Don’t hold it against Tom Tykwer’s A Hologram for the King that its best scene is also its first. As Alan Clay (Tom Hanks) strides down a suburban street singing a modified version of Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” (“You may find yourself … without a beautiful house ……
Elvis Presley once watched Dr. Strangelove three times in one night at a Memphis movie theater. After that, he made them play the last reel several more times, marveling at it. It’s fascinating to wonder about: Here’s this country’s biggest musical star, the leading man in movies he knew were…
In Jeff Nichols’ gripping domestic thriller Take Shelter, Michael Shannon played a family man convinced that Armageddon was upon us. But even as the character’s visions compelled him to take more and more extreme precautions, the film remained fixed in the world of the real. It was a portrait of…
Jonathan Pine, the hero of The Night Manager, might have a syrupy voice and skin tanned to a glowing bronze, but in other respects he’s a classic John le Carré creation. Pine (Tom Hiddleston) makes his living unshowily and in the dark, at a swank hotel, juggling front-desk phone calls,…
The musician biopic might be stale and stupid as a genre, but it will endure. Each new one offers the possibility of the wondrous thing that made Hollywood into Hollywood: presence. You can guess from the trailers that I Saw the Light might be a botch job as drama, but…
Careful what you wish for. When it was announced that Jessica Chastain and Emily Blunt would be joining Charlize Theron and Chris Hemsworth for the followup to 2012’s humdrum action/fairy tale Snow White and the Huntsman, many filmgoers, myself included, got unduly excited. The original film, while a hit, had…
Filmmakers have to be more rigorous than you might think when they’re making a stoner comedy – especially when the two leads are doing most of the shooting as they go along. Doobious Sources, director Clif Lord’s tale of spliff and grief that has its world premiere on Thursday, April 21,…
All actors possess their own personal gateway into becoming a character. Some require deep memory mining (method). Others require lengthy conversations with the director about seemingly unrelated philosophical topics. And some just need a single physical characteristic around which they can develop a character’s entire being. Susan Sarandon is a…
There must have been something in the ink that started coloring the world of popular animation, because adult animation really took off in 1972, mixing sex, drugs and political messages with wild, eye-popping visuals. Fritz the Cat, the ground-breaking animated film made that year, kicks off Deviant Animation, a new…
The effortless charisma of Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer, the headliners of the first two Barbershop movies (released in 2002 and 2004), helped keep those over-plotted comedies buoyant. Cube and Cedric are back as Calvin and Eddie in Barbershop: The Next Cut, but even their enormous appeal can’t rescue…
What do you get when you make a superhero movie with a male lead but keep your female audience at the forefront in your decision-making? Apparently a box office hit. By now, you’ve probably heard about the wild success of the little superhero film that could: Deadpool. Nobody expected much…
The Chet Baker portrayed by Ethan Hawke in Robert Budreau’s misty biopic Born to Be Blue is midway between beauty and ruin. Behind him are the 1950s, when his easy virtuosity and matinee-idol looks swiftly took Baker from Charlie Parker’s sideman to major player on Dick Bock’s Pacific Jazz label…
Here’s a question faced by the creators of almost every superhero adaptation: How do do you pull this off without copying Frank Miller’s Batman? Too many modern superhero dramas — including the Dark Knight films, Arrow, Daredevil and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — either ape the dour realism…
Hardcore Henry screened as a midnight movie at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and was so ecstatically received that a distributor bidding war ensued. Six months later, the film has hit theaters nationwide and fallen flat, thanks to intensely negative reviews from critics upset by its unceasing violence. It didn’t…
Here’s about as convincing an argument as I can imagine for the existence of the modern Hollywood blockbuster. Disney and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book reinvigorates an oft-told tale with star power, technology and calculated charm. It’s been billed as a live-action remake (it’s too good to be called a…
Scream Screen, our Best of Denver 2016 winner for Recurring Classic Film Series, hosted and curated by Best Bloodthirsty Host Theresa Mercado, will return to the Sie FilmCenter in May with a big-screen tribute to horror master John Carpenter. The event kicks off at 10 p.m. Saturday, May 28, with a special…
And they keep on coming: After the international critical and commercial breakthroughs of Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation and The Past, Fireworks Wednesday represents the second of his earlier films to receive a belated U.S. release. As was the case with About Elly — made in 2009 but given a stateside…
In Karyn Kusama’s newest feature film, The Invitation, a group of old friends gathers in a secluded house in the Hollywood Hills, reuniting after two years of radio silence from their hosts. What follows is slow-burning suspense, testing belief systems and social niceties, under the guise of a dinner party…
The Aspen Shortsfest won’t end until April 10, but the Denver Film Society just announced that the inaugural RSC Shorts Fest will debut at the Sie FilmCenter in May. It’s the first foray into curated film programming by the DFS’s Reel Social Club, which caters to young professionals interested not just…
Superhero fans may not know stunt coordinator Philip J Silvera’s name, but they do know his work. Silvera’s choreography turned heads in such recent comic-book adaptations as the Arkham Knight and Arkham Origins Batman video games, the record-breaking Deadpool film and Netflix’s Daredevil. Silvera’s imaginative, brutal work on Daredevil’s first…
Like the Juggernaut or St. Patrick’s Day drunks, nothing can stop the hundreds of hours of filmed superhero junk that hits our faceholes each year. But rest easy, true believer! Once in a while, the onslaught can still offer surprise and pleasure. A shiver of both hit me minutes into…
Have you ever considered the fact that, in 1951, Hank Williams actually wrote “Hey Good Lookin'”? That, for the first 175 years years of American history, those words and that melody weren’t already part of our shared heritage? Williams didn’t just pluck it out of the air, of course. Cole…
