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…
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…
The Devil’s Sword (Mondo Macabro) Few trash movies live up to their reputation, but here’s a balls-out wonder that surpasses it. Grab a 12-pack of Bintang and cue up this jaw-unhinging slab of Indonesian sword-and-sorcery circa 1983 — a start-to-finish feast of martial arts, mullets, flying heads, vestal virgins, dry-ice…
About three-quarters of the way through Waist Deep, the hero of the piece — an indestructible ex-convict who calls himself O2 (2 Fast 2 Furious star Tyrese Gibson) — peers out through the swirling smoke and the bloody mayhem of an urban killing ground and experiences a revelation. “Somethin’ ain’t…
Click may be the first Adam Sandler movie in which the high concept isn’t dependent upon the star. Sandler comedies tend to take his standard character of the petulant man-child with anger-management issues and place him in different wacky situations: elementary school (Billy Madison), the golf course (Happy Gilmore), the…
It may not be an “iconic manifestation of civilization,” as documentarian Ken Burns proclaims, but the New York Times crossword puzzle is undoubtedly an institution. Printed every day for the past 64 years in weekly cycles of increasing difficulty, the puzzle draws politicians, working stiffs, comedians, musicians, coders and homemakers…
UC-Berkeley gymnast Dan Millman (Scott Mechlowicz) is one of the best at what he does, and he has it all: perfect abs, a big bulge in his crotch (the camera focuses on it early on), beautiful girlfriends and the ability to balance full beer glasses on his feet. There’s just…
In case you’ve been snoozing on the couch for a couple of decades, here’s an update: Edward R. Murrow is dead, and most television journalism has degenerated into shlocky infotainment. That’s the none-too-startling conclusion of documentarian Brian Malone’s Breaking News, which presumes to explain all over again that the boob…
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…
Night Watch (Fox Searchlight) Every once in a while, Hollywood needs somebody else to steal a genre and totally reimagine it; it keeps old ideas young, like celluloid Botox. Well, Hollywood’s gonna need one big needle to absorb Night Watch, an insane, insanely cool Russian action/horror/sci-fi brew that’s like nothing…
There is no movie more overrated in recent history than Napoleon Dynamite; it’s to cinema what the Doors are to rock and roll, a thing blindly and inexplicably championed as though it were a religion above being blasphemed by non-believers. And every time someone tries to explain its appeal –…
Remember what a fun couple Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves were in Speed? Well, forget that. In The Lake House, Warner Bros.’ slow and heavy kickoff to the summer-romance season, Bullock and Reeves play the mopiest lovers to hit the big screen since Tony and Maria channeled Romeo and Juliet…
