Screen
‘Couples Retreat’ a waste of talent, unfunny
Director Peter Billingsley had a tough assignment: take four suburban couples and put them through a series of "relationship building" challenges that were thought-provoking, poignant, revealing and funny. In attempting to accomplish this, he makes everyone a crass ...
Jedi mind tricks from ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats’
"Is this really based on facts?” a fellow critic asked the studio rep at the screening of The Men Who Stare At Goats. “Does it matter?” I responded, and I was right, it doesn’t. Whether it’s factual or just a riff on the craziness of modern military and contemporary ...
Mental illness explored
Something really bad is coming, an impending apocalypse, and only Curtis (Michael Shannon) can see it. His mom was institutionalized with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 10, however, so are his dreams prophetic or is he starting to lose it? This is the plot of ...
Home viewing: Spike Lee
Spike Lee’s latest film, Da 5 Bloods, will be available to all with a Netflix login on June 12. Delroy Lindo, Isiah Whitlock Jr.,...
Never marry Brad Pitt
As creative luminaries Alfred Hitchcock and Sir Mix-a-Lot have demonstrated, a great end is crucial to quality art. Allied does not have a great...
Now serving number 666
Is there a less desirable room to be in than a courtroom? True, courtrooms are the spaces where civility and rhetoric determines the justice of actions, but entering one is like traversing Dante’s Inferno. Justice may be served, you might even come out the victor, ...
Adventures in cinema
Back for a 15th year, the Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF), Feb. 28–March 3, has expanded its usual scope. With over 50 features and...
Mechanical failure
The Mechanic is Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham), a crack assassin who can kill his targets without leaving a trace, and even — as we learn later — implicate third parties in the crime. Impressive. Except as we watch Bishop blunder his way through target after target, ...
