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If they weren’t over already, the days of Arizona being remotely regarded as a culinary backwater are demonstrably in the past. Or should be, at least. Don’t believe me? Check out the semifinalists for this year’s James Beard Awards. There’s at least one Arizona nominee in every delicious category (not counting the regional categories, obviously). Check them out, then make reservations: Best New Restaurant: Vecina, Phoenix Outstanding Baker: Don Guerra; Barrio Bread, Tucson Outstanding Bar...

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In wide release: The Invisible Man—After the dispiriting Tom Cruise version of The Mummy in 2017, Universal turned to Blumhouse Productions for their next monster reboot. Good move, as it turned out. This new version of the story of a see-through madman has little in common with the 1897 H. G. Wells yarn, or the classic 1933 James Whale film adaptation, beyond the name of the title character: Griffin. Played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, he’s a...

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January and February tend to be the doldrums of the moviegoing year, full of titles that the studios want to unload with a quick release before blockbuster season, and don’t care if they’re forgotten by awards season. One remedy for this drought is to catch up on the high-profile stuff from last year you may have missed; FilmBar, for instance, is showing Bong Joon Ho’s horrifying, hilarious, wildly original surprise Best Picture winner Parasite, the...

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Carrie: The Musical—One of the most celebrated flops in Broadway history was this staging of Stephen King’s novel about a teenage misfit who takes psychic revenge on her high school when she’s the victim of an ugly prank at prom. Expensive and technically complicated, it closed after just sixteen previews and five official performances in 1988. But it has refused to die. Several marginally more successful revivals, including an Off-Broadway run in 2012, as well...

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Playing at 1 p.m. Saturday, February 15, at several Harkins Theatres Valleywide: Spartacus (1960)—One of the last great leading men of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Kirk Douglas, departed last week at the age of 103. In his honor, Harkins Theatres is showing one of the best and most famous Douglas films, Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 epic Spartacus. If you haven’t seen the movie, or not in a long time, or if you’re a benighted post-Boomer who doesn’t...

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Opening this weekend: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)—Armed with a broad Gotham accent, Margot Robbie is endearingly crazy-eyed, manic and girlishly bouncy as Harley Quinn, the Joker’s jilted, heartsick ex, in this newest DC free-for-all. When she’s not dodging old enemies who bear her any number of murderous grudges, she’s helping super-anti-heroine team Birds of Prey defend an adolescent (Ella Jay Basco) from a scuzzy, sadistic gangster whose alter...

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Opening this weekend at Harkins Metrocenter 12, AMC Westgate 20 and Cinemark Mesa 16: Quezon’s Game—Directed by veteran cinematographer Matthew Rosen, this historical epic from the Philippines is sort of Schindler’s List, Manila-style. It’s about the efforts, in the late ‘30s, by Filipino President Manuel Quezon to bring more than a thousand German Jews to his country — then still a U.S. commonwealth — to rescue them from the rising threat of the Nazis. According...

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Opening this weekend: The Gentleman—Matthew McConaughey plays Mickey Pearson, a wildly wealthy weed kingpin in the UK. By virtue of the fact, which Mickey himself points out, that his illicit product doesn’t kill people like heroin does, he’s the least despicable boss in this latest of writer-director Guy Ritchie’s gangster comedies. Mickey would like to divest himself of his massive subterranean pot empire and live the life of a gentleman, so he makes an offer...

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Opening this week: Dolittle—Robert Downey, Jr. plays the newest screen version of Hugh Lofting’s character, the doctor who can talk to the animals. Directed by Stephen Gaghan and set in a vague idea of the 19th Century, the movie has a late point of attack: The Doc has long since learned his inter-species polyglot skills and is an embittered widower, withdrawn from human society to hang out with his animal pals in his vast estate....

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Opening this week: 1917—It’s April of the title year in France, and two young British soldiers are ordered to take a hike. Their mission, which they have no choice but to accept, is to cut across no man’s land to warn another battalion a few miles away but cut off from radio communication with headquarters, not to attack as planned; they’re heading into a German trap. One of the men has a brother in this...

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Time for the movie critic’s annual exercise in self-importance (as opposed to all those weekly exercises in self-importance): The Top Ten List. Here are the ten films from the past year that seem like the best to me, at least at the moment: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—As with Inglourious Basterds, tolerance for Quentin Tarantino’s provocative do-over of 1969 in general and the Manson murders in particular will be a matter of personal taste; I...

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Little Women—There have been multiple screen adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel, and all of them have their merits. Katherine Hepburn seemed born to play heroine Jo March in George Cukor’s 1933 film, and Elizabeth Taylor seemed born to play Amy in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1949 rendering. For my money, the best, most balanced and beautiful version yet was Gillian Armstrong’s, from 1994, with Winona Ryder’s best performance ever as Jo, and a luminous Claire...