The heads of the City Dionysia, the Grecian playwriting competition that pitted Aeschylus against Sophocles and can be considered the original Oscars, had a rule: no original characters. Instead, the best creative minds of a generation — or, really, a millennium — exhausted themselves finding new spins on, say, Medea…
Maybe Cars and the Hot Wheels-ification of Pixar has been a good thing. Now that the storied studio has, like its rivals, puked onto our screens indifferent kid-distracting junk, its new movies come un-freighted with expectations of genius. Miserable as it was, Planes: Fire and Rescue (from corporate parent Disney…
Marvel’s Jessica Jones is smart, surprising and occasionally terrifying, a human tale of trauma and healing in a superhero vein. Its first episodes have more (unexploitative) sex scenes than battles, more shrugs and eye rolls than mighty kapows. But it’s not the shock or novelty that gives it resonance. Jessica…
How funny, really, are dick pics? Millions of them must be snapped and shared each year, as inducement or harassment, celebration or shaming. Perhaps Harper’s Index could tell us the tonnage of coal mined each year to power the transmission of American crotches. So when a dick pic turns up…
In the current noble vogue of admirable female figures in documentaries, now comes Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, by Lisa Immordino Vreeland. Guggenheim may not be news to the art world, but for the rest of us the film might stir wishful nostalgia for a breakthrough time in cultural history: Check…
It’s clear why Angelina Jolie Pitt became a star. She was a sexpot with talent, and, just as crucially, her feline beauty was a sexpot breed we’d never seen. Past glamazons like Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, and Jayne Mansfield trailed a whiff of insecurity. We could sense that they were…
Saoirse Ronan makes a grand case for herself as the millennial generation’s finest leading lady in Brooklyn, an immaculately crafted, immensely moving character study about a 1950s immigrant struggling to find her place in the world. With an open, innocent countenance equally capable of registering tremulous separation anxiety, exhilarating joy,…
Bryan Cranston parades through Trumbo, a wiki-pageant of shorthand history, like a costumed kid playing actor Bryan Cranston at a Disney park. As blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a man given to mannered diction, Cranston layers movieland falseness over the scraped-raw heart of his Breaking Bad triumph. Remember how you could…
With the spectacular The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, the best in the series, Jennifer Lawrence closes out the franchise that made her the biggest star of her generation. Since the Hunger Games movies started, in 2012, she’s starred in four of them and only six of everything else…
On Sunday, the 38th Denver Film Festival came to a close, after screening over 250 films from 39 countries (17 from Colorado alone) for over 55,000 filmgoers. And every film in the festival was eligible for the prestigious Starz People’s Choice Award, with a select few han ded additional awards…
The terror attacks in Paris cast a shadow over the final days of the Denver Film Festival. At screening after screening throughout the fest’s final weekend, speakers referenced the horrific crimes and encouraged attendees to send positive thoughts to victims and survivors in the City of Light. But the shows…
Actress Illeana Douglas isn’t really a household name — and that’s too bad. The great character actress has been in dozens of films since the late ‘80s, and even if her name is unfamiliar, once you see the wide-eyed actress, she’s instantly recognizable…and unforgettable. This Saturday she’s returning to the…
Again this year, Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today he spotlights selections for November 13 (Lamb), November 22 (Mustang) and November 23…
We’ve gotten used to the idea that the highest-quality, most innovative television lives on premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime. But two of the most delightful and inventive series to premiere in the past year have come from an unexpected place: the CW. Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend…
“To actually do an action film without Zöe Bell is foolhardy,” says director Quentin Tarantino, but based on the current slate on the New Zealand-born stunt double turned actor’s resume, doing any film without her is a questionable choice. The sparking star is returning to the Denver Film Festival this…
Again this year, Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today, he spotlights a selection for November 12: Karbala. Karbala Directed by Krzysztof Lukaszewicz 3:30…
Here’s a sentence you didn’t expect to read today: There’s a recent Simpsons that’s entirely worth your time. Seriously. “Halloween of Horror,” the fourth episode of the series’ 27th season, is a rarity: a late-era Simpsons rich with feeling, sharp jokes and the sense that this family and their story…
Again this year, Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today, he spotlights selections for Wednesday, November 11: Virgin Mountain. Virgin Mountain Directed by Dagur…
How do you dramatize the unthinkable? On August 5, 2010, 33 Chilean miners were trapped when the hundred-year-old gold and copper mine in which they were working collapsed around them. For weeks, no one knew if they were alive or dead. But 69 days later, after a team of international…
Newspapers are dead, except in the hearts of anyone who has ever loved them — which means that there are still narrow slivers of hope. One of them now comes to us in the form of a movie: Tom McCarthy’s bold, shirtsleeve-sturdy newsroom drama Spotlight, which shows how a team…
Again this year, Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today, he spotlights his pick for Tuesday, November 10: War of Lies. War of…
Regular Denver Film Festival-goers tend to judge their experiences in part by the percentage of good movies to lousy ones they see before each edition of DFF runs its course. By that measure, my experiences since catching Charlie Kaufman’s low-key, defiantly weird Anomalisa on the fest’s opening night this past Wednesday…
