Screen
Leave it alone
Let’s not do this, OK? Let’s not use nostalgia to forgive the unspeakable things we did to fringe, denim and the musical scale in the 1980s. Other than the 1985 Chicago Bears and that time Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire, there is nothing even worth remembering...
A true auteur
When the French writers for Cahiers du cinema coined the term “auteur” in the late ’50s, they envisioned an author of motion pictures —...
Too much violence — despicable
Despicable Me is a surprisingly violent animated movie that suffers from being released within a few weeks of Toy Story 3. Where Toy Story 3 has warm characters who seek to do well by each other, Despicable Me is populated by characters who constantly hurt each ...
Not awful, at least
Compared to 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth and Killers — The Ugly Truth and Killers being extra-specially evil benchmarks of how low modern romantic comedies can go — Life as We Know It does not crush your soul, does not turn Katherine Heigl into a shrill pain in the ...
American boy
Soft-spoken and even, Charles Bukowski sounds nothing like his face looks. Or like his prose reads. In his introduction to the 1979 edition of...
From banal to extraordinary
Stan Brakhage may have died in 2003, but his legacy lives on in the town in which he made his home. To this day, the spirit of the experimental filmmaking legend lives on in many ways — and in Boulder, there is no shortage of places to go and see films and speakers ...
Farce gone awry in ‘Planet 51’
How might a teenager protect himself from that dreaded fate described in legions of sci-fi movies — the probe? If you weren’t thinking “champagne cork,” you were way off, according to the sci-fi kids cartoon Planet 51...
A foggy reflection
In 1998, Walt Disney Feature Animation released its 36th film, its first and only retelling of a Chinese legend: Mulan, the story of a...
Going gaga for Kojo
Writer/director Blitz Bazawule’s first feature-length film feels exactly like someone telling you about a dream they had. Only you’re actually interested in it, and...
Twentieth-century mogul
For 50 years, Scott Eyman’s been collecting string. The author of over a dozen books on Hollywood history has a deep collection of research...
The power of discussion
The “road trip” might be the ultimate American movie trope — the vast expanse of the continental United States providing a vivid backdrop while the confines of a vehicle pressure-cook characters in the comedy and drama they need to discover the intricacies of ...
