Starz Denver Film Festival wrap-up: Fact beats fiction

While introducing a screening at the 36th Starz Denver Film Festival late last week, fest director Britta Erickson asked members of the audience how many people had seen 25 movies by then — and a number of hands went up, with even more rising to confirm other ticket-holders had caught…

Starz Denver Film Festival November 15-17 must-sees: Doomsdays and more

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, Withey recommends Friday’s Doomsdays, Saturday’s What Is Cinema? and Sunday’s Here…

With The Best Man Holiday, Malcolm D. Lee makes up for lost time

From the mid-1990s to somewhere around 2006, Hollywood bankrolled a number of romantic entertainments targeted to — though not made exclusively for — black audiences. Pictures like Love Jones, Brown Sugar, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and Something New provided a showcase for actors of color, a refreshing change…

Domhnall Gleeson has got the power in About Time

Richard Curtis has so much to tell us about life. Seize the day! Show people you love them before it’s too late! Don’t let the right one get away! His movies — those he writes, directs or both — are so packed with info-feeling that they become restless jumbles of…

The engrossing Spinning Plates is an ode to the restaurant business

There’s little to suggest the restaurant industry needs a champion, but director Joseph Levy took on that mantle anyway. His feature debut is the splendid and engrossing documentary Spinning Plates, a love letter to that singular intersection of artistic innovation, cultural legacy, community pride, and family-sustaining (or -straining) commerce known…

Now Showing

Barbara Carpenter and Janice McDonald. In the east gallery at Spark, Barbara Carpenter has assembled a large group of small photos hung in clusters, salon-style, for Walking Miss Daisy: Photographs by Barbara Carpenter. The Miss Daisy of the title is Carpenter’s dog, and all of the photos have been taken…

Michel Gondry Picks Noam Chomsky’s Brain

Michel Gondry likes video stores. He is, after all, the director of the ultimate VHS sonnet, Be Kind Rewind, in which Jack Black and Mos Def re-create classics like Ghostbusters from plastic bags and tinsel. (Sad about the death of Blockbuster? Give it a watch.) One night, Gondry was browsing…