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Becoming van Gogh. Timothy Standring, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, is the brains behind the very compelling, very interesting and, most of all, very successful Becoming van Gogh, on display now. When we think of van Gogh, we are actually only thinking of the work of…

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas delivers fine dramatic fare

If you knew you were dying, and it was Halloween, your first impulse might not be to gather your whole estranged family together for one last night of spooky, costumed tomfoolery. Christmas is this whole other deal. From Michael Keaton’s dead dad in Jack Frost to Ed Asner’s dying father…

Jack Reacher: one beautiful beat-’em-up action flick

In his 2005 novel One Shot, writer Lee Child lays out nine rules for surviving a five-against-one alley fight, a challenge his hero, the ex-Army cop Jack Reacher, is about to face. These include “Be on your feet and ready.” “Identify the ringleader.” “Don’t break the furniture.” Rule number nine…

Judd Apatow ponders modern marriage in This Is 40

Sadly, country songwriters stand as nearly the only entertainers in our popular culture who craft memorable art on the subject of marriage, the state in which just fewer than half of Americans spend the majority of their lives. A few years back, Brad Paisley, one of Nashville’s best, wrote and…

Karina Longworth’s top ten films of 2012

More than ever, boiling this concluding year down to the 10 “best” movies feels both arbitrary and reductive. Ideally, I’d have 25 unnumbered slots. I’d cite another five, formally varied non-fiction films: Tchoupitoulas, Detropia, The Ambassador, Only the Young and How to Survive a Plague. And were I crafting this…

Now Showing

Becoming van Gogh. Timothy Standring, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, is the brains behind the very compelling, very interesting and, most of all, very successful Becoming van Gogh, on display now. When we think of van Gogh, we are actually only thinking of the work of…

It’s hard to take Any Day Now‘s message seriously

Any Day Now is homo history repurposed as courtroom soap opera. Director Travis Fine, greatly embellishing a script written decades ago by George Arthur Bloom — who based it on a real-life, high-camp Brooklyn neighbor (played by Alan Cumming) and the mentally challenged kid he looked after — has virtuous…

The Hobbit hews closely to its source material

Set some sixty years before the events depicted in LOTR, The Hobbit tells of another unassuming Shire-dweller’s grand mythopoeic adventure in the company of wizards, elves, and — this time around — a merry band of thirteen dwarfs. The hobbit in question is one Bilbo Baggins — uncle of Frodo…

See Hyde Park on Hudson for Bill Murray’s performance

It’s dispiriting that a film about the romantic life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who cultivated a small coterie of mistresses, should exhibit so little interest in what so engaged its hero: the women’s individual hearts and minds. Instead, Hyde Park on Hudson quickly introduces us (and FDR) to the president’s…

The twenty baddest movie villains of 2012

The year 2012 was a big one for creeps — living, breathing, oozing, killing-Batman creeps. So we asked Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl to choose the year’s twenty baddest from the scores of contenders. Continue reading for his picks — a spoiler-free selection of this year’s spookiest screen villains…

ANIMAL/object scores experimental films tonight at the Merc

Joel Haertling is one of Boulder’s more unusual fixtures: a globetrotting advocate for experimental film and music, over the years he’s worked with Stan Brakhage and toyed with noise as Architects Office, all while curating the Boulder Public Library’s free film series. See also: – Architect’s Office is a one-man…

Now Showing

Becoming van Gogh. Timothy Standring, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, is the brains behind the very compelling, very interesting and, most of all, very successful Becoming van Gogh, on display now. When we think of van Gogh, we are actually only thinking of the work of…

Starlet portrays the old, the beautiful and the naked

An empathic, absorbing tale of the old and the beautiful, Starlet tracks an unlikely intergenerational friendship in the San Fernando Valley. Florida transplant Jane (Dree Hemingway) is employed by one of the area’s main engines of commerce, breaking into the XXX industry and cheerfully working adult-movie trade shows. When not…

Movie violence has never been better…or more reckless

Part of the renascent body-count action industry, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning’s mere existence might shock many Americans. “There are four Universal Soldier movies?” those shocked Americans would say. They might also be taken aback by the bracing violence that marks the film from stem to stern: the gangland-style execution…

Life of Pi star Irrfan Khan forges a cross-cultural career

“I can’t think of a more pathetic situation for an actor than to do a film and not connect to it,” Irrfan Khan says. “And I pray to God that I never face that situation.” Khan might not be one of the most prominent stars in Bollywood, especially not when…