Now in post-production, the as yet untitled Led Zeppelin documentary, directed by Bernard MacMahon, celebrates the world’s best-selling rock band on their fiftieth anniversary. The documentary traces the journeys of the four members through the music scene of the 1960s, their meeting in the summer of 1968 for a rehearsal that will change the future of rock, and culminates in 1970 when their second album knocks The Beatles off the top of the charts and they become the number one band in the world. With brand new interviews of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones, as well […]
GEEK SQUAD: 5 Reasons Why Endgame Is Badass
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT No one was shocked when Avengers: Endgame crushed the box office opening weekend. Both nerds and normies alike — legions of them — waited for this film since last year’s bummer-ific Avengers: Infinity War. Hell, this film has been hyped for years. The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe built to this moment. And the film lived up to that hype–I cheered, laughed, cried, and said “Holy fuck!” to myself at least 20 times while watching it. WARNING: The preceding is the end of the spoiler-free segment of this article. If you have not yet […]
CINEMA: A Friend Of The Devil Is A Friend Of Mine
HAIL SATAN? (Directed by Penny Lane, 95 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Given the FUBAR state of our country, it’s no surprise that we are inundated with documentaries that try to soothe our troubled minds with Netflix-ian Schadenfreude. Whether it be true crime truth-squadding, pedophile gotchas or rich millennial douchebags stranded on a desert island, our United States Of Fear are perpetuated by these granular takes on real-life human suffering. All of which was on my mind when, with some reluctance, I sat down to watch Hail Satan?, the disarmingly feel-good documentary about the Satanic Temple […]
SATANIC PANIC: Q&A With Director Penny Lane
BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Recently Phawker had the opportunity to chat with documentarian Penny Lane, whose strangely feel good portrait of The Satanic Temple, Hail Satan? opens in Philadelphia this week. Lane got her big break with her oddly humane and hilarious political portrait Our Nixon, which was comprised of Super 8 home movies confiscated by the FBI during the Watergate investigation. It’s this intimate portrait of Richard Nixon that really set the bar for the Lane’s cinematic style going forward. After Nixon, she tackled John Romulus Brinkley, a doctor who attempted to cure impotence via goat testicle […]
CINEMA: This Is The End
AVENGERS: ENDGAME (Directed by Joe & Anthony Russo, 181 min., USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC The end is near. It’s taken 22 films and 10 years of story to get to this moment: the titular endgame of the MCU’s Infinity Saga. Having lost to Thanos (Josh Brolin), their greatest foe, who brought “balance” the universe by killing half its population — including half The Avengers — in an instant with the cosmically powered Infinity Gauntlet in last year’s Infinity War, the surviving Avengers attempt to cope with the aftermath and undo the damage done. Given the myriad narrative […]
CINEMA: Hellboy Is Hella Bad
HELLBOY (Directed by Neil Marshall, 120 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Hellboy is an odd sequel/reboot mashup that simultaneously ties up the loose narrative threads left behind by Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) while introducing a new cast and the fresh hell that will befall them. In this incarnation helmed by Neil Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers), Hellboy (David Harbour) is assisted by spirit medium Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane) and Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense agent Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) as he attempts to stop a Gruagach, which […]
CINEMA: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
THE BEACH BUM (Directed by Harmony Korine, 95 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Everyone I know seems to have a Harmony Korine story. From the friend who once told me about how an applicant at the video store he used to work at listed the director as a reference — and how they called the number only to have Korine pick up. To another friend in whom Korine confided that he once lost almost 70 never-produced scripts in a bizarre house fire. Like the director himself, The Beach Bum is a study in larger-than-life chaotic personae that […]
GEEK SQUAD: Shazam! Reviewed!
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Shazam! is hands down DC’s best movie since The Dark Knight trilogy. Filmed in Toronto but set in Philly, Shazam! is an old fashioned feel good film that is perfect for a character first created in 1939 (under the name Captain Marvel, which is a story for another time). The film begins when Billy Batson (Asher Angel) arrives at a new foster home with five other children. He quickly hits the superpower lottery when a wizard grants him the powers of Shazam. By invoking the magic word SHAZAM! Billy Batson is transformed into […]
ZOMBIE BIRDHOUSE: The Horror Of Jim Jarmusch
VICE: Last week, Focus Features announced that director Jim Jarmusch’s truly bonkers zombie movie, The Dead Don’t Die, is dropping this summer, and that it’ll star just about every extremely cool person you’ve ever heard of. Now, just a few days later, the film’s first trailer is here—and good lord, this one is going to be an incredible, star-studded bloodbath. Are you ready to watch the reanimated corpse of Iggy Pop feast on the flesh of some unsuspecting mortals? Or Bill Murray unload a shotgun into a crowd of the undead? Or Adam Driver go to town with a […]
CINEMA: This Is America
US (Directed by Jordan Peele, 116 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Us, Jordan Peele’s white-hotly anticipated follow up to to his 2017 breakout hit Get Out, is a stylish, cerebral and visually stunning creepshow that rings loud and true and in the process solidifies his status as our next great American auteur. Peele dodges the sophomore slump serving up another suitably jaundiced meditation on American dysphoria that smartly delivers the requisite scares and yucks. Starring Black Panther break out Winston Duke and Lupita Nyong’o, its a film that’s bigger in scope than than his previous outing and […]
CINEMA: Teaser For Tarantino’s New Manson Flick
THE WRAP: On Aug. 9, 1969, [actress] Tate and [hairdresser-to-the-stars] Sebring died at the hands of the Manson Family at her and Polanski’s home on Cielo Drive. So did Tate’s unborn baby, aspiring screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folgers coffee fortune, and 18-year-old visitor Steven Parent. In a bizarre turn of events, before the true killings were known, Polanski briefly suspected [martial arts legend] Bruce Lee of the murders. The killer or killers and left a pair of glasses at the home on Cielo Drive, and one morning after the murders, Lee casually mentioned to Polanski, […]
ARCADE FIRE: Baby Mine
From Tim Burton’s forthcoming Dumbo. Easily the best thing they’ve done since The Suburbs.
CINEMA: Bikini Kill Kill
CAPTAIN MARVEL (Dir. by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 124 min., USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Captain Marvel arrives at an interesting inflection point in the Marvel Comics Universe, preceding the apocalyptic events of Infinity War by decades, while introducing what could possibly be their most powerful superhero yet. The film is directed by the husband/wife team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who have a demonstrable knack for complex character building, which is surely why they were chosen to bring Marvel’s first female led superhero film to theaters. Brie Larson was recruited for the title role […]