The protagonist of Lodge Kerrigan’s deeply moving, uncomfortably intimate Keane is the kind of pariah most urban dwellers will do anything to avoid. Rocking foot to foot, the poor man mutters angrily to himself or shouts at the air, a captive of demons that only he can hear. Eyes bloodshot,…
DreamWorks is so anxious to have you believe in its latest family movie that the words “Inspired by a True Story” are actually part of the title. Yep, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story is the proper name, and publicists have been well coached to say and write out the…
When watching Where the Truth Lies, a film noir about a young celebrity journalist’s obsession with a comedy duo from the 1950s, a single question arises again and again: Why? Why have the immense talents of Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, both of whom are excellent in this movie, been…
Elijah Wood is not a believable tough guy. Probably this comes as no great revelation to you. There’s a reason that the Lord of the Rings video games tend to focus on Aragorn, Legolas, and Gandalf — Wood’s Frodo is a wuss, and everybody knows it. So any movie that’s…
For Western viewers willing to spend 143 minutes inside a cocoon-like Chinese theme park littered with scaled-down reproductions of the Eiffel Tower, the Piazza San Marco and the Taj Mahal, Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004) can be a rewarding experience. As with the bogus pyramids and ersatz Empire State Buildings…
Arrested Development: Season Two (Fox Home Entertainment) The best show on TV — which you’d know, if you actually watched the thing — also serves as one of the best reasons for the existence of DVD: No show has ever rewarded multiple viewings the way Arrested Development does. The second…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
Good Night, and Good Luck, a riveting movie that’s as entertaining as it is socially and politically important, could not have come at a more propitious time. But more than just the right film at the right moment, George Clooney’s sophomore directorial effort is dynamic filmmaking: brilliantly conceived, visually arresting,…
It happened almost with the first step off the airplane at the Toronto airport last month. Someone, a friend or merely a concerned stranger, would stop to warn you of impending peril. They would plead with you to avoid the danger ahead in Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe film that screened…
It’s the cover-up, stupid! It doomed Nixon during Watergate, got Clinton impeached, inspired outrage against the Catholic Church and apparently is part of the day-to-day operations at places such as Enron and Tyco. The initial crime is bad enough, but the conspiracy to hide it always ends up hurting more…
Her name is Domino Harvey, and she is a bounty hunter. If you’ve seen even one TV spot or theatrical trailer for Domino, you’ve heard that message ground into your brain like an annoying jingle. What you might not know is that Domino Harvey was a real person, the daughter…
The anguished paintings of Edvard Munch, who was born in 1863, foreshadowed expressionism and provided uneasy visual correlatives to the horror and loneliness of the twentieth century. But it wasn’t until 1974 — three decades after the Norwegian painter’s death — that a filmmaker captured the spirit of Munch’s work…
Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (Universal Studios) Alfred Hitchcock may be the best pop filmmaker in our history, and this gorgeous 14-film set is certainly worthy of the master. Licensing issues kept it from being as “definitive’ as the box claims — missing, most notably, are Hitchcock’s classic Cary Grant…
Full and PLANNING.ABSTRACT. Denver painter Bruce Price is clearly Colorado’s preeminent post-minimalist, as proved by the recent batch of fabulous creations in FULL: New Paintings by Bruce Price. These paintings, though clearly a continuation of Price’s past efforts, are also completely new-looking and very different conceptually. A protegé of the…
Ah, Wallace and Gromit. Who doesn’t get a little lift at the sound of those names? Who doesn’t feel the edges of her mouth begin to tickle toward a smile, her heart grow warmer with images of the love between a (plasticine) man and his (plasticine) dog? Perhaps you’re not…
In 2001, Jonathan Safran Foer made an astounding literary debut. “A Very Rigid Search,” published by The New Yorker, was his hilarious, heartbreaking account of an attempt by a young American man (named, cheekily, Jonathan Safran Foer) to find a Ukrainian woman who had saved his grandfather from the Nazis…
Director Curtis Hanson, a journeyman only recently bestowed with the title of Great Director, has already made his horror movie (1973’s The Arousers), his kiddie action comedy (1980’s The Little Dragons), his teen sex romp (1983’s Losin’ It ), his handful of Hitchcock riffs (1987’s The Bedroom Window, 1990’s Bad…
All the publicity for Waiting… has focused on the scene in which an annoying customer at the fictional chain restaurant ShenaniganZ sends her food back to the kitchen, where it meets with all sorts of nasty modifications, courtesy of some dandruff, pubic hair and mucus. The teaser posters depicted similarly…
One of the strongest — and sure to be controversial — films of the year, The War Within goes places that other films wouldn’t dare go. Thoughtfully written and nicely acted, it follows an Islamic suicide bomber who comes to New York City with a deadly plan. The film in…
Two years before he stunned the film world with 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, 29-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci directed The Conformist, a deeply unsettling portrait of a Fascist secret policeman (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who represses his true urges — social and sexual — in a cowardly attempt to embrace the dangerous ideological…
Robots (Fox) The story of a small-town ‘bot (voiced by Ewan McGregor) who bolts for the big city, Robots is the first non-Pixar film to compete with that studio’s razzle and dazzle. The thing’s stunning to look at, and frankly, it’s better to stare at than listen to, since listening…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
