When world-renowned banjo player Béla Fleck was commissioned to write his first banjo concerto, he knew it would be a long, deep and challenging experience. The master musician decided to film the yearlong journey, and the result is Béla Fleck: How to Write a Banjo Concerto, a very personal look…
Three people get lost in a strange new world where mystery and danger abound. In the process of figuring out how to return home to the real world, they will uncover a secret that puts the fate of not just the planet, but perhaps the entire universe, at stake. That’s…
1959. Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum, is the host curator for Modern Masters at the Denver Art Museum, and he’s done a companion exhibit at his own stamping grounds called 1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated. (Special tickets allow visitors to see both.) The backstory for…
One of the biggest selling points of 21 Jump Street, the 2012 TV-remake comedy, turned out to be its seemingly unscripted lunacy, the way it put Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in police-shorts outfits and let them riff on their characters’ mutual ineptitude. As undercover cops who pose as teenagers…
There’s still one kind of dread that today’s genre filmmakers can reliably stir up: that everything we’ve been watching on screen is going to be upended by some last-minute twist, that all the clues and portents we’ve puzzled over will be swept away in favor of some revelation so big…
The most radical thing about this eco-terrorism drama is its quiet patience and formal vigor. While most studio pictures slap together their images with all the care of a grocery-store deli clerk assembling the ham and carrots on a cheap-o party platter, Kelly Reichardt, the director of Night Moves, favors…
If you ever have days when you prefer animals to human beings, How to Train Your Dragon 2 is your kind of movie. In some ways the second entry in this animated franchise is inferior to the first, released in 2010: The plot is needlessly busy, and much of the…
The Fault in Our Stars made heaps of money at the box office, and film critics Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek wonder if a recent piece declaring that adults should feel ashamed to read young adult novels has any weight to it. They also talk about The Immigrant and film…
Filmmaker Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West hit theaters recently and on this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, the Village Voice Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek, with L.A. Weekly’s Amy Nicholson, talk about his generally offensive body of work. Also on this week’s pod: reviews…
Amy Metier. The William Havu Gallery is currently showing Amy Metier: Preconceived Notions, a marvelous solo that’s filled with modernist-derived abstractions. The show — Metier’s first in-town solo in two years — fills the gallery’s entire main level, not only with her signature paintings, but also with prints featuring experimental…
In 1986, peaceniks were mad at Tom Cruise. That year, the Navy thanked Top Gun for boosting enlistment with another 20,000 recruits. Since then, Cruise has made more critiques of the military than advertisements for it, most of which (Lions for Lambs, Born on the Fourth of July, The Last…
The grand old dirty pope of midnight-movie voodoo and post-’60s turn-on, drop-out mythopoeia returns with a vengeance, in his autumnal phase and with — surprise! — a personal look backward at his own childhood. The Dance of Reality may be Alejandro Jodorowsky’s best film, and certainly, in a filmography top-heavy…
There’s no doubt that Ping Pong Summer is someone’s childhood. It plays like a cherished memory, rosy and warm, rebuilt in minutiae with such affection and detail it’s hard not to be moved by its sincerity. Writer-director Michael Tully weaves his coming-of-age story with all the trappings of the ’80s,…
One of the biggest selling points of 21 Jump Street, the 2012 TV-remake comedy, turned out to be its seemingly unscripted lunacy, the way it put Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in police-shorts outfits and let them riff on their characters’ mutual ineptitude. Sometimes you need a little flapdoodle, and…
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller pitched their idea for a 21 Jump Street movie, a film everyone thought was, at best, a moronic moneymaker, they had one bold proposal: “What if the twist is that we try to make it really good?” says Lord. “That’s basically a summary of…
Multi-hyphenate actor Clark Gregg understands that hard work and perseverance don’t necessarily pay off in Hollywood. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1992, the star of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has directed two feature films and scripted three, none of which are the work he’s best known for. Gregg knows…
Cancer, so costly in real life, can be thrown around pretty cheaply in fiction, which is why most cautious readers and moviegoers are wary of it as a plot element. Call it the Love Story syndrome. But the presence of mortal illness has always been a staple of romantic melodrama,…
Denver has scored its first World Football Film Festival just in time for the World Cup, which starts June 12. Sponsored by Denver Film Society, America Scores Denver, Soccer Electric and Three Lions Pub, the inaugural festival will run June 5 through June 8 at the Sie FilmCenter. See also:…
Whether you’re looking for a dip into cinema studies, a killer sports doc or a trashy romantic comedy, Denver’s big screens have you covered this month. Bike to the Blake Street Tavern for 40-Year-Old Virgin, immerse yourself in the glory of five of Hitchcock’s greatest films and kick your way…
The Western genre isn’t entirely comprised of spaghetti or John Wayne talking out the side of his mouth: From its earliest days, filmmakers were putting a comic spin on stories set on the dusty trail, with the genre hitting its apex between the mid ’70s and mid ’80s. We’ve gathered…
We’re still adjusting to Seth MacFarlane as a big-screen star. Not just because his breakneck absurdist humor often demands that viewers pause and rewind, but because the man himself looks like a hand-inked cartoon, with his black, pupil-less eyes and an alabaster baby face that appears to reflect light like…
Remarkable as it seems, there’s still poetry to be found in the idea of kids tooling around with nothing much to do. Whether you grew up in a small town or a midsized-to-large city, in 1962, 1982 or 2002, you probably remember getting into a car, unwisely, with the first…
