Since every cell of you dies and sloughs away so many times in your life, can you be said to be the same you at 65 that you were at 20? Such questions power this frustrating doc about William Powell, the humanist adult who happens once to have been the…
Consider, before you consider anything else about the sequel to Trainspotting, that the director of both films is an artist whose signal trait had been a seeming repulsion at the thought of ever going back to the well. Between the original and the new T2 (cheeky title, innit), Danny Boyle…
To understand how Ritesh Batra’s The Sense of an Ending might disappoint you if you’ve read the suspenseful, tear-jerking Julian Barnes novel on which it’s based, you should think back to Batra’s much-lauded debut feature The Lunchbox (2013). In that humanistic film, a young woman trapped in her marriage falls…
Having now reached the age of its wayward protagonist, Donnie Darko is once again being tasked with forestalling the end of the world. Richard Kelly’s sleeper first opened almost two years after screening at Sundance, and a month after 9/11, becoming an early example of a trend that scarcely exists…
The antagonistic atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair relished it when Life magazine called her “The Most Hated Woman in America” in the 1964 profile that only heightened her notoriety. That designation followed the 1963 Supreme Court ruling on Murray v. Curlett (and another lawsuit) that ended Bible-reading in public schools. Director…
Mainstream awareness of Breitbart, Infowars and other unsavory conservative “news” outlets has skyrocketed, as millions suddenly found themselves needing to know who Steve Bannon et al. were. For me, none of these outlets or talking points were news: I’m Texas born-and-raised — there, free-floating libertarian paranoia is a standard component…
Director George Mendeluk has stated that he wanted to make Bitter Harvest to bring wider attention to the Holodomor, the forced famine imposed by Joseph Stalin that killed between three and seven million ethnic Ukrainians in the early 1930s. That’s certainly a subject worthy of a film, but the question…
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…
