In Nicole Holofcener’s first feature, 1996’s Walking and Talking, the writer-director warmly portrayed an adult female friendship, nudging at emotional issues without resorting to shtick or melodrama. Five years later, Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing attempted to do the same for a family of women, but with wildly different results: Virtually…
Countless are the creative souls who struggled with mental illness, as are the novels and films dedicated to them. Again and again, we’ve encountered artists both inspired and undermined by their madness, whose torment and tumult produce works of beauty and depth. So can a documentary about a singer-songwriter and…
Perhaps it’s just the inner drama geek talking, but there’s something extremely compelling about seeing hardened felons preparing to put on a classic play with the enthusiasm of giddy schoolgirls. Like many of us, these violent men undoubtedly considered Shakespeare highbrow and stuffy in the outside world, but in attempting…
Believe it or not, The Benchwarmers is so lame that it can’t even lay claim to being the best Adam Sandler-produced movie not screened for critics in 2006; that dubious honor would go to Grandma’s Boy, which was by no means good, but at least featured a kung-fu chimp and…
Tired of the same old multiplex? Last Friday, the Harkins Northfield 18 at Stapleton opened for business, offering Denver movie-goers the largest single screen in the state and a sound system that rivals the most muscled-up rock-concert venue. The centerpiece of the new eighteen-theater house is something called the Cine…
Building Outside the Box. With the Denver Art Museum’s outlandish Hamilton Building by Daniel Libeskind taking shape at West 13th Avenue and Acoma Plaza, there’s a lot going on outside the place. Inside the gorgeous Gio Ponti tower, it’s a different story. Up until the opening of the Hamilton next…
Ellie Parker (Strand) This extremely raw portrait of an actress trying — and failing — to make it in Hollywood showcases Naomi Watts in a wrenching and sympathetic performance. Writer-director Scott Coffey shot the movie over nearly six years, beginning in 1999, before Watts was a household name. Though they…
You may not yet have lost your ardor and respect for the pressure-point hammerblow Quentin Tarantino executed on American movies, but it’s difficult at this late date not to view him as an imperative inoculation with unfortunate side effects: gas, bloating, dizziness, delusions of cleverness. Imitators flock when coolness seems…
Calling Rian Johnson’s teen indie-drama Brick a piece of stuntwork might seem tantamount to hitting it with a pie, but it’s a high-speed wheelie of a strangely daring variety. Try this thumbnail definition on for size: a high school noir complete with a Dashiell Hammett-derived plot line and a fearless…
It’s difficult to tell from the image on the poster for Take the Lead, but that’s not star Antonio Banderas dancing in blue silhouette. In fact, the movie isn’t even about Banderas dancing — it’s about Banderas teaching teenagers to dance. You’d think that might be a dream come true…
We’ve all done it — killed an afternoon drinking in a pleasantly grungy roadhouse somewhere, boozily enjoying the illusion of having fallen off the grid, playing semi-forgotten blues songs on an outdated jukebox and thinking aloud, See, I should capture this feeling. This should be a movie. Sobered up, we…
The raunchy cult favorite Unholy Rollers (1972) features gorgeous Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings as the rebellious star of a Roller Derby team that’s amply stocked with resentful teammates and bitter rivalries. The heroine’s good looks and singleminded pursuit of fame make her a target at every game, and it isn’t…
Denver’s Pictorial Photographer. The Colorado Photographic Art Center no longer has a permanent home, but it’s still going. The group has held on to its impressive permanent collection, which is where the material for Denver’s Pictorial Photographer at Gallery Roach comes from. The title refers to R. Ewing Stiffler’s work…
The Mel Brooks Collection (Fox) Talk about taking the good with the bad; how else to describe a boxed set containing Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (Brooks’ silly masterpieces), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights and History of the World, Part 1 (both overrated, even by people who can’t stand…
You want an easy job, go join the Red Cross,” someone says well into Thank You for Smoking, a gleeful farce about capitalist mendacity based on Christopher Buckley’s 1994 bestseller. The implication, made drummingly plain in the film’s every bon mot, is that our ethical barometers skew lazily toward goodness,…
We all want to believe that in even the most dangerous or frightening of situations, we would have the courage to stand up for our convictions — that we would not name names, that we would not betray our friends or our ideals. Thank God most of us will never…
We are in the middle of a B-movie renaissance, if you haven’t noticed. For years now, the politics of the multiplex have forced films to be either big-budget, Burger King-cup blockbusters or tiny “indie” projects about college-educated Caucasians with emotional problems (and viewed by college-educated Caucasians with emotional problems). But…
Balletomanes are bound to adore Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s lavish documentary Ballets Russes (2005), which recalls the glory days of that legendary emigré dance troupe through rare footage of its opulent performances and interviews drawn from a 2000 reunion of its surviving stars, most of them in their eighties…
Building Outside the Box. With the Denver Art Museum’s outlandish Hamilton Building by Daniel Libeskind taking shape at West 13th Avenue and Acoma Plaza, there’s a lot going on outside the place. Inside the gorgeous Gio Ponti tower, it’s a different story. Up until the opening of the Hamilton next…
Wonder Showzen: Season One (MTV) On the surface, the way this MTV2 puppetfest explores adult concepts through a kiddie-show format seems fresh as a Nantucket limerick. But Wonder Showzen’s execution is so bold and frankly hilarious that it feels wholly new. Whether it’s exploring diversity with a forbidden homosexual love…
According to the posters for V for Vendetta, the film is “an uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy.” Uncompromising? It simply isn’t possible to translate Alan Moore’s multi-layered comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify; and it’s certainly not feasible…
John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust, published in 1939 and all but forgotten till its 1980 reissue with a Charles Bukowski foreword, is very much a work of thinly veiled autobiography; only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Its protagonist, a struggling writer named Arturo Bandini, shared…
