From the moment a naive college student discovers a severed human ear in a suburban parking lot, David Lynch’s classic Blue Velvet perversely begins to alter our perceptions about the true qualities of American life. Even twenty years later, Lynch’s overdoses of murder, depravity and kinky sex retain the power…
The Armory Group. In a summer art calendar that’s uncharacteristically filled with significant exhibitions, The Armory Group: 40 Years has got to be one of the most important of them all. The story begins back in 1966 in Boulder — specifically, in the fine-arts department at the University of Colorado…
Feed (TLA) Remember the old jokes about “What’s grosser than gross”? The makers of Feed do, as they prove in the first 10 minutes — one-upping their opening scene featuring a voluntary victim of cannibalism by bringing in a guy who gets nekkid and shoves cheeseburgers down the throat of…
Two weeks ago, a colleague insisted that Superman Returns isn’t the remake of the 1978 original, as I wrote, but a reinterpretation — its melancholic flip side. Where the Christopher Reeve model was pop art and a cool breeze, the Brandon Routh version is heavy and solemn, weighed down by…
It would be a mighty sweet thing to see M. Night Shyamalan as the great redemptive storyteller he clearly thinks he is — or as he portrays himself in those American Express commercials. Genuine yarn-spinning, even as a doomed ambition, is virtually extinct in American movies; what had been the…
Originally, Ward Serrill set out to make a documentary — and a short one, at that — about Bill Resler, an avuncular tax professor at the University of Washington who thought he knew enough about basketball to coach the girls’ team at Roosevelt High School in Seattle. Never mind that…
In the latest extravaganza from executive producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, millions of dollars and long hours in the digital animation studios have produced…a photorealistic, computer-animated, generic American suburb! Location costs must be getting pretty damn expensive nowadays. As Monster House begins, we follow a leaf slowly descending on…
Tour pros and frustrated duffers alike love Harold Ramis’s classic 1980 golf comedy Caddyshack — thanks in large part to inspired turns by the late Rodney Dangerfield as a foul-mouthed, wisecracking plutocrat, and Chevy Chase as a playboy hacker who doesn’t bother keeping score on fairway or green. Set at…
The Armory Group. In a summer art calendar that’s uncharacteristically filled with significant exhibitions, The Armory Group: 40 Years has got to be one of the most important. The story begins back in 1966 in Boulder — specifically, in the fine-arts department at the University of Colorado. The title of…
Edison Force (Sony) Gritty cop stuff must write itself — just make sure everyone’s tough, corrupt, and talking like they stole Mickey Spillane’s thesaurus. Then cast Justin Timberlake. Screech! Employing the talented (at music) popster as a crusading journalist isn’t this lame flick’s worst flaw — merely the one you’ll…
Slipped into the summer movie season like acid into your happy meal, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is a blockbuster of counter-programming. No matter that the dude from The Matrix is its star — or would be, if he weren’t half hidden under a thick swath of digital paint. Linklater’s…
Owen Wilson has moved up in the world: He’s gone from crashing weddings to crashing entire marriages. In the listless farce You, Me and Dupree, his eponymous ne’er-do-well, having lost his job and been evicted from his apartment after taking time off to be the best man at the Hawaiian…
Perhaps no one can pinpoint the exact moment vaudeville died, but there’s a moment early in Strangers With Candy where you’d swear you had just witnessed the death of visual comedy. En route to her first day of high school, a tarty middle-aged jailbird — this is not a Disney…
Balanced Dissolution. Chuck Parson, one of the region’s top sculptors, is an artist whose work you’d expect to see in a fall slot, but his solo, Balanced Dissolution, is on right now at Artyard. Parson does non-objective metal sculptures with deep roots in conceptual art and constructivism. He’s chiefly interested…
Grand Prix (Warner Bros.) John Frankenheimer, as underrated as he was brilliant, made a racing picture in 1966 that’s yet to be topped forty years later. James Garner suffered through the director’s churlish demands (which Frankenheimer reveals and owns up to, in archival footage on one of the documentaries here)…
The fact that 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was such a hit had much to do with viewers’ pre-launch expectations, which were approximately none. Who could have been blamed for thinking a Gore Verbinski-directed, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie based on a theme-park ride would proffer…
Just in time for its U.S. release, Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’s fierce docudrama, The Road to Guantanamo, received a giant shot of free publicity with the news in early June that three Arab inmates at the infamous detention center in Cuba — none of whom had officially been charged…
The ultra-violent Hong Kong cult classic The Story of Ricky has lost none of its appeal since being released in 1992. If anything, the fighting exploits of a vengeance-seeking young prison inmate named Ricky Ho (Louis Fan) have begun to intrigue a new generation of fans. After all, who can…
The Armory Group. In a summer art calendar that’s uncharacteristically filled with significant exhibitions, The Armory Group: 40 Years has got to be one of the most important of them all. The story begins back in 1966 in Boulder — specifically, in the fine-arts department at the University of Colorado…
For an industry in decline, print journalism has done a fashion publicist’s job of staying in vogue, particularly among the more stylish of career-seeking college grads. Never mind telling these BlackBerry-toting eager beavers that even an unpaid gig in the field is as rare as a winning lottery ticket: The…
After all that, just…this? After all the anticipation, all the hype, all the product available on toy-store shelves and kiddie sections at bookstores, after all the promise that this would be the most super of Superman movies, all we get is just this…this…remake? Because let’s first call Superman Returns what…
Tragic hipsters, unite! What could be a more effective antidote to the scourges of school’s-out joy and summer sunshine than a month-long tribute to David Lynch? Beginning Friday, June 30, Starz FilmCenter will present a series of five films by the celebrated creator of the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks…
