Screen
La dolce vita
There’s an old story (probably embellished, possibly apocryphal) from Blackboard Jungle’s opening weekend. Not many people remember that 1955 teen drama starring Sidney Poitier and...
‘Violence motherf*ckers!’
Not every director starts a scene by yelling, “Action!” Clint Eastwood gently whispers, “When you’re ready,” while others don’t even bother calling it. Sam...
Under the radar
Fire up the projector and dim the lights — the 46th Denver Film Festival kicks off this weekend. This year’s slate opens with a...
Just whose America is this?
July 12, 1917, Bisbee, Arizona: Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler and a deputized posse nearly 2,000 people strong rounded up 1,300 striking miners —...
Evil Cheesey rides again
When Terry “Evil Cheesey” Chesebro, 58, is out in public or walking near a road, it’s not uncommon for the former daredevil to receive quick honks as people yell his name in admiration...
Mommy issues
A mother is on trial for murdering her child. We know how, but not why. Nor does the mother. She does not deny the...
Lost in a sea of memory
Few films can announce themselves as succinctly with an opening image as Frantz does. In the foreground: green leaves and pink flowers waving in...
Seuss is spinning
The new animated feature The Lorax, known in its entirety as Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax to keep it straight from “John Grisham’s The Lorax,” does a few smaller things right but the bigger things not quite. I’ve come to fear these movies. I love Seuss so much, even his ...
Went the war well?
Dunkirk — the latest feature from writer/director Christopher Nolan — isn’t like any other war movie. That’s because Dunkirk isn’t the story of a...
Page turner
John Ford is cinema. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1894 — just as motion picture cameras were first being put to good use —...
Stories we tell
You know something’s amiss from the start. There’s something benign about the secondary school classroom setting, something pedestrian about the participants that makes your...
The more things change…
On Nov. 15, the Starz Denver Film Festival will screen a 35mm revival of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, a movie that is as relevant today as when it debuted in 1989. This past summer’s headlines out of Ferguson, Missouri, and the death of Eric Garner in New York, ...
