A fractured film about a fractured family, Louder Than Bombs takes a potentially tired premise and reshapes it before our eyes. It opens on a newborn’s tiny hand helplessly clinging to a father’s finger, and ends with a different father watching his two sons sleep. In between is a story…
Once spring has sprung in the Mile High City, you might want to head outside — but fight that urge. Because in April, you’ll want to get into the cool darkness of one of your favorite movie theaters and see a film or three. If you must spend time outdoors,…
April is here and it’s brought a bounty of great geek events — no fooling. From zombie conventions to classic action movies, the month is peppered with fantastic ways to live the geek life in Denver. Here are ten of the month’s best, presented in chronological order. 10. The Kepler…
Some free advice: If you ever find yourself defensively reminding people that you’re not in a cult, you’re probably in a cult. This comes up early and often in The Path, Hulu’s new series premiering on March 30th, not that any adherents of the fictional Meyerist Movement seem fazed by…
Willful ignorance as a character trait typically evokes annoyance in those who witness it — at least in real life. In many French films, however, a character who’s willfully ignorant is portrayed in the twee manner, encouraging us to believe it is their blissful view of the world we should…
A nice, snowy Saturday is the perfect time to watch a goofy, geeky sci fi movie. Cory Casciato recently listed The Five Most Important 1950s Geek Films in the latest installment of his Geekology 101. But one reader takes issue with the inclusion of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Says Andrew: Plan…
Thunderous, ponderous and occasionally exciting, Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opens with one of those grim proclamations that the creators of modern superhero movies are so fond of: “There was a time above, a time before,” intones the voice of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), over a by-now…
Ask weary WWE viewers to identify why the professional-wrestling titan’s creative direction has gone so stagnant and you’ll hear one answer time and again: lack of competition. It’s no coincidence that the company’s late-‘90s heyday ran concurrent with the rise of Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, which at one point…
The joke was on me when I first saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding back in 2002: I watched the film at a press screening that also happened to be attended by a large group of older female tourists. While I grimaced through the movie’s obvious gags and not-ready-for-prime-time direction,…
Drone warfare is a moral grey area, and this movie is on it. Gavin Hood’s Eye in the Sky stands alongside Drones and Good Kill as the cinematic equivalent of online commenters shouting “First!” on on a hot topic but not bothering to say anything new or insightful about it…
You’ve seen a lot of movies like Too Late, and yet you haven’t. Shot over several years on 35mm, Dennis Hauck’s neo-noir detective drama is only being shown theatrically in that increasingly rarefied format — a bold financial move for an independent film at a time when so many others…
In Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument, intimate relations with Marion Cotillard lead one character to a spiritual awakening. Later, protagonist Paul Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric) declaims on what he considers “the one pleasure” that will never go away in life: “the surprise when I…
Brash yet intimate, writer-director-editor Trey Edward Shults’ observant, unnerving first feature transcends the notion of a “promising debut.” Here, the promise is already fulfilled on the screen, which bustles with chaotic family life — and prickles with anxiety. Krisha is a heartsick family story that plays as psychological horror, its…
Take heart, Newsroom fans. If you were hankering for more scenes of Jeff Daniels standing around talking, you’ll find an unlikely ally in the new young-adult sci-fi sequel Allegiant, the third entry in the Divergent series based on Veronica Roth’s hit novels. Too bad the stuff he’s saying is so…
Prestige cable flatters us about the past. It lets us vacation in the backwardness of previous generations, usually while throwing some empathetic side-eye. Gape at Mad Men’s blithe white dudes, each convinced he earned every bit of authority he commands over women and minorities. Or thank Jezebel that we’ve evolved…
That light-gray Glen plaid suit, topped with a bright-red bowtie and white kicks. That precociously naive predilection for absurdly oversized or miniaturized household gadgets. Those impatient eye rolls, mischievous tongue darts and sweetly demented giggles. The fizzy comic persona of Pee-wee Herman dates back to the late ’70s, when Groundlings…
Why is it that little movies about being out of step so often wind up feeling the same? Not long into Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name Is Doris, a comedy about a misfit frump pining for a much younger hunk, the unlikely target of the heroine’s affections muses to his…
The Brothers Grimsby is a movie for those who thought Kingsman: The Secret Service didn’t go far enough. If all the exploding heads and anal-sex jokes and creative impalements of Matthew Vaughn’s tongue-in-cheek spy thriller didn’t do it for you, rest assured: This time, we get to see British super-agent…
This patchy comedy about a cossetted, obnoxious gymnast who has slid deep into sloth in the decade or so since her Olympic triumph gets an occasional laugh from the American ills it sends up: jingoism, the sports-industrial complex, home-schooling, fast-food gluttony. The scattershot jabs pepper the flaccid storyline of the…
The seemingly stark divide between sleep and wakefulness serves as the main motif in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor, which allegorizes the history of Thailand as deepest REM slumber. Weerasethakul’s works are sensory delights, haunted, if obliquely, by Thailand’s violent political past and still fractious present. A film about the…
For the protagonists of cable dramas, sex and death are twin forces of titillation, pressure valves for frustrated middle-aged men or steely-eyed careerists. That’s also true for the audience of cable dramas, of course, but there’s a reason we eagerly pursue onscreen what often makes us squirm in real life:…
In one key way, the kinda-maybe sequel 10 Cloverfield Lane might be the purest example yet of the J.J. Abrams house style. Directed by first-timer Dan Trachtenberg but produced by Abrams (Super 8, Lost, Alias, Cloverfield, etc.) the thriller is yet another of the fannish wunderbrand’s mystery boxes, a genre…
