We have the Twilight franchise to thank for the fact that almost no sane adult wants to see another vampire movie, ever. Not that all the Twilight movies were bad. The first, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, hit a teen-dream sweet spot, the point where Gothic lit meets the iPod. And…
The original Maniac hit theaters in 1980, and quickly became a slasher classic by heralding a new era in on-screen depravity. The grimy, gritty film about a serial killer who scalps women and collects mannequins famously depicted a close-up of a shotgun blast to the head, multiple scalpings and other…
New Israeli Cinema began unofficially six years ago, when Mizel Museum curator Georgina Kolber began showing Israeli films on the lawn of the museum on summer nights. But inclement weather and a slim selection of library titles didn’t fulfill the curator’s desires, so she approached the Denver Film Society about…
Matt Dillon’s been all over the board over the years, from his roots as a rough and pretty teen with a James Dean vibe to later comic character roles in films like Singles, The Flamingo Kid and Mr. Wonderful. And somewhere in between, he delivered an unforgettable performance as the…
There’s no better way to celebrate a geek movie about shooting asteroids out of the sky than getting a bunch of geeks on stage to show off their skills doing that exact thing. No surprise, then, that the Alamo Drafthouse’s Action Pack team will be doing exactly that Sunday, Jun…
With just a day to go, the Sie FilmCenter made its $150,000 Kickstarter goal — which will fund the theater’s necessary transition to Digital Cinema Presentation projectors. As incentive for participating in the Kickstarter campaign, Film on the Rocks director Britta Erickson and her crew promised a special screening of…
With Friday’s release of The Heat (Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy), another buddy cop movie joins a film library filled with explosions, oddball pairings and broad humor. While the genre’s been compacted into a cliche over the years (especially immediately following its heyday in the late ’80s and early ’90s), and…
David Mazza. It was only last summer that Randy Roberts, director of Z Art Department, shifted gears: Although he initially showcased the work of historic artists — that is, dead ones — Roberts has increasingly turned to contemporary artists who are still alive and kicking. Demonstrating this new direction is…
A sommelier can incite intimidation, scorn or trust, depending on who’s drinking and who’s pouring. Rarely, at least in America, do we take full advantage of proximity to those nerds with corkscrews. Somm follows four young men training hard to be Master Sommeliers, of which there are only 200 worldwide…
Surprising proof that Hollywood still can craft a memorable studio comedy — even if it doesn’t realize that itself — Roland Emmerich’s White House Down stands as a singular achievement in parody, its auteur’s intentions be damned. It’s not just a pitch-perfect attack on every risible plot point afflicting today’s…
Until 2005 or so, no one thought much about modern piracy of the high-seas variety. But then Somali pirates began attacking merchant ships with increasing frequency, seizing vessels and holding their crews hostage for outlandish sums. Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s wiry, neatly crafted thriller A Hijacking wrests fact into the…
Among the revelations you’re likely to experience during the course of Gideon’s Army, Dawn Porter’s vital, moving new HBO documentary (premiering July 1) about the struggle of conscience waged by public defenders in the deep South: “Everyone is so young.” Not just the suspects — mostly black and mostly broke…
Before he was one of cinema’s finest dramatists (All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Volver, Broken Embraces), writer-director Pedro Almodóvar was a provocateur and a satirist. The 63-year-old filmmaker harks back to that past with his first comedy in nearly 25 years, I’m So Excited!, a lighthearted, ensemble-driven bit…
If you’ve never seen Sandra Bullock blow a peanut shell out of her nose, and you’d like to, The Heat is your movie. That’s not meant sarcastically: It’s one of the highlights of this often dismal but occasionally inspired comedy from Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids, which pits Bullock’s hoity-toity…
Steve Martin and I go back a long way. I remember Steve from his SNL days, playing the banjo with an arrow through his head, a wild and crazy guy who perfected his idiot role in such movies as The Jerk (1979) and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982). Yes,…
Crispin Hellion Glover is many things. He’s a cult figure, known for his baffling performance art-like appearance on David Letterman, as well as a decidedly outsider filmmaker who creates offbeat art films featuring actors with Down’s syndrome and cerebral palsy. He’s a musician who once did a spine-chillingly wondrous rendition…
Charles Partridge Adams. Rocky Mountain Majesty: The Paintings of Charles Partridge Adams highlights the career of a prominent turn-of-the-nineteenth-century impressionist who lived and worked in Colorado for decades. Adams first came to Colorado in 1876, when he was only eighteen years old. He was self-taught, but worked informally in Denver…
The writer-philosopher Hannah Arendt, who pounced on the opportunity to cover the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, resulting in her controversial pronouncement about the disparity between “the mediocrity of the man” and “the horror of the deeds,” is brought to life by a mesmerizing Barbara Sukowa in a new film…
In Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, Iron Man gets off a good burn on Thor during their intramural fight in the woods: “Shakespeare in the park?” he says. “Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?” Like any good Shakespearean pastiche, The Avengers began in medias res, with a glowy cube thing…
Delicacy of touch isn’t a particularly valued commodity among American filmmakers. We like pioneer swagger in our directors; particularly in the age of the blockbuster, open-ended questions and eyelash-fringe feelings are suspect. That’s why it’s always been hard to know how to categorize Sofia Coppola, one of our most gifted…
Sometimes, there’s just too damn much to say about a movie than can fit into any one review. (Even Stephanie Zacharek’s exhaustive, excellent one.) So here’s more: Stephanie Zacharek, our lead film critic, and film editor Alan Scherstuhl hashing over all the portentous craziness in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel…
By weaving together the stories behind New York City cocktail lair Employees Only and Westport, Connecticut, corner bar Dunvilles, director Douglas Tirola takes on the changing world of bartending and the rise of craft mixology in his recently released documentary Hey Bartender. And while the film focuses on a pair…
