We are all guilty of enjoying Adam Sandler's movies, and there's no shame in that. Sandler's latest film debuts this weekend, so most of you will go see this film out of habit or because of your undying loyalty for the prolific funny man. Sunday, I was having this strange conversation with James Hudson, also known as TucsonScene James, and I mentioned that Sandler seems like he's planning his next film around his next ideal vacation spot.

Obviously, I'm not the only one that shared this sentiment. Hudson sent me this verbose article The A.V. Club published about Sander's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel's talk show last night.

“Yes,” Sandler replied enthusiastically, secure in the knowledge that it absolutely doesn’t matter if he just admits, point blank, that he chooses his projects based on whether they include a trip to some luxury destination, because they are Adam Sandler movies for Adam Sandler audiences. “I have done that since 50 First Dates,” Sandler explained. “It was written in another place. I said, ‘Imagine if we did it in Hawaii, how great that movie would be.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, that’s a very artistic idea.’ I’ve been doing that ever since.”

I can't blame the guy. Hell, I envy the son of a gun. If I ever met the Water Boy, I'm going to give him a wicked awesome high five. Hopefully, he'll find it in his heart to film a movie in the Old Pueblo to spend more time with his family members that live here.

According to the weather forecast, there’s not one day this week that’ll spill over into triple-digit territory. That’s good news for those of you that enjoy outdoor cinema screenings, like tonight’s presentation of the 1963 Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant film Charade at Cinema La Placita, 110 S. Church Ave. The charming combo of Grant and Hepburn, along with co-stars Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy, really makes this romantic-comedy/suspense-thriller shine. Jonathan Demme remade this in 2002 as The Truth About Charlie, and although Demme is a great director, casting Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton in the Grant and Hepburn roles assured it’s box-office doom. Charade starts tonight at 7:30 p.m. and $3 gets you in and a bag of popcorn. Visit cinemalaplacita.com for more information.

There’s less than two weeks left in May, and that means the May series at the Loft Cinema, La Dolce Fellini: A Retrospective, is winding down. There’s still a few of his films left, like tonight’s screening of Fellini Satyricon. Arguably his most iconic film, Fellini Satyricon tells the story of ancient Rome—with lots of freakish imagery and hallucinatory sequences. The film starts at tonight 7 p.m. Tickets are regular admission. On Saturday, May 24, the Loft is screening Amarcord, Fellini’s somewhat autobiographical tale of growing up under Mussolini in Rimini. Don’t expect a typical run-of-the-mill coming of age story, this is Fellini we’re talking about, so be look out for more creeped-out visuals and hallucinatory sequences. Amarcord plays at 7 p.m. Tickets are regular admission, and both films are presented in glorious 35mm.

Speaking of hallucinatory, on Friday, May 22, and running through the holiday weekend, the Loft is screening Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece (kind of a misnomer, most of his films are) 2001: A Space Odyssey every night at 10 p.m. I’ve told you about a lot of films that you must see on the big screen, but this is the numero uno, mandatory big-screen experience,whether or not you’re eating “brownies.” There’s nothing quite like leaning back and watching that bone fly up in the air and become a spaceship on a huge screen. General admission is $6, Loft members are $5.

What would you do if you had access to every major Hollywood actor at this moment? If your answer was to use their stardom to shed light on corruption, climate change and Obama care, then you will be highly disappointed after watching this video. Joe Michalczuk, Sky News Entertainment reporter and critic, asked all your favorite actors to congratulate his wife on their upcoming marriage.

Most of it seemed sincere and heartwarming, but others were obviously annoyed by the idea. I bet it will make for interesting small talk of the wedding, or he'll just come off as a big douche for name dropping with the in-laws.

Grassroots Growing

7 p.m. Wednesday, May 21

The Loft Cinema, 3222 E. Speedway Blvd.

322-5638; www.loftcinema.com/film/open-sesame-the-story-of-seeds 



Do you know where your seeds came from?

While plenty of people pay attention to what they eat, tracking where the food comes from isn't as common an activity. Even less so is learning the origin of the seeds being used to create certain food items.

The seeds that make a good amount of the food we eat is the subject of a new documentary, Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds, that is holding a special screening at the Loft. The event will also feature a Q&A session involving local seed experts.

Together, the film and discussion group aim to raise awareness of what's going on in the world of seeds, an industry that's become more and more dominated by genetically modified organisms (known as GMOs) and is driving out the original organic seeds.

“This is very much a local issue,” said director Sean Kaminsky, who was inspired by his grandmother's love of seed collecting to make the documentary. “It's something that's been taken away from the local platform, but it needs to be a local issue.”

Kaminsky said the film does side with people who are championing for a return to more organic growing. That direction brought him to Tucson to film people enrolled in the Seed School, a program created by local nonprofit Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S).

He said groups like NS/S are part of a small, but growing movement to empower people to take seeds back into their own hands.

The Q&A session will feature several local seed experts, including NS/S founders Bill McDorman and Belle Starr as well as Jeau Allen and George Bradley of the Southwest Seed Exchange.

Tickets to Open Sesame are $9.25 for adults, $7.50 for military, students and teachers, $6.25 for seniors and children and $5.75 for Loft members.

– Written by Brian J. Pedersen

Street-walking women, vengeful brides and wealthy socialites make up the films playing tonight at three different locations. Over at the Loft Cinema, their month-long series La Dolce Fellini: A Retrospective rolls out the maestro’s 1957 film Nights of Cabiria. It’s one of Fellini’s less fantastical films, but hey, a Fellini film about a prostitute is still pretty exotic. Nights of Cabiria starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are regular admission. Another Fellini film plays this week on Saturday, May 17. Catch the 1963 classic 8 ½ , also at 7 p.m. Suave and debonair Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a Fellini-esque director who’s in over his head on an exhaustive film production. As the film swirls away from his control, so does every other aspect of his life, all in a bizarre and circus-like Fellini fashion. Tickets are regular admission. For more information on this and other events, visit loftcinema.com.

Tonight at the Fox Theatre, Kill Bill Vol. 1 plays as part of May Massacre, their Quentin Tarantino four-film retrospective series. This was Tarantino’s first film in six years after 1997’s Jackie Brown (sadly not playing at the Fox), and this was the one where he threw every cult genre in a blender. Hong Kong martial arts films, spaghetti westerns, anime, revenge films, horror, giallo, Japanese pinky violence, you name it, it’s in here. Uma Thurman plays The Bride, and she’s out to kill her former “Deadly Viper Assassination Squad” members who massacred her family and left her for dead. The legendary, God-like David Carradine plays Bill, the head of the kill-squad and father-figure to The Bride. The fun starts at 7:30 p.m., and if you dress up like a ninja, expect some free popcorn. Kill Bill Vol. 2 closes out the Tarantino series tomorrow night, also at 7:30 p.m. Tickets to both are $7, and $5 for students and military. For more info, visit foxtucsontheatre.com.

It was all going so well in Godzilla…until the damn monsters showed up.

We knew Hollywood would get here eventually, because they rehash so many things, and this one is the granddaddy of ‘em all. Although not the first metro-mauling monster movie, the original Godzilla from 1954 really set the stage for the widespread destruction we see today. Since that time, the Beast from the Far East has been distorted from the original intent countless times, which is a real shame.

In the beginning, Godzilla was a metaphor for nuclear proliferation, which had a particularly sobering effect on Japan some nine years after World War II. Over the years, though, he’s become just a by-product of nukes, and the shock that originally accompanied him has long since disappeared. By the time an American remake was dropped on unsuspecting, innocent audiences in 1998, it was just laughable.

So give this new version credit for going back to the basics, at least for a while. A nuclear scientist (Bryan Cranston) is trying to get to the bottom of a disaster he witnessed in Japan 15 years earlier. It killed his wife and has nearly driven him to the point of madness in the years since. But he knows it wasn’t a nuclear accident at the power plant; there has to be another explanation. His son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), has to travel from San Francisco back to Japan to bail his father out of jail after crossing into a zone quarantined for nuclear fallout.

Fast-forward quite a bit and we get to the bottom of it: there are ancient creatures who used to feed off radiation when the Earth was a lot less stable. Now they live at the bottom of the oceans sucking juice from the planet’s core. Scientifically, that’s not terribly sound, but for an introduction to giant monsters, OK. And there’s real drama here, too, particularly a scene where Cranston demands some answers, damn it! He’s consistently great here and for a while you actually think they’ve made a terrific summer blockbuster.

The frontloaded storytelling would explain a lot of the talent wandering around: Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) as a scientist, Elizabeth Olsen as Ford’s rather disposable wife, Juliette Binoche for some reason, and the always solid David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck). They must have been told monsters would never be seen in this movie, like Cloverfield, and now they’ll never trust their agents again.

On the other hand, director Gareth Edwards ought to keep his agent in floral bouquets for years. He had only made one feature before this, an indie monster movie called, simply, Monsters. He’s got chops, and there’s definitely enough signs of life in Godzilla to keep him working for a while.

As an effects show, this offers us nothing new. There’s a fourth Transformers movie this summer; replace sea monsters with robots and the carnage will be effectively the same. But the real problem for the film comes with how everyone else deals with the awesome power of such a towering creature. The movie and everyone in it totally loses their marbles, and at one point, poor Ford aims a revolver at a radiation-sucking monolith that’s over 300 feet tall.

On its own, of course, that strain of stupidity would be totally fine. The world can tolerate a few stupid movies every summer. But Godzilla knows it’s smarter, shows it’s smarter, and then just gives up. 

We are counting down the days until Godzilla hits theaters. Ignoring the fact that Godzilla is a (fictional) giant mutant Godzillasaurus kaiju, what the hell is a "Godzilla" anyway? Well, Fandango and their nerdy PR machine concocted a Godzilla infographic to educate and feed our love for the jolly green giant.


Catch Godzilla in theaters everywhere on Friday, May 16.

Attention independent filmmakers of the world: The Loft Cinema is currently accepting submissions for the 5th annual Loft Film Fest. This year's festival will take place on October 16 through October 19. Here's your chance to send in your short, feature films, or documentaries played among some of the eclectic films from all over the globe.

Each year keeps getting better, and I'm excited to see what special guests they have lined up for this year.

Special guests of The Loft Film Fest have included acclaimed contemporary filmmakers such as Carlos Reygadas, Alex Cox, Chris Eyre, Don Coscarelli, The Zellner Brothers, Bobcat Goldthwait, Kirby Dick and Richard Kelly; celebrated actors including Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Robert Carradine and Udo Kier; and industry legends such as Roger Corman, recipient of the 2012 “Lofty Lifetime Achievement Award.” 

Click here to submit.

Summer is fast approaching, and summer means outdoor screenings. Tonight kicks off the 15th season of Cinema La Placita, the series that shows classic films outdoors in downtown Tucson. Tonight’s classic is the 1934 comedy whodunnit The Thin Man, based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. Cinema La Placitia is located at La Placita Village, 110 S. Church Ave. Admission is a whopping $3, and that gets you a free bag of popcorn. The film starts at 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit cinemalaplacita.com.

Throughout the month of May, the Fox Theatre, 17 W. Congress St., presents May Massacre, a tribute to some of writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s bloodiest films. First up is Tarantino’s debut film Reservoir Dogs, the 1992 crime film that turned the world of indie film upside down. Starring Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn, Michael Madsen and Lawrence Tierney, Reservoir Dogs is a classic “crew-of-criminals-on-a-job” film, except the job goes horribly, horribly wrong. It’s equal parts Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Joseph Sargent’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (the film that Reservoir Dogs has been accused of outright ripping off), but it contains Tarantino’s trademark snappy and hilarious dialogue, pop culture riffs, excessive and garish ultra-violence, nonlinear plots, and a soundtrack full of lost gems. The film starts at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and specialty drinks will be on hand at “Mr. Black’s Bar.” Anyone who shows up in a suit and tie receives a free bag of popcorn. Tickets are $7, students and military are $5. Added bonus: All of the films, besides Pulp Fiction, are presented in 35mm!

If Reservoir Dogs turned the world of indie film upside down, Pulp Fiction turned it inside out. All of a sudden, indie crime films became the go-to template. After Pulp Fiction, every film had to have a greasy diner scene, a few surf songs on the soundtrack, quirky dialogue and sharp bursts of violence. Think Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, 2 Days in the Valley, Destiny Turns on the Radio, etc. For better of for worse, this is the film that made Tarantino a star and gave him carte blanche to do anything he pleased. Pulp Fiction plays at the Fox on Saturday, May 10 at 7:30 p.m. According to the theatre, the lobby “will transform into Jack Rabbit Slims Bar with specialty drinks, classic cars, live Elvis performer, impersonators, Twist Contest & more.” Also according to Fox, those who show up in “ Pulp Fiction Attire” will win a free “treat!” Gimp leathers, Eric Stoltz drug dealer robes and Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta suits are all game. Tickets are $7, students and military are $5. For more information, visit foxtucsontheatre.org.

Have you ever wanted to watch a movie about lawyers with a group of lawyers? Tonight’s your lucky night! Live out your kooky fantasy at the Fox Theatre with a screening of The Verdict, the 1982 courtroom drama starring steely-eyed Paul Newman as an alcoholic lawyer trying a medical malpractice case. The film, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by David Mamet, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The screening is presented by the Arizona Trial Lawyers Association and starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 and more information can be found at foxtucsontheatre.com.

Speaking lawyers, there’s a different kind of bloodsucker on the screen Sunday, May 4 over at the Loft Cinema. As part of their Essential Cinema series, they’re unrolling Werner Herzog’s chilling 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre. Starring the inimitable Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Herzog’s Nosferatu is both an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s infamous novel and a semi-remake of German filmmaker F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film Nosferatu. It’s the kind of horror movie only Herzog can make; it’s a genuine scare flick yet it’s a deeper study of loneliness and pathos. Classic Herzog! The film starts at 11 a.m. and there’s a $5 suggested donation. Catch a repeat performance on Tuesday, May 6 at 7 p.m.