In 1990, the same year that Kevin Costner released the massive global hit Dances with Wolves, a curious thing happened in France. The name Kevin became the country’s most popular for new babies, a Gaelic moniker edging out national stalwarts like Antoine and Jules. Imagine if everyone in America suddenly…
Here’s the last thing I ever would have expected out of Pompeii, that sword-thrust of 3D gladiator-vs.-volcano madness coming right at your disbelieving eyeholes. An hour or so in, when Vesuvius exhausts its portentous rumblings and blows its top (3D!), I legitimately wasn’t ready. Yes, all that third-act destruction is…
Gayle Crites and Andrew Beckham. As she usually does, Tina Goodwin has paired a couple of solos at her namesake gallery, with one in the larger front space and the other in the smaller corridor in back. At first glance, Gayle Crites: The Cloth That Binds appears to be an…
It’s a little sad that Colin Farrell has outgrown roles that require him to wear raggedy sweaters and say things like “For fook’s sake!” It had to happen, though. Farrell has always made a terrific bad boy, but he clearly knows he couldn’t be a scamp forever, and he seems…
The seemingly innocuous school interview that opens writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sublime Like Father, Like Son is actually a master class in foreshadowing, as its banal questions and calculated answers turn out to be carefully laid tripwires for the thematic concerns of the film. Those include the roles nature and nurture…
Congratulations, Detroit. In 1987, Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop cemented it as the most violent city in the world, an honor the Motor City resented for decades until its powers-that-be realized they may as well erect a statue of Peter Weller and milk the tourism. Twenty-seven years later, the attention has shifted…
Director José Padilha’s long-delayed RoboCop reboot has arrived, and it’s neither an unalloyed (see what I did there?) triumph nor the travesty that partisans of Paul Verhoeven’s subversive Reagan-era classic had feared. At least, and at most, it’s different, taking bold liberties with the original text, as remakes should. One…
Though it’s difficult to pinpoint the typical Berlin Film Festival film, I’ve attended the festival enough times to attest that most pictures in the competition lean toward the somber end of the scale: You’re more likely to see a drama about immigrants in tough circumstances or children left to fend…
The big news out of the Berlin Film Festival last week was that Shia LaBeouf, here to promote Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume 1, behaved like an ass on the red carpet at the movie’s premiere last night. He showed up in a proper tuxedo, but also with a paper…
Greetings from the 64th annual Berlin Film Festival, where it’s a surprisingly balmy 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). The weather here may not be business as usual, but the festival looks promising — the competition includes films by Alain Resnais, Lou Ye, Yoji Yamada, and Claudia Llosa (whose odd…
The endless love in question unfolds in that universe where shy, bookish teenage girls are always catalog-model beautiful, not a pimple in sight or a pound overweight, not a garment from Hot Topic darkening their closets. The movie tells us that 17-year-old Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) is “awkward” and has…
Just as animated characters who look too human creep us out, could there be a phenomenon we might call the RomCom Uncanny Valley, a case when movie stars’ gorgeousness fully outshines our ability to believe their characters’ humdrum relationship problems? Radiant lovers make radiant love — and then argue about…
Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, both of which publish special daily issues at the major international festivals, may be the most famous movie trade magazines. But every morning at any of these festivals, including Berlin, most critics I know – and probably plenty of industry people, too – turn to…
State lawmakers are pondering a bipartisan proposal today that would help fund the track maintenance and upgrades that Amtrak says it needs to keep running its Southwest Chief route through southern Colorado. The railroad wants approximately $40 million a piece from Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico over the next decade…
It can be overwhelming to navigate the wide variety of films and panels that run February 13 through 16 at the tenth annual Boulder International Film Festival. Luckily you can’t go wrong, says director and co-founder Kathy Beeck. The common thread is good storytelling. From the free Youth Pavilion to…
Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us, and love is in the air. Everywhere you look, people are planning fancy dates or at least renting their favorite romantic movies for a night of couch-snuggling with their beloved. Contrary to the stereotypes, geeks are no different. Well, maybe a little different –…
Does Bob Costas have pink eye? Yikes. #welcometoSochi pic.twitter.com/oPE7iTpkdb— Dan Ukrainetz (@Dan_Uk1) February 8, 2014 The lead-up to Sochi was filled with dire signs that Putin’s games were doomed. The toilets are weird! There’s no Chobani! They’re butchering thousands of dogs! My honey packet had a bee in it! And…
Valentine’s Day wouldn’t be complete without at least one showing of Casablanca, one of the greatest love stories of all time. But Bogart and Bergman will meet up several times over the next week on screens across the city, at evenings featuring everything from the movie and a martini to…
Marika Bournaki was a vivacious piano player at five and an old pro at twelve when documentary filmmaker Bobbi Jo Hart began following the Montreal-born musician around with a camera. For eight years, Hart captured every part of Bournaki’s life, as she balanced studying at Juilliard and traveling the globe…
Art may not be more important than human lives. But on the list of things that mean something to human lives, across centuries, it ranks pretty high. That’s what’s so compelling about the story of the Monuments Men, a group of people from thirteen nations who volunteered to protect cultural…
Consider the Lego, the toy of contradiction. With one — well, with hundreds of them — you can build anything: houses, airplanes, house-airplanes. You can even build something that will change the world, as Larry Page and Sergey Brin did in 1996, when they housed the server for their new…
Now that people are living so much longer, our self-invention can seemingly go on forever. The heroine of Chilean director Sebastián Lelio’s exuberant semi-comedy Gloria is right in the middle of the fifty-something version of that in-betweenness. We join her story already in progress, but get the idea pretty quickly:…
