Now Showing

Ary Stillman. Singer gallery director Simon Zalkind is a brilliant curator who has made the humble Mizel Arts & Culture Center an important destination for art lovers. Being a Jewish institution, the Singer often features shows devoted to the efforts of Jewish artists, and that’s the case with Ary Stillman:…

Now Showing

Ary Stillman. Singer gallery director Simon Zalkind is a brilliant curator who has made the humble Mizel Arts & Culture Center an important destination for art lovers. Being a Jewish institution, the Singer often features shows devoted to the efforts of Jewish artists, and that’s the case with Ary Stillman:…

Donkey Punch at Starz FilmCenter

Numerous reviews of Donkey Punch, an alternately glossy and loony thriller that debuts at Starz FilmCenter this week, have argued that the opening portions of the film, in which a trio of British party girls vacationing in Spain hook up with a group of randy young sailors on a lavish…

Two Lovers

If Joaquin Phoenix, who plays a lovelorn bachelor in James Gray’s Two Lovers, was twelve years old, the movie might make a touching, if not noticeably fresh, romantic drama for tweens. Not that adults don’t nurse unhealthy crushes and regress madly under the pressure of hopeless infatuation, which may be…

Now Showing

Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…

Seconds at Boulder Public Library

Seconds, which screens at the Boulder Public Library on Thursday, February 19, holds a bizarre place in rock history. According to legend, the 1966 flick helped trigger the mental collapse of Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, who was reportedly so traumatized by it that he didn’t see another movie in…

The International

Tom Tykwer’s The International is one of those movies in which shadowy men meet in parked cars, abandoned buildings and inconspicuous public spaces, travel under assumed names and always glance nervously over their shoulders, fearful of being spied on through a sniper’s lens. Some come to give information, others to…

Now Showing

Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…

Nothing but the Truth at the Boulder Film Festival

Nothing But the Truth, the opening-night attraction for the Thursday, February 12, launch of the Boulder International Film Festival, is an old-fashioned Hollywood flick in the best sense of the term. The plot, about a reporter (Kate Beckinsale) who goes to jail à la New York Times lightning rod Judith…

Confessions of a Shopaholic

The Confessions of a Shopaholic we need right now would be a handheld doc featuring former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain sobbing into the camera and begging the American public to forgive him for purchasing a $35,000 commode. With its curious release date — the film is meant to be…

Now Showing

Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…

Eden at Starz FilmCenter

Shocking but true: Eden’s title is meant ironically. Director Declan Recks’s film, which opens on Friday, February 6, at the Starz FilmCenter, focuses on Billy (Aidan Kelly) and Breda (Eileen Walsh), a working-class Irish couple whose relationship is frequently described by their friends as ideal even though no evidence of…

Coraline

If Alice in Wonderland were retold by the Mad Hatter, it might look something like Henry Selick’s 3-D, stop-motion Coraline, in which the bored, blue-haired eleven-year-old of the title (voiced by Dakota Fanning) travels through the looking glass and ends up in a world that strangely resembles her own —…

He’s Just Not That Into You

The smirky, overbearing, and subliminally hostile romantic primer He’s Just Not That Into You — which sold a regrettable two million copies when it was published in 2004 — seizes on some partial truths about the gender wars and blows them up into evolutionary gospel, as follows: Since cave-dwelling times,…

Now Showing

Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…

New in Town

She’s too thin. She’s a bobblehead. Her forehead doesn’t move. Where has that Jerry Maguire girl gone, the one we once knew and loved? Did the Oscar from Cold Mountain ruin her forever, or is Kenny Chesney to blame? It’s not easy being America’s Sweetheart. Nor any easier being Lucy…

Sundance Festival

The crowds were thinner, the temperature warmer, and Barack Obama’s name mentioned so many times that you might have thought he had assumed leadership not just of the free world, but the Sundance Institute, too. Otherwise, it was business as relatively usual as the Sundance Film Festival turned 25. If…

Otto at Starz FilmCenter

Even as an ardent, tireless fan of zombie cinema, I’ve never seen anything quite like Otto; or, Up With Dead People. Existing in some heretofore undiscovered common ground between the arthouse and the grindhouse, Otto is a tale of a young gay zombie in a cruel world that’s as dead…

Now Showing

Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…

Inkheart

Brendan “Kids’ Choice” Fraser returns to the multiplex daycare as “Mo” Folchart, antiquarian-book-repairman-cum-adventurer. In Inkheart’s opening chapter, he’s identified as a member of a race of “Silvertongues” — those who, when they read aloud, can suck people out of and into the texts they’re reciting from. Mo has abstained from…

Capsule reviews of current exhibits

Adam Helms. This solo in the MCA’s Paper Works Gallery is the New York artist’s first museum show anywhere. In his works on paper and in a monumental sculpture that conjures up a shooting blind, Helms explores political themes, especially armed struggle. He takes images of different radical and extremist…

Toxic Avenger at the Esquire

The first time I saw The Toxic Avenger — possibly on HBO or Cinemax — in the late 1980s, I was floored. It was absurd, graphic, gross, and fit into none of the movie archetypes I was familiar with. Needless to say, I was hooked — and I wasn’t alone…