He floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. He was so mean he made medicine sick. He’s the only person to ever beat Superman. The death June 3 of boxer Muhammad Ali from Parkinson’s-related complications left another hole in this death-speckled year. To pay tribute to the man,…
If mid-century pulp and noir gave us the cynical, quippy hardboiled detective, then Peak TV has given birth to its successor: the charbroiled cop, a bitter, corrupt, philandering, violent, addicted, nihilistic or just psychotic contemporary crime fighter. The supposed irony of this figure is that he (almost always a he)…
There’s something satisfying about hearing Tyler Perry, as mad scientist Baxter Stockman, say the words “Eliminate those turtles,” but it’s not quite novel enough to bring Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows up to street level and out of the sewers. Early on, giant squid-like brain Krang (Brad…
Back in 2013, James Wan’s The Conjuring represented the high point of a wave of mainstream horror that showed there was still value in old-school scares — that there was life beyond torture porn and slick slasher reboots. It was a ghost story-turned-possession thriller that mined terror out of the…
In 2001 a friend, a grown-up, saw The Fellowship of the Ring more than a dozen time in the theater. Sometimes she’d leave with a half hour left. “I just needed to get to Galadriel and Lothlorien,” she told me. She didn’t need all the climactic fighting. In 2012 I…
The Denver Film Society announced today a late addition to this summer’s Film On The Rocks lineup. Guaranteed to add a much-needed chill in July, Wes Craven’s 1996 horror masterpiece Scream will slash through the silver screen in honor of its twentieth anniversary on Thursday, July 7. Scream, written by Kevin…
For decades Tony Award-nominated playwright/actor/drag legend Charles Busch has been playing himself by playing other characters, usually in some form of glamorous drag, in a string of campy off-Broadway hits like his Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and the The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, along with choice Hollywood roles: adaptations…
As the summer heat rises, remember that a movie theater is your air-conditioned best friend. To celebrate the sunshine — and good air-conditioning — we’ve rounded up ten of the best film events in Denver in June, presented in chronological order. 10) Welcome to the Dahl House Saturdays beginning June…
The Denver Film Society is kicking off June by announcing (just in time for Pride Month) their dates and full schedule for the Cinema Q Film Festival, which goes into full bloom July 21 – 24 at the Sie FilmCenter. Kicking off the four-day fest on Thursday, July 21, is…
There was a time when the summer movie season was a season, sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. By the 21st century, the start date drifted back to the first weekend in May. This year, the superhero flicks started arriving with Deadpool’s release on February 12. Only two…
There’s reason for skepticism when you hear that a new documentary plays like a thriller. That suggests that the filmmakers have favored suspense over documenting — that the specifics of real life will be arranged according to the logic of plotting rather than reportage. Will Allen’s sunny gut-punch cult exposé, Holy…
It’s a feat to out-idiot TMZ culture. In achieving that, the fake-doc white-rapper satire Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a breakthrough for studio comedies, which here at last catch up to the metabolism and meaninglessness of the internet age. In its generous, frenetic first hour, Popstar’s jokes and parodies…
School’s out for summer — or close enough — and that means more opportunities to enjoy all of Denver’s geeky fun times. June is yet another month packed full of top-notch geek entertainment, from our biggest con of the year to underappreciated geek films on the big screen. Here, in…
It’s the end of an era. On Thursday, June 2, filmmaker and 2008 Westword MasterMind Jason Bosch will present the final screening by ArgusFest, the labor of love (for good, important films that educate audiences, albeit often very small audiences) that he started fifteen years ago. “I’ve decided to finally let…
“Did I want to shoot comedies?” asks Brandon Trost, director of photography on two of this summer’s funniest films, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. “It’s funny — not at all.” But then came MacGruber, Jorma Taccone’s 2010 SNL film.“The director wanted me because I wasn’t…
Mockumentary Hitler’s Folly, at only an hour long, stretches its incredibly thin premise over a surface area the size of the European front. Its single, exhausting joke: Hitler, a misunderstood artist, actually built a Disney-style animation empire that was mistaken for a fascist regime. Bill Plympton is a singularly gifted artist…
Denver moviegoers, your eyes do not deceive you. This weekend the Sie FilmCenter – our city’s home for the best in arthouse, foreign and independent film – is opening X-Men: Apocalypse, Bryan Singer’s latest big-budget entry in the comic book hero’s saga. This particular opening at this particular theater is a fascinating glimpse into…
Even when working from source material crafted by others, Terence Davies, like all singular filmmakers, imprints it with his DNA. At once solemn and lusty, Davies’ page-to-screen transfer of Scottish author Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel beautifully conveys human fragility, our bodies and minds outmatched by the brute indifference of…
Something troubling is afoot in Westeros: The heroes are beginning to outnumber the villains. The sixth season of Game of Thrones has already seen Jon Snow’s return from the dead, Arya Stark’s vision restored and — courtesy of two Stark children’s long-awaited reunion — the show’s first-ever tears of joy…
Even by the standards of Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster’s premise is a doozy: Colin Farrell plays a recently single schlub forced to report to the Hotel, where he has 45 days to form a romantic relationship lest he be turned into an animal of his choosing. This is the plight…
There’s a scene during the first half of Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse that is so emotionally resonant, so well-put-together and so quiet that you might briefly forget you’re watching a superhero film. It involves a raid by some Polish officers in the remote forest where Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto (Michael…
The guiding principle of Lewis Carroll’s classics Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass is that logic does not exist. You tumble down rabbit holes and into mirrors willy-nilly, and you try to survive, feeling what you feel, having fun when you can — oh, and try not to drown…
