Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
It’s been 85 years since Douglas Fairbanks slashed his way into the top tax bracket as the masked hero Zorro, and Hollywood still can find no reason to shut down the franchise. Technically speaking, The Legend of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas as the guy with the sword and Catherine Zeta-Jones…
Writer and director Noah Baumbach has made three light films, one so slight (1997’s party-hopping Highball) that it didn’t see release until five years after its completion (and even then it snuck onto video-store shelves credited to a pseudonymous writer and director). There was nothing in his filmography — not…
Talk about striking while the iron is hot: It’s been only a year since Saw became an instant cult hit as well as a topic of debate among horror fans. Was it an innovative new classic, or did the occasionally lackluster acting and ludicrous final twist doom it to also-ran…
The Weather Man, starring Nicolas Cage as a disappointment of a son and a failure of a father, was screened for critics in the spring, before its April release was pushed to October, ostensibly to allow for the off chance that Cage or Michael Caine (as Cage’s father) might be…
Does Steve Martin have multiple personality disorder — or is he just brilliantly in tune with some things and wildly out of touch with others? Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin’s novella of the same name, is one of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline…
A dozen years before The Corpse Bride got her not-so-pretty little hooks into Johnny Depp, Hollywood wizard Tim Burton gave moviegoers a labor of love in the exhausting puppet animation process. To many, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is every bit the equal of Bride. It’s a characteristically dark fantasy…
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner Home Video) There’s good reason to be skeptical of an eight-disc Batman set that forces you to buy the campy Joel Schumacher movies (Batman Forever, its title a veiled threat, and Batman & Robin) when all you need are the dark Tim Burton…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
When we first see the protagonist of North Country, a working-class heroine portrayed by a deglamorized Charlize Theron, she’s sporting a black eye and a slight limp, the results of an encounter with her abusive husband. We soon learn that Josey Aimes is only now beginning to take her lumps…
This fall, the roll call of gigantic ghosts inhabiting cinematic biographies continues unabated, with Joaquin Phoenix as a shrunken Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, David Strathairn as an inscrutable Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the ambitiously manipulative Truman Capote in…
The protagonist of Lodge Kerrigan’s deeply moving, uncomfortably intimate Keane is the kind of pariah most urban dwellers will do anything to avoid. Rocking foot to foot, the poor man mutters angrily to himself or shouts at the air, a captive of demons that only he can hear. Eyes bloodshot,…
DreamWorks is so anxious to have you believe in its latest family movie that the words “Inspired by a True Story” are actually part of the title. Yep, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story is the proper name, and publicists have been well coached to say and write out the…
When watching Where the Truth Lies, a film noir about a young celebrity journalist’s obsession with a comedy duo from the 1950s, a single question arises again and again: Why? Why have the immense talents of Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, both of whom are excellent in this movie, been…
Elijah Wood is not a believable tough guy. Probably this comes as no great revelation to you. There’s a reason that the Lord of the Rings video games tend to focus on Aragorn, Legolas, and Gandalf — Wood’s Frodo is a wuss, and everybody knows it. So any movie that’s…
For Western viewers willing to spend 143 minutes inside a cocoon-like Chinese theme park littered with scaled-down reproductions of the Eiffel Tower, the Piazza San Marco and the Taj Mahal, Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004) can be a rewarding experience. As with the bogus pyramids and ersatz Empire State Buildings…
Arrested Development: Season Two (Fox Home Entertainment) The best show on TV — which you’d know, if you actually watched the thing — also serves as one of the best reasons for the existence of DVD: No show has ever rewarded multiple viewings the way Arrested Development does. The second…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
Good Night, and Good Luck, a riveting movie that’s as entertaining as it is socially and politically important, could not have come at a more propitious time. But more than just the right film at the right moment, George Clooney’s sophomore directorial effort is dynamic filmmaking: brilliantly conceived, visually arresting,…
It happened almost with the first step off the airplane at the Toronto airport last month. Someone, a friend or merely a concerned stranger, would stop to warn you of impending peril. They would plead with you to avoid the danger ahead in Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe film that screened…
It’s the cover-up, stupid! It doomed Nixon during Watergate, got Clinton impeached, inspired outrage against the Catholic Church and apparently is part of the day-to-day operations at places such as Enron and Tyco. The initial crime is bad enough, but the conspiracy to hide it always ends up hurting more…
Her name is Domino Harvey, and she is a bounty hunter. If you’ve seen even one TV spot or theatrical trailer for Domino, you’ve heard that message ground into your brain like an annoying jingle. What you might not know is that Domino Harvey was a real person, the daughter…
