Conveyer of ecstatic truths and filmmaker extraordinaire Werner Herzog’s latest is Rescue Dawn, an action-drama based on U.S. pilot Dieter Dengler’s harrowing survival struggle after being shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. Herzog sat down to discuss the film. When was the last time you saw Dengler? Shortly…
Christian Bale is an actor who may be as well known for what he does to his body as he is for his body of work. He’s done extreme things to that body in the name of art. Turning it as hard and sharp as an ice pick for American…
The magic has returned to the Harry Potter franchise — albeit magic of the old, black variety. The darkest and most threatening by far of the five Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the only series entry outside of the third, Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry…
George Ratliff’s Joshua debuted at the Sundance Film Festival to raves from a particular breed of audience member: parents. Because, see, no matter how hard Fox Searchlight is trying to sell this movie as a horror picture — Rosemary’s Baby meets The Omen on the way to The Exorcist’s for…
The great thing about Thailand’s 2006 martial arts thriller, Kon fai bin — or Dynamite Warrior — is that it takes as much from American cinema as it does from Hong Kong. Besides being vaguely modeled after a high-noon Western flick, it also follows the American tradition of filling in…
Fang Lijun: Heads. China is definitely on the ascendancy internationally. Not only does the teeming economic powerhouse produce all the junk that can be found in a suburban Wal-Mart, but it’s also turning out important artists who have taken the contemporary scene in the U.S. and Europe by storm. Adam…
You’re Gonna Miss Me(Palm) A hit at the South by Southwest Film Festival two years ago, Keven McAlester’s doc about the Papa of Psychedelia, Roky Erickson, at long last gets its proper release. But time has done McAlester a tremendous favor: Had he shot the film too soon, he would…
Transformers twiddles its big, fat, stupid robotic thumbs for the better part of two hours before jabbing them into your eye socket and finger-fucking your brain in the last twenty minutes. Yes! It’s torture enough waiting for the iPhone and the second coming of Jesus without wondering when, exactly, this…
Upon finding out that The Private Life of Henry VIII was made in 1933, my roommate’s first reaction was “Dude, this is gonna suck.” I had higher hopes, thinking it would be kitschy, maybe, or at least slightly amusing because of the historical context. But good, probably not. How could…
Gary Lynch. The Emmanuel Gallery, in association with the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, presents Gary Lynch: A Memorial Retrospective. Lynch, a Denver native who was born in 1953, died unexpectedly in the fall of 2005. A well-known fine-art photographer who served on the board of CPAC, Lynch took up the…
Black Snake Moan (Paramount) The best place to see Craig Brewer’s mash-up of blood-boiling exploitation elements would be a Mississippi drive-in circa 1972. His tale of a black bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who chains up a seething, scantily clad cracker nympho (Christina Ricci) would’ve had the lot under martial law…
We’re Americans. We go into other countries when we need to. It’s tricky, but it works.” So declares Michael Moore in the midst of his new documentary, Sicko. Moore could be riffing on the war in Iraq, to name only our most recent intervention, but he’s actually referring to U.S…
Still an all-American bloodhound after all these years, Bruce Willis’s Detective John McClane begins Live Free or Die Hard by sniffing around a Rutgers-Camden parking lot and busting the frat boy trying to cop a feel off his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Oh, Dad! Since much of the ol’…
Parked uneasily between sensitive indie and studio chick flick, Lajos Koltai’s Evening makes star-studded hash of Susan Minot’s beautifully written, if emotionally constricted, novel about a terminally ill woman trying to wrest meaning out of the shards of her memories. Floating in and out of delirium in her Cambridge, Massachusetts,…
Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.” So goes the personal mantra of the late celebrity chef Auguste Gusteau, whose disembodied spirit materializes — Jiminy Cricket-style — to guide the rodent hero of Brad Bird’s Ratatouille toward his goal of gastronomic excellence. He also seems to be…
It takes Bruce Willis a while to get warmed up. He’s always just a bit below room temperature — a cool brother, dig, dating back to his Moonlighting days as a private dick belting out “Tighten Up” while going undercover as a man of the cloth in Wayfarer shades. He’s…
Altar Girls. Two very different exhibits roughly collide into one another in the middle of the Museo de las Américas. One part, put together by Museo curator Kristi Martens, is an extravaganza of santos made mostly in Colorado, Mexico and New Mexico, and primarily culled from a recent gift to…
Black Snake Moan (Paramount) The best place to see Craig Brewer’s mash-up of blood-boiling exploitation elements would be a Mississippi drive-in circa 1972. His tale of a black bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who chains up a seething, scantily clad cracker nympho (Christina Ricci) would’ve had the lot under martial law…
Evan Almighty, the followup to Bruce Almighty, is the work of an angry God. At 89 minutes that last a lifetime, it’s a sanctimonious sitcom dolled up as the most expensive comedy ever made — $175 mil, so they say, no doubt choking — and marks an unfortunate low point…
Bamako, the latest by acclaimed African director Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness), arrives heavily lauded by the usual suspects: festival love galore, including a privileged slot at Cannes and placement in the New York Film Festival; lengthy coverage in the highbrow movie magazines; strong reviews on pointy-headed film blogs. Structurally…
A skilled actor vanishes into a role; a movie star appropriates it. As presence trumps character, the star personifies Brecht’s alienation effect and the movie becomes a vehicle — the latest installment in an ongoing career or, in the case of a great star, a public myth. Angelina Jolie is…
Mike Enslin, the travel writer played by John Cusack in 1408, could use a better travel agent. Every hotel room in which he finds himself booked is said to be occupied by the ghost of some suicidal creep or a murderous goon who left behind a pile of bodies in…
