When Dallas/Fort Worth finally got an Alamo Drafthouse theater to call its own, every ravenous movie buff in the Metroplex knew it couldn’t match their unquenchable appetite for cult films, first runs and obscure favorites. So rather than risk having the Richardson theater eaten up by their fans (because as…
When it comes to making fun of movies, having Nicolas Cage in the cast is like soft-balling the set up to the joke. In almost every role, he turns an action film into a campy, over-acted flick that’s more pantomime than drama. Perhaps that’s why the good folks at The…
Tucked into a sleepy neighborhood on the edge of White Rock Lake, the Bath House Cultural Center is one of those venues only locals know. It’s part theater, party art gallery and the terrace overlooks the lake with a view of downtown Dallas in the distance. When the Texas sun…
Dan Colcer doesn’t just paint the canvas. The 38-year-old surrealist tattoos it like a skin artist from Elm Street Tattoo. Each image seems to grow out of the paint, an extension of another image that only appears the longer you meditate on the painting. He doesn’t plan the images. He…
Is your confidence high and your bank account low? Do you sometimes post pictures of your latest ATM withdrawl on your Instagram? Does your purse cost more than you’re worth? Did you drop a couple “hundo” on a new pair of sunglasses only to lose them during a drunken day…
Ryder Richards. It’s a name made for the arts. And Richards delivers. He is an artist, a writer, a curator, and an educator.
If you’re not watching this season of The Bachelorette, then you’re missing one of the most dramatic seasons on television. Ever. Or at least since Breaking Bad went off the air. OK, OK, arguably you’re not missing much, but we’d like to draw your attention to Marcus Grodd, one of…
Pottery Barn Kids sends me their catalog in the mail regularly. This time, instead of throwing it straight into the trash, I opened it. They claimed to be having a Fourth of July sale, and I thought, “Oh. Maybe this sale will make the things they sell reasonably priced.” I…
Living in Dallas in the summertime is honestly kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s going to be hotter than hell and utterly miserable until at least September. On the other, there are plenty of things to do that make it feel like you’re actually on vacation without…
Friday is Independence Day. If you’re visiting this blog and expecting me to tell you to do anything other than watch fireworks on Friday night, you’ve lost your red, white, and blue marbles. Go stuff your face with apple pie and chug 10 patriotic Budweiser beers. In fact, the Dallas…
On this week’s Voice Film Club episode, film critics Alan Scherstuhl, Amy Nicholson and Stephanie Zacharek race through the latest (and the most terrible) Transformers movie (2:01), Earth to Echo (13:14), and Tammy (16:30)…
It can seem a bit quiet around this city during the summer, because in case you just moved here, it’s about to get really freaking hot. Sure, these summer storms have kept the temperatures in the refreshingly high 80’s, but beware the “searing pain” our weather blogger predicts in regard…
One of the hallmarks of almost any production at Theatre Three, one of Dallas’ oldest theater companies, is how much time they waste moving furniture between scenes. So often the shifting of sagging sofas and rickety tables in and out of the in-the-round space seems unnecessary. T3’s penchant for choosing…
If a toddler tried to re-create the mystifying behavior of adults, it would look a lot like Paul Haggis’ Third Person, a drama in which grown-ups scream and cry and kiss for reasons that are confounding even to those who understand speech. The film follows a handful of couples, or…
Earth to Echo is a slender kiddie flick about a quartet of preteens and their palm-sized alien pal that’s at once bland, well-intentioned and utterly terrifying about the mental development of modern children. As in the most honest kids films, our 5-foot heroes admit to being isolated, unhappy and cowed…
It’s kind of happy-sad, like watching a kid you knew as a toddler graduate from high school: Chris Evans, seemingly destined to be a boy forever, is now officially a grown-up. In Bong Joon-ho’s futuristic snowbummer Snowpiercer, the Korean director’s first English-language film, Evans plays the leader of a group…
To call Roger Ebert one of the great populist film critics is to damn him with faint praise. Though he took pride in working for the scrappier of the two Chicago dailies, the Sun-Times, and though we do have him to thank — or curse —f or popularizing the thumbs-up/thumbs-down…
It’s a relief, after the wretched Identity Thief, to see movies whose makers love Melissa McCarthy as much as audiences do. Identity Thief’s comic centerpiece was predicated on the idea that McCarthy having sex is a hilarious gross-out, like she’s the pie Jason Biggs once had to diddle. Half an…
Horror, like porno, can be judged only by its effect on your pulse. If you jerked in your seat, it served its function. Biology requires us to react to jump scares, just it urges a lonely man to thrill to a great set of tits. But triggering a coronary reaction…
Mark Ruffalo’s great gift, besides those scruffy good looks and that prickish, hungover charisma, is capturing the essence of the guy who’s spinning toward a crash but trying to angle himself back. His greatest performance, in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, one of the best films of the…
Here are some of the triumphant moments of recent history that make it into the climactic montage in America, the latest “America’s perfect!”/”America’s doomed!” pant load from felonious troll Dinesh D’Souza: Jackie Robinson rounding home. Elvis Presley swinging his hips. Ronald Reagan and the Berlin Wall. Boxed copies of Windows…
If you’re looking for an evening filled with Igloo coolers, Toby Keith t-shirts, and more potassium nitrate than you ever thought humanly possible, then you need to get your cutoffs to Kaboomtown in Addison on July 3rd for their annual fireworks bonanza-extravaganza. The Wall Street Journal named it one of…
