Movies & FilmFriday Flicks: Gus Van Sant Returns with a ’70s-Toned Winner
M.V. MoorheadJanuary 16, 2026
The strange, sad episode is dramatized in Dead Man’s Wire by Gus Van Sant, from a script by Austin Kolodney.
The PHiXFriday Flicks: Farewell 2025 – Top 10 Movies from an Interesting Year
M.V. MoorheadDecember 31, 2025
“May you live in interesting times” is supposedly an ancient Chinese curse. Well, 2025 has unquestionably been an interesting year. A curse that may be in real life, but this was also an interesting year in movies, and that’s less accursed. So, let’s get ’25, and the first quarter of the 21st century, in the rear view with that traditional annual movie-critic indulgence, the Top 10 List. Here are the 10 movies that...
Song Sung Blue It would be hard, for me at least, not to like Song Sung Blue, a jukebox musical about love and family set against the backdrop of working-class show business. It’s based on the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina, small-potatoes entertainers who launched a Neil Diamond tribute act together they called Lightning & Thunder in Milwaukee in the ’90s. Charismatic performers, they built their own regional following, eventually packing houses, playing...
The PHiXFriday Flicks: Chalamet Stars in Madcap Midcentury Epic ‘Marty Supreme’
M.V. MoorheadDecember 23, 2025
The Marty in Marty Supreme is Marty Mauser, a Lower East Side kid in the early ’50s. The supremacy in question is at – of all things – table tennis, or ping-pong. He is already an insolently prodigal talent at the sport, with designs on becoming a world champ. Marty himself wouldn’t limit his supremacy merely to table tennis; he’s already intolerably cocksure about his ability to do pretty much anything he wants. Even though he could,...
It may leave you with an appetite for crabs.
To the ever-lengthening list of things that make me feel old may be added the fact that The 40-Year-Old Virgin is observing its 20th anniversary.
Movie reviews for "The Alto Knights" and "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl"
The PHiXFriday Flicks April 3: “Sonic the Hedgehog,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” & Focus Features Movie Mondays
M.V. MoorheadApril 3, 2020
At West Wind Glendale Drive-In: Sonic the Hedgehog—At this writing, it is still possible to go out to the movies here in the Valley, if you really want it; the West Wind Drive-In on 55th Avenue in Glendale is still open for business. Even though some of the fonder memories of my childhood and youth involve seeing stuff like The Valley of Gwangi and Food of the Gods and The Giant Spider Invasion and Horror Hospital and The Concrete Jungle at drive-ins back in my beloved...
The PHiXFriday Flicks March 27: “Emma”
M.V. MoorheadMarch 27, 2020
On VOD: Emma—This adaptation of the Jane Austen classic was released to the multiplexes in mid-February, and then to on-demand services when the theaters were closed in response to the current pandemic. It’s an idyllic deadpan comedy that might pass two hours of “shelter in place” quite agreeably. Austen’s “handsome, clever and rich” title heroine fancies herself a superb matchmaker, and amuses herself with meddling in the engagements of others. Most recklessly, she encourages her...
The PHiXFriday Flicks March 20: Movie Night Recommendations and a Request from FilmBar
M.V. MoorheadMarch 20, 2020
At this writing, movie theaters are closed across the Valley. Time for what may prove a long season of movie nights on the couch. I wanted to make some video suggestions, but my overarching suggestion: Watch your favorites. Watch movies that make you happy. For me, these include the original Psycho, Sunset Boulevard, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Them!, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (despite the “Bring out yer dead!”...
The PHiXFriday Flicks March 13: “The Hunt,” “First Cow,” “The Burnt Orange Heresy” and “King Kong”
M.V. MoorheadMarch 13, 2020
Opening wide this weekend: The Hunt—There’s been a fair amount of huffy fake outrage in conservative media over this shocker, in which vile liberal elites kidnap patriotic ‘Muricans and hunt them like animals. It’s roughly the zillionth variation on The Most Dangerous Game, and it may be the most imbecilic. “Snowflakes” caricatured with the subtlety of a Taki rack up a body count of “deplorables” only slightly less stereotypical. The truth, of course, is the movie...
The PHiXFriday Flicks February 28: “The Invisible Man,” “Marked Men” & GCU Film Festival
M.V. MoorheadFebruary 28, 2020
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...
The PHiXFriday Flicks February 21: Sedona Film Festival
M.V. MoorheadFebruary 21, 2020
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...
The PHiXFriday Flicks February 7: “Birds of Prey,” “The Traitor” & “Gretel and Hansel”
M.V. MoorheadFebruary 7, 2020
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...
The PHiXFriday Flicks January 31: “Quezon’s Game”
M.V. MoorheadJanuary 31, 2020
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...