Casablanca: Here’s looking at you in Denver this week

Valentine’s Day wouldn’t be complete without at least one showing of Casablanca, one of the greatest love stories of all time. But Bogart and Bergman will meet up several times over the next week on screens across the city, at evenings featuring everything from the movie and a martini to…

George Clooney spotlights unsung heroes in The Monuments Men

Art may not be more important than human lives. But on the list of things that mean something to human lives, across centuries, it ranks pretty high. That’s what’s so compelling about the story of the Monuments Men, a group of people from thirteen nations who volunteered to protect cultural…

Building a better Lego Movie

Consider the Lego, the toy of contradiction. With one — well, with hundreds of them — you can build anything: houses, airplanes, house-airplanes. You can even build something that will change the world, as Larry Page and Sergey Brin did in 1996, when they housed the server for their new…

In Gloria, love is a many-splendored thing

Now that people are living so much longer, our self-invention can seemingly go on forever. The heroine of Chilean director Sebastián Lelio’s exuberant semi-comedy Gloria is right in the middle of the fifty-something version of that in-betweenness. We join her story already in progress, but get the idea pretty quickly:…

Now Showing

Cross Currents. This ambitious show, put together by CVA creative director Cecily Cullen, showcases contemporary art by Native Americans from across the country. It is a followup to Currents, a show Cullen did at the old LoDo CVA in 2009 that was on the same theme and was equally intelligent…

Labor Day: What was Jason Reitman thinking?

Quick, somebody check Jason Reitman’s house to see if the real man has been turned into dust by a body snatcher. Though his name’s on the poster, it’s impossible to believe that the sardonic boy wonder of Juno, Thank You for Smoking and Young Adult would direct a stilted romance…

12 O’Clock Boys is an urban Western with ball caps and bikes

Baltimore’s 12 O’Clock Boys are a dirt-bike crew who literally believe in “ride or die.” If it weren’t for their Sundays in the streets causing havoc for the cops, boredom and stress would get them in worse trouble. And from what we see in Lotfy Nathan’s documentary, we believe it…

This year’s Oscar-nominated shorts are a global group

Anyone can catch American Hustle or Dallas Buyers Club on the big screen, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities to see the short films that have been nominated for the 86th Academy Awards, which will air on March 2. So film buffs may want to check out the Oscar…

Now Showing

Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…

Citizen Kane screens tomorrow following Cinematic States book talk

Citizen Kane will screen in 35-millimeter print on the big screen at the Sie Film Center tomorrow in conjunction with a discussion of Cinematic States: Stories We Tell, the American Dreamlife, and How to Understand Everything, a book by Northern Irish author and film critic Gareth Higgins, who explores American…

Ernie Quiroz on Sundance, Netflix and a FilmCenter rave

Amidst the blizzard of film-lovers blanketing Park City, Utah for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Ernie Quiroz, the Denver Film Society’s programming manager, watched sixteen movies in just three days, an enviable sprint for most seasoned couch-potatoes. More enviable, he did it for work. Quiroz returned to Denver Monday after…

Inside Denver’s new neo-cult series Channel Z

When Lamberto Bava’s splatter classic Demons screens this Saturday, January 25 at the Alamo Drafthouse, it isn’t just a rare chance to see this obscure gem on the big screen. The film also marks the debut of Channel Z, Keith Garcia’s new cult-film series that picks up where his excellent…

What separates Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac from porn?

Let’s start with the ending: the closing credits disclaimer that insists that none of the lead actors in Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac filmed penetrative sex. If there is real sex in the movie, and it sure looks like there is, it must have been done by one of the eight…

Now Showing

Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…

Vanessa Hudgens trades Disney for drama in Gimme Shelter

You can say this for the Disney teen machine: They sure know how to pick ’em. Vanessa Hudgens was seventeen when High School Musical made her famous, the tail end of a generation of Mouseketeers that included her contemporaries Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, and her elders Justin…

Asghar Farhadi’s The Past is a sublime study in human emotion

Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi solidifies his status as one of cinema’s finest living dramatists with The Past, a superb followup to 2011’s Oscar-winning A Separation that again situates audiences amid interpersonal, familial and household crises. Working from a script that incisively plumbs a thicket of logistical and emotional complications, Farhadi’s…

Maidentrip‘s journey is mutifaceted

Jillian Schlesinger’s Maidentrip condenses fourteen-year-old Laura Dekker’s quest to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world down to a breezy eighty minutes, which isn’t to say it’s all killer, no filler. Though certainly inspirational, the film could hardly be called probing: The range of emotions exhibited by…