There are four good things we can say about I, Frankenstein, another muscles-and-rubble comic book adaptation just un-terrible enough not to alienate its core audience, yet never consistently grand or surprising enough to win over anyone else. First, Aaron Eckhart brings it, scowling like a champ beneath his jigsawed scar…
For Robert Redford, Sundance’s opening day was a bummer. He woke up to learn that the Academy had snubbed him for a (deserved) Best Actor nod for the sparse yachting drama All Is Lost, and had to spend his typically triumphant morning press conference swatting down questions about being sad…
The Sundance InstituteEvery Sundance there’s a crowd-pleaser, and most years it’s got one degree of separation from the Little Miss Sunshine crew. But the most delightful flick of the 2014 fest is an unconventional documentary with no plot, no dialogue, and nothing but party. Living Stars, a fleet 63-minute film…
Pamela Smart, the sexpot schoolteacher who seduced three teenage boys to shoot her husband, has been imprisoned without parole since 1991. Her official release year is sometime in 9999, assuming that human civilization is still alive. Yet the captive in Jeremiah Zagar’s Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart isn’t her…
© Courtesy of Sundance InstituteSixty years ago, Fred Flintstone hawked Winston cigarettes. Today, he pitches cereal. And both can kill. Stephanie Soechtig’s rabble-rousing documentary Fed Up argues that it’s time to attack Big Sugar just like we successfully demonized Big Tobacco. Narrated by Katie Couric, Fed Up is the first…
© Beth Dubber, Courtesy of Sundance InstituteKristen Stewart in Camp X-Ray.Kristen Stewart spent five Twilight films getting rescued by werewolves and vampires. Consider Camp X-Ray her rebuttal to a half-decade of playing damsels in distress. As Guantanamo guard Private Cole, Stewart is punched, bloodied, and spat on — and that’s…
In the dark about the history of movies? Get a clue from critic Howie Movshovitz, who’ll be teaching Film 102, a four-class series that starts tonight at the Sie FilmCenter. Film 102 will look at the four major elements of cinema: color, genre, sound and melodrama. The first session, on…
American Mustang, which had its local premiere in November at the Denver International Film Festival, is galloping back into town for an extended run that starts today and continues through January 24 at UA Denver West Village Stadium 12, 14225 West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood, just in time for the…
Russians still make the best movie villains. Since 9/11, Hollywood has been queasy about giving us fictional baddies from Arab countries — the line between cheap stereotypes and real-life religious extremism is too blurry, too delicate. South American drug lords have had their day, and Albanians in bad sweaters just…
A tale of love complicated — if not thwarted — by prior responsibilities, intractable barriers and the rigid high-society norms that frustrate its Victorian characters’ attempts to live as they so desperately want, The Invisible Woman finds Ralph Fiennes proving as adept behind the camera as he is in front…
Can it be true that the apple-cheeked Midwestern evangelicals who send their money, their teenagers and their last-century sexual mores to Uganda genuinely see no link between their fervently anti-gay, anti-condom preaching and that country’s movement to make homosexuality not just illegal, but punishable by death? The toothsome young Pentecostals…
Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…
Despite some reluctance, Wes Craven is a name-brand filmmaker. The phrase “Wes Craven Presents” comes with certain expectations thanks to the financial success of the Scream franchise and The Hills Have Eyes series before that. But what cemented Craven’s reputation is A Nightmare on Elm Street, a deathless cycle of…
In Devil’s Due, co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (V/H/S) and first-time screenwriter Lindsay Devlin offer an uninspired found-footage riff on Roman Polanski’s demon-spawn classic, Rosemary’s Baby (1968). On their Dominican Republic honeymoon, the squeakily innocent Samantha (Allison Miller) and Zach (Zach Gilford) are drugged by a cult who draw…
One of the best performances of the year was from the tiny lifeboat in Captain Phillips.On Thursday, this year’s Oscar nominations will be announced, also known as national Gah! What Were Those Idiot Voters Thinking Day. We can’t wait, so in the meantime, we give you this: 1. Marvel Films…
Best known for his roles in the John Waters cannon of cult films, Divine had a short career highlighted by his ability to play trashy women, wayward gals, doting matrons and overzealous sex pots. While he found fame in the seedy underside of Hollywood, the actor also worked to be…
New Zealand stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoë Bell is fully aware of her unique position as an action star who also does her own stunts. After working as Lucy Lawless’s stunt double on Xena: Warrior Princess, Bell was discovered by Quentin Tarantino on the set of Kill Bill. After that, Bell has enjoyed…
Without big truth-telling scenes, grand, great-lady, Meryl Streep-type actors would be out of work. Hell, Meryl Streep would be out of work. But for now, at least, August: Osage County, John Wells’s film adaptation of Tracy Letts’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit, keeps her out of the bread line. Streep plays…
Rosemary’s Baby notwithstanding, it’s usually only suburban white people who fall prey to movie ghosts and demons — they’re always the ones opening doors to rooms that shouldn’t be entered, stepping witlessly into pentagrams painted on the floor in goat’s blood, and wondering aloud, “You think this is some sort…
Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…
So many ideas in our country begin with the best of intentions and end up completely corrupted. From Lindsay Lohan’s acting career to the once-noble filibuster, well-meaning stuff sometimes just gets out of hand here. But has it caught up with Kickstarter, too? Launched in 2009, this crowd-funding platform seemed,…
The terrible reality of modern life is that even beautiful young people on a first date can’t go a whole evening without checking their phones. Just allowing the present to happen has become increasingly foreign. That’s the idea Spike Jonze is scratching at in his futuristic romance Her, in which…
