Boulder Outdoor Cinema finishes season with Love Actually

Boulder Outdoor Cinema may have temporarily moved indoors, but that doesn’t mean the unsympathetic winter chill is keeping audiences from enjoying some heart-warming cinema. After a killer lineup of holiday films like Elf, A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, this free-of-charge series will round out its holiday theme…

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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…

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an uplifting crowd-pleaser

In the twenty years since Reality Bites, his directorial debut, Ben Stiller has metastasized from sketch-comedy lunatic to Generation X darling to blockbuster king. Among the funnymen, most of whom have calcified into cliques (yawn, Anchorman 2), he’s the last of the triple-threat writer-director-stars, and the only one who would…

Scorsese’s extravagant Wolf of Wall Street revels in excess

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is the kind of movie directors make when they wield money, power, and a not inconsiderable degree of arrogance. Sprawling and extravagant, it revels in all manner of excess, including sexual debauchery, hearty abuse of liquor and quaaludes, even dwarf-tossing. Its antihero, the…

Idris Elba elevates the formulaic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

What becomes a legend most? Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom offers the biopic’s usual reply: legend itself. Bigger, louder, more expensive legend, brought to bear by the best talents and technologies of the day. The name of Nelson Mandela is already shorthand for the things Mandela director Justin Chadwick shows…

A Thrilling Look at the Life of Barbara Stanwyck

When Peter Guralnick released Last Train to Memphis, the first half of his superb two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, some people must have wondered, “Who needs two books to tell the story of Elvis?” They may as well have grumbled, “Two whole books about America?” Some lives, some careers, push…

Marilyn Manson Convinces as a Nerdy Teen in Wrong Cops

When he was thirteen, Marilyn Manson — then just Christian schoolkid Brian Warner of Canton, Ohio — would hide out in the basement while his grandfather masturbated to bestiality porn. Then he’d go upstairs and cheer himself up reading Mad magazine. The self-dubbed God of Fuck is famous for his…

Voice Film Club Podcast: Her and Anchorman 2

Joaquin Phoenix in Her.On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, this paper’s film critics talk about Spike Jonze’s Her and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, in addition to the wave of films all coming out before the year’s over. Listen to it on iTunes or below on Soundcloud:…

An all-star cast does the American Hustle to a ’70s soundtrack

The best movies about con artists work a bit of flimflammery themselves. They’re not necessarily dishonest; they just can’t resist making the truth shinier than it is in real life. There may not be much behind the sparkling tinsel curtain of David O. Russell’s extraordinarily entertaining American Hustle. But what…

Anchorman 2: Continuing legend or legend in its own mind?

The audience that shows up for a comedy is the most tyrannical of all. Their very presence is the equivalent of a schoolyard bully’s challenge: “Go ahead — make me laugh.” Which is why there’s danger in following up a hit comedy with a sequel, even nine years after the…

Now Showing

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…

Stephanie Zacharek’s Top Films of 2013

Here’s where I write about how hard it is to draw up a ten-best list at the end of the year. Except it isn’t: I think of drawing up a list as an honor and a necessity, a way of putting twelve months of movie-going into some sort of perspective…

The Best of 2013, Take Two

I could write a Shakespearean sonnet about each film on my Top 10 of 2013, but we know we’re all here for the agreements and arguments. (Plus, have you tried writing about Joe Swanberg in iambic pentameter?) Ladies and gentlemen, let’s begin. The Act of Killing ― The year’s best…

The 2013 Village Voice Film Poll

In 2013, there were a thousand bright lights and no strong center ― even with Gravity, which ranked No. 8 on our tally of nearly 100 critics’ bests. results in this year’s Village VoiceFilm Poll, like the decisions arrived at by critics’ circles around the country, suggest that consensus is…

Ten Movies to Look For in 2014

As awards season draws nearer and best-of-the-year lists keep rolling in, there’s only one thing left to do: get excited about what comes next. Here are ten films you won’t want to miss in 2014. 1. Adieu au Language (directed by Jean-Luc Godard) Jean-Luc Godard, former master of the French…

Joaquin Phoenix: He’s (Still) Still Here

In Spike Jonze’s new sci-fi romance, Her, Joaquin Phoenix plays a divorcé who rebounds by falling in love with his smartphone. On a recent Wednesday, however, he’s a delinquent boyfriend, leaving his iPad abandoned on a chair in a Lebanese restaurant as he bounces off to the parking lot for…

Five worst journalists — in the movies, at least

The Stop the Presses series at the Alamo Drafthouse, which celebrates the media in movies with screenings of such classics as Sweet Smell of Success and concludes with the premiere of Anchorman 2, has inspired a lot of conversation about the relationship between journalists and the movies that portray them. While inspirational tales of dedicated investigators may go on to win awards and persuade young idealists to pursue a career in the news, movies about journalists who suck at their jobs are often much more entertaining. The worst newsmen in cinema are united by their blinkered narcissism, which bleeds into their work life in fascinating ways. Read on for a list of movies that herald wildly unprofessional behavior, and stay classy, Denver.

Alamo Drafthouse delivers crazy Christmas combo

Tucked away in the wealth of holiday programming at the Alamo Drafthouse this week are two linked films with very different takes on the season. One, A Christmas Story, is an almost universally beloved seasonal classic, filled with nostalgia, warm fuzzies and just enough edge to keep it from getting…