Again this year, Starz Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today, he spotlights three red carpet presentations — 5 to 7, The…
We seem to be obsessed with superheroes these days — but on Veterans Day, we recognize the true American heroes. Thanks to cinema, civilians have been able to get a closer look at what war is really like, with all the horrors and the heartbreaks. The best of these war…
When Australian filmmaker Richard Tuohy says he makes experimental films, he means it. He runs Nanolab, an artist-run film-processing lab where he develops 16mm and Super8 film for fellow filmmakers. In his free time, he has devoted himself to exploring hand-processing, optical illusions and even cameraless films. Tuohy does not…
Here’s a question the rest of us are lucky never to have had to think about: How many people does it take to bear away the corpse of a grown gorilla? Early in Virunga, Orlando von Einsiedel’s stunning heartbreaker of a doc, we see men, a dozen or so, carrying…
There’s so much space in Christopher Nolan’s nearly three-hour intergalactic extravaganza Interstellar that there’s almost no room for people. This is a gigantosaurus movie, set partly in outer space and partly in a futuristic dust-bowl America where humans are in danger of dying out, and Nolan — who co-wrote the…
It’s an unwritten rule that we’re supposed to feel most in step with people our own age, as if sharing the same cultural and historical references somehow enables our ability to look into each other’s hearts. So why do we sometimes tumble into deeper friendships with people who are ten…
Adapted from Amy-Jo Albany’s memoir about growing up with her father, Joe, the jazz pianist best known for playing with Charlie Parker, Low Down stars John Hawkes and Elle Fanning as a father-daughter duo with a lot of love and even more problems. A charming, gifted musician with a heroin…
Dmitri Obergfell. Yinfinity: New Works by Dmitri Obergfell positively vibrates with aesthetic and conceptual energy. The sculptures and wall panels that make up the show survey a range of image sources and a variety of sensibilities. For Obergfell, these pieces are linked by references to ancient or otherwise recognizable symbols…
Imagine if nerdy Clark Kent didn’t have to remove his glasses and pocket protector to save the world. Then imagine him as fat and sweet as a marshmallow. Meet Big Hero 6’s Baymax, Disney’s new cuddly champion: a waddling, inflatable health-care companion who can sense your pulse, diagnose disease and,…
There’s more television today than at any other point in the medium’s history, but there’s a good chance you’re stuck in a TiVo rut. That’s because, with a handful of exceptions, this fall has delivered a truckload of mediocrity and dead-on-arrival trends. (Goodbye, “rom-sit-coms” like the already canceled A to…
Christopher Nolan’s space epic Interstellar is a big, ambitious picture but it didn’t connect with our critics. We discuss the film at the top of this week’s podcast before moving onto a few other notable films on screens large and small this week. – The Disney film Big Hero 6…
This has been a grueling election season, with the television full of depressing news reports and endless political ads. The best way to avoid them? Program a movie, one that might give you a more honest look at elections, where you can augh at the irony, cringe at the realities…
Each November, cinephiles around the state gather for the Starz Denver Film Festival, one of the year’s hottest film events. Because the festival has an stellar lineup of directors, actors and critics escorting viewers through the best contemporary and historical cinema, it can easily overshadow other must-see movie events around…
Despite the state’s efforts to beef up its movie industry, it’s still unusual to see a crew actually filming on location in Denver. And it’s even rarer that one of those productions announces it’s holding open auditions for scores of extras — all ages and types, no experience necessary –…
Horror films take place in an alternate universe where logic disappears. The villain comes back to life, the car doesn’t start and those damn kids always go into the dark basement alone. Instead of spending your Halloween partying with people in Ebola patient costumes, choose a classic horror movie franchise…
If you want to summon some ghosts, sip on witches’ brew and watch a satanic smorgasbord of documentary, experimental and narrative shorts, head to Glob for Cinema Contra tonight . Film programmer Anthony Buchanan promises that the ghost of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey will host this unique mix…
Jake Gyllenhaal, not a particularly bulky guy to begin with, dropped twenty pounds or so to play a Los Angeles misfit who finds his calling as a freelance crime videographer in Dan Gilroy’s nervy thriller Nightcrawler. Even when Robert De Niro does it, weight change isn’t acting — it’s the…
Director Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour boasts an hour or so of tense, intimate, world-shaking footage you might not quite believe you’re watching. Poitras shows us history as it happens, scenes of such intimate momentousness that the movie’s a must-see piece of work even if, in its totality, it’s underwhelming as argument…
Perhaps Ruben Östlund’s most sophisticated thought experiment yet, the provocative and wise Force Majeure is a penetrating study of that most ludicrous of social pretenses: masculinity, toxic and ubiquitous. Östlund takes as his subject (and satirical target) a comfortably moneyed Swedish family — Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven…
Far North & Outer Space. Far North & Outer Space, now at Goodwin Fine Art, features new work by Beau Carey and Lanny DeVuono, both of whom create contemporary paintings based obliquely on views of the landscape. Many of the Careys are snow scenes and were inspired by a National…
This essay contains a spoiler or two for John Wick. There’s too much violence in movies today — too much of the wrong kind, though if you asked me what the “right” kind is, I would only be able to tell you that I know it when I see it…
Dog lovers and fans of the beyond-understated charisma of Keanu Reeves have a tough choice when it comes to John Wick. Those who count themselves among the former should know that the Cutest Beagle EVER gets offed — off-screen, but still — in the first twenty minutes. That’s not my…
