Top five flicks at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival

With over fifty films screening, the Colorado Environmental Film Festival is seeking to inspire audiences into action. The fest runs Thursday through Saturday in Golden at the American Mountaineering Center with flicks about environmental issues from organic farming to energy conservation. “I hope that people will walk away from this…

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AB EX. Several Denver art venues are presenting shows to salute the opening this past fall of the Clyfford Still Museum, with most featuring displays anchored by abstracts. A stunningly beautiful example of this is AB EX: Positions and Dispositions, at the capacious Robischon Gallery. The exhibit comprises five discrete…

Wanderlust has some gut-bustingly funny moments

There’s no one way to live our lives,” hopes the displaced, adrift couple at the center of Wanderlust. Shopping between the prefab identity options available to them — squeezed, stressed urban professionalism; suburban McMansion soul death; rural counterculture opting out — George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) are…

Rampart tracks the downward spiral of an LAPD cop

Directed by Oren Moverman (The Messenger) from a script by Moverman and L.A. noir master James Ellroy, Rampart tracks the downward spiral of LAPD cop Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson). A Vietnam vet whose personal code allows for extreme bad behavior in the name of a hazily defined greater good, Brown…

Declaration of War turns autobiography into thrilling expressionist art

The gorgeously scruffy Juliette (director/co-writer Valérie Donzelli) and Roméo (co-writer Jérémie Elkaïm) — yes, the improbability is noted — move from dive-bar love-at-first-sight to proud parents of a newborn boy in the first few minutes of Declaration of War. Then their eighteen-month-old son, Adam, is diagnosed with a brain tumor…

2012 Women + Film Voices Festival programming announced

“Last year, five percent of movies were made by women,” says Karla Rodriguez of the Denver FilmCenter. Which is exactly why this second annual edition of Women + Film Voices is imperative — to shine a light on a corner of the film-making world that is often overlooked. The lineup…

Get a scary sneak preview of CREEP! at the Bug tonight

Some filmmakers aren’t waiting for Colorado lawmakers to pass a movie incentive package, a proposal Melanie Asmar detailed in last week’s cover story, “The Reel West.” Local director Pete Schuermann plans to use crowd-funding to finish CREEP! , a movie within a documentary about the worst horror film ever. And…

Top five flicks at the 2012 Boulder International Film Festival

The Boulder International Film Festival kicks off Thursday night with Darling Companion at the Boulder Theater, and continues through Sunday with fifty diverse films as well as celebrity appearances, workshops, and ways to get involved in social causes. Below, festival director Kathy Beeck shares her top five films for BIFF…

West Side Stories shines a light on Denver’s colorful Jewish history

An important piece of Denver’s cultural foundation will be revealed tomorrow night when West Side Stories, a film documenting the city’s deep Jewish history, is shown at the Denver FilmCenter as part of the ongoing DocNight series. The hour-long documentary tells the story of the Eastern European transplants who settled…

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Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, founding director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist. Clyfford Still: Inaugural Exhibition starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with…

Kill List shows that hit men have bills to pay, too

Hit men have bills to pay, too, and sometimes a kid to feed and an anxious wife to placate, even as they worry that their reputation in the bad-guy underworld is slipping. In the suburbs of Sheffield, England, a former soldier named Jay (a superb Neil Maskell) is stressed to…

This Means War is a pandering, too-familiar film

Hostilities in This Means War are declared as two workmates compete for the affection of the same woman. The contested objective is Lauren (Reese Witherspoon), a product tester who decides to apply comparative shopping techniques to dating. Her would-be beaus, FDR (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy), are best friends…

Movies filmed in Colorado: Watch clips and a photo slideshow

Once upon a time, lots of movies were filmed in Colorado. The first was an 1897 flick called Festival of Mountain and Plain. One of the last was a 2009 Eddie Murphy movie, Imagine That. In between, there were scores of hits and classics that showcased the state’s scenic beauty…

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Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, founding director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist. Clyfford Still: Inaugural Exhibition starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with…

Loosies has colorful characters but very little character

Loosies has a bevy of colorful character actors — from Michael Madsen and William Forsythe to Vincent Gallo and Joe Pantoliano — but little character. The story of a pickpocket named Bobby (Peter Facinelli, also credited with the ungainly script) whose criminal career is complicated by the reappearance of former…