The PHiXStage Left Productions’ Dark Comedy ‘Truce’ Examines the Complicated Dynamics of a Dysfunctional Family
M.V. MoorheadApril 15, 2025
The PHiXPhoenix Film Festival Kicks Off its Silver Anniversary with 275 Rom-Coms, Thrillers, Shorts and More
M.V. MoorheadMarch 27, 2025
The quarter century mark is no minor milestone. But Jason Carney and the team at Phoenix Film Festival feel confident that they have put together a formidable lineup for the festival’s 25th anniversary, running March 27 through April 6 at Harkins Scottsdale 101. “Opening night is always exciting,” says Carney, the annual shindig’s longtime executive director. “This year, we have The Ballad of Wallis Island. It’s full of charm and comedy.” The film stars Carey Mulligan...
Movie reviews for "The Alto Knights" and "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl"
Perry Fanzo was a boon to our community and will be missed.
The eephus is an extreme specimen of an off-speed pitch, very slow and very high, designed to throw off the batter’s timing. It’s a fine title for the movie Eephus. Like many elements of young Carson Lund’s disarming, deceptively unhurried baseball comedy, it seems to carry an allegorical resonance. The movie throws off our expectations; it takes its time, and it sails surprisingly high. It’s about a game played one beautiful early fall afternoon in the 1990s...
The PHiXMovie Review: ‘Heart Eyes’ is a Romcom Send-Up with a Bloody Twist
M.V. MoorheadFebruary 7, 2025
Valentine’s Day has had a long and fruitful collaboration with movie horror. Back in 1931, for instance, the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula, arguably the original American horror movie, was nationally released on February 14, as “the story of the strangest passion the world has ever known!” Later came the 1981 slasher movie My Bloody Valentine and its 2009 remake, and the 1982 X-Ray with Barbie Benton (originally titled Be My Valentine, or Else), the 2000 Lover’s Lane and Valentine in 2001. All of these exercises...
The PHiXMovie Reviews: ‘One of Them Days’ and ‘Dog Man’
M.V. MoorheadJanuary 31, 2025
The title character in Dog Man is a man with a dog’s head. The product of improvised emergency surgery after a bomb squad mishap, he serves as a police officer in a generic city called “OK City.” Dog Man’s nemesis is a villainous cat named Petey; their ongoing relationship consists of Dog Man repeatedly capturing Petey, and Petey repeatedly escaping from jail. This goes on agreeably enough until Petey decides to up the ante by cloning himself,...
The initial scenes of Nickel Boys are somehow both vivid and vague, like one’s own earliest childhood memories. We’re seeing the point of view of Elwood, a bright, impressionable African-American kid in 1960s Florida. The warm imagery and the overheard conversations and broadcasts evoke a potent sense of the remembrance of things past, but also suggest a small child’s grasp of them. Then we see Elwood’s point of view years later as a teenager, when he accepts...
The PHiX‘Flow’ Movie Review: If You See One Animated Latvian Movie This Year, Make it This One
M.V. MoorheadJanuary 10, 2025
One of the more agreeable outcomes at this past weekend’s Golden Globes was Flow winning for Best Animated Feature. As of this writing, it’s still playing here in the Valley, at Pollack Cinemas in Tempe and at AMC Ahwatukee 24. If you see only one Latvian animated movie about a cat this year, make it this one. Directed by young Gints Zilbalodis from a script he wrote with Matiss Kaza, this wordless, dreamlike, almost free-associational...