The breadth of director Shaul Schwarz’s documentary Narco Cultura is staggering. A hybrid of hard investigative journalism and incisive cultural criticism, the film, at its core, is about definitions of success and power, and how today those terms are shaped by the shared forces of poverty and celebrity culture. Schwarz…
Catalyst. The beautiful grounds of the Denver Botanic Gardens are the ideal place to mount an outdoor sculpture show, and over the past few years, there has been one such presentation after another. This year, the theme is contemporary sculptors in Colorado. The pieces are picturesquely sited throughout in clearings…
Fifteen years ago (December 4, 1998) an unusual movie was released…and roundly rejected: director Gus Van Sant’s off-puttingly faithful remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Fresh off the critical and commercial success of Good Will Hunting, Van Sant could’ve tried for another feel-good hit or a high-profile for-hire gig. Instead, he…
The Alamo Drafthouse has only been open for a short while, but has already become and indispensable resource for Denver-area cinephiles. Engaging with the local film and comedy scenes through events like Mile High Sci-Fi the Drafthouse supports the local creative community and provides a calendar filled with events suited to every type of film buff, from the snobbiest cineaste to the inexplicably carefree sort of person who loves singing along to musicals. Throughout December, the Alamo Drafthouse has a schedules slate of niche programming that will hold particular appeal for Westword writers by celebrating the news in cinema.
Beekeepers in More Than Honey.This year saw its share of incredible documentaries, but in 2013 the stand-outs are films that help flesh out the way we see the world. Below are fifteen docs we suggest seeing, from the grisly to uplifting. Click on the name of the film to read…
Sleeping away from home is scary. Hotels hotels, motels and other temporary sleeping arrangements can be full of bed bugs, meth residue and sketchy-ass neighbors — and when you step out of real life and into the world of horror movies, you can add murderous ghosts, zombies and psychotic clerks…
One of the tragedies of the Internet age is that sometimes movies get attention for all the wrong reasons. When Abdellatif Kechiche (Secret of the Grain) debuted Blue Is the Warmest Color in Cannes in May, the festival jury was so taken with the film and its two lead performances…
Once upon a time — the 1980s — you could walk into a movie theater any day of the year, plop down a few bucks, and watch one man kick another man’s ass. Not every action flick was great, but most were good enough, the film equivalent of pizza. Back…
Unlike the Park Chan-wook picture it’s based on, Spike Lee’s Oldboy is drab and humorless, devoid of the stylistic curlicues that can get you through even a bad Spike Lee film. Like its hero, a clueless lug who’s imprisoned for twenty years by an invisible captor for a transgression he…
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…
Photo by Hilary Bronwyn Gayle – © 2012 – OB Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. “I was appalled and disappointed,” says Village Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek of Spike Lee’s Oldboy on this week’s Voice Film podcast. “I love [Park Chan-wook’s] original and watching Spike Lee’s version, there were big…
The Day of the Doctor is upon us, and it has been fifty years in the making. The longest-running sci-fi series in television history, Doctor Who is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary with a cinematic event that will screen in theaters across the country, including nineteen theaters in Colorado on Monday,…
With the pricey switch from 35mm projection systems to Digital Cinema Projection on the horizon, small-town movie theaters face a crisis. As of 2014, the majority of new films as well as re-releases coming out of Hollywood will no longer be produced on 35mm, and the equipment needed to show…
It’s hard to imagine there’s room, much less a genuine need, for another cop show on television. You’ve got whole families of your CSIs, your NCISs, hell, there’s even a Law and Order or two still chugging along, isn’t there? Throw in the single-show franchises — Castle, Hawaii Five-O, Blue…
It says something that two of the biggest sensations in young-adult literature over the past ten years have featured heroines who keep more than one guy on the line at a time. No longer do the genre’s bright young women sit around waiting for one Mr. Right to notice them…
Here’s how disastrous the MPAA rating system has become. How I Live Now, Kevin Macdonald’s stellar adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s uncommonly smart and insightful near-future young-adult novel, has won an R rating. The film is apocalyptic in the most literal sense, as in an apocalypse occurs, harrowing the characters with…
When your eyes are old, it’s hard to read the fine print. Add boredom, gullibility and desperation to leave some cash to family when you die, and you’re ripe for exploitation. In Alexander Payne’s endearingly gruff Nebraska, ex-auto mechanic Woody Grant (Bruce Dern, with a wild, white puff of hair)…
Catalyst. The beautiful grounds of the Denver Botanic Gardens are the ideal place to mount an outdoor sculpture show, and over the past few years, there has been one such presentation after another. This year, the theme is contemporary sculptors in Colorado. The pieces are picturesquely sited throughout in clearings…
Few men wear a dress as meaningfully as comedian Chris Lilley. Since 2005, he has sported the pinstriped schoolgirl uniforms of his native Australia to play Ja’mie King, a perfect little monster created by an ungodly mix of wealth, vapidity and cheerful cruelty. Ja’mie returns to HBO on November 24…
“This movie has been written about in books — go figure — and there’s discussion about whether or not it’s actually a zombie movie. And I can tell you it’s not; it’s not a zombie movie.” So says director Thom Eberhardt about 20 minutes into the commentary for his low-budget…
For all its nasty twists, the biggest shock in Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (opening November 27) hits in the movie’s first minutes — during the credits. “A Spike Lee Film,” a title card reads, a first for any of Lee’s features. Jungle Fever, He Got Game, Inside…
Images courtesy Lionsgate.Ritchman and Schlund in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, opening this Friday, Alan Ritchson and Stephanie Leigh Schlund play two of the story’s fiercest bad guys. But tucked away in a hotel room on the 17th floor of the Mandarin Oriental in Miami’s…
