Screen
Wherefore art thou, Magilla Gorilla?
San Andreas and Jurassic Park III were provided abstinence-only education, didn’t use intellectual property protection and had an illegitimate Rampage baby. Oh yeah, while...
The past and present collide in ‘Hell or High Water’
W
hen it comes to movie genres, none are as distinctly American as the Western and Film Noir. The Western, populated by cowboys, Native Americans...
Not just a voice, a resounding roar
The history of cinema is littered with career defining debuts. From Orson Welles’ seismic Citizen Kane to François Truffaut’s autobiographical The 400 Blows; from Terrence Malick’s poetic Badlands to Martin Scorsese’s raw Whose That Knocking On My Door? They don’t ...
Badly thought out film adaptations, nevermore
Edgar Allan Poe introduced his 1840s readership to a new kind of fiction: detective novels. In his dark, twisted and often macabre stories, criminals committed crimes and were brought to justice by an officer of the law. But while his stories, including "The Cask of ...
Royal triumph
Imagine you’re second in line for the throne of England, right behind your selfish, womanizing brother, your father the King is in ill health, and you have a terrible stutter. Your father despises you for the impediment, your country is poised to enter World War II, ...
The moment when everything changed
Traditions may come in all shapes and sizes, but the rigid ones always seem to be the one’s that last. On the island of...
Hard not to Laika
"Show your work.”
That statement is both an admonition given by rigid mathematics instructors and part of the reason why stop-motion animation continues to captivate....
Cold War sizzle
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 ...
The world comes to DFF
The 41st Denver Film Festival brings together more than 300 shorts and feature films from Oct. 31–Nov. 11. Sure, there are bound to be...
What we talk about when we talk about ‘Birdman’
I know two things for sure: (1) Birdman aims to relentlessly drive home one singular point, one thoroughly expressed thesis about life and art. (2) It does not succeed. You would think that would make the work of writers Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, ...
Home viewing: ‘The Breaking Point’
When Jack Warner previewed The Breaking Point in the summer of 1950, he knew he had a hit on his hands. And with good...
Only in dreams
There are two moments in Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood that take your breath away. The first is visual: A series of neon...
