There’s a knot of tough, tender, persuasive scenes near the end of Isabel Coixet’s life-advice drama Learning to Drive. These are muscular enough that, had they come earlier, they might have powered the movie — the filmmakers’ hearts might be in the right place, but the film’s doesn’t kick in…
The first famous tennis player was King Louis X of France. Nicknamed Louis the Quarreler for his domestic politics, meaning he was likely a real pain to the ref, King Louis is renowned for two facts in athletic lore: He invented the indoor tennis court, and, after a hard, hot…
Director Alex Gibney’s choice to follow this spring’s Scientology slam Going Clear with the fascinating portrait Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine might seem like an about-face. The first documentary clinically eviscerated a religion that everyone loves to loathe. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, however, is adulated to an incredible…
A comedy too listless to bother crafting jokes or comic incidents, a character study centered on a sweet-natured prick it’s hard to believe could actually exist tumbleweeding into a job at a lube shop, 7 Chinese Brothers is a go-nowhere shrug of a movie, the kind of indie that might…
Sometimes a face is enough to anchor a movie. In writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth, Elisabeth Moss plays Catherine, a young city dweller who, after recently suffering both her father’s death by suicide and a crushing breakup, treks to the country to spend a week with her best…
A sense of humor will take you far in life, even along a daunting stretch of the Appalachian Trail. In his hugely popular 1998 book A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson chronicled his attempt to hike the full length of the trail, from Georgia to Maine, accompanied by an…
The fear of losing your child or another loved one is a theme explored by two Colorado filmmakers in new films screening Monday, August 31, at the Sie FilmCenter — and for a good cause: The Rocky Mountain Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Sean S.J. Jourdan’s Teddy Boy explores a bereft couple’s…
Remake The Graduate today, and an adult might corner Benjamin Braddock and whisper, “Startups.” Debut director Max Joseph gives that a good shot, though the result — the EDM-fueled, drug-laced dream-crusher We Are Your Friends — is so sweaty and silly, people may not notice. Like Mike Nichols, Joseph wants…
There’s a strain of science-fiction writing that evokes a chilly kind of coziness, usually by introducing us to individuals or small groups of people who have found their way to the country in the hope of escaping encroaching doom. John Wyndham’s bleak, beautiful 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids…
Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, run down the worst and best of the movies they saw this summer, which as summers go, wasn’t so terrible! Among the best performances were those by Sam Elliott, wonderful in two movies,…
Brooke, Greta Gerwig’s latest Manhattan creation, is a hurricane gobbling up lives. She’s a singer, restaurateur, interior decorator, math coach, spinning instructor and self-described autodidact. When eighteen-year-old admirer Tracy (Lola Kirke), Brooke’s sister-to-be following their parents’ Thanksgiving wedding, squeaks that she wants to write short stories, Brooke devours that idea,…
Mean and vigorous men’s-adventure pulp throwback No Escape has everything going against it. It’s a late-August release whose leads, Owen Wilson and Lake Bell, tend to be the best things in movies you otherwise regret seeing. The trailers, teasing the story of a toothsome American family hunted by peasant rebels…
Thirty years ago, filmmaker John Hughes got the attention of a generation when he introduced us to the detention crew at Shermer High School, who start out socially separated strangers and end up thick as thieves as they work through their problems, differences and similarities during one extended day. Making…
What happens when the pioneers of a movement get left out of history? The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, screening August 24 at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, explores that very question. The documentary takes an in-depth look at The Damned, one of the punk era’s most influential yet…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast: We love Guy Ritchie’s stylish, charming The Man From U.N.C.L.E., while LA Weekly film critic Amy states her case for American Ultra. We move onto Lily Tomlin’s memorable performance in Grandma. Later, Village Voice film editor Alan recommends Evil Knievel doc Being Evel, cutting indie…
“You could make five different N.W.A movies. We made the one we wanted to make.” That’s director F. Gary Gray during an audience Q&A after a recent screening of Straight Outta Compton, the long-awaited N.W.A movie. In our review, Amy Nicholson writes that there’s much more to the group’s story:…
Is it in honor of its subject that the high-flying doc Being Evel indulges so often in hilarious overstatement? “He opened the door and invited people to buy a ticket to watch truth,” one talking head insists, somehow keeping his face straight. Another speaks of how in the early 1970s…
Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra is a bloody valentine attached to a bomb. It’s violent, brash, inventive and horrific, and perhaps the most romantic film of the year. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart star as Mike and Phoebe, two West Virginia stoners blissed out on weed and each other. “We’re the…
Hank Troy is taken aback. It’s just been pointed out to him that he’s created musical accompaniment for silent films a decade longer than the Silent Era itself lasted. “Hmm, I never thought about that,” says the gentle, friendly musician. “I’m going to have to think about that one!” Tonight, Troy…
In a world gone mad for superhero movies, what chance does the light spy caper have? When a whole city can be blasted to smithereens thanks to special effects, a picture that’s actually shot in Rome doesn’t hold a candle. Are modern audiences ready for the stylish, artfully ridiculous delights…
The runaway success of RuPaul’s Drag Race has put the spotlight on the subculture of drag queens, introducing the world to dozens of talented performers who have battled it out for seven seasons for the honor of being crowned the “next drag superstar.” Many of these personalities have crossed Denver…
Chances are good that you don’t know the works of writer/director/actor Xavier Dolan — and that is a crying shame. Dolan is Quebec’s wunderkind of cinema who, since turning nineteen, has put out five amazing pieces of film that show the practice, originality and power of someone much older and…
