Set in 117 A.D., the highly enjoyable action-adventure Centurion tracks a small cohort of Roman soldiers who are trapped far north of their empire’s boundary. A triple whammy of abrupt plot twists (I’ll let the movie itself spring them) has these guys being run ragged by a vengeful posse of…
Sometimes you feel bad for movie marketers, tasked with connecting any given film to an audience as large as possible. Take, for example, The American. Judging by the film’s trailers and advertisements, it’s a fast-paced Euro-stylish thriller starring George Clooney as a dashing, conflicted hero. Yet it quickly becomes apparent…
Happily sampling nasty beats and riffs from the Scorsese catalogue, the new Aussie crime saga Animal Kingdom begins with a hushed but breath-holding set piece: A gawky lad watches TV on the couch next to his dozing mum…until the already-summoned EMTs arrive and the boy calmly tells them she’s OD’d…
If you walk into a department store today, you’re going to be bombarded with Halloween paraphernalia. Even though the holiday is still two months out, it’s time to start preparing yourself for the inevitable: horror movie marathons. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell what exactly these films might portray, which is…
Denver’s a great place for fans of the big five of genre film (that’s sci-fi, fantasy, horror, exploitation and cult), as every week we get a generous helping of selections to choose from. As usual, we’re rounding up your options for the weekend to come and the following week, and…
Energy Effects. MCA Denver director Adam Lerner and architect Paul Andersen have put together one of the most important of the many Biennial shows on display now. The exhibit, with the epic title of Energy Effects: Art and Artifacts From the Landscape of Glorious Excess, begins outside the building where…
New York mag editor Juliette (Patricia Clarkson) travels alone to Cairo to meet her husband, who works for the United Nations in Gaza. When hubby gets stuck across the border indefinitely due to vague unrest, Tareq (Alexander Siddig), his former bodyguard, steps in as Juliette’s chaperone. Fluent in English and…
With a small, well-chosen cast, sly script and slippery, ambivalent characters, The Last Exorcism puts a welcome twist on the demonic-possession-movie revival. A fourth-generation minister, Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) of Baton Rouge’s Church of St. Mark was groomed for the pulpit. Onetime child preacher Cotton has grown out of the…
Elegant opening credits, written as if calligraphy on a wedding invitation, yield to a couple in blunt close-up — unhappy, interracial, tearfully celebrating their anniversary in a shopping-mall restaurant. After an unfathomable exchange, he presents her with an antique bowl found on eBay and, after reciting a guffaw-worthy litany of…
Like horror movies in general, the trailer of Pirhana 3D, yet another B-flick devoted to America’s favorite scary flesh-eating fish, starts out strong: with ominous music and the old sudden-and-startling-loud-noise trick, it creates a suspenseful mood that builds until about minute one — and then, as all horror movies eventually…
Dirtbag Gene Simmons opens the film, flatly stating that every man envies Hugh Hefner. Is that what I was feeling, watching photo ops with frail old Hefner’s orange young girlfriends obligingly “keeping him young”? Many young people know only that Hef, an easy-grinning senior in leisurewear, floating on a silicone…
Midway through Lottery Ticket, a teen-comedy-cum-wish-fulfillment fantasy, the movie’s hero, Kevin Carson, goes on a spending spree. The holder of a $370 million lottery ticket that he can’t cash in until after the July 4 holiday, Kevin accepts a $100,000 loan from a local gangster and proceeds to spend it…
The Switch is a loose adaptation of a Jeffrey Eugenides story called “Baster,” published in The New Yorker in 1996 and deemed fit for inclusion in the 2001 best-of anthology Wonderful Town. Last week, when asked by the New Yorker’s book blog about the film — which stars Jennifer Aniston…
Colorado Art Survey. Over the years, Kirkland Museum director Hugh Grant has relentlessly sought out and acquired new things for the institution’s permanent collection. In the current exhibit, Colorado Art Survey, he shows off some of these conquests and brings other things out of storage. There are some rarely seen…
Once upon a time, in the epoch of the president they called “Ray-Gon,” there was a concept so new and different it blew the minds of the citizenry: video rental. Say you wanted to watch Black Eagle with Jean Claude Van Damme, but only once or twice, and then probably…
Denver’s a great place for fans of the big five of genre film (that’s sci-fi, fantasy, horror, exploitation and cult), as every week we get a generous helping of selections to choose from. As usual, we’re rounding up your options for the weekend to come and the following week, and…
Colorado Art Survey. Over the years, Kirkland Museum director Hugh Grant has relentlessly sought out and acquired new things for the institution’s permanent collection. In the current exhibit, Colorado Art Survey, he shows off some of these conquests and brings other things out of storage. There are some rarely seen…
Their new suburban house is lovely, the neighbors friendly, the nursery ready — and now all that Göran (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his husband, Sven (Torkel Petersson), need to make their familial dreams come true is an actual child. A letter from Swedish Social Services promises that a baby is on…
Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is every bit as faithful to its source material (Bryan Lee O’Malley’s six-volume series about a 22-year-old go-nowhere man-boy fending off his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes) as Zack Snyder’s Watchmen was to his (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s brooding comic-hero deconstruction). Both…
No Damn Trespassing, Beware of Mule!” warns the hand-carved sign posted near the high country cabin of Tennessee recluse Felix Bush (Robert Duvall), whose abrupt decision to re-engage with the larger world propels Get Low, an imperfect but rewarding new film. It’s 1938, and Felix, who’s been in a self-imposed…
Like so many, it started out such a promising career. Coming up from humble beginnings as a Hispanic stand-up comic and radio host, George Lopez seemingly appeared from nowhere in the early 2000s in a number of very credible roles: the star of his own Hispanic-centric sitcom, supporting roles in…
We could all use a second chance sometimes. From everyday schmoes to high-powered television producers, everyone’s looking for a way to capitalize just one more time on one flimsy yet extremely profitable premise or other. Or maybe that’s just the television producers. Either way, the execs over at ABC are…
