Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) is rightly famous (and notorious) as the most powerful propaganda film ever made: a documentary account of the Nazis’ massive, staged-for-the-camera Nuremberg rallies of 1934. The film glorifies Adolf Hitler and propagates the myth of German “purity” so skillfully that to this day…
Christ is sexy. There — got your attention. But honestly, think about it: nice guy, pretty hair, carpentry skills, puts loaves (and fishes) on the table. Plus all that doing miracles and rising from the dead and being the Son of God business. Heck, he’d be a prime catch for…
The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically, Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film at all, but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a Polish novel penned by Stanislaw Lem. Nonetheless, the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. If someone attempted to make a…
John Ford’s beautifully crafted classic 1956 Western, The Searchers, opens Friday for a one-week run at Tamarac Square’s Madstone Theaters. This tale of a bitter Texan Civil War veteran named Ethan Edwards (ideally played by John Wayne) who undertakes a five-year search for a niece who’s been abducted by Indians…
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hello, Mr. Hundert. If we can judge from the new Kevin Kline vehicle, The Emperor¹s Club, the notion remains alive (if not particularly well) that a self-sacrificing boarding-school teacher can enrich the lives of his students while subsisting in relative emotional misery himself — and that the…
The tragedy is that even those who should have known better didn’t know at all. How could they? The people whose names they sought weren’t listed; their contributions weren’t cited; their influences weren’t credited. So even those who spent hours and days and forevers wearing out the grooves in search…
After more than 400 books, countless TV documentaries and half a dozen movies, can the huge, untidy pile of dark speculations about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination support one more theory? Writer/director Neil Burger thinks so. Shot with a hand-held camera in jittery mock-doc style, Interview With the Assassin (opening…
So, you wish to know if Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is as good as the first Harry Potter movie? Is it as charming, visually gratifying and faithful to filthy-rich author J.K. Rowling’s inescapable books? Well, that’d be “yep” times four, as it’s definitely an enchanting spectacular for…
The current TV ad campaign for the sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding plays cleverly on the film’s cross-cultural appeal by substituting the words “Italian,” “Jewish” and “Russian” for “Greek.” The implication: A person from any ethnic or religious background will relate to this story’s characters, drama and humor…
Movie buffs who are in the mood for a little blood, deceit and darkness need look no further than this week’s second annual Longmont Film Festival, which presents three film noir classics Thursday and Friday at the Longmont Performing Arts Center, 513 Main Street. At 7 p.m. Thursday, Colorado Public…
The repellent Casanova portrayed by Campbell Scott in Roger Dodger has an instinct for looking up skirts and down cleavages, but no capacity for looking in the mirror. Part salesman, part caveman, Madison Avenue copywriter Roger Swanson is, deep in his cynical heart, as loathsome to himself as he is…
With Frida — the story of profoundly passionate and uncompromising Mexican-Jewish painter Frida Kahlo — it’s evident that a few folks in marketing know how to work the demographics (it’ll be extremely PC, possibly mandatory, to gush in adoration of it). But that’s the first and last cynical comment of…
Three years on, the besieged phenomenon (the scourge, the Antichrist, the Vanilla Ice of the ’90s — take your pick) has been rendered beloved. When they, slick bizzers in suits with cell phones, speak of “Eminem” and “gross” in the same sentence, they’re talking only receipts, merchandise, profit. The man,…
Consider life’s unbreakable rules: Send Mom flowers on her birthday. Keep your fastball down. Never order lasagna in Des Moines. Don’t go sailing with people you can’t stand. Violation of this last rule has yielded some pretty fair books and movies over the years — Moby Dick and The Caine…
Now, here’s an innovative narrative: Two shticky goofs of different races get stuck with a ridiculous mission and must overcome their mutual antagonism to save the day. Been there? Done that? You bet! Yet somehow, amazingly, the new I Spy dishes out fresh and funny antics while simultaneously spewing forth…
If you’re a fan of the baseball-cap-wearin’, Nader-votin’, muckrakin’, best-sellin’, corporation-confrontin’ son of a gun known as Michael Moore, all you need to know about his latest film, Bowling for Columbine is that it’s more of the same. You know: the mix of easy humor, political potshots, attempts (some successful,…
For American moviegoers with a blood lust for organized crime, the Boss of all Bosses has long been named Corleone. Is it Vito? Or Michael? That’s a matter of personal preference. In any event, so beloved and enduring are the Godfather films — the first and second, anyway — that…
Punch-Drunk Love is a Paul Thomas Anderson film — Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia and Boogie Nights fame. It is also an Adam Sandler film — Adam Sandler of Little Nicky and The Wedding Singer fame. In terms of story, it has far more in common with Sandler’s previous work…
As pharmacologist Elmo McElroy in Formula 51, Samuel L. Jackson initially sports a seriously silly fake Afro along with hippie-dippy threads that make him look like some sort of flower-power cult leader. When next we see him, it’s thirty years later, and he’s got cornrows and is inexplicably wearing a…
Death is too often taken literally, and this unfortunate perspective is sustained by much cinema, despite the medium’s dubious kiss of immortality. There’s easy drama in tragedy and grisly ends, but moviemakers don’t often successfully deliver symbolic death, the subtly grim yet vital bridge between lively verses. Happily, director George…
Wear something silver. The 25th Starz Denver International Film Festival starts Thursday night at the Buell Theatre with White Oleander, Peter Kosminsky’s study of a girl’s harrowing journey through a series of L.A. foster homes; it will close ten days later at the Buell Theatre with Bowling for Columbine, political…
For more than two decades, Ron Henderson has been the heart and soul of the Denver International Film Festival — shepherd and shill, house philosopher and dogged troubleshooter. A publicity volunteer in year one and the festival’s director since 1981, he’s coaxed cash out of tight-fisted bankers, discovered cinematic masterpieces…
