Screen
No one promised ‘great’
Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur is a retelling of every story involving a beloved pet ever told, with the twist being the human is the pet. In an alternate reality where dinosaurs and man walked the earth together (that’s called creationism), Aldo (Raymond Ochoa), a runt ...
The collective ‘Ahhh!’
The cinema has few theorists as gifted as David Bordwell. Film Art: An Introduction, co-written with Kristin Thompson and Jeff Smith, is taught in...
John Hughes for kids
Released a year ago, the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie captured remarkably little of the sly charm of the Jeff Kinney books that line my son’s bookshelf. The film did, however, capture enough of the fan base to warrant a sequel. And here we are. And it’s a little ...
Cinema without borders
CU-Boulder’s International Film Series isn’t just Boulder’s first art-house series; it also features one of the best programs out there. From international sensations to...
Powerful pandemic picture
One of the most powerful — and frightening — film themes is global pandemics. Diseases already seem to spread without us fully understanding or being able to control them, and rapidly evolve to become resistant to our defenses. It's not much of a leap to see a very ...
Through the looking glass
Lewis Carroll’s immortal story Alice in Wonderland has been brought to the big screen many times, notably 1951’s animated Disney classic. That’s an intimidating challenge, especially for Tim Burton, who generally tackles new stories that can be crafted in his own ...
Sorry, Malaysian tourism industry!
No Escape feels like it was written by somebody who violently hates the entire Asian continent. Culled from every xenophobic stereotype, down to the eating of dogs, the film plays like a two-hour anti-tourism ad: “Malaysia, You’ll Probably Die Here.” Setting aside ...
Unlikely combinations
Mildly funny adventures in extreme baby-sitting, director David Gordon Green’s The Sitter finds its emblematic moment in the scene of Sam Rockwell, playing a Brooklyn drug dealer, joking around and then suddenly blasting one of his minions in the foot in a ...
