Forget the presidential debates and the carnage in Fallujah. If you want to see real bloodletting, fall by the Esquire Saturday night to catch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is the gruesome cult favorite in which five young innocents who have wandered into the wrong part of rural Texas…
In case you missed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind earlier this year — or can’t remember if you saw it or not — the University of Colorado International Film Series stands ready to fix you up. One of the quirkiest romantic comedies of recent years, it features rubber-faced Jim…
It was only a matter of time before Hollywood capitalized on the sympathy and admiration that have enveloped the nation’s firefighters since 9/11, and here we are. Jay Russell’s action-packed, flame-broiled Ladder 49 is an all-out valentine to the firehouse fraternity; it might never have gotten to the screen were…
Before it’s over, maybe they could match him up against a ’58 Edsel. Or the Hindenburg. Or Michael Dukakis. Something. Because Zippy Chippy, whose papers say he is a thoroughbred racehorse, has never won versus his own kind. In eleven long years of trying (and sometimes not trying), the thirteen-year-old…
The Boulder Public Library’s admirable and far-ranging film program is presenting “History and Development of the Documentary Film,” featuring works by such disparate practitioners of the non-fiction art as the father of them all, Robert Flaherty, John Huston (in his wartime role as a documentarian for the U.S. Army) and…
Next time you’re in the market for a pair of guinea pigs, a Ford pickup or a bag of jalapeño peppers, tune in to radio station KFKA in Greeley for Saturday morning’s Swap Shop show. You might even wind up buying something on a whim — like the black faux-fur…
It’s a good bet that some of the locals are horrified, or terrified, but here you have it: the Pikes Peak Lavender Film Festival, whose stated mission is “bringing quality international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender films to Colorado Springs.” That this weekend’s event is the fifth annual Lavender says…
The first of the University of Colorado Film Studies program’s Goldfarb and Grillo Awards — students will win $12,000 this academic year — will be presented this week at the fall Student Awards Showcase. The prizes, in the words of the presenters, “are designed to encourage excellence in filmmaking and…
The most crucial piece of equipment in Hollywood is obviously not the movie camera. It’s not the casting couch. Not even the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud or the personal trainer. It’s the Xerox machine — which was preceded by carbon paper. That’s why, over the years, we have had three Mrs…
In this hour of enmity and bitterness, we Americans appear to be totally fed up with each other. Post-9/11 and mid-Iraq, the national political debate has been reduced to a nasty civil war that ruins friendships, stops casual dinner chats cold and, if I don’t miss my guess, gladdens the…
Since going dark-blue-with-white-horse from the neck up, the Denver Broncos no longer sport that big orange “D” on their helmets. But if Mike Shanahan wins big in the biggest gamble of his coaching career, it is “D” that will be inside his players’ heads this year. It will be “D”…
This October, Hollywood will once again reveal its gift for scavengery (not a word, but should be) when it releases The Grudge, a Sarah Michelle Geller/Bill Pullman vehicle designed to scare us right out of our underwear. In the meantime, why not catch the incredibly chilling Japanese film that inspired…
The 12th Annual Denver International World Cinema Independent Fall Film Festival — quite a mouthful, no? — will feature three days’ worth of feature films, documentaries and shorts from around the globe at downtown Denver’s Acoma Center. British actor/director Leon Herbert will appear in person with his new feature, Emotional…
Back in the day, University of Colorado football players bonded with each other at pep rallies. They matched appetites at the training table. For awhile there, they went on raft trips and listened to their coach strum his guitar. Always, they exchanged fellow-feeling by kicking serious ass in the grim…
Until now, the landmark creature feature Godzilla (1954) has never been shown on this side of the Pacific in all its high-budget (but still cheesy) glory. The uncut version, in a new 35-millimeter print straight from the lab in Japan, restores forty minutes of previously unseen footage just in time…
Summer movies don’t get much sillier or more empty-headed than Without a Paddle, and that includes Catwoman and King Arthur. What we have here is a low-wattage buddy flick proposing that a trio of boyhood friends, now thirty years old, can shed the last vestiges of their adolescence by traipsing…
The final installment of the gory trilogy that launched, then buoyed up, horrormeister Sam Raimi’s directorial career, 1993’s Army of Darkness, goes for broke in the outrageous plotting department. The innocent hero, played by a wisecracking Bruce Campbell, is transported back to the fourteenth-century stamping grounds of King Arthur –…
The return to the screen of the ravishing Chinese actress Gong Li, who may have the most expressive face in film, should be cause for rejoicing among her millions of admirers around the world. After starring in a series of memorable and politically controversial films directed by her former paramour,…
The slightly crooked basketball hoop in his family’s Congress Park back yard holds many memories and meanings for Kevin Fletcher. Dribbling a ball under that basket one hot afternoon last week, Kevin thought about the times his driveway suddenly turned into the gleaming floor of the L.A. Forum. About the…
There is nothing mysterious or subdued about Stacy Peralta’s enthusiasms. A product of Southern California’s vivid beach scene, Peralta’s been a surfer since boyhood and was a professional skateboarder in the Œ70s before he started making documentaries about the defining moments of those sports. The phenomenally successful Dogtown and Z-Boys…
Sheathed in a custom-tailored gray suit and sporting expensively barbered silver hair, Tom Cruise looks like an older, harder version of the self-absorbed L.A. sharpie he played sixteen years ago in Rain Man. But in Collateral, a frenetic Michael Mann action thriller that runs up a Baghdad-level body count, the…
If you’re, oh, eleven years old and you’ve had it up to here with Spider-Man’s current case of existential angst, it’s time to blow your weekly allowance on Thunderbirds. This special-effects-crammed action blockbuster aims a bit lower, age-wise, which is to say its hyperactive young hero wears a retainer on…
