Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
For pure cinema, nothing rivals a high-stakes, full-tilt poker game — unless it’s somebody landing on Ventnor Avenue with two houses, or sending an opponent to the backgammon bar with double threes, or laying down a four with a bloodcurdling cry of “Uno!” Add poker to the long list of…
For a movie built around questions of failed ethics and duplicitous behavior, Street Kings is just as dishonest as its characters. Though conceived as yet another sobering frontline report on law enforcement’s ever-expanding gray area, director David Ayer’s grim police thriller mostly plays as one long dick-measuring competition. You sense…
For those growing up in weatherbeaten West Texas, someone notes early in Laura Dunn’s The Unforeseen, “nature becomes God.” A God that hands out abundance at times, to be sure, but also one who snatches away crops, farms and livelihoods in a single wrathful whirlwind. To master one’s plot of…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
Smart people got no reason to live — and, sure, that’s not quite how Randy Newman sang it, but the point still stands. Because in Noam Murro’s directorial bow — one of those Sundance premieres starring famous people slumming it in dingy Indieland — the smart people ain’t doing much…
When Time recently featured George Clooney on its cover accompanied by the headline “The Last Movie Star” — note not even a question mark at the end — you didn’t have to read the article to know where it was coming from. After all, stars of the post-pubescent variety are…
Mick Jagger’s most essential physical feature, according to Martin Scorsese: his bellystache. On the poster for Shine a Light, the big-shot director’s Rolling Stones concert film, Sir Mick is frozen in mid-song aerobics, his back arched, his half-shirt raised, that yawning navel and faint hairline more prominently showcased than his…
With ski season winding down, there seem to be fewer and fewer reasons to load up the car, buckle in and head for the high country and a weekend of scenery and excitement. But forget snow: This week, the Vail Film Festival is the only reason you need to spend…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
As John Simon once said of Jeanne Moreau — cast in a virginal role — making Simon Pegg a fat guy is like casting Lassie as a vegetarian. Take Chris Elliott, subtract Don Knotts: the remainder is Pegg, the British actor-screenwriter who barely registered as an appetizer for Shaun of…
Considering that the war in Iraq has proven to be Washington’s shot-by-shot remake of Vietnam, it’s only natural that Hollywood has followed suit, giving us a series of Iraq-themed films that can be set neatly alongside their Vietnam-era counterparts. Just as the initial wave of angry anti-Vietnam documentaries (In the…
Ben Mezrich’s 2002 bestseller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions was a smart narrative about…well, you saw the subtitle, right? Mezrich more or less recounted a fantastic tale spun by an old acquaintance from Boston, an M.I.T. grad named Kevin…
Do we need another look back at the rotten heart of the ’50s nuclear family? Ira Sachs thinks we do, and as one who can’t get enough of sweaty melodramas about rotting families, I’m with him in principle. Mind you, Sachs’s noticeably childless new movie is less about families than…
The pleasing circularity of Gus Van Sant’s masterful Paranoid Park is not only a function of the film’s narrative structure, but a reflection of the arc of its maker’s career. Few directors have revisited their earliest concerns with such vigor. Van Sant’s debut, 1985’s Mala Noche, was a moody drizzle…
The Democratic insurgent is the most charismatic candidate since RFK, and the party’s convention could be the most convulsive since the debacle in Chicago. The Vietnam War has returned in the personae of Johns McCain and Rambo. George Romero, whose Night of the Living Dead remains the definitive celluloid expression…
Sex and chance brought them together one furtive summer night in the cruising grounds of a wooded Parisian park. Adrien (Michel Blanc), a doctor: bourgeois, middle-aged, world-weary, on the prowl for boys. Manu (Johan Libéreau), a boy: beaming, naive, freshly arrived in Paris, on the prowl for experience. Flattered by…
Owen Wilson’s a bad fit for an ass-kicking bodyguard. Rare is the star vehicle that’s as poorly matched to its star as Drillbit Taylor, which casts Owen Wilson as a homeless Army deserter and con man, able to fool people into believing he’s both a substitute teacher and a master…
No Country for Old Men(Paramount)”A horror comedy chase” is how a grinning Tommy Lee Jones describes No Country for Old Men in the making-of — meanwhile, his fellow actors add to the list such adjectives as “a very primitive ride,” “a rabbit chase through Texas,” and “a very powerful story…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
Was Dr. Seuss, né Theodor Seuss Geisel, oblivious to his own genius? The allegory of his charming Horton Hears a Who! remains fluid today, and like its crafty rhymes, ebbs and flows with the times. The conviction of an innocent pachyderm known as Horton to stand up against tyranny and…
