If the clothes of Yves Saint Laurent were groundbreaking, the designer’s mystique was as subtle as the curve of an invisibly molded sleeve. Those who have picked up just a little Saint Laurent lore may know about his beginnings at the House of Dior in the late 1950s, and his…
Who knows why, but the sight of apes sitting tall and proud on horseback is stirring in a primal way. That’s one of the best images in Matt Reeves’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to the enormously successful 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes…
Jan Ole Gerster’s debut feature, A Coffee in Berlin (originally titled Oh Boy), arrives in the U.S. riding a wave of success, having swept several major categories at the 2013 German Film Awards, where its main competition was Cloud Atlas (co-directed by Gerster’s friend Tom Tykwer). By comparison, Gerster’s film…
Articulated Perspectives. Summer is group-show time, and Bill Havu and Nick Ryan have put together a great exhibit that looks at artists who combine representational imagery with abstract sensibilities. The exhibit, installed on both the main level and the mezzanine, includes the work of three painters and one sculptor. As…
“It’s the secret films you have to watch out for,” jokes Richard Linklater of his new movie Boyhood, a furtive experiment that he kept quiet for more than a decade. In 2002, he chose a first-grader named Eller Coltrane, the six-year-old son of two Texas artists; cast Patricia Arquette and…
Sirens blare and an eerie voice announces that it’s best to remain indoors if you don’t plan to participate. While others make safety arrangements and some sharpen their knives, one man loads his black, steel-armored car with plenty of guns and begins cruising. Fires erupt along the street, and gunshots…
“I forget that people think that I’m the girl with a ponytail and a briefcase,” says Anna Kendrick, perched on a couch in a T-shirt and jeans. Her career-launching role as a prim go-getter in Up in the Air is so far removed from her actual self that she’s still…
On this week’s Voice Film Club episode, film critics Alan Scherstuhl, Amy Nicholson and Stephanie Zacharek recommend seeing Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (12:00) and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (20:00), a movie filmed over twelve years with the same cast. [Subscribe to the Voice Film Club podcast…
Janus FilmsOn this week’s Voice Film Club episode, film critics Alan Scherstuhl, Amy Nicholson and Stephanie Zacharek race through the latest (and the most terrible) Transformers movie (2:01), Earth to Echo (13:14), and Tammy (16:30). They then discuss Life Itself (21:54), a film about the life of the late Roger…
Mark Ruffalo’s great gift, besides those scruffy good looks and that prickish, hung-over charisma, is capturing the essence of the guy who’s spinning toward a crash but trying to angle himself back. His greatest performance, in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, is a slow-motion skid-out, a portrait of…
Earth to Echo is a slender kiddie flick about a quartet of preteens and their palm-sized alien pal that’s at once bland, well-intentioned, and utterly terrifying regarding the mental development of modern children. As in the most honest kids films, our five-foot heroes admit to being isolated, unhappy, and cowed…
It’s kind of happy-sad, like watching a kid you knew as a toddler graduate from high school: Chris Evans, seemingly destined to be a boy forever, is now officially a grownup. In Bong Joon-ho’s futuristic snowbummer Snowpiercer, the Korean director’s first English-language film, Evans plays the leader of a group…
It’s a relief, after the wretched Identity Thief, to see movies whose makers love Melissa McCarthy as much as audiences do. Identity Thief’s comic centerpiece was predicated on the idea that McCarthy having sex is a hilarious grossout, like she’s the pie Jason Biggs once had to diddle. Half an…
Horror, like porno, can be judged only by its effect on your pulse: If you jerked in your seat, it served its function. Biology requires us to react to jump scares, just as it urges a lonely man to thrill to a great set of tits. But triggering a coronary…
Let’s get the obvious over with: The early days of the Beatles, as reflected in Richard Lester’s ebullient shout of freedom A Hard Day’s Night, were all about the optimism of the early 1960s, a thrilling and energizing time when young people, and even some older ones, truly believed that…
Articulated Perspectives. Summer is group-show time, and Bill Havu and Nick Ryan have put together a great exhibit that looks at artists who combine representational imagery with abstract sensibilities. The exhibit, installed on both the main level and the mezzanine, includes the work of three painters and one sculptor. As…
Here are some of the triumphant moments of recent history that make it into the climactic montage in America, the latest “America’s perfect!”/”America’s doomed!” pant load from felonious troll Dinesh D’Souza: Jackie Robinson rounding home. Elvis Presley swinging his hips. Ronald Reagan and the Berlin Wall. Boxed copies of Windows…
If a toddler tried to re-create the mystifying behavior of adults, it would look a lot like Paul Haggis’s Third Person, a drama where grownups scream and cry and kiss for reasons that are confounding even to those who understand speech. The film follows a handful of couples, or, really,…
How has there not already been a Nicolas Cage movie called Rage? That title could fit many of the Drive Angry star’s late-career time-wasters. Here it works best as an imperative rather than an announcement of theme: You may feel some anger if you pay to watch this. Or you…
July is a perfect time to bask under the stars at one of Denver’s many outdoor screenings or to cuddle up in an air-conditioned theater and get out of the heat. This month’s picks for movie events include throw-back classics, one queer festival and two killer new releases. See also:…
Denver Public Library’s Chris Loffelmacher wants people to see the DPL as “a community gathering spot where citizens can be with their ‘tribe.’ That has always been a goal of libraries, but it has become more and more important in the age of social media. We want to give our…
This Saturday, Channel Z is bringing one of the strangest buddy comedies of all time to the Alamo Drafthouse. Frank Henenlotter’s horror comedy Basket Case is the tale of a country bumpkin named Duane and his horrifically deformed “twin,” Belial. After his little, creepy conjoined buddy is forcibly removed, Duane…
