Of all the films directed by the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Effi Briest (1974) is probably the most literary (it’s adapted from an 1894 novel by Theodor Fontane), but there is nothing staid or inert about it. Using his customary command of technical skills and his uncanny empathy for actors,…
At first glance, Hidalgo seems to be nothing more than an old-fashioned, flat-footed adventure epic plunked down on a vast stretch of desert and amply furnished with the usual Hollywood conventions — a strong, silent cowboy on horseback, a couple of villains with nasty black mustaches, a killer sandstorm and…
If the Yankees don’t win the World Series this year, millions of shocked New Yorkers will want to know why. If the Colorado Rockies don’t finish last, three Little Leaguers up in the Rockpile will want to know how. Seen in the cold light of day, the 2004 Rox are…
It’s hard to imagine a more perfect midnight movie than Harold and Maude (1971), Hal Ashby’s subversive black comedy about the taboo romance of a twenty-year-old boy obsessed with death (Bud Cort) and a flamboyant 79-year-old senior citizen (Ruth Gordon) whose worldview is eccentric, to say the least. They meet…
This weekend’s second annual Golden Film Festival will feature a broad array of Academy Award-nominated short and feature-length documentaries, live-action shorts and animated shorts, as well as a selection of Colorado-made films. Sponsored by the Golden Resource for Education Arts and Theater (GREAT), the festival will be held in the…
It’s clear by now that Meg Ryan, the bubbly sweetheart of half a dozen romantic comedies, means to bring new substance and seriousness to the second act of her career. Witness the lonely New York English teacher she played in last year’s brainy slasher flick, In the Cut. In no…
There’s no radio. Mother Nature provides the air conditioning. If you’re 6′ 3″, forget it. Houdini would have trouble squirming in and out of the thing. Wind this tiny, bug-eyed British beast up to 105 miles per hour or so, and it starts ripping and crashing into the oncoming air…
Two sublime art forms will collide again this year during the eighth Denver Jazz on Film Festival at the Starz FilmCenter on Friday, February 13. Featured films chronicle the life of famed songwriter Cole Porter; jazz icon Jimmy Scott, who has been massaging tender ballads for more than half a…
If Bud Selig hears about this, he’ll probably go nuts. On Monday, February 9, exiled baseball legend Pete Rose will be within sight of a major-league ballpark when he visits the Tattered Cover’s LoDo store to sign copies of his new memoir, My Prison Without Bars, which sells for $24.95…
When the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team — twenty raw college boys — beat the seemingly invincible, state-hardened Soviets and went on to win the gold medal at Lake Placid, New York, the event was regarded, even in palm-lined Miami and iceless Honolulu, as the most amazing feat in U.S…
For someone who has two Super Bowl rings and his own football team and who fronts seventeen car dealerships, John Elway is a pretty modest guy. All right, so maybe the activity the Colorado Crush labors at is not really football, but you get the idea. Elway is not the…
The great silent comedian Charles Chaplin’s political troubles with the United States government probably didn’t begin with the release of Modern Times in 1936. But this brilliant satire of American factory automation, the depersonalization of workers and the social ills of the Depression got a cold reception in the U.S…
Surf’s up. Palm trees sway invitingly in the breeze. The sparkling beaches are amply decorated with bikini babes and hard-body surfer dudes. Everybody has a nice cold drink with a wedge of fresh lime in it. Viewed that way, The Big Bounce is as alluring a midwinter pitch for the…
The new film by Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi (who gave us the superb tale of mountain smuggling and pursuit A Time for Drunken Horses) has a most provocative title — Marooned in Iraq — and addresses a crucial contemporary subject: the slaughter of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein’s regime and…
Some acts of courage command everyone’s respect: the firefighter’s return to a burning house to rescue a child, the infantryman’s sacrifice of self for a wounded comrade, the weary black woman’s refusal to yield her seat on a segregated bus. Sometimes, though, courage can feel clouded — especially when it’s…
In the beginning, Rashiem Jefferson couldn’t get any fights. There were no other seventy-pound fourteen-year-olds in North Philadelphia willing to put on boxing gloves and rumble, so Rashiem would fill his pocket with the fight-gym tokens they gave him at school and go down to Joe Frazier’s and hit the…
Amid the nourishing chaos of city life, we urban dwellers find ourselves brain-deep in startling juxtapositions. Mid-morning one Tuesday, a formation of squawking geese sweeps its shadow across a used-bookstore window, dimming the dog-eared covers of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, and Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol. An instant later,…
The first film in a new monthly series called Seeing Queerly, presented by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of Colorado, will be No Secret Anymore — The Times of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon. Directed by Joan E. Biren, the 57-minute documentary chronicles half a century of…
Be careful what you defrost this week. It might be Aunt Harriet’s scary Christmas fruitcake, buried in the depths of the freezer compartment since 1997. Or that leg of lamb you neglected to roast in ’93. Worse yet, it could be the gruesome alien predator that, once accidentally thawed, terrified…
They aren’t hanging any championship banners over Chopper Circle just yet. But Denver Nuggets fans are taking the brown paper bags off their heads in record numbers, and their families have cut back on those worried phone calls to the shrink. Hope, hoops and hooplah have returned to lift high…
King Vidor’s great silent classic The Crowd (1928) holds up astonishingly well 75 years after it first played in theaters, and knowledgeable film lovers leap at any opportunity to see it — especially if that opportunity comes complete with live piano accompaniment, as in days of yore. The Crowd will…
This year’s British assault on the Yank funnybone is a spirited, hard-trying farce called Calendar Girls, plucked straight from 1999 headlines and dolled up with all the heartwarming charm we’ve come to expect from recent films made by our former rulers. Essentially a chick flick for middle-aged women — nothing…
