acker’s Animated, Post-Apocalyptic Hellscape

Early in Shane Acker's computer-animated debut feature 9, a diminutive anthropomorphic whatsit with wooden hands, copper fingers, and the titular... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: September 10, 2009

The Dardennes Do What They Do (Again) in Lorna’s Silence

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, secular worker-priests of the Belgian cinema, emerge once more from their lower depths. In describing one of their... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: September 10, 2009

With Extract, Mike Judge Goes Back to Work

Mike Judge began writing the screenplay for Extract not long after Office Space opened and closed in a matter of weeks in the late winter of... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: September 03, 2009

Tetro: Papa Coppola Returns Successfully to the Clan

As Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola's baroque genealogical melodrama, reaches its appropriately hysterical denouement, Vincent Gallo fixes his pale... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: September 03, 2009

Paul Giamatti’s Wit is the Heart of Cold Souls

Sophie Barthes' clever metaphysical comedy Cold Souls has been dubbed "Being Paul Giamatti" more than once since its Sundance 2009 debut. But if... More>>

By Anthony Kaufman

Published: August 27, 2009

Inglourious Basterds: Tarantino Makes the Nazi Occupation of France Ridiculously Fun

Energetic, inventive, swaggering fun, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a consummate Hollywood entertainment — rich in fantasy... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: August 20, 2009

District 9: Alien Invasion as Apartheid Metaphor

The aliens have been with us already for 20 years at the start of South African director Neill Blomkamp's fast and furiously inventive District... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: August 13, 2009

The Cove Expertly Exposes the Horrific Treatment of Dolphins

Late in the infectiously frisky documentary The Cove, an older man calmly gate-crashes an international conference on whaling with a television... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: August 13, 2009

Ponyo: Miyazaki Dives Under the Sea for His Latest Environmental Fairy Tale

In the same week that the South African import District 9 gives us a Johannesburg beset by alien invaders, the latest film by animation legend... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: August 13, 2009

Julie & Julia: Compliments to Meryl Streep

It was the best of movies. It was the worst of movies. Which is to say: There's half of a great movie in Julie & Julia — but since Meryl... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: August 06, 2009

Soul Power Documents an Epic Concert

"When you bad," boasts the young and beautiful, piss-and-vinegar-filled Muhammad Ali early in the documentary Soul Power, "you can do what you... More>>

By Ernest Hardy

Published: August 06, 2009

Despite Its Premise, Humpday Isn’t Really About Gay Sex

Lynn Shelton's Humpday, a sexual sitcom, opens with a pair of breeders in bed. A youngish married couple, Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: August 06, 2009

Funny People Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler Are Together at Last

After devoting his first two films as director, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, to getting laid and having kids, respectively, Judd Apatow... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: July 30, 2009

(500) Days of Summer: Love Hurts, but In a Good Way

On the surface, (500) Days of Summer really is no different from, oh, The Proposal, in which Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock spun box-office... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: July 23, 2009