When commercials for Mel Brooks’ Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) ran on Channel One at my high school, I was ready. Vampire movies had dominated the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and at last a slapstick comedy was set to lampoon all that arty melodrama. High school me couldn’t…
This sadistic pulp-revisionist Western starts so well that you might feel something like loss as it ends: The Duel could have been something. The opening is all evocative mud and blood as a pair of knife-fighters, their left arms tied together, stab in a downpour. Cut to two decades later,…
John Carpenter, the legendary horror filmmaker, has been the focus of a Scream Screen tribute at the Sie FilmCenter that just concluded with last night’s Prince of Darkness showing. But there was supposed to be a special bonus to that series: Carpenter, who’s currently on his first national tour as a musician, was…
Aspiring filmmakers, rejoice! You soon could have $2,500 for a project. The Denver Film Society is taking submissions for its inaugural PitchLatino, which “seeks projects in pre-production that highlight Latino voices, culture and themes within the community.” The project is part of the Denver Film Society’s CineLatino Film Festival, which…
In cinema, all things move towards acceptance. In time, debates about filmmakers usually settle in favor of the filmmaker — not because detractors change their minds, but because the urgency of the conflict wanes, and stalemates go to the fans. It’s hard to believe that battle lines were once drawn…
If you can get past the spectacle of British and Australian actors portraying some of the most important figures of 20th-century American literature, Genius is a good example of a prestige pic that is not only literate but surprisingly vibrant. It’s the story of the tumultuous relationship between hot-tempered, Asheville-born…
Director Jake Paltrow (Young Ones, The Good Night) met Brian De Palma at a party. He’d had a few drinks and worked up the courage to talk to the legendary filmmaker, who turned out to be surprisingly open and kind. The next day, Paltrow got an email from the friend…
Finding Nemo may have been a cartoon about a clownfish traveling across the ocean looking for his son, but it was also one of Pixar’s first overt forays into the workings of the human mind. The film, from 2003, was haunted by loss: The protagonist, Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks),…
The white-dude detective of Nordic best-sellers bears a burden other crime-solvers don’t. Besides his personal troubles — he’s usually a sauced mope estranged from his family — and the challenges of his case-cracking and victim-saving, he is also called upon to reassure readers that the rottenness he sees each day…
Dylan Reeve and David Farrier’s Tickled might be the oddest documentary you’ll see this year. It starts off with Farrier, a New Zealand TV reporter specializing in human-interest fare, discovering the world of Competitive Endurance Tickling — in which teams of strapping young men tickle each other for extended periods…
Teenage bodies are bared but fresh insight concealed in writer/director Eva Husson’s first feature, a dopey examination of Instagram-abetted adolescent abandon. Inspired by a news item that Husson came across in 1999 about a group of orgy-loving high schoolers in the U.S., Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story), despite the…
He floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. He was so mean he made medicine sick. He’s the only person to ever beat Superman. The death June 3 of boxer Muhammad Ali from Parkinson’s-related complications left another hole in this death-speckled year. To pay tribute to the man,…
If mid-century pulp and noir gave us the cynical, quippy hardboiled detective, then Peak TV has given birth to its successor: the charbroiled cop, a bitter, corrupt, philandering, violent, addicted, nihilistic or just psychotic contemporary crime fighter. The supposed irony of this figure is that he (almost always a he)…
There’s something satisfying about hearing Tyler Perry, as mad scientist Baxter Stockman, say the words “Eliminate those turtles,” but it’s not quite novel enough to bring Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows up to street level and out of the sewers. Early on, giant squid-like brain Krang (Brad…
Back in 2013, James Wan’s The Conjuring represented the high point of a wave of mainstream horror that showed there was still value in old-school scares — that there was life beyond torture porn and slick slasher reboots. It was a ghost story-turned-possession thriller that mined terror out of the…
In 2001 a friend, a grown-up, saw The Fellowship of the Ring more than a dozen time in the theater. Sometimes she’d leave with a half hour left. “I just needed to get to Galadriel and Lothlorien,” she told me. She didn’t need all the climactic fighting. In 2012 I…
The Denver Film Society announced today a late addition to this summer’s Film On The Rocks lineup. Guaranteed to add a much-needed chill in July, Wes Craven’s 1996 horror masterpiece Scream will slash through the silver screen in honor of its twentieth anniversary on Thursday, July 7. Scream, written by Kevin…
For decades Tony Award-nominated playwright/actor/drag legend Charles Busch has been playing himself by playing other characters, usually in some form of glamorous drag, in a string of campy off-Broadway hits like his Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and the The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, along with choice Hollywood roles: adaptations…
As the summer heat rises, remember that a movie theater is your air-conditioned best friend. To celebrate the sunshine — and good air-conditioning — we’ve rounded up ten of the best film events in Denver in June, presented in chronological order. 10) Welcome to the Dahl House Saturdays beginning June…
The Denver Film Society is kicking off June by announcing (just in time for Pride Month) their dates and full schedule for the Cinema Q Film Festival, which goes into full bloom July 21 – 24 at the Sie FilmCenter. Kicking off the four-day fest on Thursday, July 21, is…
There was a time when the summer movie season was a season, sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. By the 21st century, the start date drifted back to the first weekend in May. This year, the superhero flicks started arriving with Deadpool’s release on February 12. Only two…
There’s reason for skepticism when you hear that a new documentary plays like a thriller. That suggests that the filmmakers have favored suspense over documenting — that the specifics of real life will be arranged according to the logic of plotting rather than reportage. Will Allen’s sunny gut-punch cult exposé, Holy…
