Screen

Rose-tinted world

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At the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, house-servantturned-space-commander Riff Raff threatens the sequinned-and-fishnetted Dr. Frank-N-Furter with a laser trident and yells, “Say goodbye to all of this, and hello to oblivion...

Quake and stakes

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Let’s get this clear up front: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s character, Ray, in San Andreas is stealthily one of the most morally bankrupt, narcissistic assholes to ever be called a “hero.” He’s introduced as having saved more than 600 lives during his many years with ...

Taken

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Hendrik Coetzee was not a man easily dominated. After he led the first expedition from the source of the Nile in Uganda to the Mediterranean — a 4,100mile trip he undertook in 2004 to show the humanitarian situation in that part of the world — some people griped that...

Get Fassbent

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So the whole time, Michael Fassbender wears this giant, papier-mache-style head and mumble-sings gibberish lyrics about things like snags in the carpet while other people play instruments they created out of things like toothbrushes. Welcome to Frank, a movie that is...

Please sir, may I have my job?

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Sit down, Sartre. Writers/directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne get it a bit more right: Hell isn’t just other people. Hell is asking other people to surrender their bonuses so you can keep your job. Two Days, One Night is a harrowing social allegory, a dramatic ...

Cold War sizzle

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Presumably, a reboot or remake is done to capitalize on the good will and brand recognition of an intellectual property. Do fanboys of the 1960s TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. exist? Does anyone remember anything about it, other than it sporting a weird acronym for ...

Leave it alone

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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...

Leni Riefen-stalling

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On the one hand, any film subtitled “Part 1” is a naked cash grab. On the other hand, shut up and take my money, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1...

Reel to reel | Week of November 14, 2013

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The Starz Denver Film Festival, Nov. 14-17...

The bacon of blockbusters

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Hands down, my favorite discussion in the wake of Furious 7 doing to the box office what Vin Diesel does to elocution (which is to say, stomping it to oblivion): “Do we really need another Fast and Furious movie?” No. No, we do not. We also didn’t need to land on the...

Awake my soul

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Nostalgia, like love, erodes rough edges; it fills in gaps, paints clean what was scuffed and forgives copious small sins in the name of happiness. I’m sorry, but none of the Star Wars movies have been perfect. Although some are demonstrably (and laughably) worse, ...