Let’s say you had to make up a list of historical moments that might serve as grand backdrops for sweeping, old-fashioned, Hollywood-style romantic dramas. How high would you rank the Armenian Genocide? How high would you rank any genocide? Watching Hotel Rwanda, you probably never hoped that, amid the carnage,…
Even if it were not for the fact that Mean Dreams has become Bill Paxton’s penultimate picture, Nathan Morlando’s thriller would be worth recommending entirely on its own merits. Start with cinematographer Steve Cosens (The Tracey Fragments), who uses sharp focus and the occasional faded Polaroid-style filter to lovingly caress…
It’s the take as old as time. Yes, Beauty and the Beast’s love story can be read as a tale of abuse and brainwashing, of a woman imprisoned by a tyrant until she starts chatting with the table settings — and then, as seasons pass, chastising herself in song for…
With movie-history viewing choices spawning like mold in a damp room, we can easily see the things we didn’t even know we’d never seen. For me that includes Takashi Miike’s Black Society Trilogy (Arrow Video), a trio of quick, down-and-dirty crime-gang pulp rockets (1995-99) that established Miike as Japan’s fin-de-siècle…
Pop quiz. What comic-book adaptation centers on a white man orphaned by tragedy but blessed with great wealth who travels to an Asian country, only to return to America as a fearsome hero of amazing skill? That’s a trick question, of course: There are too many to count. In Batman…
Don’t hold it against Martin Zandvliet’s land-mine drama that its English title is the dopiest movie-title pun since John Singleton’s Poetic Justice. That film concerned a poet named Justice; Land of Mine a land of mines. Called Under Sandet in the original Danish — roughly Under the Sand — Zandvliet’s…
Every Western that gets made feels like it could be the last one, and yet the genre refuses to ride off into the sunset. Martin Koolhoven’s Brimstone doesn’t breathe new life into the oater, but the Dutch writer/director has clearly studied the gunslingers of yore. His film strives for a…
“A cat meowing at your feet, looking up at you, is life smiling at you,” says one of the interviewees in Kedi, and who am I to argue? Ceyda Torun’s daydream-like documentary explores a subject near and dear to my heart: the street cats of Istanbul, those countless, fearless denizens…
In Staying Vertical, as in nearly all of French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie’s tonically unorthodox work, the emphasis is on the abundant possibility of pairings and practices when people get horizontal. Filled with quite literal chubby-chasing, Guiraudie’s sexually anarchic romp The King of Escape (2009), for example, centers on a middle-aged…
For a movie in which a major character’s death is discovered when a giant lizard-monster vomits out his skull, Kong: Skull Island is a surprisingly breezy affair. It’s not so much that the characters or situations are particularly lighthearted. The film offers up plenty of wartime atmosphere and grim backstory,…
Shirley MacLaine has been described by press and co-stars over the years as “rude,” “nasty,” “difficult” and “selfish.” Hell, she’s called herself impatient, caustic and much worse. None of that has stopped her from being a fiery mainstay in American screwball comedies and dramas. Her signature pixie cut came to…
Science fiction has gotten so high and mighty on TV that it now can be easy to admire but hard to love. Westworld and Mr. Robot may win Emmys and prompt think-pieces, but their self-reflective chill keeps the audience at arm’s length — few things are as annoying as getting…
How could this not work? Table 19 boasts the right premise and a top-shelf cast: Anna Kendrick, Stephen Merchant, June Squibb, Craig Robinson and the great Lisa Kudrow as the randos consigned to a wedding reception’s least choice table, the one way in the back by the bathrooms. Mostly strangers…
It’s March! Time to celebrate spring by staying inside and watching more TV! National Treasure (Hulu), March 1Originally a UK Channel 4 miniseries, this is a four-hour deep-dive into rape and sexual assault allegations against a beloved celebrity comedian. Sound familiar? I have some apprehension that it’ll try too hard…
The Denver Film Festival has announced it will be returning to the Mile High City from November 1 through November 12 this year, and is now accepting submissions. Programmers plan on screening more than 200 new films and bringing in more than 175 international filmmakers, actors and artists from around…
Logan is a punch in the gut in all the right ways. Onscreen, the X-Men series has always found ways to morph and expand, from time-traveling fantasy to social allegory to political thriller. And it’s done so as other comic-book franchises have ossified, with the DC movies (foolishly) doubling down…
There’s a reason Zoey Deutch is often “the girl” in comedies. Her face expresses multitudes, and the funny guys need a woman with priceless reactions to sell their punch lines. She’s endured dick jokes for Robert De Niro and Zac Efron in Dirty Grandpa, played oblivious straight woman to the…
Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure is a cautionary tale of sisterhood, sexuality, and the sometimes self-destructive things people do for love. The film, which won the award for best debut at the Gdynia Film Festival, is also a diabolically wicked Polish-language musical about two beautiful mermaids who climb ashore in Warsaw…
Movie actors intend no less than to live forever, a goal that seems likely for the ever-likable, endlessly surprising Bill Paxton, who died last weekend at age 61 from complications following heart surgery. (Too damn soon.) No softie, Paxton created memorable movie villains, including the loves-his-work vampire in Near Dark…
The Oscars have come and gone in a surprisingly dizzying fashion, and now that awards season is finished, we can settle in for pure movie watching. Thankfully, Denver’s cinema houses are hitting the ground running. Our best movies list offers up the cream of the crop for the month —…
Perhaps you’ve been waiting until the crowds die down to see the award-winning film La La Land. Maybe you never planned to watch it but were inspired to after the cringe-inducing Academy Award SNAFU. Or possibly you’ve already watched it a dozen times and know every song by heart. Whatever the…
A stylized painting of Woody Allen, a golden gun to his forehead, stares down at Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) in the astonishing third episode of Girls’ final season. She’s seated in the study of a best-selling wunderkind novelist, planted in the middle of his sofa while he faces her, coldly,…
