Screen
A couple of clowns
There is something in the air at the 39th Denver Film Festival (DFF), something musical. Be it Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling channeling the...
Strength and decay: One strongman’s quest for the American dream
New Jersey strongman Stan “Stanless Steel” Pleskun, the “Strongest Man in the World at Bending Steel,” and his struggle to build a career performing feats of strength are the subject of New York filmmaker Zach Levy’s award-winning documentary Strongman, which will ...
The way to dusty death
Style is half the picture. Story is the other half. William Shakespeare’s 17th-century play, The Tragedie of Macbeth, might be one of the greatest stories...
Awake my soul
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, ...
Brand Xenu man
Writer/director/demigod of modern American cinema Paul Thomas Anderson — or PTA, as his peeps call him — has a filmography so stunning that merely making a very good movie means it’s his worst one yet. So, with a heavy heart comes the news that The Master isn’t ...
Company bust
A single spontaneous moment pops up in the otherwise obsessively well-ordered ensemble drama The Company Men, written and directed by ER and West Wing alum John Wells. It’s a quick shot in a hotel room tryst of Maria Bello bopping back into frame, unexpectedly, ...
‘Astro Boy’ seems dated
Lovely dollops of wit and warmth float through the big screen version of Astro Boy, the latest Japanese TV cartoon to make it to the big screen. But the look, themes and slam-bang "Transformers" violence of that 1960s animated series make this every bit as dated as "...
Right story, wrong script
Red Tails squanders a great subject, reducing the real-life struggles and fierce heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen to rickety cliché. Some of the action is fun. But if something about that statement doesn’t sound right, well, there’s your chief problem with Red Tails. ...
Comedians united
It seems like an odd way to start a review for a movie in which Will Ferrell tries to make Zach Galifianakis touch his testicles on stage during a debate, but The Campaign has a clever message...
2012, will you marry me?
I want the 2012 year-in-film to have my babies. Heck, I’ll have its babies; it has been so durn good I’d totally go seahorse for it. Before I reduce a year that renewed my cinematic soul to a series of arbitrary numbers and rankings, a quick caveat: Because ...
Homespun cinema
CU Boulder’s International Film Series (IFS) has unveiled the spring 2023 calendar, and it’s a doozy. From the Jan. 26 free 35-mm screening of...
