Pollack Tempe Cinemas

A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a spectacular Titanic-by-way-of–Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone. It's no shock that Ang Lee... More »

A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a spectacular Titanic-by-way-of–Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone. It's no shock that Ang Lee brings to his high seas adventure graceful and refined aesthetics devoid of any unique signature or pressing emotion, as the director has proved himself a skillful craftsman without an imprimatur to call his own. Here, that anonymity results in slavish, proficient devotion to his source material, Yann Martel's 2001 novel. The story concerns the upbringing of Pi (newcomer Suraj Sharma) in India, his unbelievable experiences surviving a shipwreck aboard a life raft also occupied by a Bengal tiger, and his post-rescue efforts to convince Japanese officials that his tale is true—a three-part structure that's framed by the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan), recounting his tale to a nameless Writer (Rafe Spall). A struggling Caucasian American novelist who has been told that Pi's saga will convince him of God's existence, the Writer-- who looks like he just came from a Banana Republic modeling shoot-- is a colonialist appropriator of Pi's story, which he plans to turn into his own novel. Lee ignores such thorny sociopolitical dynamics, opting instead to couch this framework as further proof of the divine magic of storytelling. Lee stages the freighter's demise with a thrilling immediacy, taking full advantage of 3-D, and culminates with a shot of an underwater Pi gazing at the vessel as it descends to the bottom, its lights twinkling like flickering eyes. Still, the story's relentless articulation of its thematic aims proves a buzz kill, and the film spoon-feeds rather than enlightens. « Less

12:10 PM, 7:00 PM

If you completely unpack the plot of Peter Ramsey's sweet, fun Rise of the Guardians, it’s a hierarchical set of nested lies: A bunch of sprite-like beings who, in real life, we've fabricated to trick children, are, for movie purposes, actually... More »

If you completely unpack the plot of Peter Ramsey's sweet, fun Rise of the Guardians, it’s a hierarchical set of nested lies: A bunch of sprite-like beings who, in real life, we've fabricated to trick children, are, for movie purposes, actually real. But they will vanish in puffs of rationality if children stop believing in them. So the self-reinforcing work of these mythical beings is to kindle widespread belief in their own existence (i.e., lies). Jack Frost (Chris Pine), the hoodie-wearing hero, has the terrifying ability to accelerate entropy and therefore hasten the heat death of the universe-- or, in the comforting parlance of children's stories, he nips noses with frosty mischief. Jack coexists in the same world as Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, and the old sleepy-time sandman, collectively known as the Guardians, a coalition of powerful beings kind of like the Avengers or Damn Yankees. Happily, the film skews away from the established templates for these archetypes. (Santa Claus apparently isn't in the business of rendering Manichean judgments on the behavior of children.) Based on illustrator William Joyce's book The Guardians of Childhood, the film continues the migration of Dreamworks Animation away from broad jokes and obvious pop-culture references in favor of something more enduring. « Less

12:00 PM, 2:40 PM

There are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky-- and, eventually, on earth-- in Jack the Giant Slayer, X-Men director Bryan Singer's big-budget, gently revisionist, 3-D spin on "Jack and the Beanstalk." It's a journey... More »

There are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky-- and, eventually, on earth-- in Jack the Giant Slayer, X-Men director Bryan Singer's big-budget, gently revisionist, 3-D spin on "Jack and the Beanstalk." It's a journey facilitated by the eponymous Jack (Nicholas Hoult), the naïve farm boy who trades his horse for magic beans that sprout up like some unholy tincture of Miracle-Gro and HGH, putting both Jack and an intrepid princess (newcomer Eleanor Tomlinson) face to face with mankind's potential extinction. The story is hardly original or surprising, but the supremely confident Singer lends Jack an enjoyably old-fashioned showmanship that recalls a time when movie illusions were created by hand rather than by computer. Hoult (Warm Bodies) makes for an appealing lead, with the hesitant milk-fed smile of the young Tom Cruise and an unforced chemistry with Tomlinson. Simply put: Any five minutes of this is preferable to all of The Hobbit. « Less

2:05 PM, 7:15 PM

It's hard out there for a video game villain—always being attacked, never given the benefit of the doubt, and forever pigeonholed. Such is the fate of Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly), the bad guy in an old-school arcade game. With gigantic hands,... More »

It's hard out there for a video game villain—always being attacked, never given the benefit of the doubt, and forever pigeonholed. Such is the fate of Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly), the bad guy in an old-school arcade game. With gigantic hands, a round face, and overalls strapped over one shoulder, Ralph resembles a human Donkey Kong, and after 30 years of his smash-and-growl routine, he has grown tired of his station in life. At a therapy session for like-minded scoundrels including Super Mario Bros.' Bowser and Street Fighter's Zangief and M. Bison, Ralph wonders aloud why he can’t ever be the hero. A Pac-Man ghost responds, "We can’t change who we are." With bouncy CG that's given greater depth by 3-D, director Rich Moore's film blends the secret-lives-of-toys reality of Toy Story with the self-actualization vibe of Bolt, with the former proving far more electric than the latter. There’s an invigorating energy to the first 20 minutes, with Reilly's ho-hum-glum narration hilariously establishing Ralph's discontent, and Ralph’s travels through the game world marked by one winning cameo after another, including 2-D icons Pac-Man (detested by Ralph) and Q*Bert (now homeless). Thus, it's disappointing to find Wreck-It Ralph squandering the opportunities it sets up, retreating into static be-yourself territory when Ralph gets stranded in a cart-racing game with a smart-talking teen (Sarah Silverman) to save. Wreck-It Ralph's themes don't develop by branching out in wild, unpredictable ways; instead, they become narrower and more monotonous, perhaps replicating the fundamental nature of '80s-era games, which were predicted on basic, repetitive action. « Less

12:20 PM

As with her Twilight series, the infelicities of Stephenie Meyer's The Host-- drab dialogue, ridiculous plotting, more emotional crises than story-- are enlivened by its thematic eccentricities. For all her programmatic love triangles, Meyer's... More »

As with her Twilight series, the infelicities of Stephenie Meyer's The Host-- drab dialogue, ridiculous plotting, more emotional crises than story-- are enlivened by its thematic eccentricities. For all her programmatic love triangles, Meyer's fantasy is at least humane. You know how most fantasy adventures films have their orcs or stormtroopers or Germans who the good guys have a grand time genociding? The Host's heroine-- or heroines, more on that later-- actually forbids her friends from killing any of the parasitic space-protozoa who have taken over the bodies of most of the Earth’s population and are actively hunting down the last human survivors. Of course, that's only after she's slumped about for much of the story (in true Meyer fashion) trying to choose between two hunks who seemed to me interchangeable—despite living holed up in a Utah cave, far from civilization, both appear to have gym memberships and limitless access hair product. Once she is stirred to action, the heroine-- a part-human, part-alien frump played by Saoirsie Ronan-- argues for peace. This isn't quite like if Princess Leia, post-Alderaan, urged appeasement with the Empire as she sulked over whether she preferred Luke or Han. Instead, Ronan's Melanie understands the low odds of a human victory and hits upon a solution that isn't all pew-pew. She even suggests to the surviving Earthlings that best way to handle the invading force is to show it love-- the thing that makes us human, and the thing that the aliens can learn from. The movie's a slog, but it's nice to see Hollywood offer an option besides killing every motherfucker in the room. « Less

12:10 PM, 4:50 PM, 7:40 PM

As with her Twilight series, the infelicities of Stephenie Meyer's The Host-- drab dialogue, ridiculous plotting, more emotional crises than story-- are enlivened by its thematic eccentricities. For all her programmatic love triangles, Meyer's... More »

As with her Twilight series, the infelicities of Stephenie Meyer's The Host-- drab dialogue, ridiculous plotting, more emotional crises than story-- are enlivened by its thematic eccentricities. For all her programmatic love triangles, Meyer's fantasy is at least humane. You know how most fantasy adventures films have their orcs or stormtroopers or Germans who the good guys have a grand time genociding? The Host's heroine-- or heroines, more on that later-- actually forbids her friends from killing any of the parasitic space-protozoa who have taken over the bodies of most of the Earth’s population and are actively hunting down the last human survivors. Of course, that's only after she's slumped about for much of the story (in true Meyer fashion) trying to choose between two hunks who seemed to me interchangeable—despite living holed up in a Utah cave, far from civilization, both appear to have gym memberships and limitless access hair product. Once she is stirred to action, the heroine-- a part-human, part-alien frump played by Saoirsie Ronan-- argues for peace. This isn't quite like if Princess Leia, post-Alderaan, urged appeasement with the Empire as she sulked over whether she preferred Luke or Han. Instead, Ronan's Melanie understands the low odds of a human victory and hits upon a solution that isn't all pew-pew. She even suggests to the surviving Earthlings that best way to handle the invading force is to show it love-- the thing that makes us human, and the thing that the aliens can learn from. The movie's a slog, but it's nice to see Hollywood offer an option besides killing every motherfucker in the room. « Less

12:10 PM, 4:50 PM, 7:40 PM

Set amid the 1979–1980 Iran hostage crisis, Argo, Ben Affleck's third directorial effort, is a "gritty" historical drama overwhelmed by its love of Hollywood as an inventor of imaginary narratives with real consequences, a great generator of... More »

Set amid the 1979–1980 Iran hostage crisis, Argo, Ben Affleck's third directorial effort, is a "gritty" historical drama overwhelmed by its love of Hollywood as an inventor of imaginary narratives with real consequences, a great generator of American bedtime stories whose magic works on suburban kids and foreign enemies alike. After an Iranian Revolution for Dummies Prologue, the movie proper begins with the November 4, 1979, attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran. While 52 Americans are held hostage, six embassy workers manage to escape, ultimately hiding out at the home of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). Determined to smuggle the houseguests out of Iran by disguising them as a film crew on a location scout, CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Affleck) enlists the help of John Chambers (John Goodman), a movie makeup artist, and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), an old-school producer Chambers pulls off the lifetime-achievement circuit to give the "production" credibility. (In real life, Chambers won an Oscar for Planet of the Apes; Siegel is a composite). Between hokey wisecracks ribbing industry idiocy, the trio seizes on a dusty script for a Star Wars rip off called Argo. The great movies of the period Argo depicts, even period pieces, were about the American experience in the moment they were made. Argo doesn't reflect who we are now so much as it argues for what Hollywood can be. It's an embodiment of the kind of quality adult film that really shouldn't be an endangered species, and a love letter from Affleck to the industry that made him, shunned him, and loves nothing more than to be loved. « Less

5:00 PM

2:45 PM

Director David O. Russell is still doing penance for I Heart Huckabees, a wonderfully nutty 2004 passion project exploring the desperate search for meaning within corporate America. Silver Linings Playbook feels more personal than The Fighter,... More »

Director David O. Russell is still doing penance for I Heart Huckabees, a wonderfully nutty 2004 passion project exploring the desperate search for meaning within corporate America. Silver Linings Playbook feels more personal than The Fighter, his last feature, but it also feels like the movie version of a brilliant but unbalanced mind on too many edge-sanding meds. Released from the psych hospital where he was sent after a marriage-ending manic fit, Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) moves back into his childhood home. Cooper spits out such lines in an unmodulated, rapid-fire assault, his eyes wide and shining. Russell trusts us to draw on, like, every movie we've ever seen to recognize this is what the fearlessness of the mad looks and sounds like; the twist is that Pat's parents-- superstitious amateur bookie Pat Senior (Robert De Niro) and the sweetly overbearing Dolores (Jacki Weaver)-- speak the same way. The scenes in the Solitano home are a cacophony of mile-a-minute monotone. They’re the best, most alive parts of the movie. Like many assholes, Pat brands himself a "truth teller"; he is, of course, the only person who can’t see the truth about himself, which is that he’s incapable of empathy. It comes as no surprise that the vehicle for this transformation is a slow-building romance with a bruised young widow played with feisty authenticity by Jennifer Lawrence. Manic as it might be stylistically, Silver Linings Playbook maintains too even of an emotional keel. It's a film about the alienated that makes sure to alienate no one, a movie depicting wild mood extremes that never rises or falls above a dull hum of diversion. Russell has made a great movie about American malaise; this isn't it. « Less

12:00 PM, 7:00 PM

With animated kiddie product as generically sugary and dim-witted as this-- the directorial debut of Despicable Me storyboard artist Callan Brunker-- parents should prep a cost-benefit analysis including (a) the two-hour price of a babysitter,... More »

With animated kiddie product as generically sugary and dim-witted as this-- the directorial debut of Despicable Me storyboard artist Callan Brunker-- parents should prep a cost-benefit analysis including (a) the two-hour price of a babysitter, (b) the toxifying effects of exposing children to consumer waste, and (c) whether they're forced to sit through it, too. "Turn off your brain and hang on," warns Kira Supernova (voiced by Sarah Jessica Parker) as she and her nerdy scientist hubby Gary (Rob Corddry)-- noseless, blue humanoids from a planet bafflingly more Jetsons-futuristic than extraterrestrial—rocket-race to save their son. Their kid, in turn, has foolishly run after his barrel-chested, celeb-astronaut uncle Scorch (Brendan Fraser), captured by a villainous general (William Shatner) on the dangerous "Dark Planet" we call home. We're supposed to wonder, "Will Gary ever overcome his timidity and become an intergalactic hero to his family and dismissive bro?" Between the frequent cribbing of character designs (The Smurfs, Toy Story) and hoary catchphrases (Titanic, The Warriors), to its unfunny, dated references (Simon Cowell? ZZ Top?!) and pointless excuses for 3-D gimmickry (food fights, paddleballs), Escape From Planet Earth makes a compelling case for our disposable culture to finally get wiped out by malevolent aliens. « Less

5:00 PM, 7:10 PM

Here's a breakthrough, of a sort: The funniest scenes in Identity Thief are of Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman beating the hell out of each other. McCarthy-- playing a multi-named serial liar and credit-card fraud artist we'll call Diana--... More »

Here's a breakthrough, of a sort: The funniest scenes in Identity Thief are of Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman beating the hell out of each other. McCarthy-- playing a multi-named serial liar and credit-card fraud artist we'll call Diana-- clocks Jason Bateman with a vicious neck punch. Bateman-- as yet another sane fellow whose life is infested with plot-driving crazies--clocks, tackles, and even brains her with the stolen bric-a-brac that clutters Diana's home. I'm not going to argue that this man hitting this woman for laughs is a progressive triumph. But it is at least a victory for whatever is the opposite of sexism. McCarthy gets bashed about like a Stooge, and she bashes back with riotous abandon. Sadly, the rest of the movie is a shambles. So, let it be said, this one time only: Here is a comedy that really could use more inter-gender violence. (I’ll leave it to you to parse the sexual politics of McCarthy's insult after Bateman beans her with a knickknack: "You throw like a fuckin' girl!") The rest of the film, they’re solo acts, each doing what audiences expect: She yells and exhibits an unsocialized horniness; he regards her with dismay and disgust. Yes, disgust. There's no way around it: The producers of Identity Thief seem to find McCarthy's real-world body loathsome. Her big comic sex scene is ruined by director Seth Gordon's refusal to shoot her below the chin, and her Diana is later freighted with a sad-clown back story and given a princess makeover—penance, perhaps, for having roughhoused like the boys in the first reel. « Less

2:35 PM, 7:30 PM

If Side Effects, an immensely pleasurable thriller centering around psychotropic drugs, really is Steven Soderbergh's final film, as the director claims it will be, then he has peaked in the Valley of the Dolls. Scripted by Scott Z. Burns, who... More »

If Side Effects, an immensely pleasurable thriller centering around psychotropic drugs, really is Steven Soderbergh's final film, as the director claims it will be, then he has peaked in the Valley of the Dolls. Scripted by Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote the screenplay for Soderbergh's Contagion (2011), Side Effects shares, at least at first, the earlier movie's icy fury over the corruption of the medical profession. Yet when this initially pointed critique of our quick-fix, highly medicated era becomes a twisty genre exercise—filled with double-crosses, and blouses ripped-- it doesn't lessen the movie's punch. Side Effects begins with the scene of a crime: blood on the hardwood floors of a modest Manhattan apartment. The film then cuts to three months earlier as 28-year-old Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) applies lipstick the same sanguine hue as the gore in the prologue. Skeletal, morose, and vacant-eyed, she is prettying herself up for a prison visit with her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), who is nearing the end of a four-year sentence for insider trading. Yet Martin's release seems to send Emily into deeper despair. A suicide attempt lands her in the care of overextended shrink Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law). Emily’s depression seems to be lifting under a new drug though soon one of its unintended effects-- episodes of "acute parasomnia"-- leads her to commit a very gruesome sleep crime. Scenes between Catherine Zeta-Jones, perfect as a steely rival shrink, and Law, even better than he was as the fear-mongering blogger in Contagion, reminds us what we'll be missing if Soderbergh never makes another film: someone to diagnose our national malaise as coolly and seductively as he has. « Less

4:20 PM

Though Snitch loudly announces itself as a social-issues movie, its nominal outrage over the severity of our nation's sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders is quickly subsumed by a jacked-up narrative of a father going to extremes to save... More »

Though Snitch loudly announces itself as a social-issues movie, its nominal outrage over the severity of our nation's sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders is quickly subsumed by a jacked-up narrative of a father going to extremes to save his son. Inspired by a real-life incident detailed in a 1999 episode of Frontline, the film tracks construction-company magnate John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) as he offers to go undercover to nab drug dealers in exchange for a reduced prison sentence for his estranged 18-year-old son, Jason (Rafi Gavron). The teenager, still apparently smarting over his parents' divorce, faces 10 years in jail for accepting a package filled with Ecstasy and refuses to concoct evidence against a friend to lessen his time behind bars. In order to assuage the hurt he's caused his firstborn, John, after reading the Wikipedia entry for "drug cartel," first has closed-door meetings with a federal prosecutor (Susan Sarandon)-- her villainy signaled by both her childlessness and a snide remark about gay weddings-- then drives 1,000 miles in a semi containing mountains of coke secreted in cement bags. As the plot grows more and more absurd-- Benjamin Bratt shows up as a drug kingpin named "El Topo"-- Snitch reveals another kind of political agenda. After telling his co-conspirator in the blow setup that "there's no way I'm going to let either side dictate our fates," John stands in a gun shop, coolly assessing the arsenal that's his for the taking. « Less

4:35 PM

WWE Studios, the film production arm of World Wrestling Entertainment, breaks from its usual target audience of guys who like films about shirtless, muscley men with The Call, a suspense thriller starring adequate actress and Academy Award... More »

WWE Studios, the film production arm of World Wrestling Entertainment, breaks from its usual target audience of guys who like films about shirtless, muscley men with The Call, a suspense thriller starring adequate actress and Academy Award recipient Halle Berry as an overcommitted, hotshot 911 emergency operator. When she makes a rookie-level error that costs a teenage girl her life, she opts to hang up her call center headset-- until the girl's killer kidnaps another teen victim. Locked in a car trunk with a prepaid cell phone, she calls 911. The middle third of the film comprises the phone call, a tight 40 minutes in which the girl, guided by Berry, deploys the contents of the trunk (screwdriver, paint roller handle, cans of white matte finish) to make her kidnapper's vehicle more conspicuous while Berry presses her for details she can relate to the police. In a nod to the studio's usual demographic, two-time WWE tag-team champion David Otunga plays officer Jake Devans, though fans hoping for spinning headlock elbow drops or backflip kicks will be disappointed. When the emergency call ends, Berry drives out to the crime scene the cops traced down and goes all Clarice Starling inside the spooky cabin where the bad guy keeps his Saw basement, which has to be seen as a departure from the film's thin blue line of realism, or the workaday reality that WWE became known for when the Undertaker defeated Kane with his signature Tombstone piledriver at Wrestlemania XX. « Less

2:35 PM, 4:40 PM