The pleasing circularity of Gus Van Sant’s masterful Paranoid Park is not only a function of the film’s narrative structure, but a reflection of the arc of its maker’s career. Few directors have revisited their earliest concerns with such vigor. Van Sant’s debut, 1985’s Mala Noche, was a moody drizzle…
The Democratic insurgent is the most charismatic candidate since RFK, and the party’s convention could be the most convulsive since the debacle in Chicago. The Vietnam War has returned in the personae of Johns McCain and Rambo. George Romero, whose Night of the Living Dead remains the definitive celluloid expression…
Sex and chance brought them together one furtive summer night in the cruising grounds of a wooded Parisian park. Adrien (Michel Blanc), a doctor: bourgeois, middle-aged, world-weary, on the prowl for boys. Manu (Johan Libéreau), a boy: beaming, naive, freshly arrived in Paris, on the prowl for experience. Flattered by…
Owen Wilson’s a bad fit for an ass-kicking bodyguard. Rare is the star vehicle that’s as poorly matched to its star as Drillbit Taylor, which casts Owen Wilson as a homeless Army deserter and con man, able to fool people into believing he’s both a substitute teacher and a master…
No Country for Old Men(Paramount)”A horror comedy chase” is how a grinning Tommy Lee Jones describes No Country for Old Men in the making-of — meanwhile, his fellow actors add to the list such adjectives as “a very primitive ride,” “a rabbit chase through Texas,” and “a very powerful story…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
Was Dr. Seuss, né Theodor Seuss Geisel, oblivious to his own genius? The allegory of his charming Horton Hears a Who! remains fluid today, and like its crafty rhymes, ebbs and flows with the times. The conviction of an innocent pachyderm known as Horton to stand up against tyranny and…
Near the beginning of The Counterfeiters, a fact-based Holocaust drama by Austrian filmmaker Stefan Ruzowitzky, we meet Jewish money forger and former jailbird Salomon Sorowitsch (brilliantly played by Karl Markovics), packing to flee Berlin in 1936 with a suitcase full of fake money. We know from an opening coda that…
For the crime of obliterating high culture, for the crime of getting off on vicarious degradation — and, above all, for the crime of sitting through any movie that resembles the one he’s (re)made — Michael Haneke sentences you (me, us) to Funny Games. Scratch that: to a second fucking…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
To the uninitiated viewer, Austrian director Michael Haneke might best be described as modern cinema’s master of the unkind rewind. In the opening scene of his second theatrical feature, Benny’s Video (1992), we see crude camcorder footage of a farm pig being shot with a cattle gun during a family’s…
“Based on a true story,” brags The Bank Job before diving into the clear blue water of the Caribbean, where, in 1970, a topless woman frolics with two swimming mates — just another day in Paradise. The trio retires to a hotel room for a sweaty, breathless afternoon quickie, which…
For an obscure tale of a virginal London governess who discovers her true calling running interference for a giddy night-club singer, the 1938 English novel Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has enjoyed a pretty lively renaissance. Knocked off in six weeks by Newcastle homemaker Winifred Watson while she washed…
“Fresh City Life is making a real effort to create programming that doesn’t simply inform and entertain people, but also gives them the space to create something,” says the Denver Public Library’s Audrey Sprenger. That’s the idea behind the EyeBelieve: Independent Filmmakers Competition, which kicks off Saturday, March 8, with…
Into the Wild(Paramount)Sean Penn waited a good decade before adapting Jon Krakauer’s book about Chris McCandless, who graduated college in 1990, then disappeared into the American unknown, re-emerging as Alexander Supertramp before his final, tragic farewell in the Alaskan wilderness in ’92. Penn’s patience is evident in every finely wrought…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
This past fall, The Band’s Visit made headlines after being disqualified as Israel’s foreign-language submission to the 2008 Academy Awards — an ironic fate, indeed, for a movie that takes language as its very subject. The official ruling of the Oscar referees was that too much of the film’s dialogue…
The extraordinary Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, more comfortably known as “that abortion movie that won this year’s Palme d’Or,” sheds its secrets slowly, a high-end realist drama quickening skillfully into a thriller. Though the frighteningly late-term abortion at its center hints at larger sins in…
Semi-Pro’s much better than Blades of Glory, which wasn’t nearly as good as Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which was a little better than Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which was almost as funny as Old School, which was better than everything else Will Ferrell had done…
“When you sleep with the king, it ceases to be a private matter.” And so it comes to pass that young Mary Boleyn (Scarlett Johansson) must stand before her father, Sir Thomas (Mark Rylance), and her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey), and report the nitty-gritty details of having…
Justice League: The New Frontier(Warner Bros.)Based on Darwyn Cooke’s comic-book miniseries — a masterpiece starring all of DC Comics’ major-leaguers at the dawn of their immortality during the Cold War — this animated adaptation plays stronger, faster, and further than any direct-to-DVD in recent memory. It’s a grown-up superheroes story,…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
