Dark Alleys

About two-thirds of the way through A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Chris Browne’s weirdly engaging documentary about professional bowling, the bad boy of the game, Pete Weber, looks straight into the camera and assures us: “I’m not an asshole.” Whether to believe Weber is an open question, given what we’ve…

Mighty Aphrodite

Eros is not a single film but three, each roughly a half hour, joined in a common goal. The first segment was made by Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love) and the second by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich). The final piece, by any measure the climax, was…

Miracle on Ice

If you’re short on reasons to be grateful these days, look no further than March of the Penguins, the astonishing, if imperfect, nature documentary from first-time director Luc Jacquet. Hard times may have befallen you, but at least you are not a penguin, an animal destined to repeat a devastating…

Flick Pick

The popular Boulder Outdoor Cinema series got under way last month and continues through August 27. And a pair of immensely popular recent movies will be on view this week as BOC patrons loll before the screen on assorted couches, bean bags and yoga mats. On Friday, July 8, it’s…

Now Showing

Alden Mason, Kimberlee Sullivan and Lorey Hobbs. The changing of the seasons from spring to summer is what inspired William Biety, director of the Sandy Carson Gallery, to put together three solos, each comprising nature-based abstractions. Alden Mason marks the debut of the Washington artist, who is represented in this…

Gross Encounters

Quite simply and quite literally, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned inside-out: They’re still out there, only this time the aliens are out for our blood, which they spray all over the countryside like so much red paint…

24-Hour Pouty People

So little time, so much trouble. In the 24-hour period that’s dissected in Heights, the first feature from Harvard/Cambridge/USC film-school-educated Chris Terrio, an aspiring Manhattan photographer named Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) gets cold feet about her upcoming marriage to a dull but pleasant lawyer named Jonathan (James Marsden); a needy Broadway…

Dance, Dance, Revolution

Forget Mad Hot Ballroom. The real dance documentary hit of the summer is more likely to be Rize. After all, which do you think the kids are going to find more appealing: Formal steps that require suits, partners and schoolteachers; or shaking the booty and slamming into fellow dancers while…

Underground Hit

It’s okay to be slightly afraid of Hungarian movies. Even critics don’t necessarily relish the thought of them or look upon Budapest as a hotbed of filmmaking. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to recall the last time there was a good movie from the land that gave us…

You So Lazy

Martin Lawrence has never exactly been among the world’s more gifted comedians, yet his movies seem to keep raking in the cash, so there must be legions of loyal Lawrenceheads out there somewhere. But even they, who have made financial successes of Black Knight and Big Momma’s House and National…

Flick Pick

A kind of criminal fairy tale, Benot Jacquot’s Tout de Suite recalls both the Godard New Wave classic Breathless and its American counterpart, Bonnie and Clyde. A restless rich girl named Lili (dramatically beautiful Isild Le Besco) takes up with a small-time Moroccan thief (Ouassini Embarek) after a botched bank…

Now Showing

Alden Mason, Kimberlee Sullivan and Lorey Hobbs. The changing of the seasons from spring to summer is what inspired William Biety, director of the Sandy Carson Gallery, to put together three solos, each comprising nature-based abstractions. Alden Mason marks the debut of the Washington artist, who is represented in this…

Cursed

Bewitched may go down as the first movie about a fictional failed actor that creates a real-life failed actor. This hackneyed, hapless and utterly useless redo of an overrated 1960s sitcom is excruciating to sit through for a dozen reasons. But nothing is more intolerable than the sight of Will…

Chinese Box

You’re a talented young resident at a New York hospital, first-generation Chinese, and you happen to be gay. In fact, you’re dating a new and exciting woman, a dancer with the city ballet, and she wants you to share the relationship with the world — and your family. But can…

Car Trouble

Anyone who would insist that movie reviewing is not a real job (ŒSup, Mom) hasn’t been forced to sit through screenings of Bewitched and Herbie: Fully Loaded in the span of five days — and by forced, I mean either you see both movies, write 800 words about each, or…

Flick Pick

Horror-movie cultists are in for a dark thrill this week when the 1945 British classic Dead of Night is shown in Boulder. Linked by the tale of an architect’s recurring nightmare, it’s a series of five supernatural episodes. Notable are the two directed by Alberto Cavalcanti — the first about…

Now Showing

Alden Mason, Kimberlee Sullivan, and Lorey Hobbs. The changing of the seasons from spring to summer is what inspired William Biety, director of the Sandy Carson Gallery, to put together three solos, each comprising nature-based abstractions. Alden Mason marks the debut of the Washington artist, who is represented in this…

Bat Cave-In

DC Comics has kept its superheroes locked in a fortress of solitude for almost a decade, forcing the likes of Superman and Batman to warm the bench while longtime rival Marvel Comics’ Spider-man, the Hulk, the X-Men and Blade galloped up and down the playing field. Not counting Catwoman, which…

Female Fling

Not many people saw Lost and Delirious, the 2001 boarding-school drama about two girls in obsessive love, and that was probably for the best. Yes, Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) made a stunning androgynous rebel, but she couldn’t rescue the film from its unctuous self-importance. My Summer of Love, a bewitching…

Flick Pick

Michael Wranovics’s well-meant documentary Up for Grabs, about the absurd legal battle over the ownership of the baseball Barry Bonds hit for his season-record 73rd home run back in 2001, is instantly overshadowed by other events: the steroids scandal, the allegations of Bonds’s apparent mistress, the possibility that his career…

Now Showing

Amish Quilts. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the women in Amish colonies in the East and Midwest produced quilts as utilitarian and ceremonial articles. They eschewed printed fabrics and used only solid-colored ones, especially in darker shades, to carry out their bold compositions made up of simple geometric…

Problems at Home

The consequences of marital discord in Mr. & Mrs. Smith go way beyond sleeping on the couch or maintaining icy silence at the breakfast table. Thanks to a cartoonish premise by British screenwriter Simon Kinberg — and the dictates of the summer-movie marketplace — the battling Smiths of the title…