Joan Moment and Monroe Hodder. Though Joan Moment has spent the past four decades in California, she began her art career right here in Colorado in the late ’60s when she was a graduate student at the University of Colorado in Boulder. That makes it easy to associate her work…
Taking in Enemies of the People is a little like watching a Cambodian Shoah, if we had access to the director’s methods and motivations instead of just the astonishing results. Chronicling his ongoing project to track down and document those responsible for the Khmer Rouge’s late-’70s reign of terror, co-director…
Ivan Reitman, master of the high-concept, big-budget Hollywood comedy (Ghostbusters, Dave), would seem an unlikely candidate to direct No Strings Attached, an extremely low-concept, low-key romantic comedy of contemporary sexual mores centered on the dating foibles of attractive nerds. Fully devoid of the fantasy contrivance that often sets a Reitman…
Tracking the parallel trajectories of three employees laid off from cushy corporate jobs at the same Boston-based manufacturing conglomerate, The Company Men is transparent in its ambition to capture The Way We Live Now from a sensitive and equitable — rather than a withering and satiric — point of view…
There are many things that make English television better than American television. Mostly, it is a lack of censorship; American TV loves violence but hates sex, drugs and profanity. English TV loves them all equally, and luckily for us, by the good graces of YouTube and Netflix, we can indulge…
My, how attitudes change — or, rather, how well MTV edits. Episode three opens with Sammi feeling remorseful after somehow, just now, realizing Ronnie is a liar. A big one. She’s ready to apologize to the girls, and Ronnie is ready for her to peace out of the relationship, since…
Last week we met up with the old crew and were introduced to Deena, the “dirty chihuahua” (Sammi’s nickname, not ours) who came attached to Snooki. This week we pick back up with the Jersey Shoreans mid-fight, with Jwoww and Sammi coming to actual blows as Ronnie and MVP (Michael “The…
If plummeting temperatures have you dreaming of steamier situations, grab a pillow, make sure you’re wearing clean undies and head to Longmont tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. for the free monthly movie night hosted by the new Boulder branch of the Center for Sex Positive Culture. A double feature of sex-centered…
The brick-and-mortar movie rental store is a dying breed, but that doesn’t mean you can’t rent local. Louisville’s John Griffin has started a local kiosk movie business called Treehouse Movies. Right now he’s got one kiosk in Denver, at the Sunflower Market at 2880 S. Colorado Blvd., and three in…
Let’s say you’re trying to get to the top of Mount Rainier in Washington State. You’re walking along with your buddy across a snow bridge, and all of a sudden it collapses, plunging you into an 80-foot-deep crevasse, causing an avalanche and killing your buddy, leaving you stranded at the…
2011: Year in Preview. Bobbi Walker, owner of Walker Fine Art, has employed a clever way to create an automatic group show by putting together examples of work by all of the artists who will be featured in duets this year. The show looks good, but what’s really neat is…
John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole plops us down in the lives of Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart), fortyish bourgie marrieds rattling around an East Coast dream house. Becca and Howie’s young son was killed in an accident, and months later, the couple is trying to cope. Howie thinks…
When the MPAA handed Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine an NC-17 rating this fall, cynics suggested that the so-called kiss of death was better publicity for the gently experimental marriage drama than anything famously crafty distributor Harvey Weinstein could buy. When the rating was reversed last month — downgraded to an…
A quasi-documentary portrait of young non-actors striking poses, walking around Boston, hanging out and playing or listening to music, Damien Chazelle’s Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is a giddy and cannily frugal avant-musical. Beginning when Chazelle, now 25, was an undergraduate at Harvard, and evolving over a period…
The gang’s all here — well, minus Angelina and plus the new and terrifying, droopy-eyed Snooki part two, Deena — and after a stint in Miami, they’re back at the actual Jersey Shore. Thank God…
When you call your local government office and ask whether they are covering up a dragon population in the sewers, the usual response is an auto-reply. Greeley, faced with only slightly less outlandish accusations, has taken a more proactive route by fielding citizen concerns in a View-style talk show on…
Kelly Canter is the Courtney Love of country stars. Spectacular meltdowns on stage have forced Kelly (an inconsistently twanging Gwyneth Paltrow) into rehab. There, her decolletage decked out in black lace and a bling cross, she jams in more than one sense with singer-songwriter-janitor Beau (Tron fox Garrett Hedlund) until…
Generously bankrolled (then shelved) by an imperiled Weinstein Company and peopled with Oscar nominees, it’s tempting to call All Good Things an upscale version of straight-to-cable True Crime crap — only that makes it sound more entertaining than it actually is. The fiction feature debut of Andrew Jarecki, director of…
Dissolute action-movie star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), first seen doing laps in his black Ferrari, has no destination in Somewhere, Sofia Coppola’s mood ring of celebrity lassitude. Coppola’s fourth feature, winner of the Golden Lion at Venice this year, is, at times, similarly aimless and empty. But those who groan…
When Johnathan McFarlane and his partner Tim DeMasters created the Festivus Film Festival four years ago, they had trouble attracting audiences to all of the screenings at the Oriental and Bug theaters. Since then, the event has picked up buzz and grown its budget. The 2011 festival later this month…
In this day and age of reality shows being devoted to every imaginable social phenomenon (recall, if you will, TV Lands’s The Cougar), it was only a matter of time before one got devoted to the “fag hag” — although the Sundance Channel’s series goes with the considerably more PC…
Many of my favorite films of the year are still awaiting wider release, so although this top-ten list wraps up my 2010, it can also serve as a guide to your 2011. My number-one film, in fact, sneaks into New York just three days before the year ends: The Strange…
