Email Author Bill Gallo

2004 Stories by Bill Gallo

• Leaning Sideways

  published December 30, 2004

  Our best movies of the year may actually have been anything but the best to a few of our critics: Such is the dilemma of offering employment to... More >>

• Cine Bon!

  published December 30, 2004

  The Gospel According to Mel Who needs studio publicists when every fundamentalist pastor in the country is herding his flock to the... More >>

• Second Run

  published December 30, 2004

  While Michael Moore and Mel Gibson garnered most of this year's critical attention, plenty of fine films opened to little or no fanfare. Following... More >>

• By Hooker or Crook

  published December 23, 2004

  Wonderful game, baseball. Nothing quite like the sights and sounds of the good old national pastime. The happy crack of hickory on horsehide. The... More >>

• Over-the-Topera

  published December 23, 2004

  By all accounts, the only living creatures who've never taken in a stage production of The Phantom of the Opera are Osama bin Laden... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published December 23, 2004

  Released in 1960, La Dolce Vita is the film that gave currency to the term "Fellini-esque" -- and a name to a lot of lousy Italian... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published December 16, 2004

  Catherine Breillat's Sex Is Comedy could serve as a companion piece to a pair of earlier French movies about making movies -- François ... More >>

• Shanny and Snake Ain't Jake

  published December 9, 2004

  My favorite news item of recent weeks is the one about the family in New York that's suing a restaurant chain for $10 million because one of those... More >>

• Anatomy of a Sumbitch

  published December 9, 2004

  Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana's fascinating documentary Overnight is a kind of instructional video about how to fail in showbiz.... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published December 9, 2004

  All right, all right. It's well established that White Christmas (1954) wasn't nearly as good as its model, Holiday... More >>

• Lust Buster

  published December 2, 2004

  The new Mike Nichols film, Closer, is a boiling pot of lust, mistrust and double-dealing that we might take for outright soap opera... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published December 2, 2004

  One of the most compelling films of 2004, first-time indie director Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace is a drug movie that has no... More >>

• Merger Mania

  published November 25, 2004

  Most Nuggets fans can't read tea leaves, but they're pretty good with injury reports. Either way, universal health care will be critical to the... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published November 25, 2004

  Patrice Leconte's Intimate Strangers develops from an intriguing premise: A troubled woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) making her first... More >>

• Hail Snail Mail

  published November 18, 2004

  U.S. Postal Service workers who think they have it tough should probably get a look at Huo Jianqi's Postmen in the Mountains. In... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published November 18, 2004

  Penek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe, released last summer, takes the notion of the Odd Couple to dizzyingly philosophical... More >>

• At a Loss

  published November 11, 2004

  That pointy brown thing that turns up in the U.S. of A. every autumn is a football -- a fact that has escaped most of Colorado's major colleges... More >>

• What the Hayek?

  published November 11, 2004

  The witless inanity of After the Sunset is so numbing that the sole reason for any living creature to sit through it -- man, woman... More >>

• Killing You Slowly

  published November 11, 2004

  The punk-hipster appeal of filmmaker Jim Van Bebber is based on half a dozen lurid, no-budget gorefests like My Sweet Satan, in which a... More >>

• Next Best Thing

  published November 4, 2004

  When shot with verve and skill, so that you can feel the heat and passion of the moment, a concert film is the next best thing to being there.... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published November 4, 2004

  The talented documentarians Albert and David Maysles, both of whom studied psychology at college, were always at their best when addressing... More >>

• Ice Follies

  published October 28, 2004

  The good thing about the hockey lockout? Todd Bertuzzi is looking for work. The bad thing? Nobody gets to drive the Zamboni, big lovable galoot of... More >>

• Foxx Is Pitch Perfect

  published October 28, 2004

  The agony and the ecstasy of Ray Charles's long journey cry out for a grittier, more direct movie than Taylor Hackford's Ray -- a... More >>

• Hail to the Drama Queen

  published October 28, 2004

  Margo Channing cracked wiser. And her devious protegé cooked up better schemes to steal the limelight. Still, half a century after they lit... More >>

• Flick Pick

  published October 28, 2004

  The late Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski was an artist of sublime gift and burning conscience. His peerless series of meditations on the Ten... More >>