Strange as it sounds, political theorists and trained economists may get an even bigger charge out of Tycoon: A New Russian than admirers of great movies like Citizen Kane and The Godfather, which chronicle the rise and fall of ambitious men. Directed by Pavel Lounguine from a barely fictionalized novel…
Talk about weird cinematic experiences: The German department at Colorado College is presenting a series of ten Third Reich-era films this fall under the rubric “Between Entertainment and Propaganda: Popular German Films of the 1930s.” These largely forgotten works all come from the so-called Gleichschaultung period (1933-39), when Adolf Hitler…
From the beginning, in the 1960s, Sergio Leone’s justly famous “spaghetti Westerns” had about them both a whiff of excitement and an air of folly. Here was an extroverted Italian working in Spain, reinventing American history and American movie mythology with an abandon that bordered on craziness. Leone’s style was…
Harvey Pekar, star of a long-running comic-book series he writes and others illustrate, is reminded early in American Splendor that he’s no superhero. It’s Halloween, and the eleven-year-old Harvey, played by a bent-over, sneering Daniel Tay, stands on a stoop seeking tricks and treats from a woman who recognizes the…
Get the lawn chairs folded, the picnic basket stuffed with goodies and the kids firmly in tow. The last film of the summer in the ultra-popular Boulder Outdoor Cinema series will be screened this Saturday night, August 30. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is not just for…
The last thing the Roman Catholic Church needs at this point is another exposé of its misdeeds. The shock of the pedophilia scandals and of the official coverups isn’t going away anytime soon, and when last we looked, the former bishop of the Phoenix Diocese was out on $45,000 bail…
Deck. Wheels. Attitude. This is the stuff of Grind, a new comedy about skateboarding and its effects on the human psyche. Neither young dawgs nor old poops will be surprised that the movie is about friendship, competition, product placement and, like, chasing one’s dreams. Yet Grind craftily sidesteps the obvious;…
Always the keen-eyed social agitator, Stanley Kubrick found in the dystopian fantasies of novelist Anthony Burgess material akin to his own bleak view of the world. In his corrosive film version of A Clockwork Orange (1971), the director let out all the stops — dramatic, visual and satirical. This is…
Kevin Costner appeared in his first Western when he was thirty and looked to be in his early twenties. He was a slender, restless actor in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado, the 1985 film in which Costner played the blithe brother of a somber Scott Glenn — all giggles and gunshots, a…
Ah, Paris: City of Light, of Love, of Liver Damage and Lung Cancer. C’est formidable, non? Who in need of a posh vacation would turn down the opportunity to luxuriate in its finest hotels, stuff themselves with sumptuous snails and work on a terribly flat romantic drama called Le Divorce?…
Credit the quality of a superior educational system. Or the native wit of two quick thinkers with a gift for understanding the human animal. Or the power of happy collaboration. In any event, Lawless Heart, the second feature co-written and co-directed by young Brits Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger, is…
Not to worry: Whenever summer machismo levels threaten to fall below mad-dog range, Hollywood invariably steps in to restore the status quo. Witness S.W.A.T. , a thoroughly unremarkable police action movie starring the magnetic Samuel L. Jackson as L.A.P.D. Sergeant Dan “Hondo” Harrelson, known affectionately to his men as “the…
The hormone-crazed teens who jam into the multiplexes this week to watch Freaky Friday will likely have no idea that this domestic fantasy about a fifteen-year-old girl who switches bodies with her mother for a day is the remake of a movie Disney released 25 years ago. They won’t know…
For those who missed last year’s first run of the extraordinary French/Brazilian co-production City of God, here’s a second chance to taste, smell and feel the Cidade de Deus of the title — a 1960s-era housing project that, by the 1980s, had degenerated into the most violent slum in all…
Cremaster 3 is the final installment of Matthew Barney’s five-part Cremaster cycle. If that reads like a typo, be informed that, over the last decade, Barney has been filming and releasing the different episodes out of order, if the numbering has any real meaning — not that viewers are likely…
There’s magic in Northfork, both in the movie, by twin brothers Mark and Michael Polish, and in the Montana town soon to be drowned by the opening of the dam keeping the baptismal waters at bay. Northfork is a beguiling and bittersweet fantasy set in a netherworld where the living…
The fall of Roman Polanski’s career remains one of world cinema’s most tragic stories. By the late ’60s, this visionary was undeniably an American filmmaker, no longer a Pole on loan, who gave young Hollywood’s bold new spirit (Buon giorno, Don Corleone; may the Force be with you, Luke Skywalker)…
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over continues a fine tradition of turning third installments of film series into three-dimensional efforts; Amityville 3-D and Jaws 3-D exploited the gimmick long before Robert Rodriguez made clever use of the numeral signifying the milking to death of a franchise. But what Rodriguez lacks –…
Like the wounded nation that loved him, he was uncertain and half crippled. So in the depths of the Great Depression, when a knock-kneed thoroughbred named Seabiscuit rose up to outrun the elite racehorses of the day, he became a folk hero suited to his moment and a fixture in…
I purposely avoided reading anything about Capturing the Friedmans before seeing the film, which was no easy task. Andrew Jarecki’s documentary — about a Great Neck, New York, family torn asunder in the late 1980s by allegations of kiddie-porn possession and the horrific sexual abuse of numerous children — has…
So much for those crackpot theories about flighty teenagers and their short attention spans. For four long years now, the bland pop star Mandy Moore has stuck in the brainpan of white adolescent America like a wad of bubble gum, and there’s no sign that she will loosen her grip…
To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, yes, indeed — can’t do without Fairbanks as the Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important…
