Now Showing

Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…

Who Is Kickstarter For, Anyway?

So many ideas in our country begin with the best of intentions and end up completely corrupted. From Lindsay Lohan’s acting career to the once-noble filibuster, well-meaning stuff sometimes just gets out of hand here. But has it caught up with Kickstarter, too? Launched in 2009, this crowd-funding platform seemed,…

Artful performances transcend Her‘s obvious metaphors

The terrible reality of modern life is that even beautiful young people on a first date can’t go a whole evening without checking their phones. Just allowing the present to happen has become increasingly foreign. That’s the idea Spike Jonze is scratching at in his futuristic romance Her, in which…

Five ways for Downton Abbey fans to find Mile High inspiration

As the snow settled on Sunday evening, Colorado’s Downton Abbey fans were transported to England in February 1922, only six months after the tragic and untimely death of Mathew Crawley, killed in a car wreck at the end of last season. The Masterpiece-produced show started with Mathew’s widow, Mary, and…

An open letter to James Franco: Do the Double Dick dude

James, By now, your buddies have forwarded you the Reddit Ask Me Anything where a 24-year-old man with Diphallia — aka two penises — says he wants to give you a facial. Say yes. Let’s get through the superficial reasons first. This magical male unicorn (er, two-nicorn?) is anonymous, which…

A Touch of Sin puts a face on China’s have-nots

Over the past few years, our view of modern China — at least as culled from news reports — has been that of a country whose economy has grown so fast that the center cannot hold. Put another way: How can the inhabitants of one country possibly buy so many…

Oscar Isaac on the “screwball tragedy” of Inside Llewyn Davis

Three types of artists hinge on authenticity: punk bands, folk singers, and rappers. Actors, like Oscar Isaac, are by definition phonies. But the star of Joel and Ethan Coen’s new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, gets that pressure to keep it real. In high school, he was a straight-edge punk frontman…

Now Showing

Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…

Community Returns — and Feels Like Community Again

Community returns for season 5 on January 2 with a two-episode block that plants its feet on the study room table and regrounds the characters after a fourth season of viewer discontent and lost purpose. It’s impossible to discuss the season opener without talking about the show’s creator. The sweet,…

Boulder Outdoor Cinema finishes season with Love Actually

Boulder Outdoor Cinema may have temporarily moved indoors, but that doesn’t mean the unsympathetic winter chill is keeping audiences from enjoying some heart-warming cinema. After a killer lineup of holiday films like Elf, A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, this free-of-charge series will round out its holiday theme…

Now Showing

Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an uplifting crowd-pleaser

In the twenty years since Reality Bites, his directorial debut, Ben Stiller has metastasized from sketch-comedy lunatic to Generation X darling to blockbuster king. Among the funnymen, most of whom have calcified into cliques (yawn, Anchorman 2), he’s the last of the triple-threat writer-director-stars, and the only one who would…

Scorsese’s extravagant Wolf of Wall Street revels in excess

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is the kind of movie directors make when they wield money, power, and a not inconsiderable degree of arrogance. Sprawling and extravagant, it revels in all manner of excess, including sexual debauchery, hearty abuse of liquor and quaaludes, even dwarf-tossing. Its antihero, the…

Idris Elba elevates the formulaic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

What becomes a legend most? Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom offers the biopic’s usual reply: legend itself. Bigger, louder, more expensive legend, brought to bear by the best talents and technologies of the day. The name of Nelson Mandela is already shorthand for the things Mandela director Justin Chadwick shows…

A Thrilling Look at the Life of Barbara Stanwyck

When Peter Guralnick released Last Train to Memphis, the first half of his superb two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, some people must have wondered, “Who needs two books to tell the story of Elvis?” They may as well have grumbled, “Two whole books about America?” Some lives, some careers, push…