Queen to Play is a feminist tale on a chess board

After chambermaid Hélène (Sandrine Bonnaire) glimpses an American couple (Jennifer Beals and Dominic Gould) playing chess in the upscale Corsican resort where she works, she becomes obsessed with the game and what it represents to her. The couple’s casually sexy interplay and wealth are in stark contrast to the hand-to-mouth…

Who could possibly replace Oprah?

Oprah is returning to her home planet this week. Or she’s leaving daytime television. Or something like that. Everybody loves Oprah. Even if they’ve never seen her television program, they know Oprah is “truth.” She’s solid, she’s the bridge between different cultures and the essence of what it means to…

Help Nurse Necro M.D. get made, win a trip in a hearse

SORP Films wants to share a story with you, but they need your help. You see, they’ve got this great tale of a mutated nurse looking for revenge, but they’re a little short on funds, so they’ve turned to Kickstarter for a little help. If you’re wary of donating to…

Sneak Peek: Mountainfilm in Telluride 2011

This week, Mountainfilm in Telluride promoters released the full program for the 32nd annual festival (May 25-30). Since there are more than 70 films on the schedule, we caught up with Mountainfilm’s program director Emily Long to bring you a sneak peek at some of this year’s most hotly anticipated…

Gratuitous randomness: Spider-Man about town

What with Tobey Maguire all sincerely pining for Mary Jane and the (admittedly badass) spectacle of CGI overload in the new Spider-Man movies, we occasionally long for the good old days, the days when Spider-Man was shittily drawn and was sort of a dick. Well, that second part isn’t necessarily…

Jesus vs. Bono: Who would win? The founder of PeaceJam intends to find out

Come Saturday, Colorado’s poised to have more incoming messiahs than anybody ever asked for, including the evangelicals; besides being the scheduled day of Jesus’ second coming according to Biblical number-cruncher Harold Camping, it’s also the day Bono comes to Denver with U2 for a show at Invesco Field — all…

Now Showing

15 Colorado Artists. The Kirkland Museum is presenting a historical show that tracks the beginnings of post-war modernism in Denver using the artist group 15 Colorado Artists as an index. The story goes that the Denver Artists Guild was hostile to modernism at the time. This led to a split,…

Rutger Hauer is a man on a mission in Hobo With a Shotgun

Pick a reason to balk at this spot-on, garishly threadbare paean to ’80s no-budget sleaze: It apes a genre that was already creaky when its director/co-writer, Jason Eisener, was still in nappies; it’s nauseatingly violent; it began life (and arguably should’ve finished it) as a mock trailer for faux-grindhouse gazillionaires…

The Pirates franchise is just about washed up

After sinking into self-important tedium with its prior two overstuffed installments, Pirates of the Caribbean seemed destined for burial at sea. And yet the soggy franchise and Johnny Depp’s foppish rapscallion return again for On Stranger Tides — to search for the fountain of youth, no less, a quest that…

Mel Gibson loses it in The Beaver

An earnest, intermittently droll dramedy about a manic-depressive toy manufacturer and his bewildered family, The Beaver is a parable that’s not easily parsed. While director Jodie Foster fails to maintain a consistent tone — could there be such a thing as inspirational satire? — the movie’s lopsided wobble is undeniably…

Priest is this week’s most ridiculous trailer

OMG like how hot are vampires right now? So hot, is how hot they are right now, but as everyone knows, Dracula is pretty much played out and the whole vampires-as-sexy-brooding-potential-lovers thing is already taken — what we need is a new angle on vampires. So let’s see… how about…

The ten best children’s shows not meant for children

We miss Saturday mornings sometimes, when we would run downstairs filled with sugary cereal and spend the day watching cartoons and “educational programming.” Even though these days we’re well aware of the alphabet (some of us, at least — mostly those that don’t comment articles on the internet) and the…

O wise Master Yogi: The top ten quotes from Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra: the man, the baseball legend and the quote machine. Over the course of his life, Berra — born Lawrence Peter Berra on this very day in 1925 — has come up with countless expressions and sayings, golden nuggets in the English vernacular that are still quoted today in…

Now Showing

15 Colorado Artists. The Kirkland Museum is presenting a historical show that tracks the beginnings of post-war modernism in Denver using the artist group 15 Colorado Artists as an index. The story goes that the Denver Artists Guild was hostile to modernism at the time. This led to a split,…

Circo chronicles the tough and beautiful life of a Mexican circus

“The circus is tough and beautiful,” says a talking head in Circo, Aaron Schock’s documentary on the small, struggling, family-owned Circo Mexico. It’s an apt description of the film itself, a riveting patchwork of interconnected dramas that include difficult in-laws, arguments about money and familial exploitation, and the wrenching tensions…