A kick for those who’ve distractedly thumbed through Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, Joel and Ethan Coen’s bustling comedy Hail, Caesar! looks back to the waning days of moviedom’s golden age: specifically, to 1951, when big-studio fixers were still tidying up the messes left by the talent (scrubbing now done by…
Jane Got a Gun’s reputation precedes it, but it shouldn’t define it. After a tortured production that included the departure of original director Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) and a revolving door of leading men, the Western arrives in theaters long after popular opinion declared…
Patrick Warburton is that rare voice actor who looks like he sounds. His imposing, muscular physique complements his deep basso voice, but his warm tone gives a touch of soul to his many memorable performances as lunkheaded alpha males. Quite likely your ears perk up when you hear him. He…
February is our month for love in all of its syrupy forms — and our list of cinematic valentines is packed tighter than a chocolate box. Though lacking in stories actually about love, each one of these movies is perfect for a date or a solo outing that might lead…
You will never really get movies unless you do them the old-fashioned way: No matter how pervasive digital media becomes, movies thrive in the dark, up on the big screen, in front of engaged viewers. CU-Boulder’s International Film Series knows this, and is celebrating its 75th year of operation with…
February is here, which means a societally obligated focus on all things love for the next two weeks! Don’t worry, though — apart from a couple of carefully curated selections, this month’s list of geek events will barely register the existence of Valentine’s Day. Instead, our focus — as always…
The queasiest thing about American Crime Story’s (FX) retelling of the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial is how easily such a flagrant miscarriage of justice could happen all over again. The twin forces that most warped that case, after all, still plague us today: a tabloid culture that reduces flesh-and-blood…
Is the Stanley Hotel giving up the ghost on its film festival? For the past three years, the haunted landmark raised cinematic spirits with the Stanley Film Festival. But the traditional April fest has been put on hold for 2016, and Stanley owner John Cullen has parted ways with the Denver Film…
Get ready, drag enthusiasts: Tickets go on sale today for the Denver stop of RuPaul’s Drag Race Battle of the Seasons, at the Ogden Theater on May 1. This year’s 2016 Extravaganza Tour is headed to our town for the first time — last year’s events here starring Drag Race…
Mulder and Scully are back, at least for the length of a mini-series, and legions of costumed X-Files fans re-emerged from the shadows to cheer on their long-lost heroes at a big-screen premiere party at the Oriental Theater. The Enigma was there, too — tattoos, horns and all — just to…
“Every film is a documentary of its actors,” Jean-Luc Godard once said. Starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Haigh’s shattering marital drama 45 Years expands that maxim: As we gaze at and listen to these performers, whose characters reflect on nearly a half-century together — almost as long as…
The movie they’re selling isn’t the movie this is. Sony Pictures Classics is peddling Nicholas Hytner’s film of Alan Bennett’s play and memoir The Lady in the Van like it’s the usual twinkly Best Exotic time-with-our-elders holiday entertainment. There’s Maggie Smith, dressed up as what my grandmother used to call…
Popcorn is a truly rare gem in a vast, picked-over field of rocks: a fun, smart slasher film that was released during a time when we all thought we’d never scream at a slasher again. Well, break out the earplugs: Popcorn is showing Wednesday, January 27, at the Alamo Drafthouse. For…
Here’s an odd thing to say of a lavishly expensive 3D IMAX maritime disaster flick that hits theaters just a month after the last one: They don’t make them like this anymore. There’s a reason for that, of course — the parents and grandparents who like ’em stolid and corny…
But what about the meaninglessness of everything? William Monahan’s Mojave is one of those ’90s-style chatty-killer movies, mixed with one of those ’90s-style guns-in-the-desert existential cheapies, the kind of picture where good-looking dudes shooting each other is passed off as elemental and beautiful rather than just what it actually is…
There’s essentially one joke in the Kung-Fu Panda movies. A ridiculous, adorable creature executes some extravagant action-flick flourish — vaulting over roofs, dropping a bad guy, striking a poster-perfect superhero pose. Then the battle music fades and that adorable creature breaks badass character to remind us it’s totally relatable, even…
There are worse ways for a television star to transition into film than a horror movie. There are also better movies to do it in than The Boy. Still, Lauren Cohan of The Walking Dead shines bright in William Brent Bell’s dim genre exercise, a vital presence opposite a lifeless…
Call it a dissenting opinion if you must, but Dirty Grandpa has sporadic moments of hilarity: the spontaneous “USA! USA!” chant that erupts after an out-of-his-mind Zac Efron announces to spring breakers that he’s just unknowingly smoked crack, or Aubrey Plaza commanding as foreplay that Robert De Niro, as the…
“Who can give me the derivative of X?” a high-school teacher asks early in the YA-apocalypse mashup The 5th Wave. As soon as she asks that, the lights blink off, everybody’s cellphones die and jets tumble from the sky. We never hear a student respond, but here’s my Official Fan…
In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower famously left the White House with a warning to the American public about the rise of the military-industrial complex. When Barack Obama exits the Oval Office next year, he wouldn’t be remiss in cautioning the nation about the conspiracy-industrial complex, which has dug its tentacles into…
What are the limits of representation? That’s a moral question that hovers over any depiction of the Final Solution, and it’s not considered lightly by László Nemes’ Son of Saul, which turns unimaginable horrors into tangible ones. By venturing inside the death factory of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nemes risks greeting obscenity with…
Benghazi is a hashtag battle-cry, a call to arms that many Americans don’t understand. Unlike the simplicity of “Remember the Alamo!” a bleat of “Benghazi!” still has people wondering, “Wait, what happened? And why are we mad?” Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi has an explanation, though…
